Topic
Empty name
About: Empty name is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 13 publications have been published within this topic receiving 112 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: This paper present a direct-reference account of the meaning of empty names in combination with a pragmatic-implicature account of why we have certain intuitions that seem to conflict with a direct reference account.
Abstract: What are the meanings of empty names such as ‘Vulcan,’ ‘Pegasus,’ and ‘Santa Claus’ in such sentences as ‘Vulcan is the tenth planet,’ ‘Pegasus flies,’ and especially ‘Santa Claus does not exist’?
Our view, developed in Adams et al. (1992, 1994, 1997, 2004), consists of a direct-reference account of the meaning of empty names in combination with a pragmatic-implicature account of why we have certain intuitions that seem to conflict with a direct-reference account.
26 citations
26 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors claim that the pretense theory of empty names does not satisfy this constraint and propose a new theory of fictional coreference, which does not respect this constraint.
Abstract: There seems to be a perfectly ordinary sense in which different speakers can use an empty name to talk about the same thing. Call this fictional coreference. It is a constraint on an adequate theory of empty names that it provide a satisfactory account of fictional coreference. The main claim of this paper is that the pretense theory of empty names does not respect this constraint.
18 citations
TL;DR: The authors show that when nothing truth-evaluable is said by an utterance, intuitions to this effect can be recovered by speakers, but no such intuitions appear to be recoverable for sentences containing empty names.
Abstract: Millians hold that the meaning of a proper name is just its referent. Empty names have no referent. Accordingly, assuming semantic compositionality, utterances containing empty names have no literal, truth-evaluable meaning. Nothing truth-evaluable is said, in Grice’s sense, by such utterances. But the intuitions of ordinary speakers are that utterances containing empty names are meaningful. In recent years, some Millians have attempted to explain such ordinary intuitions in terms of what is pragmatically imparted by sentences containing empty names. We argue that this strategy fails. We show that when nothing truth-evaluable is said by an utterance, intuitions to this effect can be recovered by speakers. But no such intuitions appear to be recoverable for sentences containing empty names. Furthermore, we argue that alternative Millian strategies for dealing with empty names are even worse off. Unlike Millianism, a good semantic theory should assign meaning to both full and empty names.
17 citations
TL;DR: Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London as discussed by the authors, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fi nes, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities.
Abstract: Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London. He is something of a folk hero, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fi nes, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities. In spite of his cape and lame tights, he is no fi ction; he’s a real person. By contrast, Pegasus, Zeus and the like are fi ctions. None of them is real. In fact, not only is each of them different from the others, all differ from Angle Grinder Man. After all, Zeus throws thunderbolts but doesn’t remove boots from cars; unlike Superman, Angle Grinder Man couldn’t leap over a parked Mini, and all sightings suggest that he is a human being, not a horse. According to the charmingly austere theory of Direct Reference, a proper name’s meaning is simply its referent. Two proper names with
17 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2016 | 1 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2012 | 1 |
| 2011 | 2 |