Millianism, Empty Names and The No-Proposition View

Abstract

Millianism fundamentally holds that the semantic content of a proper name is its referent. Respectively, it implies that an empty name has no semantic content. Given an orthodox sense of proposition-talk and the Fregean principle of compositionality, Millianism further entails a disputable view on the semantics of empty-name sentences- namely, the No-Proposition View (NPV)- which states that empty-name sentences express no proposition. Thereby, NPV further indicates that empty-name sentences fail to convey meaningful, truth-evaluable, and distinguishable contents. However, as commonly discussed, such a semantic construal of empty-name sentences seemingly contradicts our linguistic intuitions about empty-name sentences such as ‘Santa is Santa,’ ‘Santa doesn’t exist,’ and ‘Sherlock doesn’t exist’. This paper provides an extensive analysis of Millianism and NPV in the face of the semantic puzzles concerning the fundamental convictions behind NPV. In doing so, the paper intends to disclose the convictions leading Millianism to NPV so that it seeks to show how to rescue Millianism from the semantic puzzles in question. As a result, the paper concludes that NPV does not necessarily follow from a Millian thesis about the semantic value of proper names. Instead, it follows from certain convictions about the genuineness of proper names, the plausibility of non-referring names, the nature of propositions, and so on. As exemplified throughout the paper, it is thus fair to divorce Millianism from NPV by reconstruing the relevant convictions in one way or another.