Abstract

I discuss six recent views of the semantic content of proper names, starting with the influential work of Saul Kripke . Kripke analyzes, and criticises, John Searle's version of a Frege-Russell "description" theory of the semantic content of a name. David Kaplan and Nathan Salmon , despite Fregean objections, accept a theory of "direct reference", which says that the semantic content of a name simply is the referent of the name. Mark Richard thinks that the semantic content of a name is both the name and its referent. Richard also thinks that the context of a belief ascription determines, for any name used in the ascription, which names that name may "represent" . Mark Crimmins thinks that 'believes' expresses "hidden indexicals", which refer to name-like tokens in a believer's head. However, Crimmins' view of the semantic content of a name is the same as that of Kaplan and Salmon. Michael Jubien rejects direct reference and also traditional description theories. Jubien sees the semantic content of a name as a special property, which involves a unique feature of the individual which actually bears the name and upon which the actual naming of that individual crucially depended. I say that names belong to various name "families", and I propose that the semantic content of a name is a special kind of name family. My main thesis is that a name belongs to its special family only if it is reasonable to expect the people who use the name to realize that the referent of the name is the same as the referent of any other names in the family which they also use