Proper Names and Reference

What mechanisms determine the meaning of proper names? Drawing from semantic and metasemantic perspectives, this book offers a novel theory.

Names raise controversial issues in philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Stefano Pugnaghi explores The first part of the text focuses on the contemporary debates on names’ meaning, discussing particularly the debates between predicativist and referentialist accounts of names and the one between constant and non-constant referentialist views.

Pugnaghi describes some challenges to a predicative account of names, defending instead a Millian account of names’ meaning and offering a new way of conceiving the mechanisms through which names acquire such meaning. This approach to names’ reference-fixing is inspired by the Kripkean picture but capable of capturing the freedom with which names are introduced.