Referentialism and Predicativism About Proper Names

Abstract

The debate over the semantics of proper names has, of late, heated up, focusing on the relative merits of referentialism and predicativism. Referentialists maintain that the semantic function of proper names is to designate individuals. They hold that a proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, refers to a specific individual that is its referent and has just that individual as its semantic content, its contribution to the proposition expressed by the sentence. Furthermore, a proper name contributes its referent to the proposition expressed by virtue of mechanisms of direct reference to individuals, not by virtue of expressing properties. Predicativists embrace an opposing view according to which proper names are just a special kind of common noun. Their semantic function is to designate properties of individuals. A proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, expresses a property, and that property is its contribution to the proposition expressed by the sentence. They admit of various types of restrictions—in exactly parallel fashion with other common nouns. It is reasonably uncontroversial to acknowledge that referentialism at least seems the more intuitively compelling theory. Pre-theoretically, proper names appear to be most commonly used simply to directly designate unique individuals. To