ABOUT THE BOOK “HOW DO PROPER NAMES REALLY WORK?
(Published by
De Gruyter, 2023)
One author’s self-judgment
is often too biased to be taken seriously.
But since I
am a kind of outsider - who will make this judgment for me?
So, in my
personal view, this book is the most unexpected and relevant piece of
philosophical argument written on theories of reference since Kripke’s Naming
and Identity.
This is so
because the book contains a theory of reference able to overthrow the new
causal-referential externalist theories of reference, as much as the old still naive descriptivist cluster theory.
In what
follows I will try the impossible task of summarizing 260 pages in few words:
In the first
chapter, the story of reference theories from Stuart Mill to John Searle is correctly
told. It was the victim of simplified and systematically caricatured
interpretations.
From Frege to
Searle through Russell, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, it was in fact a single
cluster theory differently approached.
The second
chapter is a critique of Kripke’s views on reference.
Although
there are causal-historical external chains, these chains are in themselves inscrutable
and, when scrutable, they are captured by cognitive intentions and,
consequently, by descriptions.
This means
that causal-historical theories are circularly dependent on cognitively
loaded descriptions in order to get any explanatory power. A really consequent
referentialism would be condemned to a petitio principii.
The third
chapter diagnoses the main problem with the cluster theories, namely, that the bunches
of descriptions are disordered.
We need a
meta-rule and variants enabling us to order clusters of descriptions in ways
that allow us to form singular identification rules.
These identification rules will decide which under
many combinations of descriptions will allow the proper name‘s applications in
any possible world where it has a bearer.
The main
descriptions are the localizing and characterizing ones.
They can be
found by an Austinian method of consulting encyclopedias, helped by many thought
experiments.
This is what
makes proper names rigid designators. In this way, we arrive at the right
distinction between proper names and descriptions:
Descriptions
are only accidental when associated with proper names as parts of their
clusters. When this association cannot be found, descriptions turn into rigid
designators.
More often
only a few privileged speakers know the full identification rule.
Most speakers
use the proper name by means of mechanisms of reference borrowing or parasitic
reference.
In chapter
four all relevant counterexamples and objections against descriptivism
presented by Kripke, Donnellan, and others are convincingly answered.
In chapter
five Frege’s paradox of identity is solved by turning senses into
identification rules.
In chapter
six the theory is extended to indexicals and general terms turning the views of
Perry, Kaplan, Putnam, and Burge on their heads.
My hope with
this book is not polemic. I wish to set new bases for theories of reference,
fostering innovative research in the search for a comprehensive and consensual cognitivist
and neo-descriptivist solution.
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