Names

First published Wed Sep 17, 2008; substantive revision Tue Mar 19, 2013

Proper names are familiar expressions of natural language. Their semantics remains a contested subject in the philosophy of language, with those who believe a descriptive element belongs in their meaning (whether at the level of intension or at the level of character) ranged against supporters of the more austere Millian view.

Syntax Semantics o Millianism o Sense Theories o The Description Theory o Attacks on Descriptivism o The Causal-Historical Theory of Reference o Descriptivist Replies o The Character of Names o Anti-Functionalism o Names as Anaphors Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries

1. Syntax
Proper names are distinguished from proper nouns. A proper noun is a word-level unit of the category

noun,

while proper names are noun phrases (syntagms) (Payne and Huddleston 2002, 516). For instance, the proper name Jessica Alba consists of two proper nouns: Jessica and Alba. Proper names may consist of other par ts of speech, too: Brooklyn Bridge contains the common noun Bridge as well as the proper noun Brooklyn. The Raritan River also includes the determiner the. The Bronx combines a determiner and a proper noun. Finally, the Golden Gate Bridge is a proper name with no proper nouns in it at all. While any string of words (or non-words) can be a proper name, we may (tentatively) locate that liberality in the form of proper nouns. Proper names, by contrast, simply have a large number of paradigms corr esponding to the sorts of things named (Carroll 1985). For instance, official names of persons in most Western cultures consist of (at least) first and last names (themselves proper nouns). Names of bridges have an optional definite determiner and often co ntain the common noun bridge. Hence we can have bridge names that embed other proper names like The George Washington Bridge. We can also have structurally ambiguous names like the New New York Public Library. Names are often (Geurts 1997, Anderson 2 006) claimed to be syntactically definite, since they can occur with markers of definiteness, such as the definite article in English. Since definite expressions include pronouns, demonstratives and definite descriptions, this evidence is often used to support views on which names are subsumed to one of these categories (Larson and Segal 1995, Elbourne 2005), though it is also consistent with names forming their own species of definite. What we might call proper nominals (proper names without their determ iner) can modify other nouns, as in a Bronx resident. They can also occur as the restrictors of determiners other than the, as in every Alfred. Some (notably Burge [1973]see the Description Theory below) take such non-argumental occurrences as consitituting their primary use (in a theoretical, rather than statistical sense). However, it might seem more natural, pre-theoretically, to regard such occurrences as on a par with coerced expressions such as the verb googled. Is there just one proper nam e Alice or are there many homonyms (Alice-1, Alice-2, etc.)? On the one hand, it is tempting to infer the uniqueness of the name, on syntactic grounds, from the uniqueness of the proper

noun (arguably the same noun recurs in the names Alice Waters and Alice Walker, as well as in the

phrase two famous Alices). On the other hand, there is pressure from semantics to recognize multiple homonyms (or else large-scale ambiguity). For instance, if the meaning of a name is its referent, then there is either one ambiguous name Alice, with as many meanings as there are individuals named Alice, or many univocal names with identical spelling (see Kripke 1980, 8 and especially Kaplan 1990 for the latter view). If instead the meaning of a name corresponds to a rule determining, or constraining, its reference in a context, then there is no pressure to adopt either expedient.

2. Semantics
2.1 Millianism J. S. Mill is given credit (and naming rights) for the commonsense view that the semantic contribution of a na me is its referent (and only its referent). For instance, the semantic value of the name Aristotle is Aristotle himself (note that this assumes that, by Aristotle, a particular, as opposed to generic, name is intendedsee Syntax above). It is unlikely that Mill was the first to hold this view (Mill's argument that a town could still with propriety be called Dartmouth even though it didn't lie at the mouth of the Dart River engages with a dialectic as old as Plato's

Cratylus), which underwent a revival in the second half of the twentieth century, beginning with Ruth

Barcan Marcus 1961. Frege's puzzle of the Morning Star and the Evening Star challenges the Millian conception of names (note that while Frege used proper name [Eigenname] to cover singular terms generally, both expressions seem to be proper names of a sortstar namessee Syntax). For while both expressions have the same referent (the

cognitive significance, nor do they contribute in the same way to the truth conditions of all sentences in which they occur. In particular, they cannot be substituted salva veritate (preserving truth) in the scope of propositional attitude verbs (this claim is subject to dispute see
planet Venus), they do not seem equivalent in Salmon 1986): Homer believed that the Morning Star was the Morning Star. (True) Homer believed that the Morning Star was the Evening Star. (False)

Russell (1911) required that a propositional attitude holder be acquainted with each of the components of the proposition in question. This presents a further problem for the Millian view, for it seems that one can believe the proposition expressed by the sentence Aristotle was wise without personally being acquainted with Aristotle, suggesting that Aristotle is not himself contributed to that proposition. Even if we don't find Russell's epistemological views persuasive, names without a referent (e.g. Atlantis) pose a problem for Millianism. For it is plausible that the sentence Atlantis lies to the west of Gibraltar expresses a proposition (and one distinct from that expressed by El Dorado lies to the west of Gibraltar, for someone might believe the former without believing the latter) and yet on the Millian view Atlantis does not contribute anything to the semantic content of the sentence (and hence nothing over and above what El Dorado might contribute). Millians have made responses to all three of these objections. For Frege's puzzle, see, to begin with, Crimmins and Perry 1983, Richard 1983, Salmon 1986, Soames 1987 and 1989. For the puzzle of empty names, see Braun 1993 and the essays in Everett and Hofweber 2000. Russell's conditions on singular thought are now generally viewed as overly stringent, and it is common to assume that we Aristotle as a constituent (see, for instance, Kaplan 2012).

are in a position to entertain a proposition with

2.2 Sense Theories Frege's (1952) answer to his own puzzle was to add an additional tier, of floor semantic value, the expressions differ at the level of sense.

Sinn or sense, to the referential

semantic value of a name. While the Morning Star and the Evening Star have the same reference, or ground -

Frege left his notion of sense somewhat obscure. Subsequent theorists have discerned a theoretical role unifying several distinct functions (cf. Kripke 1980, 59; Burge 1977, 356). First, as just remarked, an expression has a sense (along with a

Bedeutung or reference) as part of its semantic value. Its sense is its contribution to the

thought (proposition) expressed by a sentence in which it occurs. Names, considered as generic syntactic types, most likely do not have senses as their lingustic meanings. However, any successful use of a generic name (or perhaps any particular name) will express a complete sense. Second, the sense of an expression determines its reference. Third, sense encapsulates the cognitive significance of an expression. In the last capacity, the sense of a sentencea thought (proposition)must obey Frege's intuitive criterion of difference (Evans 1982). Roughly, any two sentences that may simultaneously be held to have opposite truth-values by the same rational agent must express different thoughts. Take the Morning Star and the Evening Star. In addition to referring to Venus, each of these names has a sense. The sense in each case determines (perhaps with respect to some parameter) the referent Venus. Additionally, the senses encapsulate the cognitive significance of each expression. This implies that the senses of the two names are different, since the thought expressed by (3) is distinct from the thought expressed by (4) (from the intuitive criterion of difference, and the fact that someone might think (3) is true but (4) is false). The Morning Star is the Morning Star The Morning Star is the Evening Star Neo-Fregeans have come up with a host of candidates for the role of sense. These candidates do not always satify all of Frege's requirements (though they usually satisfy at least one), making the Neo-Fregean camp somewhat heterogeneous. For example, Michael Devitt (1981) takes senses to be causal-historical chains linking utterances of names to their referents (see the Causal-Historical Theory below). For him, senses play a role in semantics (by constraining the notion of synonymy and the truth conditions of attitude reports) without encapsulating the cognitive significance of an expression for a group of speakers. John McDowell (1977 ) provides an account of sense that fills the cognitive and reference-determining roles Frege ascribed to it, without adopting a two-tiered semantic theory (that is to say, without reifying sense as a semantic value). He associates the sense of a name with an appropriately stated clause in a

Tarskian truth theory (making it possible to

state what one must know to have the sense but not what the sense itself consists in). Perhaps the best known account (emerging from the work of Carnap [1947] and Church [1951]) treats sense as intension. An intension is a function from possible worlds to extensions. For instance, the intension of the number of planets is a function that, given a possible world

w, returns a numberthe number of planets at w.

The extension of an expression at the actual world corresponds to its reference (in the case of the number of planets this is 8); thus intension can be said to determine reference (relative to a world param eter). Moreover, if we take propositions to be functions from possible worlds to truth-values (i.e., intensions of sentences), then we can easily treat the intension of a noun phrase as its compositional contribution to the proposition expressed by a sentence. Finally, the intension of a definite description can be seen to correspond to its cognitive significance. The significance of a definite description the F is presumably the information that allows one to discriminate possible worlds based (only) on who or what is (uniquely) F. The intension of a definite description partitions logical space (i.e., the set of all possible worlds) in precisely this manner.

N by finding a (proper) definite description the F true of the referent of the name at the actual world, and then setting the intension of N
We can cook up an intension for a name