Abstract
Proponents of the predicate view of names explain the reference of an occurrence of a name N by invoking the property of bearing N. They avoid the charge that this view involves a vicious circularity by claiming that bearing N is not itself to be understood in terms of the reference of actual or possible occurrences of N. I argue that this approach is fundamentally mistaken. The phenomenon of ‘reference transfer’ shows that an individual can come to bear a name in virtue of the referential practices of a group of speakers. I develop a picture of name-bearing which captures this fact by treating the extension of name as a function of the way that extension is represented in the presuppositions of groups of speakers. I show that though there is a form of circularity inherent in this approach, it is not vicious circularity.
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Notes
A comment on notation: I use bold type to refer to expressions. I will also use single quotes in constructions like x bears the name ‘Alfred’. I do this so as not to presuppose that bearing a name consists in standing in a relation to an expression, rather than, say, a sign or some other linguistic object. I will call ‘Alfred’ a name and Alfred a nominal predicate (which is slightly infelicitous, as that term is put to a different use by linguists). I’ll allow myself a certain license in the relation between the two forms: saying things like, for every name N there is a corresponding nominal predicate N. This, strictly speaking, involves a use-mention confusion. It should be read as: for every name N there is a corresponding nominal predicate which is pronounced N. The context in which the claims occur should make this clear.
This is slightly too strong. I think the most defensible version of the view would hold not the same expression occurs in (1) and (2) but that the occurrence in (2) is semantically derivative of the expression which occurs in (1). I’ll ignore this in what follows.
Different versions of the view have differed with respect to which term-forming operator is posited. Burge (1973) treats bare proper names as abbreviating the function of demonstrative and predicate. More recent versions of the view have moved towards positing an unpronounced definite determiner, partly because of cross-linguistic evidence (see Larson and Segal 1995, p. 355 and Ghomeshi and Massam 2009) and partly because of considerations of the discourse role of proper names (see Higginbotham (1998, p. 37) for reasons to think that bare occurrences of names do not have the discourse role of demonstratives).
For more putative examples see Elbourne (2005, Chap. 6).
For other discussions of PV, see Loar (1976, 1980), Katz (1977, 1990, 2001), Devitt (1980), Abbott (2002), Elugardo (2002), Rothschild (2007), and Maier (2009).
I ignore, for the sake of simplicity, a class of related views. Francois Recanati (1997, Chaps. 8, 9) defends indexicalism about names. According to that view, proper names are indexicals. The character of a proper name N is a function from a context, to the contextually salient individual who bears the name N (this view is elaborated and defended in Pelczar and Rainsbury (1998) and Pelczar (2001)). I would class these views, along side the predicate view, as broadly metalinguistic views of names. What is characteristic of metalinguistic views is the idea that the property of bearing N is semantically involved in bare occurrences of N. Different accounts of this semantic involvement amount to different kinds of metalinguistic view. Although I won’t argue for it here, my hunch is that the dialectic I develop in this paper with respect to PV, suitably modified, would apply equally to any metalinguistic view.
“One should also note, of course, that in the current view names contain a free variable which can be assigned a referent directly. So the descriptive content does not in any case bear the whole burden of getting reference off the ground.” (Elbourne 2005, p. 177).
Burge holds that bare occurrences are semantically equivalent to demonstratives. Contemporary proponents of PV hold that they are incomplete definite descriptions. Depending on their view of definite descriptions, contemporary proponents differ with respect how contextual factors have their effect. Bach (2002) treats definite descriptions as Russellian and so treats the reference of a incomplete definite description as a matter for pragmatics. Elbourne (2005) treats definite description as complex individual-denoting expressions which contain variables. In the referential use of an incomplete definite description, the variable is free and assigned an individual by context (in this sense, his picture is broadly analogous to Burge’s). Geurts (1997) employs an account of definite descriptions in a dynamic-semantics framework.
Geurts says that Kripke’s complaint “presupposes that any semantical theory of names should be a theory of reference” (Geurts 1997, p. 325).
I say ‘so-called’ because if PV is correct, these cases do not involve reference transfer but rather involve a change in the extension of a nominal predicate which is not precipitated by baptism or stipulation.
Don’t be tempted to say: wasn’t the person in question referred to with the name in being baptised? Without going into the semantics of nominative constructions—although this, in itself, an interesting question (see Matushansky 2008)—we can note that one can be baptised by describing the new name: “I give him his father’s name” or “I give him the name which is spelled ‘A’\(^{\frown}\)‘l’\(^{\frown}\)‘f’\(^{\frown}\)‘r’\(^{\frown}\)‘e’\(^{\frown}\)‘d”’, etc.
I make no assumptions about the semantics of definite descriptions, in particular whether or not the referential use of a definite description is semantically, rather than merely pragmatically, distinct from its non-referential use. The above picture is consistent with either choice but it is broadly modeled after Neale’s account of the pragmatics of referential uses in (1990, Chap. 3).
An issue that would have to be addressed in a fuller account is the interpretation of compound names, part of the point of which, presumably, is to achieve reference in cases of this sort. The predicate view is better positioned to understand the (quasi) compositional interpretation of compound names than is the orthodox approach. But the issue is not straightforward. In particular, it’s not obvious that we can understand the mode of combination of a compound name like Paul Ryan on the model of predicate composition. Doing so would seem to predict that Paul Ryan was synonymous with Ryan Paul—which doesn’t seem right.
I make no attempt, and neither did Kripke, to specify what the ‘right’ relation is. It is surely not necessary that a speaker is able to recall her first encounter with the name and intend to co-refer with that initial encounter. More likely, her current intentions and beliefs with respect to the name must stand in the proper causal connection to the original intention, and she must intend to use the name in the way that her peers do.
For a negative assessment of the idea that semantically simple referential terms play an essential role in reference-fixing causal relations, see Goodman (ms).
There would be a form of vicious circularity present if one held that an individual might come to bear a name in virtue of presuppositions of the form ‘The unique Alfred satisfies Alfred’. This presupposition could only concern a particular individual if that individual were already an Alfred. So the existence of such a presupposition could not explain that individual’s coming to be an Alfred. But the above account is not committed to coherence of this possibility, so no trouble arises. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
I’m being a little cagey about this simply because I’m not confident that the traditional picture of de re thought is correct. It is possible to hold apart the question of linguistic reference-fixation from questions about the transmission of de re thought. It would be possible to hold that the conditions under which a speaker can achieve linguistic reference to an individual by deploying a name are more permissive than the conditions under which a speaker can frame de re thoughts about an individual (this is essentially Evans’ position in (1982, Chap. 11) as well as the position advocated in Goodman (ms)). It also possible to be more liberal about the conditions for de rethought. One might hold that a causal-informational connection to an object is not necessary, and that is possible to frame a de re thought by, say, applying a dthat operator in thought to a definite description (Jeshion 2002) (see also Hawthorne and Manley (2012, Chaps. 1–3) for a good overview of the state of the art). Though I take no stand on the issue, it does affect the position developed here in subtle ways. In particular, if we want to hold on to the possibility of (so-called) descriptive names (Let’s call the shortest spy ‘Boris’), and we want to hold on to the idea that only de re presuppositions are relevant to name-bearing, then we have to allow that speakers can form de re presuppositions without a causal-informational connection to an object. Otherwise we would have to lift the requirement that only de re presuppositions count towards establishing the extension of a nominal predicate. This would require reworking (6).
I will also mention that if one is tempted to understand de re thoughts in terms of ‘mental names’ (i.e. simple referential terms) in a language of thought, PV is no obstacle to doing that. PV makes no claims about thought, its only target is natural-language syntax and semantics.
Though there is not space to fully address it there, there is another sort of circularity worry one might have about PV. The discussion in the body of the paper focuses on whether our attempt to characterize the extension of Alfred somehow made illicit reference to that extension. But one might think that there is an even earlier worry: (6) makes no reference to the extension of Alfred, but it makes reference to Alfred itself. Isn’t this illegitimate? Can an expression be referred to in characterizing its own meaning?
There is much to say here, and much depends on one’s views about the metaphysics of expressions. I’ll simply note that this structure is not unheard of. Say one thought of the meaning of a variable as a function from an assignment to an individual in the domain. One might also think of an assignment as a set of pairs of variables and objects from the domain. In that case, one would be characterizing the meaning of an expression in terms of (an object which constitutively involves) itself. The account of nominal predicates developed here is similar.
Of course one need not think of an assignment in that way—one might think of an assignment simply as a sequence of objects from the domain. To do that, though, one would need to posit more structure in the variables themselves. One would, for example, need stipulate that the variables themselves had an order. The same thing, though, would be possible with nominal predicates.
This might be too strong. The idea that definitions that are circular in this way are illegitimate is itself controversial. Gupta and Belnap (1993) develop a logic of circular definitions which they employ in analyzing the concept of truth. It would be interesting to explore this account of names in the context of a logic that allows circular definitions, but this would go well beyond the project here.
We could imagine other ways for us to attempt to establish whether the Prince believes that x is a cow. For instance we might look to his utterances (for example, of sentences of the form ‘That is a cow’). It strikes me that this would merely postpone the same worries. How would we know that his ‘cow’ and our ‘cow’ expressed the same concept without, for example, having insight into the sort of evidence which elicits those reports?
This opens up another line of support for this proposal, but one I cannot explore here. It has commonly been held that it is central to the communicative function of names that they depend on an arbitrary link between a name and its bearer. The point of having names in a language, the thought goes, is to allow speakers to successfully refer to individuals in cases where they may have a substantially different conception of the substantive properties of the target, and to continue chains of co-reference across changes in the substantive properties of targets. Take, for example, the following remarks from Strawson and Searle:
[I]t is convenient to have in circulation[…] a tag, a designation, which does not depend for its referential or identifying force upon any particular[…] position or relation, which preserves the same referential force through its objects changes of position or relation and has the same referential force for communicators who know the object in different connections and for whom quite different descriptions would be uppermost. (Strawson 1974, p. 38)
But the uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of proper names in our language lie precisely in the fact that they enable us to, refer publicly to objects without being forced to raise issues and come to agreement on what descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the object. They function not as descriptions, but as pegs on which to hang descriptions. Thus the looseness of the criteria for proper names is a necessary condition for isolating the referring function from the describing function of language. (Searle 1958, p. 172)
Similar remarks can be found in Evans (1982, pp. 379–380) (I was made aware of Strawon’s remarks in Jeshion (2009), where Jeshion develops a different picture of the characteristic communicative function of names). The reflexive account developed above does justice to the arbitrary connection between names and bearers in a way that the typical version of PV cannot, in virtue of their central appeal to naming practices.
This is obviously a little delicate. It doesn’t seem incoherent to imagine a culture in which there is a practice of baptising a child with a name that is never meant to be used—perhaps names are sacred in some way. To the extent that I can think of such a practice as a form of baptism, it seems like a practice which is in tension with itself. It is a way of setting up a practice and at the same time forbidding speakers to participate in it. We should say, I think, that such a baptism does indeed create a disposition to use the name to refer to the baptised individual, but that, like all dispositions, it can be masked by interfering dispositions (in this case, the disposition associated with the taboo on using the name). It strikes me that we need both dispositions in place to understand the sense in which such a practice represents a kind of restraint or denial. For there have to be something restraining the use of the name, there must be some tendency towards its use, otherwise there would no restraint but merely an absence.
Something that needs to be addressed: what is the temporal scope of the existential quantification? For an individual to bear a name now is it enough that there once was a group with the relevant attitudes? I’m not sure how to go here, I’m inclined to think that there might be some context sensitivity. What this approach rules out is the possibility that an individual bears a name without there ever having been a group of speakers who were willing, under the right circumstances, to use the name to refer to that individual. And this strikes me as correct (with the caveat introduced in note 27).
An obvious question: what about groups of one? It strikes me that there is no problem imagining an individual coming to bear a name in virtue of the practice of a single speaker. The account developed here is consistent with this possibility, assuming that it makes sense to talk about contexts involving only one speaker (or temporally extended contexts involving different stages of the same speaker).
An issue that would need to be addressed in a full account is the way that sense/reference issues crop up here. I have been suppressing this complication for the course of the paper, and doing justice to it would require another paper in its own right. I can gesture here at how this sort of picture would handle the issues. Broadly, there are two ways to go here:
One could try to introduce some notion like a guise of an individual—which was something like a stable, shared mode of presentation of an individual—and simply relativize the account above to guises. So an individual x would bear a name N just in case there is some guise for x such that in typical contexts speakers can use N to referentially communicate about x under that guise.
I prefer a slightly more complicated approach here. I’m not sure that there is any useful theoretical notion of a stable, shared mode of presentation (here I am loosely following the approach in Heck (1995, 2012). Rather we need to relativize guises to contexts of utterance. So, given a context of utterance we can think of a guise simply as a class of mental files of the participants of the context (what determines the class is, of course, a tricky matter). The account of name-bearing would then go something like this: an individual bears a name N just in case in typical contexts there is some guise for x such that it is part of the common ground that x satisfies N under that guise.
This is a recurring worry about the relationship between semantics and metaphysics, going back at least as far as Russell’s discussion of Meinong. Contemporary versions include the worry that certain elegant semantic treatments of modality are committed to an implausible ontology of possible worlds, and that certain elegant semantic treatments of action sentences are committed to an implausible ontology of events. Elsewhere in philosophy, structurally similar problems often relate epistemology and metaphysics (most famously, Benacerraf’s problem).
One place where it would be fruitful to compare the discussion here would be the case of dispositional accounts of colour terms (e.g., x satisfies blue iff x looks blue to perceivers under normal conditions). Such accounts have long been dogged by accusations of vicious circularity. Recently, authors have mounted a defense of them, at least from the accusation of vicious circularity (Byrne and Hilbert 2011). It would be instructive to compare the two cases.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Nat Hansen, John Hawthorne, Chris Kennedy, Michael Kremer, Daniel Rothschild, Josef Stern and an anonymous reviewer, as well as participants in the various workshops at the University of Chicago for helpful comments on earlier versions of this material. Special thanks to Rachel Goodman for insight on the substance and advice on the structure of this paper.
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Gray, A. Name-bearing, reference, and circularity. Philos Stud 171, 207–231 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0262-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0262-z