DOCSLIB.ORG

The Use-Conditional Indexical Conception of Proper Names

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Use-Conditional Indexical Conception of Proper Names Philos Stud (2014) 168:119–150 DOI 10.1007/s11098-013-0264-x The use-conditional indexical conception of proper names Dolf Rami Published online: 20 December 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract In this essay I will defend a novel version of the indexical view on proper names. According to this version, proper names have a relatively sparse truth-conditional meaning that is represented by their rigid content and indexical character, but a relatively rich use-conditional meaning, which I call the (contex- tual) constraint of a proper name. Firstly, I will provide a brief outline of my favoured indexical view on names in contrast to other indexical views proposed in the relevant literature. Secondly, two general motivations for an indexical view on names will be introduced and defended. Thirdly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on names: formal variable accounts and salience-based formal constant accounts. In the fourth and final section, I will develop my own use-conditional indexical view on names in three different steps by confronting an initial version of this view with three different challenges. Keywords Proper names Á Indexicals Á Determination of reference Á Reference to past bearers of a name Á Multiple bearers of a name Á Empty names 1 Setting the stage: Indexical views on proper names Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose semantic reference depends in a certain way on specific parameters of the context of use. Therefore, an indexical expression can have different semantic referents relative to different contexts of use. Prototypical and uncontroversial examples of indexicals are expressions like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’ and ‘this’. The view that proper names are indexical expressions is D. Rami (&) Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] D. Rami Department of Philosophy, University of Go¨ttingen, Humboldtallee 19, 37073 Go¨ttingen, Germany 123 120 D. Rami controversial. Several important and influential contemporary philosophers of language1 explicitly reject this view or at least hold a view that is incompatible with it; and, I think, it is safe to say that the majority of philosophers holds the view that proper names are non-indexical expressions. There is only a comparatively small group of people that have explicitly argued for an indexical view on proper names.2 We can distinguish between two different general varieties of an indexical view on proper names that can be found in the relevant literature: informal and formal variants. A defender of the first kind of variant identifies certain natural language expressions that are unquestionably indexical and claims that they are semantically equivalent to proper names. Typically, such an equivalence claim is put forward without providing a formal semantic representation of the proposed equivalent indexical expression.3 The following claim is an example of such a view: ‘Alfred’ is semantically equivalent to ‘the present bearer of ‘Alfred’’. A formal variant of the indexical view on proper names makes use of a formal semantic framework that is suitable for the representation of indexical expressions and conceives of proper names as indexical expressions according to this framework. The distinction between formal and informal variants of an indexical view on names is obviously not exclusive. There could also be mixed variants. A more interesting and exclusive distinction is the distinction between distinctive formal and informal or mixed variants. A distinctive formal variant holds that proper names are a distinctive kind of indexical expression in natural language such that there aren’t any other indexical expressions in natural language that are not proper names (like complex demonstratives4 or indexical definite descriptions5), but are seman- tically (or truth-conditionally)6 equivalent to names. I will provide some reasons in favor of such a distinctive view in the second, third and fifth section of this essay. A formal constant indexical account on names represents names formally as simple7 or complex8 non-logical constants with an indexical semantics. The best- known formal semantic framework amenable to such an approach is Kaplan’s logic of demonstratives—in the following abbreviated as KLD.9 I will defend a novel 1 Some examples: Bach, Fine, Donnellan, Kaplan, Kripke, Perry, Sainsbury, Salmon and Soames. 2 C.f.: Burks (1951), Burge (1973), Cohen (1980), Sommers (1980), Zimmermann and Lerner (1991), Recanati (1993), Pelczar and Rainsbury (1998), Dever (1998), Pelczar (2001), Elbourne (2005), Cumming (2008), Matushansky (2008), Sawyer (2010) and Tiedke (2011). 3 C.f.: Burks (1951), Cohen (1980), Sommers (1980) and Sawyer (2010). 4 E.g.: ‘That Alfred‘or ‘That bearer of ‘Alfred’’. 5 E.g.: ‘The present bearer of ‘Alfred’’. 6 Typically, two expressions are considered as semantically equivalent if they make the same contribution to truth-conditional content. But if we accept additional non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, and I will argue for such an additional layer of meaning in this paper, truth-conditional equivalence is only a necessary condition for semantic equivalence. 7 Pure indexicals like ‘I’ are conceived of as simple individual constants in Kaplan (1978, 1989). 8 True demonstratives like ‘that’ are represented as complex expressions of the form ‘dthat[the /]’ in Kaplan (1978, 1989). 9 C.f.: Kaplan (1978, pp. 86–97; 1989, pp. 541–553). 123 Indexical view on proper names 121 version of a formal constant approach of the indexical view on names that is based on KLD and holds that names are a distinctive kind of indexical expression. It is reasonable to distinguish a truth-conditional from a use-conditional layer of meaning. The truth-conditional meaning of an expression concerns its contribution to the truth-conditions of a sentence that contains such an expression. The use- conditional meaning, on the other hand, concerns its contribution to the semantically correct use of a sentence relative to a context of use. According to KLD, every expression has two different aspects of truth-conditional meaning: content and character. Contents are a certain kind of generalization of what is classically called an intension. An intension is a (total or partial) function from possible worlds into extensions. Contents are functions from circumstances of evaluation into extensions. In the minimal sense of circumstances of evaluation, they are just possible worlds. But a circumstance of evaluation can contain additional parameters; for example, also a time parameter. In the case of a singular term, the extension is identical to the referent of this term. A content of a singular term is rigid if the output of this function is the same relative to every possible world. Character is a second layer of truth-conditional meaning additional to contents. It is a total function from contexts of use into contents. Kaplan conceives contexts of use as ordered quadruples consisting of (a) the agent, (b) the place, (c) the time and (d) the possible world of the context of use of a specific expression. It might be necessary to extend these parameters to capture the character of specific indexical expressions in an adequate way.10 A character is non-indexical if it has the same output relative to every context of use; it is indexical if not. In addition to these two truth-conditional layers of meaning, I will add a third use-conditional layer. I will call this additional layer (contextual) constraint.11 A constraint is a (proper) subset of the set of all contexts of use. That is, the contextual constraint of an expression e restricts the set of all possible contexts of use of e to the set of all contexts of use of e relative to which e is used in an acceptable or felicitous way. According to the indexical view on names that I will defend in this paper, proper names are non-logical constant expressions, with a rigid content, a specific indexical character, and a specific contextual constraint. It will be the main concern of this paper to characterize the specific indexical character and contextual constraint of proper names. My defence and development of the proposed use-conditional version of the indexical view on names will proceed in the following way: Firstly, I will provide two different general motivations for an indexical view on proper names. The first motivation will concern the so-called problem of shared names. The second motivation concerns the mechanisms that determine the referent of a proper name. Secondly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on 10 C.f.: Predelli (2005, p. 20; 2012, p. 550). 11 This view is inspired by Predelli (2012, p. 555). 123 122 D. Rami names: formal variable accounts12 and salience-based formal constant accounts.13 Apparent bound anaphoric uses of proper names are the main motivation for the former accounts. I will try to undermine this motivation and point out some problems of two different paradigm variable accounts defended in Elbourne (2005) and Cumming (2008). After that I will be concerned with salience-based accounts based on KLD as they are defended most prominently in Zimmermann and Lerner (1991), Recanati (1993), Pelczar and Rainsbury (1998) and Pelczar (2001). These views have different individual problems, but I will also try to show why salience- based variants are in general inadequate. Thirdly and finally, I will develop my own version of a formal constant indexical view on names that is based on pluralism about the determination of reference of a proper name, a view that I will introduce and defend in the second section of this paper, and a specific development of a suggestive analogy between names, complex demonstratives and third person personal pronouns. I will confront a preliminary version of this view with three problems and develop on this basis the proposed use- conditional variant of my formal constant indexical view on names.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Kripke's Naming and Necessity: Lecture II
    Kripke’s Naming and Necessity: Lecture II PHIL 83104 October 12, 2011 1. Varieties of descriptivism (end of Lecture I) ....................................................................1 2. Kripke’s arguments against descriptivism (71-90) ...........................................................2 2.1. The modal argument (48-49, 71-77) 2.1.1. Rigidified descriptions 2.1.2. Wide-scoping descriptions 2.2. The semantic argument (78-85) 2.3. The epistemic argument (86-87) 3. Kripke’s alternative picture of reference (91-97) ..............................................................5 4. Identity sentences and the necessary a posteriori (97-105) ..............................................7 4.1. The necessity of identity 4.2. A prioricity and qualitatively identical situations 4.3. Some sources of skepticism about Kripke’s claim 4.3.1. Contingent identities? 4.3.2. The illusion of contingency 4.3.3. Millianism about names 1. VARIETIES OF DESCRIPTIVISM (END OF LECTURE I) We’ve already seen two distinctions Kripke makes between different versions of descriptivism: • The distinction between descriptivist views which let a single description do the work, and those which rely on a cluster of descriptions • The distinctiopn between views according to which a description gives the meaning of a name, and those according to which it merely fixes the reference of the name Here Kripke introduces a third distinction: between circular and non-circular descriptivist views. This distinction is not like the others; it is less a distinction between varieties of descriptivism than a constraint on descriptivist views. What exactly is this constraint? Suppose we identified the meaning of the name “Aristotle” with the meaning of the description “the person called ‘Aristotle’” or “the referent of ‘Aristotle.’” These would be examples of descriptivist views which fail to meet the non-circularity condition, since to determine what object satisfies the description, we must first know which object is the referent of the name in question.
    [Show full text]
  • PROPER NAMES: ONE CENTURY of DISCUSSION Uxía RIVAS
    Logica Trianguli, 3, 1999, 119-138 PROPER NAMES: ONE CENTURY OF DISCUSSION Uxía RIVAS MONROY Abstract The main objective of this paper is to offer an overview of some of the most relevant and at the same time controversial aspects of proper names over this last century. Therefore, the intention is not to go deeply into all the issues re- lated to proper names, though special attention will be paid to one of them for its importance, namely, the discussion as to whether proper names have sense or meaning associated to them or whether they are directly referential expressions. In the same way, only a few of all the authors who have made theories, comments or analyses about proper names will be mentioned in this article. The subject of proper names is complex enough in spite of its apparent simplicity, so as to leave many lines of analysis open, which are not deeply dealt with in this pres- entation. 1. Introduction Proper names form part of the most general category of singular terms, that is, of expressions characterised for referring or denoting only one object or individual; therefore, and taking this consideration into account, definite descriptions and the wide range of indexicals will also be singular terms. Following Strawson’s terminology we could say that singular terms, and in particular proper names, are the types of expressions generally used to make singularizing references, i.e. they are the expressions which tend to have a “uniquely referring use”. What we generally have in mind as speakers of a language when talking about proper names is the most paradigmatic examples of them, such as Galicia, Paris, Socrates, Atenea, Ulises, Mary, John; however, we may also consider “The Holy Roman Empire”, “The United States of America”, “The Hercules Tower”, “The Second World War” as proper names; and surely we would not consider “The dean of the Faculty of Philosophy”, “The present king of France”, “The director of the gen- eral library of Santiago” as proper names.
    [Show full text]
  • A Defense of Denotative Theory from Kripke's Criticism
    Tomoya Imaizumi 57 A Defense of Denotative Theory from Kripke’s Criticism Tomoya Imaizumi n Naming and Necessity, Kripke criticizes the denotative theory of reference and proposes a version of the causal theory of ref- erence. The outline of the discussion between these two theo- I ries is the following: the denotative theory is advocated by Rus- sell, who thinks that the reference of a name is determined by the definite description the name gives. Kripke, however, opposes this idea; he thinks that names can designate objects without description, and proposes his version of the causal theory. In this paper, I attempt to examine the criticism given by Kripke and defend the denotative theory from it. I then challenge the causal theory. Finally, I will show the ad- vantages and disadvantages of the denotative theory and the causal theory, along with a comparison between the two. To achieve this goal, it is first necessary to explain the denotative theory, the foundation of which is the notion of definite descriptions, before moving to an expla- nation of Kripke's version of the causal theory, the foundation of which is the notion of rigid designators. I. Description Theory and Denotative Theory In this section, I will explain what the description theory is, Tomoya Imaizumi is a senior studying philosophy at Kyoto University in Japan. His philosophical interests lie in philosophy of mathematics, philosophical logic and philosophy of physics. He is particularly inter- ested in Dummettian generalization from intuitionism to anti-realism, on which he is writing his senior thesis. He would like to continue studying philosophy at a graduate school in the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Kripke on Modality
    KRIPKE ON MODALITY Saul Kripke’s published contributions to the theory of modality include both mathematical material (1959a, 1963a, 1963b, and more) and philosophical material (1971, henceforth N&I; 1980, henceforth N&N). Here the latter must be given primary emphasis, but the former will not be entirely neglected. APOSTERIORI NECESSITY Kripke’s overarching philosophical point is that the necessary is not to be confused with the apriori, but preliminary explanations are needed before his contribution can be specified more precisely. To begin with, the linguistics literature (Palmer 1986) distinguishes three flavors of modality: deontic, epistemic/evidential, and dynamic. The pertinent notions of necessity are the obligatory or what must be if obligations are fulfilled, the known or what must be given what is known, and the inevitable in the sense of what cannot fail and could not have failed to be, no matter what. This last is the only notion of necessity of interest in our present context. As Kripke emphasizes, this notion of the necessary and its correlative notion of the contingent are metaphysical concepts. They are as such at least conceptually distinct from the epistemological notions of the apriori and aposteriori and the semantical notions of the analytic and synthetic. Before Kripke this was never completely forgotten, but its importance was arguably grossly underestimated. Prior to Kripke’s work it was the near-unanimous opinion that the analytic is included in the apriori, which in turn is included in the necessary (Quine 1960: 59). It was the majority opinion that these inclusions reverse, making the three classifications coextensive; but there were dissenters, conscious of being in the minority (Kneale and Kneale 1962: 637-639).
    [Show full text]
  • Frege: the Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference UNIT 2: FREGE: the SEMANTIC DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSE and REFERENCE UNIT STRUCTURE
    Unit 2 Frege: The Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference UNIT 2: FREGE: THE SEMANTIC DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSE AND REFERENCE UNIT STRUCTURE 2.1 Learning objectives 2.2 Introduction 2.3 Frege’s view on meaning 2.4 Semantic distinction between sense and reference 2.5 Frege on Proper names 2.6 Sense and reference of a proper name 2.7 Evaluation 2.8 Let us sum up 2.9 Further readings 2.10 Answers to check your progress 2.11 Model questions 2.1. LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this unit, you will be able to: l explain Frege’s view regarding the concept of meaning. l explain Frege’s distinction between sense and reference. l discuss Frege’s view regarding proper names. l discuss the concepts of Sense and reference of proper names. 2.2 INTRODUCTION Whenever we go to discuss the problem of meaning in philosophy, the problem of referring seems to proceed hand in hand with it. The problem of reference has occupied a central place in philosophical discussion from the very beginning of the twentieth century. Frege’s theory of sense and reference has a strong place in the entire philosophical thought of the twentieth century western world. It is based on the problem of reference. The philosophers have offered a number of toughly competing hypotheses about the nature of meaning. The 20 Contemporary Western Philosophy (Block 1) Frege: The Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference Unit 2 referential view is that words mean by standing for things and a sentence means what it does because its parts correspond referentially to the elements of an actual or possible state of affairs in the world.
    [Show full text]
  • A Pragmatic View of Proper Name Reference
    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.
    [Show full text]
  • Proper Names As Descriptions David Goss-Grubbs University of Washington [email protected]
    Proper Names as Descriptions David Goss-Grubbs University of Washington [email protected] 0. Introduction In this paper I will describe and defend a particular version of the description theory of proper names. This theory simply states that the meaning of a proper name is more or less equivalent to the meaning of the description the individual who bears the name ‘’ . Section one describes the basics of the theory. Section two defends the theory against the objection that it is what Frege (1892) called a (mere) meta-linguistic solution. Section three is devoted to defending the theory against the objections that Kripke (1972) leveled against the theses he numbered (2) through (5) that define the description theory of names in general. Section four defends the theory against Kripke’s claim that this theory (which he attributes to W. Kneale) is circular. Section five is devoted to defending the theory against Kripke’s objection to thesis (6). Section seven describes a particular strength of this theory – its ability to account for non-rigid uses of proper names. Several different kinds of examples are given where proper names are used non-rigidly. 1. Theory Basics In a nutshell, my proposal is that the meaning of a proper name is equivalent to that of a definite description, where the descriptive content is simply that the subject bears that proper name. So using a theory such as that of Russell (1905), the meaning of sentence (1) could be described with the expression (2): 1 (1) Socrates is wise. (2) ∃x (bear( x, ‘Socrates’) ∧ wise( x) ∧ ∀y (bear( y, ‘Socrates’) → y = x)) This says that there is an individual which uniquely stands in the bears relation to the expression ‘Socrates’, and is wise.
    [Show full text]
  • Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference
    THEORIA, 2008, 74, 181–218 doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.2008.00018.x Frege’s Theory of Sense and Reference: Some Exegetical Notes1 by SAUL A. KRIPKE The City University of New York, Graduate Center Abstract: Frege’s theory of indirect contexts and the shift of sense and reference in these contexts has puzzled many. What can the hierarchy of indirect senses, doubly indirect senses, and so on, be? Donald Davidson gave a well-known ‘unlearnability’ argument against Frege’s theory. The present paper argues that the key to Frege’s theory lies in the fact that whenever a reference is specified (even though many senses determine a single reference), it is specified in a particular way, so that giving a reference implies giving a sense; and that one must be ‘acquainted’ with the sense. It is argued that an indirect sense must be ‘immediately revelatory’ of its reference. General principles for Frege’s doctrine of sense and reference are sated, for both direct and indirect quotation, to be understood iteratively. I also discuss Frege’s doctrine of tensed and first person statements in the light of my analysis. The views of various other authors are examined. The conclusion is to ascribe to Frege an implicit doctrine of acquaintance similar to that of Russell. Keywords: Frege, sense and reference, indirect senses, immediately revelatory senses, tensed and first person statements, doctrine of acquaintance, backward road IN TRANSLATING Frege’s terms “Sinn” and “Bedeutung”, I follow Max Black’s translation as “sense” and “reference”, or “referent”. For a long time this was standard, although other translations have been proposed, and later some have thought that standard German usage should be followed in the translation of “Bedeutung”.
    [Show full text]
  • Searle's Theory of Proper Names, from a Linguistic Point of View
    Originally published in: Burkhardt, Armin (Ed.): Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions. Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. - Berlin (u.a.): de Gruyter, 1990. S. 259-278. (Grundlagen der Kommunikation und Kognition/ Foundations of Communication and Cognition) DOI: 10.1515/9783110859485.259 Searle’s theory of proper names, from a linguistic point of view M i c h a e l J . E v a n s /R a i n e r W i m m e r (Heidelberg/Mannheim) 1. Introduction There has been a long and great tradition, in philosophy as well as linguistics, of inquiry into the functions proper names fulfil in any linguistic community. Philosophical questions differ in many respects from what linguists are interested in and from what they think to be relevant for the ordinary and everyday use of proper names. Philosophers’ attention is strongly focussed on the question of what role proper names have to play in relating facts of the actual world to linguistic expressions, often called linguistic signs by linguists. Proper names seem to be those linguistic entities most specifically suited to fulfil and guarantee an unmistakably established and constant relation between a given phenomenon in the world on the one hand, and a linguistic sign or the use of a linguistic sign on the other. What the relation is between the world and a language or, more specifically, certain signs of a natural language, has been the dominant question in the philosophy of proper names for the last century (cf. Dummett 1973, 54 ffi). John R. Searle has made important and prominent contributions to the solution of this problem (cf.
    [Show full text]
  • 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.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Frege's Theory of Descriptions?
    What is Frege’s Theory of Descriptions? Francis Jeffry Pelletier and Bernard Linsky 1 Introduction1 When prompted to consider Frege’s views about definite descriptions, many philosophers think about the meaning of proper names, and some of them can cite the following quotation taken from a footnote Frege’s 1892 article “Uber¨ Sinn und Bedeutung.”2 In the case of an actual proper name such as ‘Aristotle’ opinions as to the Sinn may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another Sinn to the sentence ‘Aristotle was born in Stagira’ than will a man who takes as the Sinn of the name: the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. So long as the Bedeutung remains the same, such variations of Sinn may be tolerated, although they are to be avoided 1We are grateful to Harry Deutsch, Mike Harnish, Theo Janssen, Gregory Lan- dini, Jim Levine, Leonard Linsky, Nathan Salmon, Gurpreet Rattan, Peter Simons, Peter Stanbridge, Kai Wehmeier, an anonymous referee, and audiences at Simon Fraser University, the Society for Exact Philosophy, the Western Canadian Philo- sophical Association, and the Russell vs. Meinong Conference for helpful comments on various aspects of this paper. 2In our quotations, we leave Bedeutung, Sinn, and Bezeichnung (and cognates) untranslated in order to avoid the confusion that would be brought on by using ‘nominatum’, ‘reference’, and ’meaning’ for Bedeutung, and ‘meaning’ or ‘sense’ for Sinn. We got this idea from Russell’s practice in his reading notes (see Linsky 2004).
    [Show full text]
  • What's in a Name?: a Thesis Concerning the Philosophical Problems Posed by Proper Names
    What's in a Name?: A thesis concerning the philosophical problems posed by proper names Author: Ingrid Kestrel Bengtson Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/500 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2007 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program & Department of Philosophy What’s in a name? A thesis concerning the philosophical problems posed by proper names By Ingrid K. Bengtson Prof. Richard Cobb-Stevens, Advisor May 2007 Juliet: ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. -William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II.ii To Shakespeare’s Juliet, it seemed that all that stood between her and her one true love was a name. Of course, it was not just the name of the unique entity that the name ‘Romeo Montague’ denoted that kept Romeo and Juliet from being together, you might say; it was the whole history of dispute between their two families, which would remain the same whatever they were named.
    [Show full text]