Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

I compare two metalinguistic accounts of names, predicativism and a presuppositional account I have been defending over the years, on both of which the semantic contribution of N is (an elaboration of) being called N. Following early work by Burge, Delia Graf Fara and others have been advocating a predicativist account, on which names semantically behave like predicates (Fara, Philosophical Review 2015). The presuppositional view on names I defend shares some features with these views, but it also differs in important respects. The presuppositional account I advocate incorporates both elements of “metalinguistic” proposals and of Kripke’s own causal-historical communication chain. On this view, a proper name N contributes x to the content of the main speech act made by the utterance including it given an associated ancillary presupposition, that x is whoever or whatever is called N. There is a connection with predicativist views here; but in my view we do not need to go as far as denying a purely referential, central use for proper names.