Rigid Designators Research Articles

Wie anders sind Eigennamen?

Two theories concerning the syntax/semantic relation in proper names are contrasted. The theory developed by Longobardi assumes that proper names differ significantly from other noun phrases: being rigid designators they differ from definite descriptions with regard to their referential properties, to semantic composition and noun phrase internal movement. The theory, however, does not pose such a fundamental difference: proper names have a structure analogous to other kinds of noun phrases insofar as they are operator-predicate structures. We will show that the symmetrical theory has several advantages over the asymmetrical theory.

The Meaning of Meaning-Fallibilism

Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. “infallibilism”) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way the meanings of scientific terms develop, an increase in scientific knowledge over and above scientists’ ability to quantify over new entities. Although a recent conspicuous embrace of rigid designation has broken up traditional meaning-infallibilism to some extent, this new dimension to the meaning of terms such as “water” is yet to receive a principled epistemological undergirding (beyond the deliverances of “intuition” with respect to certain somewhat unusual possible worlds). Charles Peirce’s distinctive, naturalistic philosophy of language is mined to provide a more thoroughly fallibilist, and thus more realist, approach to meaning, with the requisite epistemology. Both his pragmatism and his triadic account of representation, it is argued, produce an original approach to meaning, analysing it in processual rather than objectual terms, and opening a distinction between “meaning for us”, the meaning a term has at any given time for any given community and “meaning simpliciter”. the way use of a given term develops over time (often due to a posteriori input from the world which is unable to be anticipated in advance). This account provocatively undermines a certain distinction between “semantics” and “ontology” which is often taken for granted in discussions of realism.

Farewell to Opacity

Summary This paper firms up previous arguments for referential transparency in intensional constructions by providing conclusive proofs of this, both formal and informal. Centrally the paper uses epsilon terms to symbolise referring expressions, and so it obtains the rigid designators needed to allow the same object to be referred to in all worlds and minds. The details of several contrary ideas are examined to reinforce the claim that they are incorrect. But also certain world-dependent or mind-dependent objects are identified, using epsilon terms, to give an understanding of what might have caused the historical belief in referential opacity.

La modification du nom propre dans une perspective contrastive

The translation of French modified proper names (Npr) into Swedish gives rise to cultural problems, in view of the fact that Swedes are not always familiar with the original referents of the Npr. Linguistic problems do also arise due to the difficulty in Swedish to create new interpretations of the Npr by adding a determiner in front of it. The article system is not so highly developped in Swedish as in French, the partitive article du, de la, de l’, and the indefinite plural article des lacking in Swedish. On the other hand, Swedish noun morphology is extremely complex: the definite article is agglutinated (-n, -en, -t, -et) and since there are seven declinations, plural endings show great variation (-ar, -or, -er, -r, -n, O, -s). The addition of one of these audible endings to the Npr comes in striking contrast with the fundamentally indeclinable form of the Npr. So even if most of the French types of modified Npr can be found also in Swedish, treated in the Grammar of the Swedish Academy as Npr converted into common nouns, their translation may be problematic due to differences in the morphological systems.On the basis of examples from texts mainly by Balzac and Proust, the translation into Swedish of French modified metaphoric and metonymic Npr is examined. As regards the metaphoric Npr, most of Newmark’s (1982) strategies for the translation of metaphors are applied, and that of explicitating the relation of similarity is most often used. The translation of metonymic Npr, which designate either (a part of) an artist’s or writer’s works or a person’s typical behaviour, usually needs an indication of what sort of referent is intended. In both cases, the Npr is “demodified” in the Swedish translation and appears in its prototypical use, as a rigid designator of its original referent.

Necessity and Rigidly Designating Kind Terms

Kripke claims that certainkind terms, particularly natural kind terms,are, like names, rigid designators. However,kind terms are more complicated than names aseach is connected both to a principle ofinclusion and an extension. So, there is aquestion regarding what it is that rigidlydesignating kind terms rigidly designate. Inthis paper, I assume that there are rigidlydesignating kind terms and attempt to answerthe question as to what it is that they rigidlydesignate. I then use this analysis of rigidlydesignating kind terms to show how Kripke'sreasoning regarding the necessity of `Hesperusis Phosphorus' can be extended to statementsinvolving kind terms like `Water is H2O'and `Tigers are mammals'.

On the Metaphysics of Species*

This paper explains the metaphysical implications of the view that species are individuals (SAI). I first clarify SAI in light of the separate distinctions between individuals and classes, particulars and universals, and abstract and concrete things. I then show why the standard arguments given in defense of SAI are not compelling. Nonetheless, the ontological status of species is linked to the traditional “species problem,” in that certain species concepts do entail that species are individuals. I develop the idea that species names are rigid designators and show how this provides additional motivation for SAI.

Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond rigidity: The unfinished semantic agenda of naming and necessity by Scott Soames Thomas Wasow Beyond rigidity: The unfinished semantic agenda of naming and necessity. By Scott Soames. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix, 379. ISBN 0195145283. $37.50. Soames 1985 opens with the following sentence: ‘Recent years have seen a significant convergence of interest among philosophers and linguists in constructing semantic theories of natural languages’. The present work made me wonder what had happened in the interim. Beyond rigidity (BR) may be excellent philosophy of language, but it contains little that is relevant to the concerns of linguists. As the subtitle implies, BR’s primary goal is to defend and elaborate Kripke’s (1980) thesis that proper names and natural kind terms are ‘rigid designators’. Rigid designators are referring expressions of which the semantic content is not equivalent to any description; rather, they designate their referents without the mediation of any descriptive conditions. Moreover, statements of identity between the referents of two rigid designators, if true, are claimed to be necessarily true, even though in many cases they are true a posteriori. The classic example of such an identity statement is 1. (1) Hesperus is Phosphorus. Although there is no doubt that it was an empirical astronomical discovery that the heavenly body named Hesperus (also known as the evening star) was the same as the one called Phosphorus (the morning star), Kripke argued that 1 is a necessary truth. Similar arguments are made with respect to statements of identity between natural kinds, for example, Water is H2O. Ch. 1 of BR summarizes the central theses of Kripke 1980 and identifies two unresolved problems that S seeks to solve. The first is that two sentences that, according to Kripke, express the same proposition may be used to convey different information and express different beliefs. For example, uttering Hesperus is Hesperus is uninformative, but an utterance of the purportedly semantically equivalent 1 is informative.1 The second unresolved issue BR addresses is the claim [End Page 786] that natural kind terms like water, cats, and pain are also rigid designators. S argues that although Kripke noted striking parallels between names and natural kind terms, he did not demonstrate that they shared all of the properties of rigid designators. S’s solution to the first problem is nicely summarized in the following passage (86): When speaking of the information carried by an assertive utterance of a sentence in a context, one must distinguish (i) the semantic content of the sentence uttered in the context; (ii) what the speaker says (asserts) by uttering the sentence; (iii) what the speaker implies, implicates, or suggests; (iv) what the speaker hopes or intends his utterance to impart to his audience; (v) what the audience does acquire from the utterance . . . I have argued that (i) is standardly included in (ii), but that in the case of many utterances, (ii) is not exhausted by (i). Claims about rigid designation are claims only about (i), not about (ii)–(v). In the course of arguing for this position, S responds at length to some of Kripke’s critics. Among the issues he addresses is the status of partially descriptive names such as New York City and World War I. He treats them as hybrids ‘associated with both a descriptive property Pd and a reference o [which] is determined in part by having the property Pd and in part by the same nondescriptive mechanisms that determine the reference of ordinary nondescriptive names’ (110). Later he asserts: ‘The semantic contents of the vast majority of linguistically simple proper names are their referents alone (or their referents plus the properties expressed by some very general sortals associated with the names)’ (129). The parenthetical hedge in the preceding quote is presumably meant to cover at least number and gender. But these are by no means the only aspects of proper names that convey information. Smarr and Manning (2002) have shown that it is possible to classify the referents of unfamiliar names with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy on the basis of orthography alone. S might well regard this discovery as irrelevant since it can easily be...

Two envelope problems and the roles of ignorance

Four variations on Two Envelope Paradox are stated and compared. The variations are employed to provide a diagnosis and an explanation of what has gone awry in the paradoxical modeling of the decision problem that the paradox poses. The canonical formulation of the paradox underdescribes the ways in which one envelope can have twice the amount that is in the other. Some ways one envelope can have twice the amount that is in the other make it rational to prefer the envelope that was originally rejected. Some do not, and it is a mistake to treat them alike. The nature of the mistake is diagnosed by the different roles that rigid designators and definite descriptions play in unproblematic and in untoward formulations of decision tables that are employed in setting out the decision problem that gives rise to the paradox. The decision maker’s knowledge or ignorance of how one envelope came to have twice the amount that is in the other determines which of the different ways of modeling his decision problem is correct. Under this diagnosis, the paradoxical modeling of the Two Envelope problem is incoherent.

K'INICH AND KING: Naming self and person among Classic Maya rulers

Like other rulers in the ancient world, Classic Maya kings needed to legitimize their power. They did so by adopting the name of the sun deity, K'inich, thus identifying themselves with the celestial authority of a potent supernatural being. However, Classic Maya kings used the name of the sun god in two different ways: to name the individual self of the king, and to identify his socially defined person. The individual self of a king was always linked to a defined aspect of the sun god. The person of the king was always referred to using a simple K'inich prefixed to a rigid designator. These two modes of reference also show differences in usage. Prefixed K'inich name elements are mostly omitted in external references because they refer to a socially defined person who is not perceived as such in antagonistic areas. But the K'inich referring to a king's self is employed in external references.

The Semantics of Rigid Designation

Frege's thesis that each singular term has a sense that determines its reference and serves as its cognitive value has come to be widely doubted. Saul Kripke argued that since names are rigid designators, their referents are not determined by senses. David Kaplan has argued that the rigid designation of indexical terms entails that they also lack referent–determining senses. Kripke's argument about names and Kaplan's argument about indexical terms differ, but each contains a false premise. The referents of both names and indexical terms are determined by reflexive senses. It is reflexive sense that makes these terms rigid designators.

Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity

In this fascinating work, Scott Soames offers a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions. He also demonstrates the irrelevance of rigid designation in understanding why theoretical identities containing such predicates are necessary, if true.

The Hooded Man

The Hooded Man Paradox of Eubulides concerns the apparent failure of the substitutivity of identicals in epistemic (and other intentional) contexts. This paper formulates a number of different versions of the paradox and shows how these may be solved using semantics for quantified epistemic logic. In particular, two semantics are given which invalidate substitution, even when rigid designators are involved.

The human world in the physical universe: consciousness, free will, and evolution

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 The Human World/Physical Universe Problem Chapter 3 The Human World: What Is of Value? Chapter 4 The Physical Universe: Is It Comprehensible? Chapter 5 Diverse Attempts at Solving the Problem Chapter 6 The Physical and the Experiential Chapter 7 Free Will Chapter 8 Evolution Chapter 9 Consciousness Chapter 10 Civilization in the Physical Universe Chapter 11 Appendix 1: Love, Time, Comprehensibility, and Abstract Entities Chapter 12 Appendix 2: Contingent Identity with Rigid Designators: Refutation of Kripke Chapter 13 Appendix 3: From Standard to Aim-Oriented Empiricism Chapter 14 References Chapter 15 Index

Restrictive and non-restrictive modification of proprial lemmas

The notion of rigid designation has become a widely accepted, if not unproblematic one in connection with the function of proper names. In this paper, some less “rigid” uses of proper names will be looked at. Proprial lemmas—that is to say, words that function prototypically as proper names—may sometimes function as common nouns rather than as proper names, for instance in There are two Johns in my class. On the other hand, proprial lemmas may also receive some amount of modification without acquiring the “categorizing” function of common nouns, but rather retaining the rigid, unique designation associated with proper names, as in An angry Blair left the meeting yesterday. The aim of the present paper is twofold: (i) to offer a workable terminological and conceptual framework to deal with these different constructional schemata involving proprial lemmas; and (ii) to propose a tentative classification of both “restrictive” and “non-restrictive” modification of proprial lemmas into distinct subtypes. In the end, it is hoped, these endeavours may shed a new light on the nature and potential of proper names and proprial lemmas.

The Curious Role of Natural Kind Terms

The semantics of natural kind terms has recently been seen as a problem of reference. Kripke and Putnam have suggested that their meaning begins with rigid designation, with any further implications emerging after empirical study. I part ways with this approach and instead offer an account that focuses on the contribution that these terms make to the inferential roles of different sorts of sentences. I note that natural kind terms play an odd array of grammatical roles, both as subject and as parts of predicates, and explain why this dual role contributes something pragmatically significant to explanations of natural phenomena.

Two Theories of Names

The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names. The enterprise is of particular interest because the theories are very similar in fundamental respects. In particular, they can agree on three major features of names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful. Neither theory by itself offers complete explanations of all three features. But each theory is consistent with them and goes some way towards explaining them.

A Formal Semantics for Plural Quantification, Intersentential Binding and Anaphoric Pronouns as Rigid Designators

It is well known that certain kinds of plural quantification as well as intersentential pronominal cross-reference in natural language cannot be formalizable by the devices of standard first-order logic, i.e., by a formal language containing variables x,y,z,..., ranging over individuals, the quantifiers V and 3, the truth functional connectives and the equal sign. The most famous example of the former is perhaps the Geach-Kaplan sentence, (1) Some critics admire only one another. An example of the latter is (2) Some woman will land on Mars in the year 2010. (3) She will be an American. (2) and (3) cannot be represented as, (2') ∃x(x is a woman & x lands on Mars in the year 2010) (3') x is an American (2') and (3'), respectively, since the variable in (3'), representing the anaphoric pronoun 'she', is free. But for it to refer to the woman who lands on Mars in the year 2010, it should be bound by the quantifier ∃x' in (2'). In this paper, we shall present a formal language and a model-theoretic semantics (hereafter, a formal semantical system) for such plural quantification and for anaphoric expressions requiring intersentential.binding.

Alternative Translation Techniques for Propositional and First-Order Modal Logics

We describe and analyze techniques, other than the standard relational/functional methods, for translating validity problems of modal logics into first-order languages. For propositional modal logics we summarize the s-as-Pow method, a complete and automatic translation into a weak set theory, and then describe an alternative method, which we call i>algebraic, that achieves the same full generality of s-as-Pow but is simpler and computationally more attractive. We also discuss the relationships between the two methods, showing that s-as-Pow generalizes to the first-order case. For first-order modal logics, we describe two extensions, of different degrees of generality, of s-as-Pow to logics of rigid designators and constant domains.

Langford and Ramachandran on Occasional Identities

In their ‘Rigidity, Occasional Identity and Leibniz’ Law’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (2000), pp. 518–26, Steven Langford and Murali Ramachandran argue that my defence of the transiency and contingency of identity given in my Occasions of Identity is flawed. In that work I supported what I called the Occasional Identity Thesis by defending certain theses about rigid designation and time-indexed properties. Langford and Ramachandran argue that the theses in question have unacceptable consequences. I attempt to show that their argument fails, and that their alternative proposal concerning Leibniz' Law does not work.

Indicative and Subjunctive Conditionals

In any plausible semantics for conditionals, the semantics for indicatives and subjunctives will resemble each other closely. This means that if we are to keep the possible‐worlds semantics for subjunctives suggested by Lewis, we need to find a possible‐worlds semantics for indicatives. One reason for thinking that this will be impossible is the behaviour of rigid designators in indicatives. An indicative like ‘If the stuff in the rivers, lakes and oceans really is H3O, then water is H3O’ is non‐vacuously true, even though its consequent is true in no possible worlds, and hence not in the nearest possible world where the antecedent is true. I solve this difficulty by providing a semantics for conditionals within the framework of two‐dimensional modal logic. In doing so, I show that we can have a reasonably unified semantics for indicative and subjunctive conditionals.