## 1. Syntax



The Cambridge Grammar of English distinguishes the syntactic category
of proper name from that of proper
noun (Payne & Huddleston 2002: 516). A
proper noun is a word-level unit of the category *noun*, while
a proper name is a type of *noun phrase*. So, for example, the
proper *name* "Alice Walker" consists of two proper
*nouns*: "Alice" and "Walker". A proper
name (the noun *phrase*) may also--and often
does--consist of a single proper noun, just as a verb phrase may
consist of a lone verb. Hence, the sentence "Alice sleeps"
is comprised of a noun phrase/proper name and a verb phrase; the noun
phrase contains a single proper noun, and the verb phrase consists of
a lone verb. Its analysis into syntactic constituents would look like
this: 

 
\[\left[\_{\textsf{S}} \left[\_{\textsf{PName}} \left[\_{\textsf{PNoun}}
\textsf{Alice} \right]\right] \left[\_{\textsf{VP}} \left[\_{\textsf{V}}
\textsf{sleeps}\right]\right]\right]\]


Proper names may contain other parts of speech, too: "Brooklyn
Bridge" places the common noun "Bridge" alongside
the proper noun "Brooklyn". "The Raritan
River" includes the determiner "the". "The
Bronx" combines a determiner and a proper noun. Finally,
"the Golden Gate Bridge" is a proper name with no proper
nouns in it at all.



Proper names occur in different formats depending on the sort of thing
named (Carroll 1985). For instance, official names of persons in many
cultures consist of (at least) first and last names, themselves proper
nouns. Names of bridges have an optional definite article and often
include the common noun "bridge". We have bridge names
that embed other proper names like "The George Washington
Bridge". We can even imagine structurally ambiguous names, such
as "the New New York Public Library".



To accommodate the full range of proper names, we need one more
syntactic category. Following the Cambridge English Grammar once again
for convenience, a noun phrase consists of an optional determiner
followed by a nominal phrase. Thus in the noun
phrase "the man who was Thursday", the nominal phrase
constituent is "man who was Thursday". If we assume a
similar construction for proper names, then "the Raritan
River" has a constituent "Raritan River" (itself
made up of the proper noun "Raritan" and the common noun
"River"). We will call the constituent that is the
complement of the (optional) determiner in a proper name a proper
nominal. Thus the full analysis of the proper
name "Alice" looks like this: 

 
\[[\_{\textsf{PName}} [\_{\textsf{PNom}} [\_{\textsf{PNoun}} \textsf{Alice} ]]]\]


Names are standardly categorized as definite
noun phrases (Mulkern 1996; Abbott 2002). They can occur with markers
of definiteness, such as the definite article "the" in
English (though in some languages, such as Samoan, proper names
obligatorily occur with a special proprial
article, distinguished from the ordinary definite article).
Since definite descriptions also belong under the general head of
definite noun phrases (along with pronouns and demonstratives), this
evidence is used to support views on which names are a type of
definite description (Sloat 1969; Larson & Segal 1995:
354-355; Elbourne 2005), but is consistent with names forming
their own species of definite.



Proper nominals (proper names without their determiner) can modify
other nouns, as in "a Bronx resident". They can also occur
as the restrictor of determiners other than "the", as in
"every University of California, from Berkeley to Santa
Cruz". Some (Sloat 1969; Burge 1973) see the predicate meanings
of proper nominals as primary, and attempt to generate the meaning of
the more common argumental occurrences of proper names from them.
However, it is also reasonable to regard predicative proper nominals
as on a par with "coerced" expressions such as the verb
"to google" (Leckie 2013; Schoubye 2017), or as having a
meaning separately bestowed by convention (Johnson 2018).



Is there just one proper name "Alice," or are there many
homonyms, one for each person or thing so named? It is tempting to
infer the uniqueness of the name, on syntactic grounds, from the
uniqueness of the proper noun. Arguably the same noun recurs in the
different names "Alice Waters" and "Alice
Walker", as well as in the phrase "two famous
Alices" (though see Sainsbury 2015 and Gray 2015 on the latter).
And if the name "Alice" is a complex expression built up
from a unique noun, then presumably there should be only one such
expression built up in that particular way.



On the other hand, the name "Alice" can be used to refer
to many different people. If the same syntactic item is responsible in
each case, this profligacy must be explained. Supposing the name is
meaningful (the topic of the next section), it is either (massively)
ambiguous, or else has the sort of meaning that constrains, without
determining, the reference of a specific utterance. It might
alternatively have a general meaning that identifies a different
referent when uttered in different contexts (in the manner of
indexicals like "here" and "now").



If instead there are many homonyms, then each may be allocated its own
convention, independently determining its proper referent (see Kripke
1980: 7-8; Kaplan 1990). It is reasonable to see the uniquely
denoting name as a technical innovation responding to a specific
theoretical need in semantics. Alternative terminology employed with
the same goal in mind, but a greater reluctance to embrace genuine
homonymy, includes that of the particular "use" of a name
(Strawson 1950), "name-using practice" (Evans 1982),
"naming convention" (Matushansky 2008: 592; Recanati
1997), and even "discourse entity" (Cumming 2014).



For the exposition to come, we will not presume the issue settled, and
will speak, at different times, of the many homonymous specific
names "Alice", as well as the
unique generic name "Alice".


## 2. Semantics


### 2.1 Meaning and Extension



As well as having a range of entities to which it applies, the common
noun "bachelor" has a meaning; it means *man who has
never been married*. Is the same true of names?
"Socrates" certainly applies to things. It applies, most
obviously, to the founder of Western philosophy. When understood as a
generic name (see
 Section 1),
 "Socrates" applies to several individuals: to a first
approximation, all those who are called "Socrates." But
does "Socrates" also possess a meaning?



Some names have meanings in a sense. I have heard "Merlot"
used on the playground to summon a child, and knew of a married couple
whose respective names were "Sunshine" and
"Moonlight." These names, we would say, have meanings.
"Moonlight," for instance, means *light from the
Moon*. Something similar goes on when we say that
"Theodore" means *gift of god,* or interpret a
Mohawk name with a verb phrase. But this sense of meaning turns out
not to be the one we are after.



Consider that for "bachelor" the meaning--*man who
has never been married*--is also what determines the
noun's range of application. When the noun
"bachelor" applies to someone, it's because they are
a man who has never been married. And when it fails to apply to
someone, it's because they are not. By contrast, the kind of
meaning just canvassed for the names "Merlot" or
"Moonlight" places no direct constraint on who they apply
to. One may be named "Merlot", and so fall within the
name's range of application, no matter what relationship one
bears to the wine grape variety, *Merlot* (Mill 1843: 34).
Moreover, a relationship to the grape does not constitute the reason
for the name applying.



In this long tail of the article on semantics, we will confine
ourselves to the question of whether names have a meaning in the sense
that "bachelor" does. Do they have a meaning that
determines, or restricts, their extension
(i.e., their range of application or reference)? As we will see, even
pursuing this reduced target, philosophers have had to consider a
series of foundational questions about language and meaning. It is not
off-limits to ask a different question about names, or to think about
their meaning in some other way, but this question will open a path
through the important topics in the semantics of names, and indeed the
philosophy of language.



Let's begin with the generic name "Alice". Consider
the range of individuals to which it applies. Unlike the range of
"bachelor", this set is not united under a brief
definition, but consists of all the various people (including Alice
Cooper), and perhaps things, referred to by (occurrences of) the name
"Alice". A natural view, then, is that the individual
referential relationships are what's basic here, and any
generalization concerning a generic name's range of application
is based on them, rather than the other way around. According to this
view, there is no general meaning of the name, responsible for
determining to whom or to what it correctly applies. While it is
possible to articulate a (complex) condition that correctly sorts
Alices from non-Alices on some basis other than those referential
relationships (for instance, a disjunction consisting of each
Alice's unique time and place of birth), it is clear that any
such condition is based on those pre-existing relationships, rather
than being, with any plausibility, their originating source.



The only concise way of delimiting the range of generic
"Alice" is with a metalinguistic feature, such as
*being named "Alice"*. And indeed some have
defended a metalinguistic account of the
meaning of generic names (see
 Section 2.10
 below). The challenge for the account is to distinguish the relevant
feature from that of *being in the extension of
"Alice"*, which clearly cannot determine the extension
in the robust sense required of a meaning (Kripke 1980: 68; Geurts
1997: 326ff; Bach 2002: 83; Gray 2014).



Next consider the specific name "Socrates." It refers to a
certain citizen of Athens, and, in contrast to the generic case, this
(unitary) extension may be delimited concisely without appeal to its
onomastic features. Moreover, just like "bachelor,"
"Socrates" appears in (some) dictionaries along with an
explanation supplying just this kind of non-linguistic identifying
information. The following is from Lexico (see the link in Other
Internet Resources):



> 
> 
> (469-399 BC), Greek philosopher. As represented in the writings
> of his disciple Plato, he engaged in dialogue with others in an
> attempt to define ethical concepts by exposing and dispelling error
> (the Socratic method). Charged with introducing strange gods and
> corrupting the young, Socrates was sentenced to death and died by
> drinking hemlock.
> 
> 
> 



Of course, the majority of specific names do not appear in any
dictionary. Moreover, it should not be thought that dictionary
"definitions" always give the meaning of the word they
appear under (one entry for "Socrates" on Wiktionary just
says "A male given name of mostly historical use"). But
suppose we have a condition satisfied by, and only by, the referent of
"Socrates"; one which is, moreover, listed below the name
in certain dictionaries. For the sake of argument, suppose it is
*the teacher of Plato and Xenophon*. Would it follow that
"Socrates" meant *the teacher of Plato and
Xenophon*?



Not necessarily. First note that, *prima facie*,
"Socrates" simply does not mean *the teacher of Plato
and Xenophon*. While we would agree that Socrates *was* the
teacher of Plato and Xenophon, we would not be inclined to say that
this is what the word "Socrates" *means*. By
contrast, we are happy to say that "bachelor" means
*man who has never been married*.



Similarly, though a dictionary might offer a definition of
"cat" as *domestic animal with retractile claws*,
we would not be inclined to say that "cat" meant
*domestic animal with retractile claws*, though we would admit
that cats *were* such animals. Even if cats are the only
domestic animals in existence with retractile claws, it does not seem
correct to say that this is the meaning of "cat". The
meaning of a word is something more than just an accurate description
of the contents of its extension.



In the first place, a condition that selects the correct range for a
word is not necessarily the condition that determines that the word
has that range. Suppose all and only ascetics have matted hair. Still,
"ascetic" doesn't mean *person with matted
hair*, because having matted hair, though it may be a
distinguishing mark of ascetics, is not what makes someone an ascetic.
But even supposing our condition is the one in virtue of which
"Socrates" applies to the relevant Athenian, it still
doesn't follow that it is the meaning of "Socrates".
It may yet be that "Socrates" doesn't have a meaning
(compare Kripke 1980: 32-33). Though we take the meaning of a
word to determine its range of application, we do not assume the
converse, that whatever determines the range of application of a word
must be its meaning. We allow that names might work differently from
"bachelor". Their extension might be determined by
something other than a meaning; for instance, their previous use
 (Section 2.7).



To put it another way, the question as to whether a name has a meaning
is not trivial. The name "Socrates" refers to a particular
Athenian, and, unless reference is metaphysically basic, there must be
some feature of the world in virtue of which it does (cf. Kripke 1980:
88, fn.38). However, this feature may or may not comprise the meaning
of the specific name "Socrates". It is really a further
question whether this feature is semantic or meta-semantic, whether it
is part of the meaning, or whether it establishes the name's
reference without belonging to its meaning. The theory of (nominal)
reference (see the entry on Reference) should be distinguished from
the--intertwined--theory of the semantics of names (Dickie
2011).


### 2.2 Cognitive Significance and Identification



Another issue we must disentangle from the semantics of names is that
of their cognitive significance and allied
behavior in opaque contexts, including especially attitude reports
(see the entry on Propositional Attitude Reports).



Names that corefer do not always communicate the same information. For
instance, to one who is ignorant of the fact that the names
"Hesperus" (i.e., the Evening Star) and
"Phosphorus" (i.e., the Morning Star) both refer to the
planet Venus, the sentence "Hesperus is a planet" and the
sentence "Phosphorus is a planet" transmit different
information, producing different cognitive states and resultant action
(Frege 1892). One who mishears an utterance of one of these sentences,
mistaking it for the other, has misunderstood the speaker, despite
arriving at an interpretation that is extensionally correct (Loar
1976).



Moreover, coreferring names may be used with distinguishing import
even by those in the know. When (in Wharton's novel) Miranda
falls upon the Abbot's mercy, and admits she has been playing
the part of a man to sidestep an ecclesiastical restriction on female
performers, he mercifully lifts the ban:



> 
> 
> My only condition," he added with a truly paternal smile,
> "is that, after the Signorina Miranda's performance at the
> theatre her twin brother the Signor Mirandolo shall return every
> evening to the monastery. (Wharton, *The Valley of
> Decision*)
> 
> 
> 



The Abbot's condition is not met unless Miranda returns to the
monastery each night *in male guise* (compare Saul 2007).



Relatedly, coreferring names cannot always be substituted *salva
veritate* in the context of a propositional attitude report (Frege
1892). If Daphnis doesn't know that Hesperus is Phosphorus, then
it could be true that


* (1) Daphnis believes
that Hesperus appears in the evening.



While being false that


* (2) Daphnis believes
that Phosphorus appears in the evening.



These observations are connected with the main question of this
section--do names have meanings? For names with the same
reference could yet differ in meaning, and this might explain their
differing cognitive significance. In particular, if a name's
meaning is (part of) what it contributes to the truth condition of an
utterance, then a difference in meaning, in spite of an equivalence in
reference, could lead to a different truth-value for the sentence.



Nevertheless, we will not consider this source of evidence for nominal
meaning further in the article. In the first place, the phenomena just
recounted are general to all kinds of referring expression (and
perhaps other sorts of expression too), rather than being particular
to names, and so their discussion properly belongs under a more
general head. Second, in cases where we are less uncertain that
meaning exists, it does not seem to correspond to cognitive
significance. For example, given the right scenario,
"bachelor" and the phrase documenting its
meaning--"man who has not been married"--would
also fail to substitute *salva veritate* in an attitude report.
Finally, the debate over cognitive significance devolves into a
stalemate, as any detailed explanation of the phenomena that relies on
names having meanings can be approximated by one that relies instead
on information which, while associated with a name, is not considered
its meaning (Soames 2002).



I will substantiate the last point at length, by considering a
particular account of the cognitive significance of names. The account
relates cognitive significance to the identifying
information associated with a specific name in an agent's
mind (Strawson 1974: 43ff). To illustrate this, suppose I know of two
individuals bearing the name "Zera Yacob". Most likely, I
associate a different sobriquet, or description, with each specific
version of the name, as a way of maintaining the distinction in my
mind. Moreover, whenever I speak or hear the name "Zera
Yacob", I implicitly associate the utterance with one of those
descriptions; either it is the seventeenth century philosopher or the
fifteenth century Emperor of Ethiopia who is being named in this
instance. Plausibly, I cannot felicitously utter "Zera
Yacob" without selecting either the prince or the philosopher as
my intended referent, and I can't fully interpret
another's utterance of the name without forming a parallel
determination.



If each specific name is annexed to some identifying
information--enough to single out its bearer at least in the mind
of the agent--then this could explain the different cognitive
significances of coreferring names. But does the identifying sobriquet
also represent the meaning of the name? There are several reasons to
doubt that it does. First, different agents might well associate
different identifying information with the same referring use of a
name (Frege 1892), which would seem to conflict with the natural
assumption that a name like "Socrates" has a single
meaning throughout a community. Different responses are available
here. We might say that the meaning of a name is relative to the
idiolect of the individual, rather than the dialect of the group.
Another option would be to claim that the meaning of a name in a
public language is aggregated in some way from the identifying
information associated with it by each member of the relevant public
(Strawson 1959: 191-192). Note that, on the latter sort of
account, it would be possible for a user (or even every user) of the
name to only have a partial grip on its (aggregate) meaning (see
 Section 2.3).



Second, information that is sufficient for identificational purposes
(internally distinguishing one bearer of a name from another) may yet
be inadequate to determine the extension of a name (Strawson 1959:
20-21). For instance, "the Roman author" is enough
to distinguish Marcus Tullius Cicero from Cicero, Illinois; but it is
not sufficient to select a unique Cicero in the world (Kripke 1980:
81; Donnellan 1970: 343). There is, for instance, Cicero's
younger brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero, also an author of several
works.



A description can also have the identifying function though it is
false of the proper referent of the specific name. For instance, many
would have inaccurately identified Christopher Columbus as the first
European to visit the Americas (Searle 1958: 168; Strawson 1964: 102;
Donnellan 1970: 341; Kripke 1980: 83-84).



If the feature used for identificational purposes is false of the
referent of the name, then by our earlier criterion it cannot serve as
the meaning of the name. If it is true, but insufficient to
discriminate the referent, then the situation is different. It is
possible to claim that the identifying feature is the meaning of the
name, while admitting that nominal meaning merely constrains, without
fully determining, nominal reference. Names would then be akin to
certain pronouns (arguably, the meaning of "she" merely
limits its possible referents in certain respects).



Thus, it is possible to find a place in one's theory for
identifying descriptions, and even use them to explain cognitive
significance, while still denying that they correspond to the meanings
of names. Strawson himself, who developed the account of
identification on display, and who thought that a name's
reference was determined by its associated identifying description
(1959: 181-182), did not conceive of that description as
expressing the name's meaning (1950: 340).



More generally, suppose we call whatever theoretical posit captures
the cognitive significance of names, sense,
following Frege. The crucial point is that we need not conflate the
linguistic meaning of a name with its sense (Kripke 1980: 59; Burge
1977). This is so even if we take a name to contribute its sense to
the truth condition of an attitude report, as Frege also suggested.
Remember, we understand meaning as something that (if present)
determines or constrains the extension of a word. We have refrained
from identifying meaning with a word's contribution to the truth
condition of a declarative sentence (what is usually called its semantic
value). If we had, then it would follow,
from the fact that names do contribute to truth conditions, that names
have meanings; and we had wanted to frame the issue of a name's
meaning so that it didn't have a trivial answer. Instead, we
have left open whether a name's contribution--sense or
referent--is determined by its meaning, or else, in the absence
of such a meaning, by extra-semantic factors, such as use.


### 2.3 Meaning and the *a priori*



There are propositions we can only confirm or justify by observation
and experiment. There are, for example, various ways to establish that
the Earth is round, an especially conclusive one being
circumnavigation. There are other propositions that no observation can
confirm, nor, indeed, disconfirm; for instance, the proposition that
bachelors are unmarried. Since "bachelor" is defined as
*man who has never been married*, we derive this proposition
prior to any consultation of the external world. It is *a
priori*.



By similar reasoning, if "Socrates" meant *the teacher
of Plato and Xenophon*, it would be *a priori* that
Socrates taught Plato (Kripke 1980: 65). However, unlike the
proposition that bachelors are unmarried, this claim does not seem to
be *a priori*. Intuitively speaking, the widely held belief
that Socrates taught Plato could turn out to be false. Perhaps one day
documents will come to light establishing that the person who served
as a model for the character of Socrates in Plato's dialogues
(and other similar traditions) lived out his life prior to
Plato's birth. Such evidence would appear to refute the
tradition according to which Plato was Socrates' pupil.



By contrast, no observation could unseat the belief that bachelors are
unmarried. Even irrefutable evidence that each individual we thought a
bachelor had in fact been married would not convince us that bachelors
were, after all, married men. We would conclude instead that those men
weren't bachelors (compare Putnam 1962 and Unger 1983 on
"cat").



Now an *a priori* proposition is not automatically known. If
one is ignorant of the meaning of the relevant terms, then one
presumably won't know the *a priori* proposition that
follows from the meaning. Someone might be unaware, for example, that
all linguistic discourse is either verse or prose, or that all planets
have sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium; yet both
propositions follow from the definitions of the relevant words
("prose" is defined as language without the metrical
structure of verse; and the official definition of
"planet" includes a clause requiring hydrostatic
equilibrium).



The fact that some users of "Socrates" don't realize
that Socrates taught Plato does not immediately show that the
proposition is *a posteriori*. It could be that they are
ignorant of the meaning of "Socrates", and if they had
known it, they would also have known (*a priori*) that Socrates
taught Plato. The same goes for the intuition that *it could turn
out* that Socrates did not teach Plato. This intuition could
similarly originate in obscuring ignorance of meaning. It should be
kept in mind that the argument we are considering in this section
(often termed the epistemic argument) takes
for granted that if "Socrates" had a meaning, we would
know what it was, and be in a position to draw *a priori*
conclusions from it.



With this one caveat, the epistemic argument is an effective challenge
to many accounts that provide names with a substantial meaning. Often
what would follow from the proposed meaning is something that,
according to our intuition, could turn out to be false. An ingenious
response to the argument is to identify the meaning of a name with
(roughly speaking) whatever claims about its extension could not turn
out to be false, according to ordinary speakers' intuitions
(Chalmers & Jackson 2001). Such an account of meaning (call it
apriorist) is of course immune to the
epistemic argument.



What sorts of claims are we talking about here? Not the claim that
Socrates taught Plato: this, intuitively, could turn out to be false.
But what about the claim that *it could turn out false that
Socrates taught Plato*. The justification for this claim was not
observational evidence, but an intuition about a hypothetical
scenario, and what we would say about Socrates in that scenario. We
felt that if the true source of Plato's character had died
before Plato was born, then it would follow that Socrates did not
teach Plato. But whence this judgment? Perhaps it stems from the
conviction that, roughly, "Socrates" will refer to whoever
turns out to be the actual source of the eponymous character in
Plato's dialogues (and other similar traditions). This is not
quite *a priori* either. As a claim, it stands or falls on our
empirical knowledge of the relevant traditions. Still, one imagines
the claim could be winnowed down further, until, as it were, the *a
posteriori* hull is gone. The remaining polished kernel would then
serve as the apriorist meaning of "Socrates."



It would be interesting to see this exercise carried out in full, but
what would it show? Not that a certain core of knowledge must
constitute the meaning of "Socrates". There is always the
possibility that "Socrates" has no meaning. Even if the
account of what determines the reference of a name has an *a
priori* core, we may yet conclude that such reference is
determined extra-semantically. Perhaps the *a priori* core is
simply an (*a priori*) theory of reference in general, applied
to the special case of "Socrates".



Furthermore, the apriorist account, like the epistemic argument that
led us to it, relies on the assumption that meanings, and their *a
priori* consequences, are known to speakers, who then lean on this
knowledge in forming intuitive judgments about what could turn out to
be true of Socrates--or bachelors. But consider the person who
finds it intuitive that a planet might not have achieved hydrostatic
equilibrium? We would like to say that they don't fully
understand what "planet" means, given that this is one of
the conditions in the 2006 definition arrived at by the International
Astronomical Union (see
 Other Internet Resources).
 However, on the apriorist account, we are forced to say instead that
the proposition that all planets have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium
does not follow from the meaning of "planet", as it does
not belong to the *a priori* core (as proven by the one speaker
who doesn't find it intuitive). Indeed, the *a priori*
core, whatever it is, only supports the judgment that all planets have
achieved hydrostatic equilibrium in conjunction with the *a
posteriori* knowledge that achieving hydrostatic equilibrium was a
clause in the definition of "planet" stipulated by an
authority.



The concern is that many uncontroversial examples of word meaning are
not known to some speakers (and for any example, including
"bachelor," we could easily contrive a case in which it
was not known to someone), and hence must be excluded by the
apriorist. Even if one is convinced that whatever (directly)
determines the extension of a word constitutes its meaning, there is
still no guarantee that a particular (or general) theory of extension
determination can be found, however implicit, in native speaker
intuitions. Or, supposing it can be, that the process of deriving it
from those intuitions is one of *a priori* demonstrative
inference. Like other aspects of linguistic theory, the road from
native speaker judgments to theory is presumably the ampliative method
of science.


### 2.4 Meaning and Necessity



The fact that "bachelor" means *man who has never been
married* implies that bachelors are *necessarily*
unmarried. A married bachelor is an impossibility, a contradiction in
terms. A man who in fact lived his life as a bachelor could have
(instead) married, but if he had, his bachelor status would
immediately have ceased. The scenario is thus not one involving a
married bachelor, but merely one where a particular person, actually a
bachelor, gets married instead.



This is a separate topic from that of the previous section, since
necessity and the *a priori* can come apart. Consider the claim
that the nucleus of an atom of gold contains 79 protons. This claim is
not *a priori*. It is the fruit of an empirical inquiry into
the nature of gold, and could certainly not have been deduced from the
meaning of "gold". It is, however, a necessary truth
(Kripke 1980: 123-125). The nature of gold is, in this respect,
immutable. If you added or subtracted protons from the nucleus, you
would no longer have an atom of gold, but some other element
instead.



Consider once more the view that "Socrates" means *the
teacher of Plato and Xenophon*. Does it similarly predict a
necessary connection between being Socrates and being the teacher of
Plato and Xenophon? Is it committed to the impossibility of a Socrates
who never taught? If so, the view would seem to be in trouble. For it
appears a contingent fact--one that could have been
otherwise--that Socrates taught Plato (Searle 1958: 172; Kripke
1980: 74). Socrates could, after all, have died in infancy; or else
lived, but declined to take on his most famous pupil.



Note that "Socrates" is a referring expression, while
"bachelor" is a nominal predicate. In carrying over the
analogy from "bachelor", we had to convert
"Socrates" into a predicate ("being
Socrates"). This was because the necessity we observed for
"bachelor" involved the co-instantiation of
properties--one can't *be* a bachelor without
*being unmarried* (compare Dummett 1973: 131). But it may be
that referring expressions relate to their meanings in a different way
to predicates--one that implies no necessary co-instantiation of
properties. Indeed, we will find that this is the case, for at least
one sort of referring expression, in
 Section 2.5.



A different test using modal sentences relies on the assumption that
synonymous expressions should be substitutable *salva veritate*
in modal contexts. To agree to this, we don't have to think that
the meaning of an expression corresponds to its truth-conditional
contribution; only that, in identical linguistic contexts, synonymous
expressions will make (or are likely to make) the same contribution.
(Keep in mind that synonymous expressions are certainly not
substitutable *salva veritate* in all contexts. Substituting
"man who has never been married" for
"bachelor" might change the truth-value of an attitude
report if the attitude holder is ignorant of the meaning of
"bachelor.")



As it turns out, "Socrates" and "the teacher of
Plato and Xenophon" cannot be substituted *salva
veritate* in modal contexts (compare Kripke 1980:
40-42):


* (3) The teacher of
Plato and Xenophon might not have been human.
* (4) Socrates might not
have been human.



If we consider that Plato and Xenophon could have been raised by
wolves, (3) sounds true, while (4) remains false. Thus, if we agree
that synonyms should substitute in this context,
"Socrates" cannot mean *the teacher of Plato and
Xenophon*.



However, observe that (3) also has a (false) reading on which it says
roughly the same thing as (4), referring to a particular man, rather
than generalizing over teachers of Plato and Xenophon. (A competing
explanation is that "Socrates" is lexically univocal, but
gives rise to a structural ambiguity, being analyzed as a scope-taking
expression--see Russell 1905; Neale 1990. Note, however, that
this approach doesn't lend itself as well to the defense of our
descriptivist hypothesis. Such a defense needs to claim that names,
perhaps similarly to the quantifier "each", gravitate
towards the widest possible scope in the sentence--see Dummett
1981: Ch.9; Soames 1998; and Sosa 2001 for further discussion of this
proposal.)



Following Rothschild (2007) and Nichols (in unpublished work; see
 other internet resources),
 we could say that while the name "Socrates" refers to an
individual, the definite description "the teacher of Plato and
Xenophon" can refer either to that same individual, or else to a
particular role--namely, that of teacher to Plato and Xenophon.
When understood in the second way, (3) means something like "The
role of teacher to Plato and Xenophon might have been filled by a
non-human". This parallels the fact that "tiger" has
a taxonomic reading on which it applies to kinds alongside the more
standard reading on which it applies to individual animals, so that
"the tiger" can refer to either the kind or some
particular tiger.



Supposing that definite descriptions can refer to roles would explain
their different behavior in modal sentences without threatening the
idea that a name could be synonymous with a definite description on
its non-role reading. Still, the foregoing reflections offer no
further help in interpreting the claim that "Socrates"
means *the teacher of Plato and Xenophon*. The claim
can't simply be that "Socrates" and "the
teacher of Plato and Xenophon" corefer. Even one who denies a
meaning to "Socrates" admits this. But if there are no
detectable modal consequences of a name's having some meaning,
in what other substantial sense should this possession be
understood?


### 2.5 Rule of Use



The Oxford English Dictionary's entry for the first person
pronoun "I" says: "Used by the speaker or writer
referring to himself or herself." This is plausibly a linguistic
rule: it is correct English to use "I" this way. The
definition also determines the reference of (a particular utterance
of) "I". It seems reasonable, then, to think of this rule
as giving the meaning of "I" (Kaplan 1989a: 520-521;
Reichenbach 1947, 284).



This is handy: we now have an example of the form the meaning of a
referring expression can take. The first benefit is that we can
confirm that this kind of meaning doesn't generate necessities,
the way the meaning of "bachelor" did. Suppose
"I" means *the speaker in the context* (Kaplan
1989a: 495). Well, it is possible to be me without being the speaker
in the context. Though I am speaking now, I might have remained silent
(Kaplan 1989a: 509).



It is evident, too, that the meaning of "I" cannot perform
the duties of an interpersonal Fregean sense (discussed in
 Section 2.2).
 The rule determining the reference of an utterance of "I"
(what Kaplan calls its character) is not the
same as the contribution such an utterance makes to the communicated
content (the cognitive significance of the utterance) on a particular
occasion of use. Indeed, whereas "I" has a fixed
character, it contributes different senses when uttered by different
people (see Frege 1918-1919 [1956: 296]).



The rule is not irrelevant to the cognitive significance of an
utterance of the term, of course; and may be considered the mode by
which its interpersonal content is presented (Kaplan 1989a: 530).
Moreover, the meaning of "I" supports *a priori*
inferences of a particular sort (Kaplan 1989a: 508-509). For
instance, no empirical investigation is required to divine that an
utterance of "I" refers to the one uttering it. Hence,
"I am the one uttering this sentence" is *a
priori*.



The meaning of "I" provides a model for the meaning of
names, but is there a candidate meaning for a name that fits this
model? "I" does not refer to the same person every time it
is used, so we might reasonably suppose that it provides a better
model for a generic name--also used for different
people--than a specific one. The rough thinking being that if a
name is only ever used to refer to one thing (as a specific name is),
there is no real need for a *general rule* of use.



What would a rule of use for a generic name look like? If
"I" constrains reference to the speaker in the context,
then generic "Alice", in most situations (unless the
referent is a protected witness, for example), constrains reference to
persons called "Alice". A semantic rule of use for generic
"Alice" would thus amount to a metalinguistic account of
its meaning. More will be said motivating and criticizing such a
stance in the dedicated
 section (2.10)
 to come, but I will preview a major criticism of the view that names
have a metalinguistic rule of use below.



The rule governing the use of a generic name like "Alice"
has been spelled out by various theorists in similar ways (Burks 1951;
Lerner & Zimmermann 1984, 1991; Haas-Spohn 1995; Recanati 1997;
Pelczar & Rainsbury 1998). On each occasion of use, a referent for
the name will be more-or-less available, or obligatory, depending on
the familiarity and salience of a convention that tags that referent
with that generic name. So a minimal rule of use for
"Alice" would require each utterance to refer to one to
whom that (generic) name has been conventionally attached. A stronger
version would have it that an utterance of "Alice"
obligatorily refers to the most salient individual of this sort.



As Kaplan (1989a: 562) points out, there is a competing account of the
variable reference of names that does not treat them as generic
expressions with a metalinguistic meaning (rule of use). On that
account, the variation in reference is due to either ambiguity or
homonymy (i.e., there are many different "specific" names
with the same form), and what passes for a rule of use on the
metalinguistic theory is not properly ascribed to the meaning of names
at all, but is rather a more generally applicable procedure of
disambiguation (see also Evans 1973, as well as Evans 1982, where
name-using practices, rather than specific names, are settled on in
the process of disambiguation).



To illustrate the difference, recall that it is a convention of
English that a speaker uses "I" to refer to themselves.
That convention is available to us, roughly speaking, whenever we are
conversing with fellow English speakers, and we must always
disambiguate an uttered token of "I" (distinguishing it,
say, from homophone "eye") prior to applying this
convention to determine the token's referent. The availability
of the "I" convention in a conversation, and the
disambiguation of an individual token of "I", while
crucial to communication, are matters that come before applying its
rule of use, and so are distinct from the matters addressed in that
rule.



We might go so far as to say that the sort of things a metalinguistic
rule of use ranges over--conventions and the like--are just
not suitable targets for linguistic meanings (compare Pelczar &
Rainsbury 1998: 297-298). However, a rule of use just like the
one advanced for generic "Alice" is very plausible for
certain other expressions. For instance, "the tall Alice"
or even just "the Alice" (see Jeshion 2017 for
unexceptionable examples of the latter) is a context-sensitive phrase
used to refer to the most salient individual satisfying a
metalinguistic predicate (either being tall and being called
"Alice", or just being called "Alice"). For
such examples, disambiguation between a number of different senses (of
either "the Alice" or "the tall Alice") is not
a plausible account.



It is obvious in hindsight that natural language, in its versatility,
would not disbar metalinguistic rules of use. Still, the point remains
that *ceteris paribus* we should prefer pre-semantic
disambiguation as an explanation, since it is required anyway, to
introducing a metalinguistic rule of use that apes it.


### 2.6 The Cluster Theory



Suppose we are convinced, perhaps by arguments already given, that
*the teacher of Plato and Xenophon* is not, by itself, a
satisfactory specification of the meaning of "Socrates".
We might beat an orderly retreat, maintaining that it is still part of
that meaning. Instead of being specifiable as a single succinct
condition, the meaning of "Socrates" is constructed from a
*cluster* of similar conditions.



Strawson, though he did not think names were meaningful, proposed that
the referent of a specific name was determined by the collection of
identifying descriptions associated with the name in the
community:



> 
> 
> Suppose we take a group of speakers who use, or think they use, the
> name, "Socrates", with the same reference. Suppose we then
> ask each member of the group to write down what he considers to be the
> salient facts about Socrates, and then form from these lists of facts
> a composite description incorporating the most frequently mentioned
> facts. Now it would be too much to say that the success of
> term-introduction within the group by means of the name requires that
> there should exist just one person of whom all the propositions in the
> composite description are true. But it would not be too much to say
> that it requires that there should exist one and only one person of
> whom some reasonable proportion of these propositions is true. If, for
> example, it should be found that there was just one person of whom
> half the propositions were jointly true, and just one person, a
> different one, of whom the other half of the propositions were jointly
> true, then, unless some indication were given of which Socrates was
> meant, it would become impossible to give a straightforward answer to
> the question, whether any particular "proposition about
> Socrates" was true or false. It is true, perhaps, of
> Socrates\(\_1\), and not of Socrates\(\_2\). It is neither true nor
> false of Socrates *simpliciter*, for, it turns out, there is no
> such person. (Strawson 1959: 191-192)
> 
> 
> 



Searle (1958) responds to the epistemic argument (see
 Section 2.3)
 by proposing a cluster theory. That argument seemed to show that
individual components of the cluster, such as *taught Plato*,
could not be necessary conditions on belonging to the name's
extension. For otherwise it would be knowable *a priori* that
Socrates taught Plato. (Note that there is a similar problem with
treating it as a sufficient condition; for then it would be *a
priori* that no-one other than Socrates taught Plato.) Instead,
Searle suggests that a name's meaning imposes the weaker
requirement that *some* member of the cluster be true of the
referent. On his account, it is only *a priori* that the
referent possesses the *disjunction* of the conditions of the
cluster. (Note that this weak condition is unlikely to single out a
referent for the name; hence Searle does not seem to provide a
complete picture of reference determination. But strengthening the
account would only make the *a priori* consequences
stronger.)



Searle's escape route is blocked if one can show that, for any
finite list of the relevant sort (and for persons fully knowledgeable
of the name's meaning--see
 Section 2.3),
 it is conceivable that the true referent satisfies none of the
conditions on the list. If clusters are finite lists of conditions,
then the theory predicts that there is some such list for which it is
*a priori* that the referent satisfies at least one of its
conditions.



One way of so arguing would be to cultivate the intuition that any
finite list must be incomplete. Given any list, there is a conceivable
scenario in which some further property--one that was left off
the list--proves crucial in determining the name's
reference. This kind of argument was used by Friedrich Waismann (1945)
to demonstrate the "open texture" of empirical predicates,
such as "gold" and "cat". But it seems that
the list of factors that could conceivably be relevant to determining
the referent of "Socrates" is similarly open ended. If
this hunch is correct, then the best we could hope for from a finite
cluster theory is a kind of *ceteris paribus* determination:




> 
> 
> If such-and-such facts obtain *and no other facts relevant to the
> determination of the reference of "Socrates",* then
> "Socrates" refers to so-and-so.
> 
> 
> 



Kripke (1980: 66-67) argues that, so long as our cluster
consists only of properties commonly attributed to the bearer of the
name, as on Strawson's account, it is conceivable that none of
its members applies to the referent. His case is buoyed by examples
where experts posit or even identify a historical figure behind a
popular legend, and treat the historical personage, who might share
none of the attributes of the legendary one, as the true referent of
the name. We might respond by applying Strawson's method to the
community of experts, rather than the general populace where the
legend holds sway, as it would then succeed in picking out the
historical figure. However, the general observation is that no group
is incorrigible. Even those experts could turn out, it seems, to be
wholly wrong in their descriptions of the name's referent (as
revealed, perhaps, by a new wave of experts).



Kripke thus provides a direct challenge to a cluster theory based on
identifying descriptions. A complication is that Strawson explicitly
countenances identifying descriptions that are parasitic on other
speakers' use (such as *the individual Plato referred to as
"Socrates"*). Kripke attempts to repulse this
maneuver, noting that the reference of one's own utterance of a
name is ultimately determined by the reference of the person from whom
one in fact learned the name, rather than the person one might
mistakenly identify as such (1980: 90-91; see also Geach 1969:
288-289; and Donnellan 1970).



Suppose we could craft a version of the cluster theory that was
materially correct (it satisfies all of our intuitions about the
reference of the name in different eventualities). We might
legitimately ask, as we have done before, whether this theory succeeds
in giving the meaning of the name. It seems that many have favored
this conclusion chiefly for want of an alternative: if a cluster of
commonly attributed features is not the meaning of a name, then what
is? Or if, alternatively, names don't have meanings, then what
could it be that determines their extension? We will supply one
general answer to the second of these questions in the next
section.


### 2.7 Reference Without Meaning: the Use Theory



The range of application of the noun "bachelor" is
determined in two steps. First, something (we haven't seen what)
establishes that "bachelor" means *man who has never
been married*. Second, "bachelor" applies to all and
only those things that satisfy the condition specified in its
meaning--the men who have never been married. If names have
meanings, then their referents or ranges (in the case of generic
names) will be determined in the same way. However, many philosophers
have found the view that names do not have a meaning intuitively
compelling (Mill 1843: 34, 36-37; Strawson 1950; Ziff 1960:
85-89, 93-94; Marcus 1961). They still believe names
refer, and so require an alternative metasemantics--an account,
in this case, of what determines reference--to the
meaning-mediated one.



The now standard alternative to the meaning-mediated model is one on
which reference (or range) is directly established by *use*.
The referent is the referent (or the range the range) because it
satisfies a particular condition, but that condition amounts to
consistency with past use, rather than encapsulating the meaning of
the expression. Proponents of the use model tend to emphasize the
externalism of this determining use. For
example, in the quote below, Evans elaborates the rough idea of the
referent *being known as NN* by citing the "actual
pattern of dealings" with the referent--by which he means
specifically the occasions where the referent has been identified as
NN by certain members of the community (the "producers" of
the particular name-using practice)--rather than basing it on the
recognitional capacities that enable the identification (which would
hew closer to Strawson).



> 
> 
> It seems reasonable to suggest that what makes it the case that an
> ordinary proper-name-using practice involving the name
> "NN" concerns a particular individual is that that
> individual should be *known to the producers in the practice as
> NN.* It is the actual pattern of dealings the producers have had
> with an individual--identified from time to time by the exercise
> of their recognitional capacities in regard to that
> individual--which ties the name to the individual. (Evans 1982:
> 382, emphasis in the original)
> 
> 
> 



We will now look, in a general way, at how the reference of a name
could be determined by other aspects of its use. Our approach will
single out attribution (of a name to someone)
as the relevant basis. Other approaches are possible, but the
(technical) notion of attribution will be broad enough to cover the
use theories of Evans and Kripke.



To refer is to use an expression to identify some individual, usually
in order to talk about them. Attribution of a name, by contrast,
requires the attributee to be identified (at least partially)
independently of the deployment of the name. To attribute a name to
someone is just to treat someone--thus extrinsically
identified--as belonging to its extension; to assert or
presuppose that the name applies to them. A straightforward example,
where the attributee is identified by a gesture (or her proximity),
would be:


* (5) This is
Miranda.



Others include vocative address ("Hello, Miranda!"), where
the name is attributed to the addressee, and stipulation ("Let
this one be Zappa"). Constructions with appellative verbs like
"call" are tailor-made for name attribution ("Call
me Ishmael"), but attribution may also be discerned in the
background of a more casual kind of utterance. Even "Homer was a
master of narrative" could be seen to presuppose an attribution
of "Homer" to the author of certain narrative works (Evans
1982: 394-395).



Attributions can be to individuals identified *by description*
as well as *by acquaintance*. As we will see, Evans restricts
canonical applications by fiat to the by-acquaintance variety, while
Kripke seems to allow both sorts (1980: 94).



The main tenet of the use theory, as we will understand it, is that an
utterance of a name is constrained in its reference by a set of prior
applications. Assuming, for the moment, that the applications in that
set were all to one individual (the same one was independently
identified in each case), then the utterance is simply constrained to
refer to that individual (in order, as we might put it, to be
consistent with those past applications). The use theory in outline is
almost the same as Strawson's view that the reference of a name
is determined by the identifying descriptions associated with it in
the minds of its users, except that it replaces users'
dispositions to identify the referent of a name in a certain way with
their public acts of committing to particular identifications.



Another difference exhibited by the use theories of Kripke and Evans
is their flight from Strawson's democratic approach to
identification (Kripke 1980: 65). Both philosophers distinguish a
proper subset of the applications of a name as canonical for
determining its reference (see also Putnam 1975).



Indeed, only one attribution is authoritative on the picture Kripke
offers: an inaugurating stipulation that tyrannically governs all
subsequent use. The paradigm of this initiating act is the naming
ceremony, where a name is officially conferred on a person or thing.
Since no subsequent attribution can alter the reference of downstream
use, Kripke's account makes no allowance for reference change
(each "change" in fact requires the institution of a new
specific name, with a new inaugural event).



Evans loosens Kripke's restriction to allow for the influence of
subsequent attributions, and hence makes it possible to model change
in the reference of a name. On his account, the authoritative
applications are those of the (current) "producers" of a
name-using practice--those in a position to make identifications
based on direct acquaintance, as they are capable of recognizing the
individual to which they attribute the name (Evans 1982:
376-377). Those who are not producers--the
consumers--have a more limited role in the practice. While they
can use the name to refer to the relevant individual, their own
attributions need not be consistent with its reference.



Standard use theories provide vague guidelines for selecting the set
of historical attributions (the "precedent") that
constrains the reference of a particular utterance. For Kripke,
selection involves tracing back the (intentionally mediated)
historical chain from the utterance to an initial naming ceremony. For
Evans it requires resolving the utterance to its proper name-using
practice (a process he conceives of on the model of lexical
disambiguation), and then sifting out the attributions of the
producers in that practice.



It follows that Kripke is committed to the coreference of
(appropriately) historically connected name-utterances, while Evans is
committed to the coreference of all (simultaneous) utterances
belonging to the one practice. It is worth noting that a use theory
need not carry either of these commitments. We might instead,
following Donnellan (1974: 16), take the relevant applications to be
those that contribute to the historically correct explanation of the
utterance in question. Since the same speaker, manifestly intending to
contribute to the same name-using practice, might utter the same name
in pursuit of different goals, and hence with differing overall
explanations for each of their utterances, Donnellan's account
does not carry the constraints of the other theories (for some pros
and cons, see Donnellan 1970: 349-351 and Evans 1973: 202).



If the precedent consists of more than one attribution, the theory
additionally needs some way to resolve conflicts--cases where one
attribution is to *x*, while another is to *y*. We could say
that any conflict in the precedent results in either reference failure
(Evans 1982: 389) or referential indeterminacy (Lewis 1984). But we
can also imagine a more nuanced rule that prioritized certain
properties in the event of a conflict (the way Evans prioritizes the
applications of producers over those of consumers).



In sum, the general framework for a use theory has it that a set of
attributions *P* provides a constraint on the reference of an
utterance *u* of a name (the theory may provide a means of
determining *P* from *u* and its circumstances, or, at the
extreme of relativism, will only say that reference is dependent on a
choice of precedent *P*). Each element \(P\_i\) of *P*
contributes a general descriptive or situational feature that serves
to identify the subject of the application (think of each \(P\_i\) as a
property, applied at the world of utterance). Additionally, the use
theory may specify a priority relation on *P* (or other means of
resolving conflicts). The result is a condition (we can call it
\(C(u)\) if we assume that an utterance *u* determines this
condition, by determining its proper precedent) that specifies the
constraint on the reference of the utterance required by consistency
with its proper precedent of attributions.


### 2.8 Use Theories as Cluster Theories



The general use theory we have just described has an obvious affinity
with the cluster theory discussed just prior to it. The set of
canonical attributions in the use theory boils down to a cluster of
conditions that jointly determine reference. Theories of both sorts
are specified by providing a means of selecting the set, and a means
of resolving conflicts among the properties in the set (in the event
that it does not turn out to be unitary).



Use theories, like cluster theories, can be seen as open-ended in what
counts towards reference (I was careful to allow for this in the
general statement at the end of the previous section). Even an
open-ended cluster theory can issue in *ceteris paribus* claims
such as: if these are the only considerations operating in the case,
then the reference is to so-and-so. In use theories, this
open-endedness crops up (at least) in the choice of precedent; so that
the best we might say, in some cases, is: if we fix the precedent like
this, then the reference is to such-and-such. Though we are certainly
not at a loss in deciding the proper precedent for any particular
case, it is difficult to say in general and with precision which
applications should count. Evans' invocation of a name-using
practice is too vague to guide us in concretely described cases, and
Kripke explicitly disclaims that he is providing a prediction-making
theory of nominal reference.



If we generalize cluster theories to allow them to include identifying
properties extracted from use (instead of restricting them to
dispositional identifying descriptions), we can treat use theories as
a species of cluster theory. Indeed, a general umbrella is a good idea
if it turns out that dispositional identifying descriptions play a
part in determining reference alongside "the actual pattern of
dealings" (see Lewis 1984: 226-27, for this argument, and
Unger 1983 for the cases on which it is based). For example, Evans
observes that one's utterance of "Anir" cannot refer
to King Arthur's son if one believes it to be the name of
Arthur's burial place instead (1973: 198; see Dickie 2011 for a
host of similar examples).



We have already noted that a cluster theory need not give the meaning
of a name; that adopting one is consistent with thinking that names
are meaningless. Our example, recall, was Strawson, who denied the
meaningfulness of names (he would not even grant them a rule of use),
yet thought their reference was determined by a cluster of identifying
descriptions. On the other hand, one might have reasons for thinking
the cluster--even one that includes properties derived from
use--accurately represents the meaning of a name (this appears,
for instance, to be Lewis's view). Finally, the cluster could
comprise influences from meaning alongside influences from use, with
the rule for adjudicating conflict, in part, deciding between factors
of those different types.


### 2.9 Empty Names and Negative Existentials



A direct argument for the claim that a name's meaning is the
cluster condition determining its reference comes from a consideration
of claims of nonexistence (or "negative
existentials"):



> 
> 
> Consider this example. If one says "Moses did not exist",
> this may mean various things. It may mean: the Israelites did not have
> a *single* leader when they withdrew from Egypt--or: their
> leader was not called Moses--or: there cannot have been anyone
> who accomplished all that the Bible relates of Moses--or etc.,
> etc. (Wittgenstein 1953: sec. 79)
> 
> 
> 



There is something compelling about Wittgenstein's observation.
The three alternatives he outlines (while being clear they are not
exhaustive) describe different kinds of situation in which we might
well agree that Moses did not exist. While one could claim that the
sentence is ambiguous, with an interpretation analyzed in each of
these ways at least, this is not what Wittgenstein has in mind. This
is a good thing, since "Moses did not exist" cannot
literally *mean* that the Israelites did not have a single
leader, as it is certainly conceivable that Moses existed but did not
lead the Israelites (Kripke 1980: 66-67). Instead, we must treat
his alternatives in the manner already suggested for the components of
a cluster theory: as conditions that are neither strictly necessary
nor inevitably sufficient, but which instead count as factors in favor
of the nonexistence claim, interacting with an open-ended set of other
factors both for and against. Perhaps, indeed, Wittgenstein himself
held this view in an inchoate way:



> 
> 
> Has the name "Moses" got a fixed and unequivocal use for
> me in all possible cases?--Is it not the case that I have, so to
> speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on
> one if another should be taken from under me, and vice versa?
> (Wittgenstein 1953: sec. 79)
> 
> 
> 



Intuitions aside, negative existentials pose a serious challenge to
the view that names have no meaning. The difficulty is most acute on
the view that names only contribute their referent to the truth
condition of an utterance (but see Kripke 2013; Braun 1993; the papers
in Everett & Hofweber 2000); there is a way out, sketched below,
for one willing to treat nonreferring names as still contributing a
sense (which, as you will recall from
 Section 2.2,
 is consistent with the claim that names have no linguistic
meaning).



Generally speaking, the point of a singular negative existential
cannot be to make a (false) claim about a certain individual, referred
to by the singular term in the subject position, to the effect that
that individual does not exist. In this way, singular negative
existentials differ from run-of-the-mill utterances, such as:


* (6)Socrates drank
hemlock.



Let *C*("Socrates") stand for the (putative) cluster
condition that determines the referent of "Socrates". We
are able to state the condition under which (6) is true as:


* (7)

 \( \exists x. C( \textrm{'Socrates'})(x) \wedge
 \textsf{drank.hemlock}(x) \)



While (7) is an accurate statement of the truth condition of (6), it
may not be the truth condition we get when we put together the
semantic contributions of the parts. (Once again, following Kripke,
Burge and others, we must maintain a distinction between the semantic
contribution--or semantic value--of
an uttered expression, and that expression's linguistic
meaning.) In particular, if we think that "Socrates"
contributes its referent (and only its referent) to the compositional
truth condition of a sentence, then we will prefer the following
statement (where *s* is an individual constant denoting
Socrates):


* (8)
\(\textsf{drank.hemlock}(s)\)



If a name does not refer (take a name such as Urbain Le
Verrier's "Vulcan" or Algernon's
"Bunbury"--from Wilde's play, *The
Importance of Being Earnest*), then we obviously lack the option
of expressing a truth condition that cites its referent. If a claim
involving an empty name has a truth condition at all, it would have to
be a condition that, like (7), incorporates the condition that
determines reference, rather than one that, like (8), incorporates the
referent itself.



We might not require a truth condition for statements like
"Bunbury drank hemlock" or "This is a fine red
one" where nothing is demonstrated (cf. Strawson 1950: 333).
Those sentences aren't true, and perhaps don't make
truth-evaluable claims at all. But Wittgenstein has drawn our
attention to negative existentials, and we do have a grip on the sort
of situations in which they would turn out to be true. If
*C*("Moses") represents the cluster condition that
singles out Moses in all those situations in which we would say he did
exist, then the truth condition for (9a) could be represented as (9b),
but not as (9c).



(9)


a.
Moses did not exist.
b.
\(\neg\exists
x.C(\textrm{"Moses"})(x)
\wedge \textsf{past}(\textsf{alive}(x))\)
c.
\(\neg\textsf{past}(\textsf{alive}(m))\)




Now suppose, for a moment, we agree with Davidson (1967) that (i) when
we state the truth condition of a sentence in the right way, we give
its semantic value. If the truth condition of (9a) cannot be stated as
(9c), then that leaves (9b) as the remaining candidate for the
semantic value of the sentence. And (ii) if the semantic value of a
sentence is determined by the semantic values of its parts, then
*C*("Moses") must be the contribution of
"Moses" (or possibly some larger constituent including
"Moses"). Since we distinguish meaning and semantic value,
it doesn't follow directly that *C*("Moses") is
the meaning of "Moses". However, we cannot, according to
this argument, think of *C*("Moses") as a mere
metasemantic condition (perhaps derived from use), because
metasemantic conditions determine the semantic values of expressions,
rather than vice versa.



Either premise (i)-(ii) in this argument could be challenged.
So, one could distinguish the (compositional) semantic value of a
sentence from its truth condition. It would then be possible to say
that a name that does not refer makes no contribution to the semantic
value of a sentence, and even that a sentence containing an empty name
does not have a semantic value, while still maintaining that (9b)
gives the correct truth condition for "Moses does not
exist". This is the approach of Donnellan (1974: 25), for whom
the compositional semantic value of an uttered sentence is the
proposition that it expresses--not quite its truth condition.
While the utterance is true if that proposition holds and false if it
fails to hold, Donnellan also thinks it may be true or false even if
no proposition is generated. In particular, he proposes a rule that
would make a nonexistence statement true if generation fails in
particular way: specifically, if the historical explanation of its
singular subject's use does not serve to identify any
appropriate individual.



A different approach would replace
*C*("Moses")--which is just shorthand for a
cluster condition--with a truly metalinguistic condition, one
that includes the reference relation itself. Note that (10) entails
(9b), given that *C*("Moses") is the condition that
determines the referent of "Moses".


* (10)
 \(\neg\exists
x.\textsf{refers}(\textrm{"Moses"})(x) \wedge
 \textsf{past}(\textsf{alive}(x)) \)



Metalinguistic analyses of nonexistence statements face certain
objections. One is that "Moses did not exist" and its
translation into French have different semantic values, since they say
of different words that they don't refer to someone who once
lived. This particular problem could be addressed if there was a
common *sense*--associated with at most one
referent--expressed by English speakers uttering
"Moses" and French speakers uttering its translation
"Moise" (see Cumming 2013 for a proposal). The truth
condition could then replace parochial reference to language with
reference to sense. If we let \(\delta\) denote the sense expressed by
"Moses", then the truth condition would be:


* (11)
\( \neg\exists x.\textsf{refers}(\delta)(x) \wedge
\textsf{past}(\textsf{alive}(x)) \)



A further advantage of (11) is that we can give a compositional
semantics on which "Moses" contributes its sense,
\(\delta\), while the predicate contributes the existential
quantification over the variable *x* as well as the relation
connecting the sense of an expression to its referent (glossed simply
as refers in (11)). Musan (1997) and others
have given empirical arguments that a large class of predicates (those
that are not "existence independent" in her terminology)
have such an existential component to their meaning. It is eminently
reasonable to place "exists" in their company.



A parallel compositional treatment of (10) would have
"Moses" contributing itself (as though it occurred in a
quotation). It perhaps seems more plausible, should we opt for (10),
to carve the truth condition up differently, so that we assign
"Moses" the metalinguistic meaning *the individual
referred to by "Moses"*. We will now turn to a
consideration of such a metalinguistic account of the meaning of
names.


### 2.10 Metalinguistic Theories



The nominal phrase *N* in a definite description "the
*N*" contributes a condition that should be sufficient to
discriminate the referent of the description from its local
distractors. If I felicitously utter "the red one", then
you should be able to successfully identify the referent I have in
mind on the basis of its being red. In this case, the condition that
serves for identification in context is not specific enough to
determine the referent outright--there are of course many red
things in existence other than the one I refer to.



As referring expressions, names can be seen to work in a similar way
(compare Gray 2014: 216). In a felicitous utterance of
"Alice", some one individual is identified to the
audience. In the case of names, the discriminating condition is
metalinguistic: the referent of the utterance is distinguished from
distractors by her feature of *being called
"Alice"*.



This parallel suggests that a syntactic constituent of the
name--the proper nominal phrase--contributes this
metalinguistic property; and the (generic) name "Alice",
as a whole, means *the individual called
"Alice"*.



This compositional theory of a name's import is corroborated by
several pieces of circumstantial evidence. First, many names,
including certain names of places and things in English and of people
in Greek and other languages, actually incorporate a definite
determiner ("the" in English). This suggests that names
might have a compositional semantics just like that of a definite
description, where the determiner meaning combines with a property
contributed by the nominal complement to generate the meaning of the
overall phrase.



Second, when a proper nominal occurs with other kinds of overt
determiner, it often takes on a metalinguistic meaning (Sloat 1969;
Burge 1973):


* (12) There are two
Alices in my son's class.



The (proper) nominal "Alice" in (12) has a meaning one
might parse as *being called "Alice"*; or, even
more specifically, since (12) is a written sentence, as *having a
name spelled A-l-i-c-e* (Gray 2015).



On the other hand, the metalinguistic property attributed to the
proper nominal appears superfluous in accounting for the way a name
identifies its referent to the audience. The fact that the referent of
the speaker's use of "Alice" is called
"Alice" is something that can reasonably be inferred from
the form of the referring expression alone, and doesn't require
access to its meaning. It is a familiar point that we should think
twice before attributing to meaning an inference that requires nothing
more than common sense (Grice 1975). Indeed, it is not clear that such
an interpretation could belong to a conventional meaning, since a
convention requires a possible alternative, and there is no
alternative to taking an utterance of "Alice" to narrow
the field to those individuals who are called "Alice".



This brings us to a circularity objection brought against the
metalinguistic view (Strawson 1950: 340; Kripke 1980: 68-70).
One way of explicating *having a name spelled A-l-i-c-e* is to
say that there is a linguistic item--a specific name with that
spelling--referring to one. Thus (12) says in effect that there
are two individuals in the class referred to by such a name. This
would be consistent with an account on which specific names (unlike
proper nominals occupying contexts like (12)) do not have a meaning,
their reference being determined by use instead. More generally, this
explication treats the reference of specific names as the more basic
notion, defining the predicate meaning of the proper nominal in terms
of such reference.



To think of names (not nominals) as having a metalinguistic meaning
which then (partially) determines their reference, reverses this
picture. Instead of the metalinguistic meaning being explicated in
terms of the reference of specific names (satisfying a certain
property), the reference of names would be explained with the help of
the metalinguistic meaning. To avoid a theory in which the explanation
goes in a circle, the metalinguistic predicate *having a name
spelled A-l-i-c-e* must be explicated without appeal to the
reference of names.



Fortunately, we already have the materials to attempt such an
explication. Back in
 Section 2.7,
 we distinguished the act of attributing a name to someone (previously
identified) from that of referring to someone with a name. It would be
quite natural to interpret a metalinguistic predicate as applying to
someone on the basis of a pattern of attribution, rather than a
pattern of reference. Indeed, the ordinary sense of "calling
someone Alice" is a reasonable gloss of the technical notion of
attributing the name Alice to them (Evans in fact employs this
terminology--see his 1982: 383). So, for instance, I could not
have mistakenly called someone Alice without identifying them
independently, and people I refer to with a name but can't
identify independently--for instance people whose names I am
reading off a roll--have not, intuitively speaking, been
*called* that name by me.



Even if name attribution is not the right way to ground metalinguistic
predicates, any use theory, in attempting to explain the reference of
a name in terms of (distinct) features of its use, will have to employ
something in its stead. Use theories and metalinguistic theories are
in the same boat. While what ends up working for one won't
necessarily work for the other, it does not seem that the
metalinguistic theory is uniquely afflicted by a circularity
objection. Rather, both theories stand in need of a suitable reductive
base (for related discussion, see Burge 1973: 428; Geurts 1997:
326-327; Bach 2002: 83; Fara 2011; Gray 2014; Rami 2014: 858;
Garcia-Carpintero 2017: 25).



The decision whether to grant a metalinguistic meaning to names
appears to come down to what is basic and what is generated in the
semantic theory. If the meaning of a name is generated from the
metalinguistic meaning of the constituent proper nominal, then names
will accordingly have a metalinguistic meaning (most likely in the
form of a rule of use). If instead names are treated as basic by the
semantics, then there is less motivation to assign them such a meaning
(we shouldn't simply do so by default, as already discussed in
 Section 2.5).



To treat both names and metalinguistically interpreted nominal
predicates as semantically basic is generally thought to be inferior
theoretical economy (Gray 2017: 436-437). But this is surely too
quick; a nominal predicate, though semantically basic, would still
count as a *natural* expression of the metalinguistic property
it denotes (see Johnson 2018), and the naturalness of the choice could
explain the prevalence of the convention across languages and its ease
of uptake. In any event, a parallel attempt is made on the
anti-metalinguistic side to generate the metalinguistic
interpretations of *proper nominals* from existing resources
(Boer 1975: 395; Leckie 2013; Jeshion 2015: 381; Gray 2017).
However, unless those basic resources include the references of names
(and Gray 2017 argues that this is hardly a promising route), the
metalinguistic theory can help itself to the same thrift.
There's nothing in the metalinguistic account that says the
metalinguistic predicates are themselves basic, just that they are
more basic than the meanings of names constructed out of them.



Dialectically speaking, then, the crucial issue appears to be the
compositional derivation of the name's meaning. I will go over a
little of the linguistic data that has appeared so far in the debate.
Much of this data would appear, out of context, as the sheerest
minutia. But the fate of what has recently been regarded as the best
prospect for assigning a meaning to a proper name comes down to the
interpretation of these details.



Firstly, a problem arises for the metalinguistic account when the name
includes an overt determiner (Cumming 2007: 22). "The
Bronx" consists of the determiner "the" and the
proper nominal "Bronx". According to a compositional
account of its meaning, it should refer to the most salient entity
called "Bronx". However, the northernmost borough of New
York City is not called "Bronx"; it is called "the
Bronx". Furthermore, despite the fact that this borough is
called the Bronx, we do not refer to it using an expression that
combines a phrase that expresses this metalinguistic property with a
definite determiner, as the compositional theory would predict. We
don't use "the the Bronx", which might be seen as
such a combination (with "the Bronx" expressing the
property of being called the Bronx). Nor is it plausible that
"the Bronx" sports a covert definite determiner, as the
overt "the" is not fused with "Bronx" into a
proper nominal phrase, but is dropped in such expressions as "a
Bronx resident".



This drawback of the metalinguistic theory is concealed when we
restrict our consideration to proper names that can
occur--optionally or obligatorily--without an article, names
such as "Alice" or "(the) George Washington
Bridge". The George Washington Bridge also happens to be called
George Washington Bridge--in the sense that people also refer to
it this way (and attribute the name sans article to it). But this
appears an accident of naming, rather than a vindication of the
compositional view. There are many names that fit the formula of
"the Bronx" instead. The World Cup is not, properly
speaking, called (just) World Cup; the Eiffel Tower is not called
Eiffel Tower (the way Sears Tower is); the Mona Lisa is not called
Mona Lisa (though its subject, Lisa del Giocondo, was; and
interestingly, we would say that the painting is titled *Mona
Lisa*).



The situation is different if we confine our attention to personal
names. As mentioned earlier, in many languages outside English,
personal names come with a (definite) determiner. Matushansky (2008:
580-581) provides evidence for a cross-linguistic pattern of
dropping the determiner on personal names in naming environments like
"is called", just as the compositional account would
predict.



A problem remains even for a curtailed version of the metalinguistic
view on which it applies only to personal names. It can be brought out
with data from English. It was originally claimed that "the
Alice" (with neutral stress on "the") was
ungrammatical, and hence that "Alice" accompanied by a
null determiner with the same meaning as "the" filled its
slot in the paradigm (Sloat 1969). However, "the Alice" is
not ungrammatical, merely unusual. It is used when the possession of
the relevant metalinguistic property is particularly prominent. For
instance, when sorting people into groups based on their names, or
collecting examples of people with a particular name (Jeshion 2017:
235; Gray 2017: 452).



Critics of the metalinguistic view have noted subtle differences in
interpretation that prevent us from treating "Alice" as
equivalent to the more clearly metalinguistic phrase "the
Alice". In each pair below, the (b) member allows the individual
who counts as the Alice to vary with the occasion, while the (a)
member doesn't (Hawthorne & Manley 2012: 236-237; Fara
2015c; Schoubye 2016).



(13)

a.
In every race, Alice won.
b.
In every race, the Alice won.

(14)

a.
Alice always cheats.
b.
The Alice always cheats.



Another difference is that "the Alice" licenses subsequent
one-anaphora, while "Alice" does not (King 2006; Jeshion
2017: 238):



(15)

a. You're too late. The Alice just left
 ...but maybe another one will show up.
b. You're too late. Alice just left ...but
 maybe another one will show up.



A natural explanation of these differences is that a compositional
semantics on which the proper nominal contribute a metalinguistic
property is correct for "the Alice", but not for
"Alice".