Page 248 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

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The relation between a name and what it names has long been viewed as fundamental in semantics, though exactly what that relation is has been a matter of considerable controversy. Within philosophy of language there is a longstanding debate, highlighted in the work of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein from the early years of analytic philosophy, as to how words or symbols attach to objects. One focus for this debate has been the question whether a name secures its ref- erence through a direct, albeit conventional, associ- ation with its object or in virtue of an implied conceptual content or sense. This article explores the main lines of this debate and should be read in con- junction with the articles on Reference: Philosophical Issues and Indexicals.
1. Denotation and Connotation
the name itself. For example, speakers often have a reason for giving an object one name rather than another: the town Dartmouth was so named for being situated at the mouth of the River Dart. But if, per- haps through geological movement, that association between town and river ceased to hold, the name could still be used: '[pjroper names are attached to the objects themselves, and are not dependent on the continuance of any attribute of the object.'
Mill's view of proper names conforms to several commonplace assumptions about names. Proper names seem quite arbitrarily connected to objects: no doubt there are social conventions governing the kinds of names (words) appropriate for different kinds of objects (people, places, pets, pop groups, etc.), but a proper name is not determined for an object by any properties of the object. Nor is a name naturally thought of as having a conceptual content in the way that a descriptive phrase has. An important conse- quence of Mill's theory is a sharp distinction between proper names and what subsequently became known as 'definite descriptions,' that is, descriptions involv- ing the definite article, such as the first man on the moon, or the father of Socrates. For Mill, although these descriptive phrases serve, like proper names, to pick out just a single individual, they are nevertheless, unlike proper names, connotative terms: they connote properties, as well as denoting individuals. One difference can be illustrated by those cases of definite
Names and Descriptions P. V. Lamarque
The starting point for modern discussions of names is
usually taken to be John Stuart Mill's account in A
System Of Logic (published 1867). According to Mill,
'[p]roper names are not connotative: they denote the
individuals who are called by them; but they do not
indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those
individuals' (Mill 1970: 20). The contrast here is with
connotative terms which do 'imply an attribute'; they
convey information and they have meaning. A proper
name, on Mill's view, is an 'unmeaning mark.' Mill
believed there to be a fundamental difference between
propernamessuchasDartmouth,Socrates,John,and descriptionswhichfossilizeintopropernames,forin general terms like white, long, and virtuous. Although
he thought the latter do have denotation—they denote all white things, all long things, and so forth—they also imply or connote attributes: whiteness, length, virtue. He acknowledges that in various ways proper names can be associated with attributes; but such associations are never essential to the functioning of
just such cases the connoted properties cease to be an integral part of the denotation. Thus New College in Oxford was originally so described in virtue of being new; but what was once a description became in time a name and the connotation of newness dropped away. Significantly, while there is a contradiction in the statement The new college in Oxford is not new, there
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