Names, Meaning and the Articulation Assumption

Here I want to suggest one reason why people have had trouble seeing a middle way between descriptivism and Millianism about names - that is, why my sort of view of names has not already prevailed or at least become a prominent option. (It is far from the only reason, and I will consider others in future posts.) This may also afford us some insight into why both descriptivists and Millians endorse their respective views.

The articulation assumption is that, if you say that names have meanings beyond their referents, you have to be able, at least in principle, to specify what they are, and in some way which articulates or unpacks these meanings. The assumption is at work in B's role in this short dialogue:

A: Names have meanings over and above their bearers.

B: What's the meaning of 'John Nash', then?

I am envisaging B's reply here as a Millian-leaning attempt to embarrass A out of their assertion.

And what I want to say here is that A need not have anything to reply here, in order to have respectably made their assertion.

To see this, it helps to reflect that, in saying 'what the meaning of' an expression is, what we are doing is giving, or at least referring to, an expression which has the same meaning as the one whose meaning is in question. And there is no reason why a name like 'John Nash' needs to be synonymous with any other expression, let alone one with more structure (so that it could be said to articulate or unpack the meaning of 'John Nash').

One of the functions of semantic notions is to bundle and separate instances of expressions. We bundle by ascribing the same meaning, we separate by ascribing different meanings.

Frege, who notoriously says precious little about his senses, at one point says that the sense of 'Aristotle' might be: the teacher of Alexander. (I reproduce his style of formulation, using a colon and no quote marks, but I don't mean to say this is clear and unambiguous.) But we don't need to do any such thing.

Making the articulation assumption could be one of the forces pushing thinkers who are impressed by anti-descriptivist arguments, such as Kripke's, toward Millianism. Likewise, it could be one of the forces pushing thinkers who are impressed by anti-Millian considerations, such as the apparent difference in meaning between 'Hesperus is Hesperus' and 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' and the apparent meaningfulness true singular negative existentials like 'Santa doesn't exist', toward (perhaps sophisticated) forms of descriptivism.

Once you reflect that the articulation assumption is false, it becomes clear that there is a middle way, quite immune to both sets of problems.

Names: Between Mill and Frege

Followup posts: 

Empty Names and Negative Existentials

Names and the Articulation Assumption

Names and the Publicity of Meaning

(Added October 2016: my most up-to-date treatment of names can be found in Chapter 6 of my PhD thesis. This is an early, undeveloped attempt.)

Kripke at the beginning of 'Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities':

One of the main concerns of my previous work (Kripke 1980) [Naming and Necessity] is the semantics of proper names and natural kind terms. A classical view which Putnam mentioned, advocated by Mill, states that proper names have as their function simply to refer; they have denotation but not connotation. The alternative view, which until fairly recently has dominated the field, has been that of Frege and Russell. They hold that ordinary names have connotation in a very strong sense: a proper name such as ‘Napoleon’ simply means the man having most of the properties we commonly attribute to Napoleon, such as being Emperor of the French, losing at Waterloo, and the like. Of course, intermediate views might be suggested, and perhaps have been suggested.

My aim here is to propose just such an intermediate view. In future posts I will flesh out the proposal and offer some speculations about why it has not been generally adopted already.

As is well known, the cardinal problem with Millianism about names is Frege's Puzzle, given in his famous article 'On Sense and Reference': Millianism leaves us unable to semantically distinguish, in a systematic compositional way, 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' from 'Hesperus is Hesperus'; since Hesperus is Phosphorus, both names involved in those propositions have the same referent, and thus, on the Millian view, the same meaning. But the two propositions do not seem to have the same meaning - the first is an empirical scientific discovery, and the second is not. Further problems arise with singular negative existentials like 'Santa does not exist' - here, in addition to Frege's-Puzzle-type problems of differentiation ('Santa doesn't exist' and 'Noddy doesn't exist' mean different things, even though both names are the same as regards their referents; neither has one), we have the problem of seeing how any of them could be true, or even mean anything.

As is also well known, the cardinal problems for descriptivism - what Kripke above calls the view of Frege and Russell - are given by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. I will not try to summarize Kripke's whole case properly, but it is often divided into three prongs: the semantic objection, the epistemological objection, and the modal objection. Very roughly, the semantic objection is 'Which description or descriptions constitute the meaning of some given name? Isn't any answer bound to be arbitrary? And since different people might associate different descriptions with the same name and the same object, how aren't they just talking past each other when they use the name?'. The epistemological objection is 'Take any plausible meaning-giving description or cluster thereof. I can surely use the name in question correctly without knowing all this - I don't have to know much of anything about someone in order to pick them out with a name'. And the modal objection is 'Suppose "Aristotle" means "the teacher of Alexander". How does it come about, then, that "Had things gone differently, Aristotle might not have been the teacher of Alexander" seems true, while "Had things gone differently, Aristotle might not have been Aristotle" seems false?'.

I am not concerned here to argue that no versions of Millianism or descriptivism have legs. I will not, for example, argue against Millianisms which try to fill the apparent semantic gap in their accounts by means of linguistic pragmatics, nor will I argue against "wide-scope" or "actualizing" versions of descriptivism. I want to propose what I think is an elegant and natural view in between Millianism and descriptivism which avoids the problems of both.

I have two ways of expressing what I take to be essentially the same view, but others may prefer to think of me as offering a disjunction of two structurally similar views. The first is in terms of the use of a name, or the role it plays in the system of language to which it belongs. The second is in terms of individual concepts - the ideas of particular objects which we (sometimes) tie names to. I more-or-less identify these things in my own thinking, but since the concepts 'use' and 'role' on the one hand, and 'concept' and 'idea' on the other are quite different (as are the uses or roles of these terms!), it is worth giving both formulations, in case someone prefers one over the other. The use-conception is inspired, at least in part, by Wittgenstein (particularly the middle period, for example Philosophical Grammar). The concept/idea-conception is more traditional.

The view, then, is that names have uses, or are tied to individual concepts, and that these are partly constitutive of their semantics. (We may say that uses, or individual conepts, constitute the internal meanings of names.)

Individual concepts or name-uses do some of the work Frege wanted to do with his senses, but there are important differences. One important difference is that Frege held, of his senses, that they determine reference, whereas individual concepts or name-uses avowedly do not do this in general; someone on Twin Earth can use a name in the same pattern (i.e. with the same concept or use), but with a different referent - in a word, semantic externalism is true of individual concepts or name-uses. (We can of course have a notion which adds an extensional component to the individuation of these things, so that two concepts or uses are distinct if they have different objects, or different projective relations to reality, but we can also isolate the internal component.)

Another important difference is that, while Frege indicates that the sense of a name is that of, or can be given by means of, a definite description, I hold no such thing with respect to individual concepts or name-uses. Names are in an important sense indefinable, as Wittgenstein held in the Tractatus. But that does not mean their referents are all there is to (what you might, though possibly misleadingly, call) their meanings, i.e. Millianism doesn't follow. (Wittgenstein expresses Millianism too in the Tractatus, when speaking of 'names', although there is an exegetical question whether this term is meant to cover ordinary proper names, which is what I am talking about, or names in some philosophically idealized sense, e.g. names in an "ideal logical language".)

Individual concepts or name-uses combine, in a very simple way, the difference-making power of Frege's senses with invulnerability to Kripke's arguments against descriptivism. 

Frege's Puzzle is solved, much in the same way as Frege did with his senses: 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' and 'Hesperus is Hesperus' are different propositions with different meanings, since 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' are tied to different individual concepts and have different uses. (Likewise with 'Clark Kent' and 'Superman'.)

But unlike with Frege's senses, this conception of names is not only compatible with Kripke's rigid designation thesis, but predicts it, at least when formulated in terms of individual concepts: if names are associated with individual concepts - concepts of particular objects - then it is immediate that they will designate the same object in all possible worlds where that object exists; designating another object is out of the question, since we are holding fixed the meaning of the proper name - the associated individual concept.

Individual concepts or name-uses also allow for an important kind of flexibility, which we must recognize in order to solve Kripke's puzzle about belief. We can individuate name-uses and individual concepts - as well as the uses or meanings of other terms, and other concepts, and larger units such as propositions - at different granularities, so that what at one granularity might count as instances of different uses/concepts may count on another (coarser) granularity as instances of the same. This is an important ingredient of my view, and will be discussed in a future post.

I have now at least mentioned all the main ingredients of the view of names I want to propose. Further posts - on semantic granularity, on internal and external meaning, and on why the view I propose hasn't already been generally adopted - will fill out the picture. I will conclude this post by trying to avert a couple of possible misunderstandings:

(1) The term 'individual concept' is sometimes used in philosophical logic and technical philosophy of language to refer to functions from possible worlds or state-descriptions to individuals (or similar constructions). I am not using it that way. For one thing, that way of going would make the problem of empty names harder - i.e., it would reduce the utility of my approach with respect to the problem of empty names - since one needs individuals for the functions to map to. For me the notion of an individual concept is more basic - it is just a refined version of the ordinary idea of an idea of an object.

(2) I am not saying that any sort of theory which associates names not with name-uses or individual concepts (in my sense), but with something else, and calls the associates 'the semantic values' of the names, is wrong. My attitude here is that expressed by Chalmers in this passage from 'The Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics':

A methodological note: in this paper I will adopt the approach of semantic pluralism, according to which expressions can be associated with semantic values in many different ways. Expression types and expression tokens can be associated (via different semantic relations) with extensions, various different sorts of intensions, and with many other entities (structured propositions, conventionally implied contents, and so on). On this approach, there is no claim that any given semantic value exhausts the meaning of an expression, and I will not claim that the semantic values that I focus on are exhaustive. (I think that such claims are almost always implausible.)

References

Chalmers, David J. (2006). The foundations of two-dimensional semantics. In Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Josep Macia (eds.), Two-Dimensional Semantics: Foundations and Applications. Oxford University Press.

Frege, Gottlob. (1952). first pub. 1893. ‘On Sense and Reference’, in P. Geach and M. Black (eds.) Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Blackwell.

Kripke, Saul A. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.

Kripke, Saul A. (2011). Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities. In Saul A. Kripke (ed.), Philosophical Troubles. Collected Papers Vol I. Oxford University Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Dover Publications.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1974). Philosophical Grammar. Blackwell.

On the Problems of Reference and Intentionality II

The following remarks were written when I was wrestling with these problems over an extended period. They might act as a stimulus to someone. Part I is here.

Part II

24. What do I mean when I say 'reference is no ordinary relation' in (22)? Perhaps the point would be better put in terms of reference-ascribing propositions.

25. I have long had the feeling that the desire for a classical analysis of reference ('x refers to y iff ...') comes from within a way of looking at things which involves something which might be called a 'transcendental illusion'.

26. For some reason I want to say: remember, in reference-talk, we are, as always, presupposing a connection between our concepts and their objects. But what this means, if anything, is very unclear.

27. There is the urge to say something like: 'Remember, you can't get outside your own mind'. But what the hell kind of reminder is that?! Who would ever think otherwise? (Satisfaction with such remarks belongs to a relatively low level of philosophizing.)

28. I can imagine someone proposing a two-component theory of reference which makes use of a "disquotational base" together with "equivalence criteria". So when I say 'my concept of John is of John' this comes from the base, and so is similar to 'I have a concept of John, who exists'. But I can also say, for example, this name 'X' seems to be refer to John, this being similar to: This word is used in the same way as my 'John'.

29. We might say: Reference is that relation which is presupposed when anything is spoken of.

30. This ignores some complications (e.g. fiction) but is more appropriate, I think, than:

(1) Existence is that property which is presupposed. and

(2) Identity is that relation which is presupposed

because that distorts the logical form of existence and identity propositions. Reference is more properly a relation (i.e. more properly a property-or-relation, i.e. thing which can be ascribed to things).

31. What do I mean by 'more properly a relation' here? Here is one way to explicate this. Imagine a form of representation where objects are represented with dots or boxes, which are then labelled with names (or otherwise made intrinsically unique). Properties can be indicated by labelled lines which have one point of contact with dots or boxes, two-place relations with labelled directed lines which have two points of contact, etc.

With such a technique, an existence property-representation and an identity relation-representation would serve no purpose. Every object would have exactly one point of contact with an existence line, and exactly two points of contact with a single reflexive identity line.

32. This is, of course, a consequence of the way I am imagining this mode of representation to work. There are of course more sophisticated possibilities, where one uses dots and boxes at a higher semantic level, so to speak - as representations of ideas of objects rather than objects themselves. In that case, one can meaningfully use something like existence and identity lines - but then aren't they more properly seen as ascriptions of the property of designating something and the relation of codesignating respectively?

33. Now, what about reference? Here we can start to see that we can sort reference propositions into classes, depending on how they work and get verified. One distinction we can make is between reference propositions which concern expressions belonging to the same language-system, and those which talk about expressions from another language-system. Let us call the former 'intrasystematic' and the latter 'extrasystematic'.

34. Now we may make a further distinction between disquotational intrasystematic reference propositions, and non-disquotational. (Some of the latter can be used to give all kinds of information, e.g. '”The winner of the race” refers to John' can inform someone that John won the race.)

35. Consider what happens when we use the graphical mode of representation described above, and a new (extralinguistic) object comes to our attention. We draw in a new box or dot (let us say "node" from now on).

But in so doing, we bring into existence a new object - one which stands in the reference relation to the original object. We can represent this fact now too. One way of going would be simply to draw in another node, which represents the last node drawn, and then to connect it to that node with a line indicating the reference relation. But of course this procedure can then be repeated for the new node. This procedure corresponds roughly to giving a name its own name in word language.

36. Another way of going, which corresponds roughly to quotation in word language, would be to introduce a kind of operator on points of contact. An unmarked point of contact is the ordinary case, a marked point of contact indicates that the contacted node is representing itself.

37. Consider the first technique, where we start at the bottom level, and then construct nodes to represent those nodes, etc., as required. This process thus "automatically generates" reference propositions. These automatically generated ones are the disquotational intrasystematic ones.

38. Also, among extrasystematic reference propositions, two kinds of verification criteria can be distinguished. Direct comparison with our systems (looking at arithmetic talk for instance), vs. coordination which "involves the object" more. (The field-linguist would be doing both of these things.)

39. There is a close connection here to the Twin-Earthable/Non-Twin-Earthable distinction. (Perhaps it is that the direct comparison verifications yield propositions about the referents of non-Twin-Earthable expressions, and the “object-involving” ones yield propositions about the referents of Twin-Earthable expressions, but that may be an oversimplification.)

40. Consider Idealism here. On Idealism, perhaps all extrasystematic reference criteria can be reduced to system-coordination. A kind of collapse of Twin-Earthability.

41. For example: I see a man point at a rock and say 'N', and I form the hypothesis that 'N' is a name (which is not part of my system) representing the rock I see in front of me. This is a paradigm case, it might seem, of acting on criteria for extrasystematic reference which cannot be reduced to system coordination. I coordinate a part of his system directly with its object, not with a part of my system.

42. An Idealist may insist that this is not so. Rather (they may say), I am correlating my perceptual representation of the rock with something. But it would seem that if we are to be consistent, we can't really say that the perceptual representation of the rock is correlated by us with the name 'N', since 'N' is not part of our system. Mustn't we now say that we correlate our perceptual representation with our representation of the extrasystematic name 'N'?

43. But still, this does not give the Idealist the distinction I want to have between external-object-involving verifications of extrasystematic reference-propositions and verifications of extrasystematic reference propositions which involve "merely internal" comparison of systems. For in the internal case they also have to talk about our representations of some extrasystematic expression.

44. Why is this interesting? Not 'in case Idealism is true'!

45. When '”A” refers to B' is not disquotational, it seems that for practical purposes it means the same as the statement that 'A' and 'B' codesignate, and can therefore be understood as being verified by correlation of (aspects of) the role of two signs.

46. x refers to y iff x codesignates with 'y' iff x's referent = y.

47. But not all reference propositions which look like disquotational ones are such. For example: '”N” refers to N in German too'. Or when setting up a new language, as in formal Peano arithmetic: '"0" refers to 0'.

48. We should take note of the singularity of a truly disquotational reference-thought.

49. In philosophy, we think: 'N' refers to N. Then we think: how?

50. Now, that first thought is a thought to the effect that a certain symbol stands in the reference relation to a certain object. That much is clearly true to say.

51. Compare the thought, as had by an English speaker, that 'Deutschland' refers to Germany. This too can be truly said to be a thought to the effect that a certain symbol stands in the reference relation to a certain object. Likewise the thought that 'John' refers to the man I met yesterday.

52. But clearly the first, disquotational thought is a very different beast from the latter ones. What worries me is the effect of their assimilation under the rubric: reporting a reference relation between symbol and object. Reference propositions are propositions which report such relations (connections), reference thoughts are thoughts that such relations hold.

53. We might want to say that the disquotational reference propositions and thoughts are a subset of all reference propositions and thoughts, characterized by the fact that the symbol which the thought is about is also used to represent the related object. And now we may ignore this subset and concentrate instead on the non-disquotational subset.

54. There is a problem with this formulation, however. For example, suppose we are told that someone used a certain expression which itself is named E, but one does not know which expression E is. One may learn something about E, namely that it refers to Venus. Suppose E is actually 'Venus', the same word used in the same sort of language system. In that case, on my formulation above, the thought that E refers to Venus would be classed as disquotational, even when the thinker doesn't know that E is the name 'Venus'.

53. So it seems what we really wanted is: the disquotational subset is characterized by the fact that the same symbol is used twice over – to specify the referer, and the referent. But even this doesn't quite work, for '”The bearer of 'N'” refers to N' fulfills that condition.

54. The difference between disquotational and other reference statements is reminsicent of the difference between trivial (repetitive) and informative identities. However, the problem is in a sense inverted: the naive relational view of identity statements makes all instances look trivial, including the nontrivial ones, whereas the naive relational view of reference statements makes all instances look nontrivial, including the trivial ones. (This use of 'trivial' may not be fully warranted, but suffices for making the point.)

55. It is instructive to compare ' "N" refers to N ' with 'The word "N" has reference, and it is used in the way it is used.' Or even just: 'The word "N" has reference, and it refers to the object which does in fact refer to'.

56. What looks like (and in some sense is) a tautologous appendage changes the modal profile radically.

57. It certainly seems that having purely disquotational reference propositions in the mix can blind us to how the rest work, owing to the special direct way the former are verified. But would it be right to discount these as degenerate?

58. 'London' refers to London. This fact could have an interesting historical explanation. (Contrast 'London is London'.)

Part III coming soon.

On the Problems of Reference and Intentionality

The following remarks were written when I was wrestling with these problems over an extended period. They might act as a stimulus to someone.

Part I

1. What determines reference?

2. Not, in general, descriptive or conceptual content associated with the name. Although the usual counterexamples to descriptivism do not apply to a range of names - for example, names of mathematical objects.

3. Not, in general, a causal connection between the object and the name. Both because the kind of connection in question is unclear, and because there is clearly no such thing in many cases - e.g. mathematical objects. But there is no clear counterexample in a range of cases: names of spatiotemporal individuals which someone in the linguistic community at some time has been perceptually acquainted with, for example.

4. What determines reference? - What gives this question its power?

5. The question seems to be: given that someone is referring to a particular object, what determines which particular object that is?

6. This is to be distinguished from: What is it which characterizes all cases of representation of, or reference to, an object? I.e. what do they all have in common which distinguishes them from other phenomena, apart from 'involving representation of an object'? But it is close to: Given some particular object O, what characterizes all cases of representation of, or reference to, O?

7. The thing we just can't accept is that we have nothing definitive to say in answer to the question: what determines reference?

8. It is extremely remarkable and important that people have tried hard to say something definitive here. It not a matter of course that anyone is moved in this way by that question. (Many people innocent of philosophy would find the whole thing quite unnatural and meaningless.)

9. I would like to talk about the feeling that, when the investigation goes empirical and scientific, we have left the realm of essence, so to speak. Is that right, anyway? Could one not maintain that by increasing our knowledge of the contingent facts - how reference actually gets going - we may be better able to penetrate to the essence? I.e. to what it takes in principle for reference to get going?

10. Well, historical development itself cannot be part of the essence. It is clear enough that there is no logical impossibility in a whole lot of organisms being spontaneously generated out of nowhere and beginning to speak of things.

11. When we think of the representation of external, physical objects, some kind of correspondence or covariance theory seems attractive. One thinks of primitive representation (or proto-representation) which is of this kind.

12. However, the merest thought of arithmetic, and Wittgenstein's builders, at once makes all this look inessential.

13. There is no reason why one cannot erect a concept which applies, for example, only to the representation of physical phenomena. But if one is inclined to say that we refer also to abstracta, and to wonder how reference in general is possible, then an investigation of the first concept alone will never satisfy.

14. It is clear enough that the idea of referring, which is primitively connected with the ideas of looking-at and pointing - the picture of representation and represented - is widely useful, and widely used.

15. Now, it looks very much as though one might, having noticed this, ask for an explanation of why it is. I.e., what makes the picture of representation and represented apply in this wide range of cases. Or better: what is it about all these cases which makes the picture of representation and represented apply to them?

16. This traces the problem down quite deeply. At this point we see that none of the common 'theories of reference' is going to help us here.

17. No answer comes to this question. This seems to have something to do with the fact that, once you are talking about a potential object of reference, you have already prejudged, so to speak, that the picture of representation and represented applies. Wherever we think of an object, there already we have the material for a higher-order thought about our representation of that object.

18. 'The problem of the essence of the representation of things leads, in a certain sense, to the problem of the essence of things.' The problem of the essence of things is obviously no ordinary one! 

19. To explain this tracing again: whenever we find ourselves in conditions where we can refer to an object, we thereby find ourselves in conditions where we can apply the picture of reference.

20. But, this is not the same as saying: wherever the conditions for objecthood are fulfilled, thereby are the conditions for a representation. For this is refuted by imagining a world in which there is just one object and nothing else. (This sort of distinction is important all through logical philosophy. It appears to be neglected, for instance, when people try to analyze existence and identity statements as designation and codesignation statements respectively.)

21. Two senses of truth conditions, two conceptions of what I will call fulfilment worlds for representations:

(1) All conditions/worlds in which what the representation actually represents to be the case is the case.

(2) The narrower set of all conditions/worlds in which the representation exists, represents what it actually represents, and where what it represents is the case.

22. What I was saying above now comes to: all the fulfilment worlds in the second sense for 'x exists' are automatically fulfilment worlds in the first sense for '"x" refers to x'. Or: once 'x exists' is fulfilled in the second sense, '"x" refers to x' is fulfilled in the first. (This holds not just for 'x exists' but for any proposition which contains 'x' in an extensional context.)

22. By dwelling on this we can start to see that reference is no ordinary relation.

23. As long as one is prepared to ignore the distinction between (1) and (2), or to openly switch from one to the other mid-analysis, then one can analyze existence and identity both in terms of reference. (Early Frege, Geach.)

Part II.

Individual concepts and modality at Philosophy etc.

I've got a guest post at Philosophy etc., 'An advertisement for individual concepts'. The comments are more substantial than the original post.

The proposal made there is closely connected with the ideas featured in my Sketch of a Way of Thinking about Modaliy, part 2 of which will be posted in the next few days.