
How Do Proper Names Really Work?
A Metadescriptive Version of the Cluster Theory
- 263 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
How Do Proper Names Really Work?
A Metadescriptive Version of the Cluster Theory
About this book
For fifty years the philosophy of language has been experiencing a stalemating conflict between the old descriptive and internalist orthodoxy (advocated by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Strawson, and Searle) and the new causal-referential and externalist orthodoxy (mainly endorsed by Kripke, Putnam, and Kaplan). Although the latter is dominant among specialists, the former retains a discomforting intuitive plausibility. The ultimate goal of this book is to overcome the stalemate by means of a non-naĆÆve return to the old descriptivist-internalist orthodoxy. Concerning proper names, this means introducing second-order description-rules capable of systemizing descriptions of the proper name's cluster to provide us with the right changeable conditions of satisfaction for its application. Such rules can explain how a proper name can become a rigid designator while remaining descriptive, disarming Kripke's and Donnellan's main objections. In the last chapter, this new perspective is extended to indexicals in a discussion of David Kaplan's and John Perry's views, and of general terms, in a discussion of Hilary Putnam's externalism.
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Information
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- IāThe true history of descriptivism
- IIāInconsistencies of Kripkeās quasi-referentialism
- IIIāMetadescriptivism: Developing a theory
- IVāMetadescriptivism: Answering counterexamples
- VāMetadescriptivism: Identity statements
- VIāConsequences for other terms
- Index