Abstract

In this essay, I suggest how ordinary proper names such as 'Aristotle' and 'China' might be satisfactorily viewed as ordinary definite descriptions in disguise. The basic idea is that an ordinary proper name is a type of "dummy" expression, which does nothing, on any occasion of its use, except await replacement by any one, indifferently, of a maximal range of co-denoting definite descriptions. This yields a sense in which ordinary proper names turn out to be semantically superfluous in a natural language in favour of ordinary definite descriptions. Equally, ordinary proper names and ordinary definite descriptions turn out to have a fundamentally similar semantic function, even when the latter are treated in Russell's quantificational fashion. The analysis requires various indexical expressions such as 'I,' 'here' and 'now,' however, to figure within the definite descriptions in question. A central theme is that Dummett is right to hold against Kripke that rigid designation buys us nothing over wide scope in modal and like contexts. Another is that the allowance of various causal facts to figure in the determination of the reference of some tokening of an ordinary proper name is orthogonal to the thesis that ordinary proper names are disguised definite descriptions