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In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning , and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy .
In the philosophy of language, the descriptivist theory of proper names (also descriptivist theory of reference) [1] is the view that the meaning or semantic content of a proper name is identical to the descriptions associated with it by speakers, while their referents are determined to be the objects that satisfy these descriptions.
Kripke's main goals in this first lecture are to explain and critique the existing philosophical opinions on the way that names work. In the mid-20th century, the most significant philosophical theory about the nature of names and naming was a theory of Gottlob Frege's that had been developed by Bertrand Russell, the descriptivist theory of names, which was sometimes known as the 'Frege ...
Keith Sedgwick Donnellan (/ ˈ d ɒ n əl ə n /; June 25, 1931 [2] – February 20, 2015) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy (later professor emeritus) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Donnellan contributed to the philosophy of language, notably to the analysis of proper names and definite descriptions.
Frege's puzzles are puzzles about the semantics of proper names, although related puzzles also arise in the case of indexicals. Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) introduced the puzzle at the beginning of his article "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" ("On Sense and Reference") in 1892 in one of the most influential articles in analytic philosophy and philosophy of language.
The Analects states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names, that is, to perceive, understand, and deal with reality. Confucius' solution to this was the "rectification of names". He gave an explanation to one of his disciples: A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve.
The study of proper names is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology, while a rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper names is a matter for philosophy of language. [citation needed] Occasionally, what would otherwise be regarded as a proper noun is used as a common noun, in which case a plural form and a determiner are possible.
What matters is that the writer is broadcasting a meaning that points to a specific (though not necessarily singular) referent, using a name conventionally treated as proper. The key to the meaning of proper name in philosophy is whether a competent reader (or competent readers in the aggregate) can get the intended specific-referent meaning ...