A Unified Theory of Names Essays -- Philosophy Philosophical Papers

A Unified Theory of Names ABSTRACT: Theoreticians of names are currently split into two camps: Fregean and Millian. Fregean theorists hold that names have referent-determining senses that account for such facts as the change of content 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 Kripke's 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 Mill's 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 views of Mill and Frege are understood as complementary, the problems that have faced t he 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 Kripke's view, to reject the powerfully supported view of names that originated with Frege. (2) Since the publication of Kripke's 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 Sense and Meaning," in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 3d ed., ed. Peter Geach and Max Black (Totowa, 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.