A Unified Theory of Names Essays -- Philosophy Philosophical Papers

A Unified Theory of NamesABSTRACT Theoreticians of name calling are currently split into two camps Fregean and Millian. Fregean theorists catch that label have referent-determining senses that account for such facts as the change of case with the substitution of co-referential names and the meaningfulness of names without bearers. Their enduring problem has been to state these senses. Millian theorists deny that names have senses and take courage from Kripkes arguments that names are rigid designators. If names had senses, it seems that their referents should vary among possible worlds. However, the Millians have the enduring problem of explaining the apparent cognitive content of names. I argue that Mills original theory, when purged of confusion, provides word-reflexive senses for names. Frege failed to notice senses of this particular sort. Moreover, it is these senses that account for names rigid designation. When the see to its of Mill and Frege are understood as complementa ry, the problems that have faced the divided theorists of names vanish. The division of terms into connotative and nonconnotative is, according to Mill, one of the distinctions that go deepest into the nature of language. (1) The importance of this distinction was reaffirmed by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity. Kripke followed Mill in holding that proper names must be understood as nonconnotative. To insist on this classification was, on Kripkes view, to reject the powerfully supported view of names that originated with Frege. (2) Since the publication of Kripkes lectures theories of names have come to be thought of as divided into two opposing types-Fregean and Millian.This opposition of theories has impeded the development of a satisfacto... ...(2) Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Boston Harvard University Press, 1980), 26-27.(3) Gottlob Frege, On find and Meaning, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 3d ed., ed. Peter Geach and Max Black (To towa, NJ Rowman & Littlefield, 1980), 57.(4) Mill, 34.(5) Ibid., 35.(6) Ibid., 36.(7) Ibid., 37.(8) Ibid., 38.(9) Frege, On Sense and Meaning, 56.(10) Ibid., 57-58.(11) Ibid., 58n.(12) Ibid., 58.(13) Frege, On Concept and Object, 46n.(14) Kripke, 68-70.(15) Note that the bearer of Socrates is a rigid description, a connotative term, synonymous with the nonconnotative term Socrates.(16) Pauline Jacobson, The Syntax/Semantics Interface in categorial Grammar, in The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, ed. Shalom Lappin (Oxford Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 90.