“what makes tokens of a word … tokens of the same word … is,
in the first instance, history, not form or function” (Millikan 1984: 72–3)
Abstract
When are two tokens of a name tokens of the same name? According to this paper, the answer is a matter of the historical connections between the tokens. For each name, there is a unique originating event, and subsequent tokens are tokens of that name only if they derive in an appropriate way from that originating event. The conditions for a token being a token of a given name are distinct from the conditions for preservation of the reference of a name. Hence a name may change its reference. Defending the theory requires considerations about the identity of acts, and about empty names and disagreement. The upshot is a causal theory of the identity of names, but not what would normally be counted as a causal theory of the reference of names. Although reference is often transmitted causally, what determines semantic reference is conventionalized speaker-reference.
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Notes
On the version I shall employ, generic names are not ambiguous: they have no significant semantics at all.
Family names have some similarities with both generic and specific names. Like generic names, they are the name many different people bear: all members of the Smith family bear the name Smith. But, as with specific names, there may be other entirely unrelated Smith families, and, in each, “Smith” is used in a different way. One simple way to classify is to treat family names as, indeed, specific names of families: one for this Smith family, another for that Smith family. John Smith’s name is a combination of his given specific name “John” and the specific name of his family, “Smith”. Using this classification, specific family names are readily accommodated within the generic/specific framework.
“In most cases, if you turn back the clock less than a century, you will find at least one, perhaps more examples of a spelling change in a surname” (http://www.houseofnames.com/wiki/Spelling-Variations).
In his appendix (1980) Kripke himself allowed that a name’s reference could shift, as I discuss in the final section below. (Whether this view is to be found in the main text, which dates back to 1972, depends upon careful exegesis of a sentence spanning pp. 96–7.) But Evans’ classic attack on “the causal theory of names” claimed that reference shifting presents a problem for Kripke.
“a man’s own name … is … something like a piece of jewelry hung round his neck at birth.” (Wittgenstein 1979: 5e). A question not addressed here is which among the many particular objects we encounter we treat as deserving a proper name. The answer seems to coincide, at least approximately, with non–fungible objects: objects for which exact qualitative duplicates would be unacceptable.
This example was presented by Hans Kamp at a conference in Göttingen, September 2011.
Kripke makes a similar point: 1980: 96, n.43.
A proper development requires a free logical setting: see e.g. Burge (1974) and Sainsbury (2005) for free logical versions. I am encouraged to help myself to “purports” by arch extensionalist Quine: “a singular term names or purports to name just one object” (1960: 90). Admittedly, it is an idiom he would rather do without: “Such talk of purport is only a picturesque way of alluding to distinctive grammatical roles that singular and general terms play in sentences” (1960: 96). But the merely picturesque is still doing important work many pages later: “Each typical utterance of the word [“Paul”] designates or purports to designate one specific man” (1960: 130).
My thanks for helpful comments to audiences at the conference on Names at King’s College, London, May 2013, to a referee for Erkenntnis, and to Dolf Rami and David Ruben.
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Sainsbury, M. The Same Name. Erkenn 80 (Suppl 2), 195–214 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9705-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9705-y