engleski

At the Brink of Millianism: Proper Names and World-Indexed Properties

Fregeans hold that proper names express identifying properties in virtue of which they refer to a particular object – the one that satisfies such a property. And it is this property, rather than the object referred to itself, that enters the semantic content of sentences they are part of ; so identify- ing properties make the meaning of a name. Anti-Fregeans deny this, and argue that the semantics of proper names has to be built on a different ground – typically, on a version of a causal theory of reference. Fregeans, it is commonly believed, would have a hard time dealing with numerous 12 counterexamples to their theory offered by Kripke, donnellan, and others who initially motivated the anti-Fregean “revolution” in the 190s. On the other hand, Fregeans can easily deal with semantic puzzles, such as Frege’s identity puzzle, the puzzle of empty names, (negative) existential statements, and the puzzle of substitution failure in intensional contexts, which initially motivated Frege and Russell to discard a simple Millian “denotation without connotation” conception of (ordinary) proper names. These semantic puzzles appear to be a stepping-stone for any anti-Fregean striving to restore the Millian conception. All this led to a frustrating condi- tion with both Fregeans and anti-Fregeans trying to accommodate and/or explain away insights and objections of the rival side. In order to resolve this problem Plantinga argued that a better Fregean view could be offered once the anti-Fregean insights were taken into account and built into a Fregean view. In what follows I will consider Plantinga’s view, I will state its merits, point to its problems, and then try to see how a proponent of his view might deal with these problems.

Fregeans; Millians; proper names; rigidity; world-indexed properties

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