Names and Context

Dolf Rami contributes to contemporary debates about the meaning and reference of proper names by providing an overview of the main challenges and developing a new contextualist account of names.

Questions about the use and semantic features of proper names are at the centre of philosophy of language. How does a single proper name refer to the same thing in different contexts of use? What makes a thing a bearer of a proper name? What is their meaning? Guided by these questions, Rami discusses Saul Kripke's main contributions to the debate and introduces two new ways to capture the rigidity of names, proposing a pluralist version of the causal chain picture. Covering popular contextualist accounts of names, both indexical and variabilist, he presents a use-sensitive alternative based on a semantic comparison between names, pronouns and demonstratives.

Extending and applying his approach to a wide variety of uses, including names in fiction, this is a comprehensive explanation of why we should interpret proper names as use-sensitive expressions.

Auteur

Dolf Rami is Heisenberg-Professor for Metaphysics and Philosophy of Logic at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

Contenu

Preface
Prolegomenon: The Diversity of Uses of Names in Natural Languages

1. Proper Names and Rigidity
2. Proper Names and Reference Determination
3. Proper Names as Use-Sensitive Expressions
4. The Fictional Uses of Proper Names
5. Apparent Predicative Uses of Proper Names
6. Apparent Anaphoric Uses of Proper Names
7. Proper Names in Hyperintensional Contexts
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index