A Pragmatic View of Proper Name Reference Peter J. Ridley King’s College London Submitted for the degree of PhD in Philosophy June 2016 1 To my friends in the King’s Philosophy Department, 2006–2016 They have inspired and influenced my thinking more than anything else 2 Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. —W.H. Auden And we must at all costs avoid over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation. —J.L. Austin 3 Abstract I argue, in this thesis, that proper name reference is a wholly pragmatic phenomenon. The reference of a proper name is neither constitutive of, nor determined by, the semantic content of that name, but is determined, on an occasion of use, by pragmatic factors. The majority of views in the literature on proper name reference claim that reference is in some way determined by the semantics of the name, either because their reference simply constitutes their semantics (which generally requires a very fine-grained individuation of names), or because names have an indexical-like semantics that returns a referent given certain specific contextual parameters. I discuss and criticize these views in detail, arguing, essentially, in both cases, that there can be no determinate criteria for reference determination—a claim required by both types of semantic view. I also consider a less common view on proper name reference: that it is determined wholly by speakers’ intentions. I argue that the most plausible version of this view—a strong neo-Gricean position whereby all utterance content is determined by the communicative intentions of the speaker—is implausible in light of psychological data. In the positive part of my thesis, I develop a pragmatic view of proper name reference that is influenced primarily by the work of Charles Travis. I argue that the reference of proper names can only be satisfactorily accounted for by claiming that reference occurs not at the level of word meaning, but at the pragmatic level, on an occasion of utterance. I claim that the contextual mechanisms that determine the reference of a name on an occasion are the same kinds of thing that determine the truth-values of utterances according to Travis. Thus, names are, effectively, occasion- sensitive in the way that Travis claims predicates and sentences (amongst other expressions) are. Finally, I discuss how further research might address how my pragmatic view of reference affects traditional issues in the literature on names, and the consequences of the view for the semantics of names. 4 Acknowledgments I can no other answer make but thanks, And thanks; and ever thanks; Twelfth Night his thesis could not have been written without a great deal of guidance, support, comfort, persuasion, discussion, and sympathy from a fair Tnumber of other people, some of whom have been very deeply involved, and some of whom have been at the peripheries, but have played a part nonetheless. I have written more words than I ever imagined I could, whatever their quality, and I’m fairly sure that my primary school teachers, who were unable to get me to write more four or five words in an hour, would not believe it. I owe a huge debt of thanks to all those who helped me achieve this feat, whatever their rôle, as well as to the AHRC, who provided me with funding. I have effectively had four different supervisors for my PhD, all of whom have significantly contributed to the project in different ways and at different times. I have been working with Wilfried Meyer-Viol, my primary supervisor, for at least eight years, and he has been a constant purveyor of support, interest, ideas, and insightful commentary during that time. When I wrote my PhD research proposal, I expected my research to follow on from my MPhilSt thesis, which focussed on the treatment of names in modal logic. However, my work drifted further and further from formal considerations, to the point at which there is no formalism of my own in this thesis at all. For this, I apologize wholeheartedly to Wilfried. Of course, his capacities go well beyond the logical, and although we did not end up work together as closely as we might have, Wilfried has been an invaluable intellectual guide, and I would not have got to this stage without him. Eliot Michaelson, my 5 secondary supervisor, arrived at King’s halfway through the third year of my PhD. Having someone with a new and different perspective, and with knowledge of all the relevant literature, approach my work at this stage in its development was invaluable. Eliot was able to point out where the weaknesses in my work lay, and where my thinking had become staid. Although his efforts to make me engage with positions other than my own has strengthened my resolve in my position—albeit with a deeper appreciation for the complexity of the debate—my arguments, both positive and negative, are certainly much stronger for those efforts. Mark Textor was my secondary supervisor prior to Eliot, and he essentially started me off on the trail that would form this thesis, working closely with me, first when Wilfried was on sabbatical, and then when my work was dominated by a debate that he himself was engaged in. Mark’s ability to point to a paper or a passage in a book that is directly relevant to any topic under discussion is astounding, as is his capacity to immediately find both the most promising, and the most problematic parts of any piece of work. I was also lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend a term in Austin in my second year, working with Mark Sainsbury. Mark is not only one of the most incisive thinkers I know, but also one of the most generous. He turned around my research from a mere collection of ideas and principles, into a feasible research project that propounded a position diametrically opposed to his own. I am extremely proud of the fact that Mark seemed to think the occasion-sensitivity of proper name reference to be a less absurd idea when I left Austin than he did when I arrived. I also thank Charles Travis. I only had two or three tutorials with him, but Charles was extremely encouraging of my work. He pointed me in the right direction, and gave me the motivation to keep going. As will become extremely obvious, his written work has also had a essential impact on my thought. Although I did not work with either of them during my PhD, Shalom Lappin and Ruth Kempson have both been enduring presences in my intellectual life since I started the MPhilSt. I have learnt a huge amount from them, both academically and personally. I first became really interested in the debates concerning proper name reference during a reading group on names that consisted of just Dolf Rami, Peter Sutton, and me. The discussions that we had on those summer mornings were hugely productive, and were the genesis of this thesis. I’m indebted to Dolf, who introduced me to the literature and its authors, got me excited about the topic, and supported my development within it. Peter Sutton has been my guide and bellweather through philosophy and linguistics since we first met as new postgraduate students at King’s in 2009. I’ve had few good ideas 6 that haven’t been grounded in some way in discussions with, or suggestions from him. When he left for Düsseldorf in 2014, I was intellectually lost for some time. Both he and Dolf have read sections of the thesis, and provided detailed and invaluable comments. Other friends who have, at some point, contributed either discussion, comments, proofreading, or all three, include Josh Armstrong, Lucy Campbell, Rory O’Connell, Mike Coxhead, Alex Davies, Nils Kurbis, and Matt McKeever. Giulia Felappi, Katharine Harris, and Jen Wright, in particular, provided very detailed comments and proofreading. Many thanks for comments and conversations also go to the participants of various reading groups, seminars, conferences and workshops I have spoken at or otherwise attended during the course of my PhD, including the Advanced Research Seminar, the Language and Cognition Research Seminar, the Word Meaning group, the Seriously Summery Summer Surrogate Seminar Series, two workshops on names in Göttingen, the names workshop at King’s, the London graduate conferences, PhiLang in Łódz, and SPEs 7 & 8. Many thanks in particular are due to Robyn Carston, Alex Clarke, Louis deRosset, Delia Graff Fara, Stacie Friend, Aidan Gray, Frank Jackson, Hans Kamp, Genoveva Martí, Ora Matushansky, Adriana Pavic, Tim Pritchard, and Ede Zimmermann. I also benefitted enormously from conversations in Austin with Ray Buchanan and Josh Dever. I am hugely grateful to my family for all the support, encouragement, and love they’ve given me over the course of my PhD, and throughout my life, in particular, my parents, my sister, Kathryn, my brother-in-law, Ge, and my nephew, Harris, who was born on the day I arrived in Austin. They have put up with increasingly infrequent phone calls and visits, as well as extended visits abroad, with great understanding, and very little complaint. I couldn’t have got here without them, and I will ensure that I visit more often when I’m free of this thesis. I’d also like to thank Annie and Gary for welcoming me into their family with such warmth, and providing both understanding and encouragement. My friends, both within and without King’s, have been essential to my emotional, academic, and, on at least one occasion, physical, wellbeing.