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Journal of Philosophy
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522 THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS 523
It should not be thought that every phrase of the form 'the x such
that Fx' is always used in English as a description rather than a name. I
guess everyone has heard about The Holy Roman Empire, which was
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524 THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
neither holy, Roman nor an empire. Today we have The United Na-
tons. Here it would seem that since these things can be so-called, even
though they are not Holy Roman United Nations, these phrases should
be regarded not as definite descriptions, but as names (op. cit., p. 26).
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS 525
Thus Russell, Marcus, and Kripke all agree that a designator can-
not be a (genuine) proper name, unless there exists a particular in-
dividual that it tags. As we shall see in a moment, the idea that there
is a direct link between such a name and its referent has important
ramifications for such theories in speaking about fictive objects. Mar-
cus is very clear on this point. She states that:
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THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
526
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS 527
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528
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS 529
the term 'proper name' is hardly ever used. Clearly, the ordinary
person would be right. 'Proper name' is a technical term, invented
by grammarians, linguists, and other specialists in language. In such
disciplines, it is used metalinguistically to speak about the grammar
of particular object languages, and in particular to distinguish nouns
that apply to individual persons, places, and things from so-called
common nouns, like 'tiger' and 'gold'. Ordinary speakers are not in
the grammar business and hence do not employ (or need) this met-
alinguistic terminology. Accordingly, they do not say of persons or
places that they have proper names. Instead, they speak about the
names simpliciter of such entities and objects. They will ask: 'What is
the name of the city you visited last year?' not 'What is the proper
name of the city you visited last year?'; or 'What is his name?' and
not 'What is his proper name?' An ordinary person hearing the ques-
tion 'What is his proper name?' would be puzzled by it. Is the inter-
rogator suggesting that the person is using a pseudonym or an alias,
for example? Apart from such special contexts, the question would
possibly not be understood at all.
Second, they would accept premise (4), that is, that fictive objects
in ordinary discourse have proper names, only if it were modified.
The modification would consist in dropping the word 'proper' and
thus concurring that in ordinary discourse, fictive objects have
names. That is, they would say that words like 'Sherlock Holmes' and
'Odysseus', are just as much names as 'Bill Clinton' or 'Bertrand Rus-
sell'. If asked by a philosopher of what 'Sherlock Holmes' and
'Odysseus' are supposedly the names (and assuming that they know
the relevant literary references), they might be puzzled by the ques-
tion. It seems obvious that they are the names of Sherlock Holmes
and Odysseus.
Before considering the other three steps in the argument, one
might also pursue the point further, in a Meno-like fashion, seeing if
one could elicit an argument in support of step (4) as modified.
Here are two that might emerge from the process.
(1) Suppose a philosopher were to ask an ordinary individual to
pick out the proper names in the following list:
'Paula'
'the discoverer of America'
'a metal'
'Santa Claus'
'Columbus'
'Zeus'
'chief of staff'
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530 THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS 531
One cannot tag (that is, directly refer to) that which does not exist.
...it would not in general be correct to say that a statement was about Mr.
X, or the-so-and-so, unless there were such a person or thing (ibid., p.
35).
The principle can be traced back to the pre-Socratics, but its locus
classicus in philosophy of language can be found in Frege. In a fa-
mous passage he asserts:
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532 THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
situation is not merely that it is false, but that it is obviously so; for it
is a plain fact that we do use language to refer to nonexistent (in-
cluding fictive) objects by name, and to make true (or sometimes
false) statements about such objects. It is plainly true to say that
Odysseus was married to Penelope, and that Hamlet was not married
to Ophelia, and false to say otherwise. Literary critics, and indeed
just ordinary readers, frequently discuss the characters of fictive per-
sonages: for example, Emma in the eponymous novel byJane
Austen. In doing so, they use all the resources of everyday speech
that they would use in talking about real persons, alluding to places
where such personages live, identifying those places by name, histori-
cal origin, and so forth. Those fictive names are transferred by a
causal chain from generation to generation in just the way that the
names of real historical persons are.
In such contexts, one is speaking about fictive objects not in any
secondary sense of 'about', if there be such, but in the same sense of
about in which I have been speaking about Saul Kripke and Ruth
Marcus in this paper. More generally, what is true is that whatever
can be said about nonfictional objects can be said about fictional
ones; and whatever can be said in our daily talk outside of fiction can
be said within or about fiction. Such talk includes every possible use
of ordinary discourse: jokes, lies, true and false statements, direct
and indirect references, asides, and the application of names to
characters, places, and things.
IV. THE SOLUTION
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PROPER NAMES, NAMES, AND FICTIVE OBJECTS
533
proper names are tags (premise 1 of the dilemma), we can then use
such names to refer to fictive entities in just the way that ordinary
speakers do. We would thus need no special theory about the use of
so-called proper names in fiction.
Third, it would entail that we do not have to construe so-called
proper names as abbreviated descriptions in fictive contexts. Even
better, it would entail that such names are not abbreviations for de-
scriptions whether used in fictive or nonfictive contexts. Whatever
the context, they would just be names in the ordinary sense of that
term. The Russellian and the direct-reference options would thus
both be rendered otiose. Fourth, it would entail that there is no dif-
ference in referential power between names and descriptions. The
idea that so-called proper names refer directly and that descriptions
do not is a red herring. Misidentification can occur with the use of
names and in other ways as well. I can refer with "equal directness"
to a neighbor as 'the young man next door', or as 'Donald Wilson'.
Which I do shall depend on various contextual factors, such as
whether I know the name of the person next door or not. But nam-
ing has no special referential sanctity in such cases. Depending on
circumstances, either can do the job equally well.
Fifth, it would entail a greater sensitivity to the nuances of every-
day discourse. One of the serious liabilities of the direct-reference
doctrine is that it attempts to find one and only one relationship-
tagging to explain how names refer. My view says that reference via
names is multifarious, having various forms. In particular, we should
distinguish between such notions as mentioning x, and referring to
x; and between both of them and such notions as picking out x and
identifying x, which should also be discriminated from one another.
These are all different actions. I can pick out persons, say, males
from females in a group, without being able to identify any particu-
lar individual, and each of these actions is different from mention-
ing or referring to someone or something. I can perform both of the
latter without picking anything out or identifying anything or any-
one. I can mention by name, say, thatJack the Ripper was the serial
killer who murdered Xwithout being able to identifyJack the Rip-
per, and certainly without being able to pick him out of a group of
suspects in a police lineup. Picking out, mentioning, speaking about,
referring to, identifying, and other modes of discriminating things
from one another are all ways that names work in everyday speech.
There is thus no single form of specification, such as tagging, which
is the key to understanding how names are used in human commu-
. .
nlcatlon.
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534 THEJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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