Direct reference and existence

Maverick asked me the other day what connection could possibly be between the theory of direct reference and existence. Well, there is certainly a connection between direct reference and the verb 'exists'. If the direct reference theory is correct, then this verb cannot take a singular term as a subject. So we can say 'An American philosopher exists', meaning that 'philosopher' is truly predicated of at least one singular term referring to an American, (e.g. 'William Lane Craig'). But we can't say 'William Lane Craig exists', because it is ill-formed. We can predicate 'exists' of general terms only. See the argument I gave here.

The direct reference theory is not to be confused with 'linguistic idealism' – whatever that is. The theory does not deny there is any 'extra linguistic reality'. It simply denies that 'William Lane Craig exists' is meaningful, in the strictest sense of 'meaningful'. If it means anything, the sentence means that the proper name 'William Lane Craig' refers to something. But if it referred to nothing, it would not be a proper name – for the direct reference theory says that whatever counts as a proper name must be meaningful (as opposed to a string of letters or an utterance), and that its meaning is what it refers to. Therefore if the utterance refers to nothing, it means nothing, and so cannot be a proper name. And the fact it refers to something guarantees that it refers to something in 'extra linguistic reality'.

As far 'existence', which is an abstract noun formed from the verb 'exists' – well, 'The existence of William Lane Craig' presumably alludes to the fact that 'William Lane Craig' refers to something. Simple.

Frege on predication

I mentioned Frege's distinction between concept and object earlier, and said I was taking a feature of that distinction as fundamental, namely that the distinction between predicate and sentential negation only applies to concept words (or rather, quantified concept words), and not to object words ('logical subjects').

David Brightly wasn't so sure it was a feature of that distinction, as opposed to a mere accident.  Well, two further reasons. First, it is build into the predicate calculus that simple singular propositions have only one form of negation.  We write '~Fa'.  The syntax of the calculus is designed so that we cannot even represent the difference between 'Socrates is not running' and 'it is not the case that Socrates is running'.

Second, Frege begins his discourse by saying that a concept is predicative, whereas the name of an object, a proper name, is quite incapable of being used as a grammatical predicate.  Now, we can say that someone is Alexander the Great, or is the planet Venus, but this is not predicating the object itself.  For the predicate 'is the planet Venus' is predication not of Venus itself but of the concept of being identical with Venus.  The verb 'is' is not a mere copula, its content is an essential part of the predicate.

Thus for an object-word to signify, it has to signify an object.  It is essential to an object word like 'Venus' that it has to be satisfied, whereas it is essential to a concept word like 'planet' that it can be satisfied, or not. "An equation is reversible; an object's falling under a concept is an irreversible relation.

Thus "‘Venus exists’ is true in virtue of the meaning of the proper name ‘Venus’. Maverick says that this has it precisely backwards. What I should say is that 'Venus' has meaning in virtue of the truth of 'Venus exists'. Not at all. 'Venus' has meaning in virtue of its meaning something, just as you are an employer in virtue of your employing someone.

Concept and Object

Here I mentioned Frege's distinction between concept and object, and Anthony is rightly asking questions about it.  How does direct reference relate to the distinction?

So I go back to Frege, and his famous essay. It's rather hard to get anything out of it, because he never properly defines the distinction. He says that his explanation is not meant as a proper definition. "One cannot require that everything shall be defined, any more than one can require that a chemist shall decompose every substance".  What is logically simple cannot have a proper definition (as Aristotle also noticed).

But he does give the famous example of "all mammals are land dwellers", which will do for my purpose.  He says that if 'all mammals' were the logical subject of 'are land dwellers', then to negate the whole sentence we should have to negate the predicate, giving "all mammals are not land-dwellers".  That is obviously wrong, for this predicate negation gives the contrary of the sentence it negates, not the contradictory.  Thus we must put the 'not' in front of the 'all', to give sentence negation.  But no such distinction applies to genuinely singular subjects, i.e. object words.  Indeed, he proves this by re-writing the original sentence as "the concept mammal is subordinate to the concept land-dweller".  By negating the predicate we get "the concept mammal is not subordinate to the concept land-dweller", which is the contradictory of the original sentence.  And so a useful criterion for determining whether an expression is a concept expression (a logical predicate) or an object expression (a logical subject) is to determine whether predicate negation is equivalent to sentence negation or not.  If it is, then the grammatical subject is a logical subject as well.  Otherwise it is a logical predicate.

With that test in mind, and on the assumption that proper names are logical subjects, direct reference immediately follows, as I shall show tomorrow.

Subsumption and subordination

Maverick dedicates his post here to me, saying that I like “sophisms and scholastic arcana”. Yes, and Fregean arcana too, Bill, heh heh. His post is about the odd-looking inference

Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species.

Note that the scholastics would have resolved this by treating the conclusion as a reduplicative proposition: Socrates insofar as he is a man, is a species, but never mind that. Maverick goes on to discuss the ‘modern’ Fregean treatment of propositions like ‘man is a species’. According to Frege, a universal proposition like ‘every man is an animal’ has a fundamentally different form from ‘Socrates is an animal’. In the former, one concept is subordinated to another: the concept ‘man’ is said to be subordinate to the concept ‘animal’. In the latter, the individual Socratres is subsumed under the concept ‘animal’.

Fregegives some very bad arguments for this in his famous essay ‘On Concept and Object’, but I won’t discuss those now. For the moment, here are two arguments against his view.

1. Argument from obviousness. It is obvious that ‘every man is animal’ does not say that one concept is subordinate to another, for the simple reason that it does not say anything about concepts at all. What it says is that every man is an animal. Thus, Socrates is an animal, Plato is an animal. It is talking about every man, not about some concept.

2. Frege’s position requires taking on the absurd idea of ‘object dependence’, i.e. that the meaning of a proper name depends on the existence of some object referred to. I discuss this at length here, with reference to another less well-known essay of Frege's*. Briefly, if we allow that a proper name N can be meaningful and empty, there must be some relation which holds between the name and its referent when its referent exists, and which fails to hold when there is no referent. But then a proper name is not essentially different from a common name like ‘man’. We can say ‘there are no men’ if nothing falls under the meaning of ‘man’, and we can say ‘there is no Socrates’ if nothing falls under the meaning of ‘Socrates’. Frege correctly rules this out as inconsistent with the concept-object distinction. In summary: the distinction between ‘subordination’ and ‘subsumption’ implies and is implied by the object-concept distinction. And the object-concept distinction implies and is implied by the position that the meaning of a proper name is object-dependent.

*Though I note that Maverick mentions this essay, at second-hand, in his book here.

Semantic completeness

This morning I had the idea for the following loose definition. A discourse* 'semantically complete' when any competent user of the language can understand it, simply in virtue of understanding the language.

But this of course won't do.  I had meant to eliminate proper names, because understanding the language is not a requirement for understanding them.  But who is to say that  the process of learning new proper names (or new meanings for the same proper name) is not also a process of understanding the language?  I need a criterion for 'understanding the language' that rules out proper names, but I don't have one.

Is it that a certain perceptual acquaintance, or some relation with the external world is necessary in order to learn  a proper name?  Well perhaps, but that doesn't distinguish them from common names, because to learn the meaning of certain basic terms like 'red', 'round' and so on, we have to be acquainted with external reality.

*Discourse - a sentences or any group of sentences.

More on predicate logic and direct reference

David Brightly asks here whether modern predicate logic (MPL) in fact rests on ‘weak’ (relativistic) reference, not strong (direct) reference. He appeals to the way that singular sentences in MPL seem to have a meaning even when the singular term is empty.

There are a number of connected reasons why this won’t work. Here are the main characteristics of the relativistic logic (RL) I have defended here.

• In RL there are two forms of negation for singular sentences. There is a narrow form ‘nonF(a)’, which is true when a exists and it is not the case that Fa, i.e. a is a nonF; and a wide form, which is true when either nonF(a), or when a does not exist. Excluded middle applies only to the wide form, naturally. By contrast, MPL has no such feature.
• In RL, a sentence of the form ‘An S is P’ has a narrow existential sense: it is convertible with ‘An S-P exists’. There is no distinction between a wide sense conveyed by ‘some’, and the narrow sense conveyed by ‘exist’. RL is not Meinongian. By contrast, it is open to MPL to invent an existence predicate ‘E()’, which may satisfied by some members of the domain, but not by others.
• As a direct consequence, in RL, the wide negation ‘it is not the case that Fa’ never implies the existential form ‘some x is non-F’. By contrast, in MPL a singular sentence is existential, at least in the wide sense: ‘~Fa’ implies ‘Ex ~Fx’.
• A further difference, though probably not relevant here, is that some relational statements in RL are not existential. ‘aRb’ does not always imply ‘Ex aRx’, namely in the case where ‘R’ is not logically transitive. This is how RL avoids the problem of intentionality without invoking Meinongian non-existent objects.

The net result is that if a singular sentence in MPL cannot be empty in the sense required by RL. Let ‘v’ be a term that purports to denote Vulcan (a non-existent planet). Then either Vulcan lies within the orbit of Mercury - OM(v), or not - ~OM(v). The problem is the negation. If ~OM(v), standard predicate logic implies Ex ~Fx. But that leads to Meinongianism, i.e. positing objects that do not exist, and this, as I have argued, is a form of direct reference. Direct reference is the thesis that if ‘Fa’ is meaningful, then ‘a’ refers to something - possibly a non-existent something.

Another argument: how can we even say in MPL that Vulcan does not exist? The sentence ‘~Ex x=v’ will not do, for it asserts of something in the domain that it is not in the domain; ‘~E(v)’ will do, where ‘E’ means ‘exists’, but this comes at the price of Meinong’s junkyard. For ‘~E(v)’ implies ‘Ex ~E(x)’, which is precisely Meinongianism. Or it can be denied that ‘OM(v)’ means anything at all, which is strong Direct Reference of the familiar variety. There is no escape. Either we adopt a radically different semantics and inference schemata, on the lines of RL above, or we are left with Direct Reference.

Translating ordinary language into predicate logic.

Vallicella has now apparently accepted my arguments against grammatically proper names being translatable into the ‘logical constants’ of modern predicate logic (MPL). But this leaves him with the problem that there are also strong arguments against translating them into the predicates of MPL.  I summarised these arguments earlier in June, as follows.

Argument 1 was that a proper name does not signify something that is repeatable, therefore does not signify a property. Therefore it signifies an object. A reply is here.

Argument 2 was that a name cannot be significant or intelligible to another unless the idea of what the name applies to is in the other person’s mind. But we can only have the idea of a particular thing by being acquainted with that thing, which is only possible if that thing actually exists. A reply is here.

Argument 3 was that definition proceeds by genus and specific difference. Therefore a proper name cannot be defined, for they name individuals, and individuals are not species. They have no specific difference, and can only be distinguished by the proper name itself.  A reply is here.

Argument 4 was that truth-conditional semantics rests on the assumption that the conditions for the truth of a sentence give the sentence’s meaning or significance. But there is no truth evaluable content when reference failure occurs. If there are no truth conditions, then there is no meaning or significance. I have not replied to this argument yet.

If Vallicella accepts these arguments as well as those he summarises in his post, he is apparently left with the problem that ordinary language cannot be translated into MPL at all. Is that a problem?

Sentence negation, predicate negation and direct reference

There is a good post here by Vallicella, about a comment I made to an earlier post of his. My claim, in essence, is that if we cannot distinguish between sentence negation and predicate negation of a singular sentence, then we have to accept ‘direct reference’. Let me explain. Predicate negation – e.g. ‘a is non-F’ is such that its truth requires that the object denoted by ‘a’ exist, and that this object is not F. Sentence negation, by contrast, is when we simply deny whatever is asserted by ‘a is F’.

In modern predicate logic, we do not distinguish between these two forms of negation, at least for singular sentences. The negation ‘~Fa’ is true whenever some thing is referred to by the singular term ‘a’, and when that thing is not F. Thus it is predicate negation. But it is also the contradictory of ‘Fa’. If it is not true that ~Fa, then it is true that Fa, and conversely. Thus it is sentence negation.

By contrast, in traditional logic (or at least in standard forms of it) we do distinguish between these forms of negation. ‘Socrates is a non-runner’ is true when there is some such person as Socrates, and that person is not running. Thus ‘Socrates runs’ and ‘Socrates is a non-runner’ are contraries. Both can be false when Socrates does not exist.  This is predicate negation (or ‘indefinite negation’ as the scholastics called it). This was considered distinct from propositional or ‘extinctive’ or ‘destructive’ negation, where everything asserted by ‘Socrates runs’ is denied, and which can be true even when there is no such person as Socrates.  Thus ‘Socrates runs’ and the destructive negation ‘It is not the case that Socrates runs’ are contradictories. Both cannot be false, for one denies everything the other asserts.

Now I claim that in systems where there is no distinction between predicate and sentence negation, we have ‘direct reference’. This is easily shown. Direct reference in a singular sentence is when the sentence is meaningless when the singular subject fails to refer. Assume that ‘a is F’ is not meaningless. If it is true, then there is a referent for ‘a’. If it is not true, the sentential negation ‘It is not the case that a is F’ is true. If sentential negation is equivalent to predicate negation, it follows that ‘a is non-F’ is true, and so a exists, and so, there is a referent for ‘a’. But (by excluded middle) either ‘a is F’ is true, or its contradictory (the sentential negation) is true. In either case, ‘a’ has a referent. Thus if ‘a is F’ is not meaningless, ‘a’ has a referent. Conversely if ‘a’ does not have a referent, ‘a is F’ is meaningless. But that is Direct Reference, as I have defined it.

In systems where we can make a distinction between the two forms of negation, we do not have to accept Direct Reference. If ‘a is F’ is meaningful but false, this could either be because the predicate negation is true, or because there is no referent for ‘a’.

Both Peter Lupu and David Brightly challenged this idea in their comments to the post.

Peter argued that we do not have to accept Direct Reference if we accept the distinction between meaning and reference (or ‘sense’ and reference or whatever you call it). I reply: in accepting this distinction we have (tacitly) accepted the distinction between the two forms of negation. If we are happy that ‘a is F’ may not be true in the case that ‘a’ has a sense but not a reference, and assuming that (in this system) we can say that this is so, i.e. state that a does not exist, then we can state the disjunction ‘a does not exist or a exists but is non-F’. But that disjunction is equivalent to the sentential negation of ‘a is F’, and is therefore distinct from the predicate negation ‘a does exist and is non-F’.

David argued that we can suppose a singular term has a referent, and prove a contradiction in order to show that it does not have a referent. For example, let ‘a’ denote the largest ordinal number. That supposition leads to a contradiction, therefore ‘a’ cannot denote that. Yet (according to David) it is meaningful to make assertions using the singular term ‘a’. I reply: what is meant by ‘denotes’ here? If it means ‘signifies’ or ‘means’, then the supposition that it has a meaning leads to a contradiction, and so it does not have a meaning. This is Direct Reference. On the other hand, if it does not mean ‘signifies’, but rather that a exists, then my reply is the same as to Peter. To accept the possibility that ‘a’ is meaningful but fails to correspond to any existing number, is tacitly to accept the distinction between the two forms of negation.

Where my arguments for direct reference came from

Someone posted to ask where I got the arguments for 'direct reference' from (For the purpose of this discussion, call ‘Direct Reference’ the theory that part or all of the meaning of a proper name requires the existence of a named object).

Just a question: Who gives this argument for direct reference? I haven't seen it in Kripke or any of the other big names in Phil of Lang. Just curious where you got this specific argument?

The four arguments are listed here. The argument referred to was the first of the four arguments, namely that that a proper name does not signify something that is repeatable, therefore does not signify a property. Therefore it signifies an object. Where did the argument come from? It is loosely based on Kripkean arguments against the view that proper names are non-rigid designators. I.e. I am assuming that 'non-repeatability', which Kripke does not invoke, is close enough to his notion of 'rigidity'.

The second and third arguments are closer to the early modern and medieval discussions of proper names. The fourth argument (that truth-conditional semantics rests on the assumption that the conditions for the truth of a sentence give the sentence’s meaning or significance) was taken almost verbatim from Teresa Marques' "On an argument of Segal’s against singular object-dependent thoughts" (Disputatio, volume II, no. 21, pp. 19-37) although her argument in turn owes much to John McDowell and Gareth Evans.
I haven't replied to the fourth argument yet, due to distractions about global warming and other distracting things.

Ad tertium

I reply to the third of the four arguments for direct reference.  The argument was that definition proceeds by genus and specific difference. Therefore a proper name cannot be defined, for they name individuals, and individuals are not species. They have no specific difference, and can only be distinguished by the proper name itself.

I reply by conceding that a proper name cannot be defined, and that a proper name does not signify a species or kind of thing. But I deny that "an individual can only be distinguished by the name itself".  As I have argued, signification is not a relation between a name and a thing, and so a proper name does not distinguish an individual in any strict and proper sense (although I concede that in an improper sense it is true that the name 'Frodo' distinguishes a certain fictional hobbit, as I argued here and in other places).  We do not learn the meaning of a proper name by definition or by acquaintance with an individual, but rather by acquaintance with the name itself.  When we first encounter the name, as Bosanquet says, it has a purely general sense: someone so-called.  When we next encounter it, it means the same thing as whatever it meant before. "Aeneas fled his home ... Aeneas was shipwrecked" means simply that someone fled their home and that the same person was shipwrecked.  We don't know who Aeneas was in any stronger sense than this.

Direct Reference - ad primum

I reply to the first argument of the four arguments for direct reference.  The argument was that a proper name does not signify something that is repeatable, therefore does not signify a property. Therefore it signifies an object.

I reply: the argument relies on the assumption that a a term signifies either a property (which is repeatable) or an object (which is not).  This is false.  As I have argued before, the entire significance of a proper name is to signify that (if we are talking about anything at all) we are talking about a single thing.  In other words, Fa and Ga imply that some F is G, if 'a' is functioning as a proper name.  Thus it cannot signify anything repeatable like a property, by reason of its peculiar semantic function. 'Fa' and 'Ga' always imply that 'F' and 'G' apply to a single thing. Thus it makes no sense to say that this individual is Socrates on Tuesday, but that someone else is Socrates on Wednesday. Or that this individual is Socrates today, but might not have been Socrates.

Nor does a proper name signify an object.  Sentences containing the same proper name, accepted in the same sense, are true of the same thing, if they are true at all. But they do not have to be true of anything at all, in order for us to understand this.

The arguments for direct reference (review)

I've been away for a week.  Now I am back, and it is time to review the arguments for direct reference that we considered earlier, and to prepare for a reply.

Argument 1 was that a proper name does not signify something that is repeatable, therefore does not signify a property. Therefore it signifies an object.

Argument 2 was that a name cannot be significant or intelligible to another unless the idea of what the name applies to is in the other person’s mind. But we can only have the idea of a particular thing by being acquainted with that thing, which is only possible if that thing actually exists.

Argument 3 was that definition proceeds by genus and specific difference. Therefore a proper name cannot be defined, for they name individuals, and individuals are not species. They have no specific difference, and can only be distinguished by the proper name itself.

Argument 4 was that truth-conditional semantics rests on the assumption that the conditions for the truth of a sentence give the sentence’s meaning or significance. But there is no truth evaluable content when reference failure occurs. If there are no truth conditions, then there is no meaning or significance.

More later.  Have a good weekend, readers.

The roots of direct reference - argument 4

I borrowed this one from Teresa Marques' paper "On an argument of Segal’s against singular object-dependent thoughts" (Disputatio, volume II, no. 21, pp. 19-37) although it owes much to John McDowell and Gareth Evans.

Argument Four. Truth-conditional semantics rests on the assumption that the conditions for the truth of a sentence give the sentence’s meaning or significance. But there is no truth evaluable content when reference failure occurs.  If there are no truth conditions, then there is no thought-content. Hence, if one’s utterance of a sentence has no truth-conditions, then it also has no truth conditions and therefore also no significance or meaning. Likewise, an utterance of such a sentence fails to express a singular thought.

The Singularity of Singular Thought

I just found an excellent paper by Tim Crane - "The Singularity of Singular Thought".  Today I will say some things I like about the paper, tomorrow some things I don't like so much.

Crane begins by picking up a remark by Quine that "a singular term is one that ‘purports to refer to just one object’".  This suggests to Crane that a singular term is one that appears or ‘claims’ to be doing something – referring to just one object, and which still appears to do this even if there is no such object.  Readers of Beyond Necessity will understand that I find this attractive.  Common sense suggests that a proper name, together with many other types of singular terms, has the same semantics whether or not there is an object corresponding to it.  The semantics of proper names, I have argued, is object independent.

The difficulty, as Crane acknowledges, is to explain how this is consistent with the distinction between singular and general thought, which any adequate theory of mind must account for. As I suggested in some earlier posts, there are apparently strong arguments showing that we can only explain the distinction by invoking semantic dependency on objects.  Singular thoughts (according to these arguments) are precisely those which depend for their existence on the existence of the objects they are about.  John McDowell defines a singular thought as ‘a thought that would not be available to be thought or expressed if the relevant object, or objects, did not exist’.

Crane's objective is a theory of singular thought - of which he provides only a brief sketch - which accommodates the distinction between singular and general thought, "but which also takes seriously the idea that a singular thought might merely purport to refer. In other words, a thinker can think about a particular object and yet fail to refer to that object in thought.”

More tomorrow.

The roots of direct reference 3

Argument Three.  A definition must provide the genus of the thing defined, and the specific difference by which the species defined is distinguished from every other species belonging to that kind. Thus only a species can be defined.  But a proper name be defined, for individuals are not species.  They have no specific difference, and can only be distinguished by the proper name itself.  Thus the meaning of a proper name is the individual it names.

Suggested by Reid again.  Of the Intellectual Powers, pp 219-20.  See also Argument 1, argument 2.

The roots of direct reference - argument 2

Argument Two (argument 1 is here).  When words in different languages mean the same thing, this reflects a common reality.  Thus, most human languages have words for sky, water, nose, earth, tree, animal etc.   Even when these are words for individuals (sun, moon, pole star), it is because the individuals are well known to all people in all (or most) places.  But most individuals are local, known only to the persons inhabiting that place, and so do not reflect a common reality.  Thus words for individuals - proper names - are confined to a corner of the world. 

Thus the meaning of most proper names is unknown to nearly all people in the world; they have no corresponding words in other languages; and they are not even reckoned to be words of their own language*. It follows that the meaning of a proper name involves direct acquaintance with the individual for which it is a name.

* The substance of this argument is almost entirely borrowed from Thomas Reid, T., Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, The Works of Thomas Reid, Edinburgh 1846, Essay V, p. 389.  See also this amusing page on awesomely untranslatable words, although the explanation of each word is entirely clear, suggesting that it is translatable after all.  E.g. the Japanese Kyoiku mama clearly, and somewhat perversely, means what I call a 'Chinese mother'. 

PS I looked at my notes and also found this by Locke (Essay III. iii. 3. Pringle-Pattison p. 227).

Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be understood: which is then only done when, by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of speech, excites in another man's mind who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. This cannot be done by names applied to particular things; whereof I alone having the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant or intelligible to another, who was not acquainted with all those very particular things which had fallen under my notice.

The Roots of Direct Reference

I’ve talked for a while about why the theory of Direct Reference may be false. (For the purpose of this discussion, call ‘Direct Reference’ the theory that part or all of the meaning of a proper name requires the existence of a named object). The primary reason for believing that it is false is the fact that fictional names are meaningful. I have discussed this a few time, but particularly here. The information that a proper name communicates to us is exhausted by what it would communicate us even if it had no ‘referent’ at all. The mere fact of the existence of a referent adds no further information to what the name already tells us, as is shown by meaningful texts like the New Testament, where we cannot be completely sure whether any of the proper names have a referent at all.

Even though the primary reasons for believing the theory is false are manifest and obvious, we must talk about the reasons that people have thought that theories of direct reference are true, for these are prima facie objections to any theory that is opposed to direct reference.

Argument One.  A term signifies either a property or an object*.  But properties are repeatable.  A property like being white, or running, or being bald can be instantiated by many individuals.  Even a property that can only be had by one individual at a time (being the tallest living philosopher) can be instantiated by different individuals at successive times, or could be instantiated by a different individual than the one that possesses it now.  If a proper name like 'Socrates' signified a property, even a unique property, it would make sense to say that this individual is Socrates on Tuesday, but that someone else is Socrates on Wednesday.  Or that this invidual is Socrates today, but might not have been Socrates.  But that makes no sense.  A proper name does not signify something that is repeatable, therefore does not signify a property.  Therefore it signifies an object.  Therefore an object is part or all of the meaning of a proper name, and the theory of Direct Reference, as defined above, is true.


* François Recanati defines singularism as the doctrine that ‘our thought is about individual objects as much as it is about properties’ (‘Singular Thought: in Defence of Acquaintance’ in Jeshion (ed.) New Essays on Singular Thought Oxford University Press 2010, 141-90, p. 142).

Direct Reference and the Christ Myth theory

I posted a comment on Vallicella's blog this morning, which this post largely incorporates.  According to Vallicella, most direct reference theories of proper names would seem to be committed to four theses which I summarise here.

1. A proper name denotes, designates, refers to, its bearer directly without the mediation of any properties.

2. Proper names are introduced at a 'baptismal ceremony' in which an individual is singled out as the name's bearer.

3. The connection established between name and bearer at the baptism is rigid: the name signifies that bearer in any modal context.

4. The name refers to the bearer only if there is a causal chain extending from S's use of N back to the baptism, where each user to whom the name is transmitted uses it with the intention of referring to the same object as the previous user.

This seems to leave out the most important characteristic of direct reference theory, namely the one expressed by Russell when he says "Whenever the grammatical subject of a proposition can be supposed not to exist without rendering the proposition meaningless, it is plain that the grammatical subject is not a proper name, i.e. not a name directly representing some object" (Principia Mathematica vol i p. 66). As I have argued elsewhere, this makes Frege a direct reference theorist, on one interpretation of Frege - essential reading here is Gareth Evans The Varieties of Reference, chapter 1.

This is a bullet that all direct theorists have to bite. The semantics of empty proper names do not obviously differ from that of non-empty names. For example, I cannot tell whether the 'Christ Myth' theory is true by examining the meaning of the proper name 'Christ'. (According to this theory, there never was such a historical person as Christ, the gospels are complete fiction). But according to a direct reference theorist, the name has no proper meaning at all if it is empty, and thus the semantics of empty proper names are manifestly different from non-empty proper names. Hoc absurdum et incredibile est.

The other features of direct reference theory that Bill mention are either features that follow from the primary claim of direct reference theory - the claim that the meaning is the bearer - or are props for the theory. Rigidity (thesis 3) follows from the meaning-bearer thesis. If the name has a meaning at all, it is because it means that very same object. Thus, in whatever context it has a meaning - and this includes modal contexts - it means that object. Thus it must 'rigidly' refer.

The baptismal requirement (thesis 2) follows from the primary thesis plus Russell's principle - the principle that we cannot make a judgment that is strictly about anything unless we know which object the judgment is about (see Problems of Philosophy p.58). Only when I am directly presented with an object in sense-perception can I truly know which object I am trying to name. We can 'pick out by sight or hearing or touch or otherwise sensibly discriminate' that object (Strawson, Individuals p.18). Perception affords a more 'intimate' or 'direct' relation in which the person stands to the object, in which the subject is en rapport with the object to be named.

The causal chain thesis (4) is a adjunct and buttress, rather than a consequence, of the theory. Given that the one imposing the name by baptism is en rapport with the bearer of the name, and so can use the name in a special way, and so any judgment he makes using that name, involves truly knowing which object the judgment is about, how do we explain the way in which the meaning of the name is communicated to others, who are not en rapport with the name-bearer?

Direct reference theorists introduce causation plus intention to explain this. It is by no means clear how this is to work. Suppose someone witnessed the ministry of Christ on earth, and so stood in an intimate and direct relation to the person of Christ. Then Christ died, rose, appeared to certain people, and then the witness sat down and wrote a gospel. The gospel is intended to communicate Christ's ministry and his death and resurrection to those who did not witness any of these events, and who had no such rapport with his person. How then can the name 'Christ' have the same meaning for one who was not a witness, as for one who was? In the understanding of the witness, 'Christ' has its baptismal meaning. For one who grasps this meaning, it is impossible that Christ should not exist. It would be like saying "this person here [pointing to Peter] does not exist". But in the understanding of one who was not a witness, the gospel is semantically indistinguishable from a mere story. One can read that story and reasonably ask whether Christ existed at all. Semantic analysis of the gospel will not resolve the 'Christ myth' controversy.

So it is clear that, even if the writer of the gospel is using the name 'Christ' in the special meaning that requires rapport with the person of Christ, and even if he uses it with the intention of referring to that person, he cannot communicate that special, direct meaning to the non-witness. Otherwise, as I say, the Christ myth controversy would not be a controversy.

In conclusion, the primary distinguishing characteristic of direct reference theory is that the meaning of a proper name is its bearer, i.e. that the bearer must exist in order for the name to have a meaning at all. The theses that Bill mentions are either logical consequences of this primary thesis, or are mere props, futile attempts to save it.