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The Reference and Content of Proper Names: a Social and Pragmatic Approach

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The Reference and Content of Proper Names: a Social and Pragmatic Approach THE REFERENCE AND CONTENT OF PROPER NAMES: A SOCIAL AND PRAGMATIC APPROACH DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Yimin Kui, M.A. The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Joseph Levine, Adviser Professor Louise Antony Professor Robert Kraut ____________________________ Adviser Graduate Program in Philosophy ABSTRACT The goal of my dissertation is to propose and defend a unified account of the semantic content of proper names that can address all the following six problems facing various theories of proper names: The Modal Argument, the Epistemic Argument, the Semantic Argument, Frege’s Puzzle, Belief Puzzles, and Empty Names. I first defend a theory of reference concerning proper names. I argue that for every proper name, there is a structured web of community uses associated with it. Among the objects involved in the Kripkean causal network of the name, the object that stands out as the dominant bearer of the web of community uses is the referent of the name. Roughly, an object becomes the dominant bearer of the web of uses, if it either satisfies or causes the weighted most of the properties/uses in the web. Secondly, I examine Nathan Salmon’s and Scott Soames’s defenses of the direct reference theory. For their strategies to succeed, they need the assumption that all the properties/beliefs (or at least the specific ones) in the web of community uses of a name are pragmatically imparted information and thus semantically irrelevant information. I adduce various examples to show that there are cases where we have strong intuitions that even specific properties/beliefs can collectively be semantically relevant. And I try to find good reasons to support and explain these intuitions. ii Thirdly, I propose that the meaning of a name N can be given like this. N means the object that is the dominant bearer of the web of community uses in this (rigidified) world. On the surface, this is a version of rigidified cluster theory. However, I contend that in order to use this theory to solve all the aforementioned difficulties and more importantly, in order to understand our linguistic practices involving proper names, we must emphasize the indispensable roles played by social and pragmatic factors. Indeed, I submit and explain that in essence, this is a social, historical, holistic, and pragmatic viewpoint. iii Dedicated to my wife Hua iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my adviser, Joseph Levine, for intellectual guidance, encouragement, and support which made this thesis possible, and for his patience in correcting both my philosophical and stylistic errors. I also wish to thank him for sharing illuminating insights with me in various discussions and for his wonderful seminars in philosophy of language and mind in which I have learned important topics such as 2D semantics and externalism vs internalism concerning semantic content and mental content. I would like to thank Robert Kraut for stimulating conversations throughout the years. I wish to thank him for his inspiring seminars in metaphysics in which I have learned not only contemporary issues in metaphysics, but also philosophies of Quine, Sellars, and Rorty. As a consequence, I feel that I am enlightened to approach the philosophical issues in my thesis from a social, historical, holistic, and pragmatic point of view. I am grateful to Louise Antony for discussing with me various aspects of this thesis. Her questions often pose serious challenges to my account and force me to either clarify my arguments more carefully or reconsider my position from a different perspective. As a result, I believe that the quality of this thesis, especially the first chapter, has been improved significantly. v I wish to express my gratitude to all the people who have philosophically influenced me in various positive ways. Particularly, I want to thank Mary Sirriage and John Baker at the Louisiana State University, and William Taschek and Diana Raffman at the Ohio State University. vi VITA September 16, 1964……………………… Born – Shanghai, China 1985……………………………………… B.S. Mathematics, Nanjing University China 1997-1999……………………………….. Graduate Assistant in Philosophy Louisiana State University 1999-present……………………………... Graduate Associate in Philosophy The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….iv Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..v Vita……………………………………………………………………………………...vii Chapters: Preface…..……………………………………………………………………………1 1. The reference of proper names……………………………………………………….5 1.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………5 1.2 The traditional descriptive theories of reference……………………………………6 1.3 Kripke’s causal picture……………………………………………………………...8 1.4 Evans’s early view…………………………………………………………………12 1.5 Evans’s later view………………………………………………………………….20 1.6 Other proposed theories: Devitt, Berger, Lance…………………………………...27 1.7 The phenomenon of conditional deference to the world…………………………..39 1.8 A theory of reference………………………………………………………………44 1.9 Objections and elaboration………………………………………………………..47 2. Salmon’s defense of the direct reference theory…………………………………….63 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...63 2.2 Kripke’s arguments against the traditional descriptive theories of meaning………65 2.3 The direct reference theory………………………………………………………..68 2.4 Salmon on Frege’s puzzle………………………………………………………….70 2.5 Salmon on belief puzzles…………………………………………………………..78 2.6 Salmon on empty names…………………………………………………………..83 2.7 Other theories of empty names……………………………………………………95 3. Soames’s defense of the direct reference theory…………………………………..105 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….105 3.2 Soames’s criticism of descriptivism……………………………………………...106 viii 3.3 Soames’s positive account of the meaning of names……………………………..115 3.4 Soames’s account of the meaning of names refined……………………………...131 3.5 The meaning of partially descriptive names……………………………………...134 3.6 Soames on belief puzzles…………………………………………………………135 3.7 Soames on Frege’s puzzle………………………………………………………..141 4. Chalmers on two-dimensional semantics…………………………………………..145 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………145 4.2 Chalmers’s account of 2D semantics…………………………………………….146 4.3 Block and Stalnaker’s objections to 2D semantics and Chalmers’s reply……….153 4.4 Further examination of Chalmers’s reply to the triviality objection in the case of proper names……………………………………………………………………..163 4.5 Elaboration of Chalmersian 2D semantics and its application to the case of proper names…………………………………………………………………………….171 5. The semantic content of proper names…………………………………………….180 5.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………180 5.2 A Theory of the Meaning of Proper Names……………………………………...181 5.3 The Modal Argument…………………………………………………………….185 5.4 The Epistemic Argument………………………………………………………...188 5.5 The Semantic Argument…………………………………………………………194 5.6 Frege’s Puzzle……………………………………………………………………200 5.7 Belief Puzzles…………………………………………………………………….205 5.8 Empty Names…………………………………………………………………….209 5.9 Further Elaboration of The Social and Pragmatic Theory……………………….215 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………228 ix PREFACE Any attempted account concerning the meaning and reference of proper names must face at least the following six major challenges: (1) The Modal Argument: According to the traditional descriptive theories, the meaning of a name is given either by a definite description or a cluster of definite descriptions. For example, the meaning of “Shakespeare” can be given by “the author of Hamlet, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet.” But Kripke’s modal argument shows that this is not true, because Shakespeare might not have written any of the great works. Since even the disjunction of the properties that the descriptive theorist usually associates with the name is not necessary, then the meaning of the name cannot be given by these definite descriptions. (2) The Epistemic Argument: If the descriptive theories are true, that is, the meaning of a name is given either by a definite description or a cluster of descriptions, then a speaker who understands the name must know a priori the description or the cluster of descriptions. However, this is often not the case. For instance, a speaker can understand the name “Shakespeare,” but she must investigate the world empirically in order to know whether it is true of Shakespeare that he is the author of those books. Thus she does not know a priori about the description(s). Consequently the meaning of the name cannot be given by the description(s). 1 (3) The Semantic Argument: The descriptive theories also claim that the reference of the name is determined by the meaning of the name in the following manner: the object that satisfies the definite description or the weighted most of the cluster of descriptions is the reference. However Kripke uses the semantic argument to show that it is possible that the referent does not satisfy any of the properties the descriptive theorist usually associates with the name. For instance, it is possible that Shakespeare did not write any of the great works commonly attributed to him. Consequently the reference of the name cannot be determined by these definite descriptions. (4) Frege’s Puzzle: According to the Millian theories, the meaning of a name has no connotation. A name is just a tag to the reference. Moreover, on the
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