The Revival of ‘Fido’-Fido

Abstract

Charlie Martin got me interested in the semantics of singular terms in discussions at Sydney University in 1966. He urged a thesis for names and demonstratives that was, in effect, like the rigidity theses to be made famous by Saul Kripke (1971, 1980) and David Kaplan (1973, 1975, 1979a, 1979b, 1988a). He also had a view of definite descriptions that was similar to the view that Donnellan was about to publish (1966, 1968). The ‘Fido’-Fido theory of names kept intruding into our discussions, despite our resistance.

This paper is a shortened version of Devitt in press b, earlier versions of which were given at the University of Sydney (July, 1988), La Trobe University (July, 1988), and Princeton University (October, 1988). The paper has benefited from the discussions on those occasions. I am very grateful to the following for helpful comments on a late draft of the longer paper at very short notice: Fiona Cowie, Norbert Hornstein, Bill Lycan, and Georges Rey. Finally, I must thank Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames for comments that removed some misunderstandings and led to other improvements.