Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

On the Reference of Proper Names

London Ed writes and I respond in blue:

Still thinking about how to frame the main argument, so please help me out here. 

               There is a woman called ‘Clinton’. Clinton is a politician. 

I claim there is a semantic connection between the name ‘Clinton’ that is used in the second sentence, but mentioned in the first sentence. It is this connection which licenses the inference to ‘some woman is a politician’.  My central claim is that this exhausts the semantics of the proper name. The function of the name is simply to connect the second sentence to the first.

 My question is, what arguments best support my claim. Some ideas.

(1) It’s just obvious that ‘Clinton’ refers back to the first sentence. The meaning of the two sentences is unchanged whether we write ‘he’ or ‘the man’. But since ‘he’ is just a pronoun, whose only function is to back-refer, it follows that ‘Clinton’ here is no primary reference.

BV: Your second example, then, is this:

There is a man named 'Clinton.' He is a politician.

And so 'Clinton' in the second sentence of the first example is merely a device of back reference.  Is that what you are maintaining?

We agree, of course, that 'he' is a pronoun the antecedent of which is 'Clinton.'  And so 'he' refers back to 'Clinton.'  Back reference is a word-word relation. The antecedent of a pronoun is a word, not the (extralinguistic) thing to which the word refers, assuming it refers to something.  What I deny is that 'he' in this context merely back refers.  I maintain that it also refers to Bill Clinton, a chunk of extralinguistic reality, where 'refers' picks out a word-WORLD relation.

Back reference is an intralinguistic relation; reference is an extralinguistic relation.  The reference of 'he' piggybacks on the reference of 'Clinton.' It picks up the reference of 'Clinton.'

But it is more complicated than this. For there is reference, not back reference, within a language.  For example,

" 'Red' " refers to 'red.'

There is nothing to stop us from naming words. This is a case of intralinguistic reference, not back reference.  Therefore, one cannot identify intralinguistic reference with back reference. All back reference is intralinguistic, but not all intralinguistic reference is back reference. A fortiori, one cannot identify extralinguistic reference with back reference.

It is also worth noting that 'back' in 'back reference' is an alienans adjective.

It is not clear what your thesis is. Are you an eliminativist about extralinguistic reference? That is, do you deny that proper names refer extralinguistically? Or perhaps you are an identitarian. Perhaps you hold that there is extralinguistic reference of proper names but that it reduces to back reference. (Some say that there are mental states all right, but that what they are are brain states. This is an identitarian, not an eliminativist, position. Notionally they are different even if it can be shown that identitarianism collapses of necessity into eliminativism.)

Or perhaps you maintain neither of these theses.  I'd guess you are an eliminativist from your opening statement.  I take it that you accept that there is a real world of concrete things external to language. If language 'hooks on' to these things, then presumably not via proper names. How then? Via bound variables in the Quinean way?  Or do you hold that language does not hook on to language-external things at all?

I suggest that you will never gain a hearing for your ideas unless you can answer convincingly questions such as the foregoing.

For most of us it is a datum that there is extralinguistic reference to existing concrete things in space and time.  We take it as given that in the paradigm cases reference is a word-world relation.  The theoretical problems, then, are to understand how reference is possible and how it is achieved. But you seem to be denying the datum: you seem to be denying that there is extralinguistic reference, or at least, extralinguistic reference via proper names. 

 

Posted

in

by

Bill Vallicella

Tags:

Comments

12 responses to “On the Reference of Proper Names”

  1. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    This goes somewhat beyond my initial question. Could we stick for the moment to the semantic connection between the two sentences? The second example was

    There is a man called ‘Clinton’. He is a politician.

    You say that that ‘he’ is a pronoun the antecedent of which is ‘Clinton.’ This is not correct. The antecedent is a ‘man called ‘Clinton’’. Perhaps you are thinking of the following?

    Clinton is a man. He is a politician.

    That was not my example. I will stop there. One step at a time.

    Reply
  2. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    A better example

    There is a man called ‘Chris McDaniel’. McDaniel is a politician.

    Does ‘McDaniel’ have a semantic connection to someone in reality? To whom? You may want to look up Chris McDaniel.

    Reply
  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    I looked up McDaniels and I learned that it is not nice to call an Hispanic girl ‘mamacita’ or ‘Signorita Colita’ — not that I have ever done such a thing.
    You seem to assume that a proper name cannot refer to a person unless the user of the name intends to refer to a particular person in exclusion from every other person bearing the same name. Is that right?
    Suppose there is exactly one person who bears the name ‘Chris McDaniel.’ Does the name have a semantic connection to someone in reality? Yes, to the one person bearing the name in question.
    How then can can the semantic function of a proper name be exhausted by back reference??

    Reply
  4. Simon Elliot Avatar
    Simon Elliot

    Hey Bill, you might remember me from back in May, we had a discussion about some of the overlooked weak points of anti-natalist philosophy. Do you remember I asked you if you’d ever heard of Justin Schieber? Justin is my favourite proponent of atheism, more so than Dawkins or Harris, because he’s the only person who came to exactly the same conclusions about God that I did. His thesis, that the existence of the universe disproves theism, utilizes the problem of non-God objects to devastating effect. You can listen to him explain it here (17 minutes) and I think you might want to address him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj1mKI00-To

    Reply
  5. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    >> I looked up McDaniels
    The point is that there are two politicians called ‘Chris McDaniel’.
    >> You seem to assume that a proper name cannot refer to a person unless the user of the name intends to refer to a particular person in exclusion from every other person bearing the same name. Is that right?
    No, not right. Who we intend or have in mind is irrelevant. As Geach notes, someone might have some girl in their mind when they utter ‘some girl is loved by every boy’, but this does not matter. ‘Suppose he has Mary in mind whereas in fact not Mary but Jane is loved by every boy; then “some girl is loved by every boy” will be true although “Mary is loved by every boy” would be false, and hence “some girl” cannot, even for the nonce, be being used to refer to Mary’.
    He also says ‘If Smith did have a definite man in mind, there is, as we just saw, a common use of ‘refer’ in which we can say Smith referred to that man; but it does not follow that the actual phrase ‘some man’ referred then and there to the man in question’. So when I say

    There is a man called ‘Chris McDaniel’.

    given that there are at least two men, probably thousands, who satisfy the indefinite description ‘called Chris McDaniel’, I have not referred to any of them, in that I have not told you which of these I am talking about. I probably have one of them in mind (and I was in fact thinking about the mississipi politician) but I did not tell you which, i.e. I did not give you that information. So the general existential proposition does not refer. Indeed its whole purpose is not to refer.
    >> Suppose there is exactly one person who bears the name ‘Chris McDaniel.’ Does the name have a semantic connection to someone in reality? Yes, to the one person bearing the name in question.
    No, for the reasons set out by Geach. Suppose we line 10 people up by way of a police identification, and the officer truly says ‘one of the people in this line is Chris McDaniel’. There is no semantic connection with reality. The officer has not told me which person McDaniel is.

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    It seems obvious to me that if there is exactly one person named ‘NN’ then ‘NN’ names that person.

    Reply
  7. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    >>It seems obvious to me that if there is exactly one person named ‘NN’ then ‘NN’ names that person.
    Possibly, but Geach’s point is that the indefinite noun phrase ‘a person named ‘NN’’ does not name or refer to that person. This is the confusion we began with. You mention the case where just one person is so-called. Does the indefinite noun phrase refer in that case? I don’t think so, but here we move to another of the arguments I am toying with. Can we stick to the case where at least two people are so-called. Consider

    There is a man called ‘Chris McDaniel’. McDaniel is a politician

    Now there are at least two politicians so-called (Chris McDaniel and Chris McDaniel). So it’s clear the indefinite term ‘a man called ..’ does not refer to either of them, although being a man called ‘Chris McDaniel’ is true of both.
    What of the name that is used in the second sentence? You would like to say it refers, but to which one? You can’t tell, because not enough information is given. Now it might be that I have one of them in mind, rather than the other, but unless you are clairvoyant, you have no idea which. But I do claim that there is a semantic connection between the two sentences, for we can infer ‘some man is a politician’ from them together, but not from either of them on their own.
    So my claim is (i) there is a semantic connection between the sentences, and (ii) this exhausts the semantics of the proper name in the second sentence. Otherwise the proper name would identify which of the people so-called was a politician.
    The case of a single person so-called I set aside. On the question of eliminativism, later, when we are clear about what ‘reference’ actually is. A working definition is, a subject term refers when it tells us which individual the predicate term is true of. I am not eliminativist about that. Clearly indefinite and definite noun phrases are semantically quite different.

    Reply
  8. BV Avatar
    BV

    >>Now there are at least two politicians so-called (Chris McDaniel and Chris McDaniel). So it’s clear the indefinite term ‘a man called ..’ does not refer to either of them, although being a man called ‘Chris McDaniel’ is true of both.<< I take it, then, that for you reference is necessarily singular. If a term T refers to x, then there is no y distinct from x such that T refers to both x and y. Is reference the same as naming? If yes, then there are no common names. 'Cat' is not a common name. More later.

    Reply
  9. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    >>I take it, then, that for you reference is necessarily singular.
    The medieval distinction might help here. There are three types of term:
    1. Those which can be true of many all at the same time. Example ‘cat’ / ‘person named Trump.
    2. Those which can be true of at most one person at one time, but many over different times, or different possible situations (President of the U.S.)
    3. Those which by nature can only be true of the same person over any time, or situation.
    The distinction roughly corresponds to common name, definite description, genuinely singular term or ‘rigid designator’. (‘Trump’, used in the sense where it means Donald himself, current president of US).

    Reply
  10. BV Avatar
    BV

    Those are important distinctions. But you didn’t tell me how you are using ‘reference.’ I assume that you will say that (1) and (2) are not cases of reference, but that only (3) is.
    Is that right?
    Further, do ‘refer’ and ‘name’ have the same sense?

    Reply
  11. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    >>Those are important distinctions. But you didn’t tell me how you are using ‘reference.’ I assume that you will say that (1) and (2) are not cases of reference, but that only (3) is.
    I prefer ‘definiteness’ or ‘telling-which’. Thus (1) is not a case of reference, because it doesn’t tell us which cat is F. But definite descriptions and pronouns and proper names, demonstratives, all tell-us-which.
    The underlying phenomenon, let’s call it anaphora (Greek word for ‘reference’) is in my view a semantic connection between sentences. It’s the property that connects predicates together, signifying that if the connected sentences are true, a single thing satisfies the predicates. Thus

    A man is in the crowd. A man is waving

    does not license the inference to ‘a man in the crowd is waving. But

    A man is in the crowd. The man/he is waving

    does license the inference. That, I claim, is all you need to know about reference.
    (Actually, it’s not all. We need to explain reference statements of the form ‘a refers to b’. But leave that for now.)

    Reply
  12. The London Ostrich Avatar
    The London Ostrich

    Sorry missed this
    >>Further, do ‘refer’ and ‘name’ have the same sense?
    Not quite. Consider Goliath, the Philistine slain by David. He was not called, i.e. not known as ‘Goliath’. The Bible seems to have made a mistake about his name, confusing him with another person named ‘Goliath’. Naming or calling someone by a name is a social practice. I suppose we call him ‘Goliath’. But then consider the situation where we disguise the identity of a person. ‘There is this guy who works at the yard. Let’s call him ‘Frank’ ..’.
    Clearly you know who I mean as I continue the story. But no social convention is involved.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *