On Predicating Proper Names
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10693756 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Lockwood (0000-0002-1385-5118, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1975 |
| Volume | 84 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 471 |
| Publication date | 1975-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2183850 |
| OpenAlex | W2315401572 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
M ILL'S System of Logic is not often turned to by contemporary philosophers as a source of insights regarding the philosophy of language. To be sure, the terms and denotation, which Mill coined, have passed into quite general circulation; and Mill's doctrine of proper names has recently regained a certain popularity largely as a result of the writings of Kripke. But the notions of connotation and denotation seem generally to be understood in the context of a Fregean or Carnapian scheme of thought which is, to a large extent, alien to Mill's own way of conceiving language; and Mill's views on proper names are usually discussed entirely without reference to what, for Mill, constitutes their theoretical rationale. To some, it may come as a surprise to learn that Mill actually had anything amounting to a theory of language. In fact, however, there is to be gleaned from Mill's Logic a theory of quite considerable sophistication which I shall attempt, in part, to reconstruct and defend. What will emerge from our discussion is a conception of proper names which combines elements that might seem, at first blush, incompatible with one another. I shall argue that the Kripke-Donnellan conception of proper names as rigid designators or purely referential devices is anticipated by Mill to an even greater degree than is generally recognized; but that, curiously, this conception does not prevent Mill from allowing that proper names can function as genuine predicates. We shall find that, even for Mill, there is, after all, a sense in which proper names might be said to connote
Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Linguistics · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 1977 - 2025 (49) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |