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Stage theory and proper names

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Abstract

In the contemporary debate about the nature of persistence, stage theory is the view that ordinary objects (artefacts, animals, persons, etc.) are instantaneous and “persist” by being suitably related to other instantaneous objects. In this paper I focus on the issue of what stage theorists should say about the semantics of ordinary proper names, like ‘Socrates’ or ‘London’. I consider the remarks that stage theorists actually make about this issue, present some problems they face, and finally offer what I take to be the best alternative available for them.

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Notes

  1. Sider (2001, pp. 60–61). Here and hereafter, by ‘stage’ I will mean instantaneous stage.

  2. See Sider (2001, p. 197). I will come back to this feature of Sider’s view in Sect. 4.4. Meanwhile, for ease of exposition I will disregard this complication and discuss Sider as if he were advocating a pure version of stage theory. This of course does not affect the arguments presented.

  3. Although see Parsons (2004, p. 190) for an alternative take on this.

  4. In his unpublished paper “Beyond the Humphrey Objection”, Sider presents an alternative account of reference and predication that, although compatible with temporal counterpart theory, is arguably a departure from stage theory: on this view stages are not, by and large, the referents of ordinary names and the things quantified over in ordinary talk. I cannot undertake here an assessment of this alternative account and the reasons that motivate Sider’s introduction of it (which are in any case independent of the problems that I will raise). The positive view I present in the last part of this paper is intended to suit stage theory, i.e. the view that stages are the referents of ordinary terms, members of ordinary domains of quantification, and subjects of ordinary predication.

  5. Sider (1996, pp. 449–450), emphasis added.

  6. Here and elsewhere, by ‘presently existing stage’ I mean a stage existing at the time of utterance. Since utterances take more than one instant to be made, some idealization is needed in order to take instants as times of utterance. See Hawley (2001, p. 57) for a discussion of this issue.

  7. However, unlike Kaplanian characters for indexicals, individual concepts are not supposed to be mastered by competent speakers. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out this difference.

  8. Sider (1996, p. 451).

  9. An account like the one presented here is discussed but not endorsed by Moyer (2008). But the reasons that motivate Moyer’s discussion are different from mine, and so are his overall conclusions. As far as I can see, much of Moyer’s dissatisfaction with the present account comes from rather general concerns about what he calls ‘Kripkean theories of reference’, and his preference for a descriptivist theory like Evans’. Although I am more optimistic than Moyer is about the general prospects of the Kripkean approach, this is not the place to engage in a general assessment of theories of reference. Instead, I will focus here on the specific problems that a non-descriptivist account faces when combined with stage theory, trying to show how these problems can be overcome.

  10. Donnellan (1974, p. 11).

  11. I am indebted to an anonymous referee for urging me to consider the problems discussed in this section.

  12. See Sider (2001, p. 197).

References

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Acknowledgments

For their comments and discussion on previous versions of this paper, I would like to thank Gemma Celestino, Manuel García-Carpintero, Dan López de Sa, Genoveva Martí, Fabrice Correia, Timothy Lewis, Chelsey Booth, Gary Wedeking, Steven Savitt, two anonymous referees, and audiences at Barcelona, Valencia, Paris, Vancouver, Calgary, Pasadena, and Buenos Aires. Research leading to this paper has been funded by the research projects CSD2009-00056, FFI2010-15717, and HUM2007-61108 (Spanish Government).

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  1. Departament de Metafísica i Teoria del Coneixement, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 30, 46010, València, Spain

    Pablo Rychter

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  1. Pablo Rychter
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Rychter, P. Stage theory and proper names. Philos Stud 161, 367–379 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9743-0

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