A User's Guide to Proper Names
Contents
1. 156 4 1 2 Why Put Up With Logical Omniscience 157 4 1 3 Propositions and Worldbound Individuals 160 4 1 4 Lewis s Folk psychological Approach to Foundational Semantics 165 4 1 5 The Realist Concludes 169 4 2 Propositions in Kripke vua eR Rs 170 4 2 1 Kripke is Puzzled About Pierre 173 4 2 2 Naive Contextualism 178 4 2 3 The Hidden Premise 182 4 2 4 Sophisticated Localism 187 4 2 5 Keeping Files at AA 191 4 2 6 What Pierre Taught Us 192 4 2 7 One Name or Two oir wia a Da 195 42 8 OTE en ee ee dies 200 4 3 Stalnaker and Necessary DIODDSIDODS S s es da deh Goh HABE Beebe Rd 201 4 4 4 3 1 Storing Sentences in Boxes 202 4 3 2 Belief Content and Belief Representation 208 4 39 8 Question nswer Machine 212 Answering Our Problems 214 4 4 1 Preconditions of Omniscience 215 4 4 2 Possible Worlds Under the Magnifying Glass 218 4 4 3 Shifty Propositions and Unstable Individuals 219 4 4 4 Partial Worlds and Kindred Nightmares 222 44 5 A Griceful Interlude 223 4 4 6 Stalnaker s Limits 227 45 Conclusion 228 Part II 228 5 User friendly Descriptive Semantics 231 5 1 Introduction es ao ds we en we we 231 5 2 Why Not Descriptivism 232 5 3 The Non essential Kripke 236 5 4 Where Does Essentialism Be2. A User s Guide to Proper Names Their Pragmatics And Semantics Anna Pilatova A User s Guide to Proper Names Their Pragmatics And Semantics ILLC Dissertation Series DS 2005 04 es Gud INSTITUTE FOR LOGIC LANGUAGE AND COMPUTATION For further information about ILLC publications please contact Institute for Logic Language and Computation Universiteit van Amsterdam Plantage Muidergracht 24 1018 TV Amsterdam phone 4 31 20 525 6051 fax 31 20 525 5206 e mail illc wins uva nl homepage http www illc uva nl Copyright 2005 by Anna Pilatova Cover design Dragan Dragin and Anna Pilatova Printed and bound by AMOS Prague Promotores Prof dr E C W Krabbe Prof dr M J B Stokhof Beoordelingcommissie Prof dr A G B ter Meulen Prof dr R A van der Sandt Prof dr N U Salmon ISBN 90 5776 138 6 Rijksuniversiteit Groningen A User s Guide to Proper Names Their Pragmatics And Semantics PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Wijsbegeerte aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus dr F Zwarts in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 8 september 2005 om 13 15 uur door Anna Pilatova geboren op 30 maart 1971 te Praag Tsjechi To my grandmothers Rachil and Jaryna some of the strongest and most extraordinary women I have had the honour to meet Contents Acknowledgments Preface Part I 1 Outl ining the Field and
3. Introducing Some of the Players 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 What Should a Theory of Reference of Proper Names D For US a et ds os al a dm SO es en ak oe id Semantic Theory and a Theory of Meaning Descriptive Semantics ser A gs Foundational Semantics semantics of Modals eR RE UE SEIS The Upshot o r 2 22145 de IRURE eed Setting the Scene ll 1 7 1 Three Senses of Sense 1 7 2 The New Theories of Reference 1 7 8 Introducing Some New Notions BONNEN ENEN vil xiii 2 Descriptive Semantics 2 1 IIA UCA 2a AA EA ta 2 2 Arguing for Rigid Designation 2 2 1 The Modal Argument 2 2 2 The Epistemological Argument 2 2 3 The Semantic Argument 2 3 Assessing the Three Arguments 2 4 A Direct Argument for Rigidity 2 5 Kaplan s Distinctions street ed 2 5 1 Contexts of Use and Circumstances of Evaluation Sco a Bekke de BO S 2 5 2 Content and Character a weer xs 2 6 Singular Terms and Singular Propositions 2 7 Kaplan s Problems With Names 2 8 Conclusion ts i deb ot iub ee xoa Modal Statements Individuals and Essences 3 1 Lewis s Possible world Framework 3 1 1 Lewis Let s Be Realistic 3 1 3 The Indexical Theory of Actuality Natural Remedies and the Man in the Street 3 1 4 Essentialism A
4. Matter of Choice 3 1 5 lt A Battle of Individuals Transworld Versus Worldbound 3 1 6 Can We Survive a Change 3 1 7 Looking Into Possible Worlds 3 1 8 Counterfactuals and Worldbound Individuals 3 130 Vonelusion uu o oer 3 2 Kripke s Approach to the Semantics of Modal State MEINES dw heh ee v Posh wur Curr M DIDI he Si 3 2 1 Stipulating Possible Worlds 3 2 2 Two Versions of Haecceitism 3 2 3 Haecceities and Reduction 3 2 4 Persistence and Obstinacy 3 2 5 Possible Worlds and Imagination vill 3 2 6 What is a priori ar Mali dass 101 3 2 7 Natural Kinds and Haecceities 105 3 2 8 Necessary Statements and Their Commitments 111 3 2 9 Kripke s Scientific Realism 114 3 2 10 Kripke Without Metaphysical Assumptions 117 9 2 EIL o O A o re ede led roto ee sag 119 9 9 Stalnaker s Worlds e ts eie aa EA 121 3 3 1 Stalnaker s Motivation 122 3 3 2 Possible Worlds x amp 2388 Saunas 124 3 3 3 Proposition woe ior bob moe a tx rena 128 Ode OOMEN ats SEIS tte at e de stu IES 130 3 3 5 The Possible and The Actual 136 38 0 Content sica ER qt eed 141 3 3 7 Narrow and Broad Content 146 3 3 8 The Resulting Picture escoria 148 34 ORCOS e eel a REEL ELS 150 4 Foundational Semantics 153 4 1 Believing in Propositions 154 4 1 1 Do We Believe in Necessary Propositions
5. al presuppositions and better suited for an analysis of natural language As in the two previous proposals I try to reconstruct the notion of actual world that is presupposed here In the fourth chapter Foundational Semantics I investigate the notion of proposition implied by Lewis s Kripke s and Stalnaker s approach I focus on propositions containing proper names and analyse the way in which each of the conceptions mentioned above is vulnerable to the problem of logical omniscience An analysis of Lewis s framework reveals that the concept of proposition implied by it is so weak as to be rather uninteresting An investigation of Kripke s concept of proposition deals not only with the systematic issues but also with the Pierre puzzle and various attempts at solv ing it I present a number of different approaches to the problem and compare their merits Stalnaker is very worried about the problem of logical omniscience and yet it turns out that his conception is less vulnerable to the adverse consequences of the problem of logical omniscience than other frameworks we investigate I point out that various pragmatic features of Stalnaker s framework the epistemic nature of his possible world framework the Gricean principles built into the notion of assertion help to counterbalance and mitigate the scope of the problem of logical omniscience within it In the fifth chapter User friendly Descriptive Semantics which is also the first chapter
6. co incided with the years I spent in The Netherlands and I want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who were during this time a part of my life who helped me make Amsterdam my home and Groningen my second home Hence the unusual length of this section While writing this thesis I was a part of two departments and had the good fortune of being able to profit from many events and lectures organised both by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Groningen and by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam and the ILLC with which this department is associated My research was supported by a grant I received from the Ubbo Emmius Funds which are administered by the University of Groningen I want to thank Prof Theo Kuipers who allowed me to divide my time between Groningen and Amsterdam Without Steve Thomas I would have probably never moved to Amsterdam in the first place I want to thank him for his friendship and support I was extraordinarily fortunate in having Erik Krabbe and Mar tin Stokhof as my supervisors I could not have finished this project without their professional and personal support or without their xiii faith in the topic and in my ability to deal with it Erik Krabbe read my writing with attention to detail that could hardly be sur passed He drew my attention to arguments that were not quite finished and to ways in which I could simplify them He kept me from assum
7. e alone Thanks also to Elise now Alastair s wife for her friendship and trust The final stages of the thesis were written at a hectic pace and I took to working through the nights As a consequence my flatmates Inga Bauer and Tim Scheufen saw me mainly just in my pyjamas They were very tolerant and kind Henk Zeevat and his friendship has been invaluable Our argu ments about philosophy history literature the advice on DIY and bicycle maintenance thank you so much for everything The love and friendship of Russell Dale has been with me for little less than half of my life proving that though it is difficult it is possible to stay in touch mainly by correspondence Since 2002 when the Heideggerian Hermeneutic Club came into existence it has been a place for me to relax connect with people and get out at least once a week I want to thank all of its members present and past That is its founding members David Wood the president Fabrice Nauze the co president and secretary for eman cipation Will Rose always ready to argue with Fabrice Marian Counihan the resident South African Some members who joined a little later also gained prominence Marie Safarova who intro duced Czech as a second official language of the club Gilad Mishne and Oren Tsur who helped me form the Jewish faction Albin Gi XV rardin always a gentleman thanks for your unforgettable singing Helle Hansen with her sound common sense and adventu
8. en by a particular individ ual or community has the very descriptive semantics it has In this investigation one looks at the speaker her intentions and commu nicative goals and tries to identify the strategies she uses to get her linguistic point across The User s Guide to Proper Names is divided in two basic parts The first part encompassing chapters one through to four is devoted to a reconstruction and analysis of several influential approaches to the semantics of proper names The second part of the thesis chap ters five to seven contains my own proposal regarding the semantics of proper names and a conclusion The first part of the thesis starts with an introductory chapter Outlining the Field and Introducing Some of the Players Its task is to show the usefulness of organising the thesis around the distinction between descriptive modal and foundational semantics and to pro vide a proper characterisation of these notions In the second part of the same chapter Setting the Scene I give a preliminary outline of some of the notions needed to describe the theories of reference that are later investigated that is mainly the theories proposed by Kripke Kaplan Lewis and Stalnaker The second chapter Descriptive Semantics focuses on the de scriptive semantics proposed by Kripke and Kaplan for proper names In the first part of the chapter I introduce several arguments in favour of rigid designation A closer look reveal
9. ing too much of the reader and if this thesis is relatively easy to get through he deserves a lot credit for it His contagious sense of humour and passion for the English language contributed to the enjoyment and edification I drew from our consultations Thank you Martin Stokhof started working with me even before I had an official Ph D position For many years our weekly consultations were a part of my life a part I miss Martin Stokhof has a gift for asking questions that are difficult not because they are intricate but because they go to the core of the problem He pointed me in useful directions and raised objections that helped improve the work He is an extremely good devil s advocate and I hugely enjoyed our discussions Thank you I enjoyed teaching at the University of Groningen and got a lot back from my students I had the opportunity to exchange ideas at the regular PCCP meetings and meetings of Groningen logicians the Grolog lectures I also presented some of my work there and received valuable comments The same should be said for the DIP and LEGO bi weekly talks in Amsterdam I want to thank all of my colleagues from both of the departments for their ideas kindness and friendship Among the conferences and seminars I took part in during this time the Szklarska Poreba conferences about the roots of pragmase mantics stand out I was glad to be in a position to help to organise these events and always very happy to be
10. k does not work well for proper names it gives us some conceptual tools that help us in our undertaking In the third chapter Modal Statements Individuals and Essences I analyse three different approaches to building a possible world framework Lewis s Kripke s and Stalnaker s In each case the same questions are asked What is the motivation and intended field of application of this framework What are the ontological 4 Preface commitments of the approach What form of essentialism if any does it imply How does it deal with the notion of an individual In Lewis s case the main problem turns out to be the theory of counterparts which is as I show an integral part of his approach The concept of an individual implied by it does not seem to corre spond to any intuitive reading of counterfactual statements involving individuals The investigation of Kripke s framework focuses on de scribing the weakest form of essentialism that has to be presupposed to make the proposal work Once that is concluded I analyse the essentialism Kripke actually proposes and the motivation and pre suppositions on which it rests I conclude that its motivation cannot be said to come from an analysis of language and that it presupposes a particular form of scientific realism The rest of the chapter is de voted to a reconstruction and analysis of Stalnaker s possible world framework which turns out to be rather more cautious about meta physic
11. long 238 5 5 Where Should Essentialism Belong 241 5 6 What Do We Learn From Counterfactual Statements 245 5 7 Conclusion 249 6 Foundational Semantics Names Indexicality and Ambiguity 251 6 1 Outlining the Problem 4 2 3 3 oh RENE S 252 6 1 1 Indexicality Overt and Hidden 252 6 1 2 From The Indexical Point of View 255 6 2 Names and Context Dependence 258 6 2 1 Variability of Proper Names 258 6 2 2 Problems for Rigid Designation 260 6 3 Introducing Names Into Language 261 6 3 1 What s In a Name 262 6 3 2 Non standard Uses of Names 264 6 4 Calling People by Their Names 265 6 5 Individuating Names a a die boe da a 268 6 0 COMES see Oe eo be AE ehe ATE des dud 271 6 7 Dialogue and Norms elec ed 273 6 8 Application to Problems 274 6 9 Ambiguity versus Indexicality 284 6 9 1 Learning from Aphasia 288 6 10 Conclusion io an ds E eects EM 293 7 Final Review 295 Bibliography 301 Name Index 311 Subject Index 313 Nederlandstalige Samenvatting 319 xi Acknowledgments I would like to thank everyone who helped me to write this thesis and apologise to anyone whom I might forget to mention I received support ideas and encouragement from institutions supervisors colleagues my students people at conferences my friends and fam ily The writing of this thesis
12. of the second part I present and motivate my own proposal for the descriptive semantics of proper names and the treatment of modal statements in which they figure Basically my aim is to preserve the notion of names as rigidly designating expres sions while allowing in as little metaphysics as possible Working with epistemic possible worlds whose domain is in each case co determined by a particular context enables me to develop a very intuitive plausible notion of individual to which a name can be said to refer rigidly The interpretation of modal statements is then driven not by essentialist constraints in the common sense of the term but by context derived limitations which seems to be a more natural approach In the sixth chapter Foundational Semantics Names Indexi cality and Ambiguity I develop a view of foundational semantics inspired by the pragmatic observation that in common parlance one can say that a name e g John Smith can refer to numerous indi viduals A lot of attention is given to the ontology of names and the question What is a name delivers answers which are then used in a discussion whether names should be seen as indexical or am biguous I adopt the ambiguity view and propose a way of using a Stalnakerian possible world framework to derive intuitively plausible results for some difficult cases In the final chapter Conclusion I emphasise that my approach throughout the Guide relies on a careful e
13. onal seman tics and the semantics of modal statements in which they figure Descriptive semantics focuses on the contribution a proper name makes to the truth value of sentences in which it occurs Based on such an analysis a proper name is assigned a semantic value which 2 Preface is supposed to provide us with an interpretation of that name A crucial part of this task is to see just what kind of thing the semantic value of a proper name is In interpreting sentences containing proper names one can and often does use the notion of possible worlds This is especially true if the sentences in question are modal There are various approaches to modality which carry with them different sets of presuppositions An analysis of the systematic features and presuppositions of various possible world frameworks is a part of the task of the semantics of modal statements Another task of semantics of modal statements is to investigate where the constraints on possible worlds used in analysing these statements derive from that is whether and to what degree they should derive from the descriptive or the foundational part of the semantic enterprise Both of these parts of a semantic theory have the potential to make predictions about the foundational semantics of proper names which deals with the speaker s behaviour and communication Foun dational semantics aims at answering the following question What makes it the case that the language spok
14. rous ideas David Ahn who single handedly overturned my prejudice that men in suits are boring Lotta Weckstrom who gave us at one point a rare insight into the life of people who are not in the academia Samson de Jager always sound yet fun a resident New Zealander Breanndan O Nuallain an associated member a representative of the Irish faction I miss you all I want to thank Oren Schwartz for making me take some time for culture and snooker in the summer of 2004 Simone Blayer and his family fed me in the last difficult stages of finishing my thesis Their company has always been a safe harbour to me Thank you for your friendship Alastair Butler taught me the basics of using LaTex After he left for Singapore Samson de Jager helped me out on numerous occassions Cheers I also want to thank Mary Lommerse who helped me keep sane through my professional and personal crises and all my friends from the Yiddish choir Heimish Zeyn who made me feel heimish indeed And last but not least my family My mother always believed implicitly that academically I could do whatever I put my mind to Her mother my grandmother always believed I had a good com mon sense and could basically deal with anything From my father I think I got the sense of humour allowing me to cope somehow with these expectations How could I thank you enough While I was writing my thesis my brother found he too likes the academic envi ronment and I wish him bes
15. s that none of the three arguments in question the modal the epistemological and the semantic one is actually an argument for rigid designation They all just argue against some forms of descriptivism Moreover in the case of the modal and the epistemological argument it is rel atively easy to find forms of descriptivism that are immune to the lines of reasoning proposed in the arguments The semantic argu ment seems to be the strongest of the three because it relies on a straightforward clash of intuitions regarding the identity of individ uals An analysis of a direct argument for rigid designation also high lights the connection between rigid designation and certain precon ceptions about the identity of individuals A further investigation of issues related to the identity of individuals across possible worlds emerges at this point as an important issue to tackle It also becomes clear that rigid designation alone cannot fully determine the Krip kean picture of names as non descriptive entities referring without a mediation of any sort of conceptual content In the second part of Chapter 2 I introduce the basic notions of Kaplan s approach to the descriptive semantics of proper names It turns out that in order to derive the familiar Kripkean picture of proper names one has to presuppose direct reference for names and at least some version of haecceitism for the individuals in ques tion While as we show Kaplan s framewor
16. t of luck with his thesis My twin sister has been taking me for holidays to exotic places so often my friends called me a jet setter With her even a rainy day in Amsterdam could be exciting Amsterdam Anna Pilatova June 2005 xvi Preface The origins of this work go all the way to my reading of Kripke s Naming and Necessity in 1993 It had left me with a feeling of dis satisfaction that lingered long enough to inspire my MA thesis on Internalism and Externalism in the Theories of Reference and fi nally inspired the current work Over time I became acquainted with other influential accounts of reference of proper names but my unease with essentialism and wariness of direct designation re mained In the User s Guide to Proper Names I seized the opportunity to analyse what I thought was problematic about the mainstream theories of reference of proper names I tried to tease apart a number of related doctrines about the behaviour of proper names and thus arrive at a better understanding of how the various parts of the theories of reference I chose to analyse are related This helped me to develop my own proposal regarding both the semantics and the pragmatics of proper names The Guide is organised around a particular approach to the tasks of a semantic theory According to this approach proposed by Stal naker a semantic theory dealing with proper names should account for the descriptive semantics of names their foundati
17. there All of the partic ipants over the years helped to make the conferences very special and not just because it is on a mountaintop in Poland and the pro gramme also features skying and table tennis I hope there will be many more Szklarska Poreba conferences in the years to come Travelling weekly between Amsterdam and Groningen was not easy I do not know how I could have done it had I not been given a second home in Groningen For five years for two days a week XIV Katherine Gardiner s home was my home as well I saw Joran her son grow from a baby into a young schoolboy and Nynke her daughter transform from a child into a self possessed young lady It has been a privilege I want to thank both Nynke and Joran for their love Katherine s friendship supported me through many a difficult time and there is no way I can thank her enough She and her family will always have a special place in my heart I was very fortunate in my flatmates thanks to Andy Liu Eu ropean intellectual par excellence from whom I learned so much about China its people and history thanks to Mehmet Altinakya he knows why thanks to Veronica Steward for her liveliness and lovely Scottish accent thanks to Marie Safarova who helped me through a difficult time may we never lose touch thanks to Alas tair Butler who introduced me to LaTex and British virtues and convinced me that one can exclusively on potatoes carrots and corned chicken or quich
18. xamination of different kinds of presuppositions implied by various possible world frame works and the notion of the individual used in accounts of the be haviour of proper names In my own account of these issues I do without any metaphysical assumptions and aim at describing com munication in terms accessible to the speaker and hearer
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