Filled Names

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

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JONES in Predelli post, writes:

"Vacuous names lack a designatum but do have a correlate, and all have the same correlate? Are fictional names vacuous?"

I think Grice is being rhetorical. We shouldn't think of names as _bags_. A bag is vauous or not.

I don't know where he got that idea. Perhaps 'empty' is a better term, as in this Stanford publication on "Empty names". I wrote to the editor of that piece, noting the Grice reference, and he wrote back that it was too early a reference to be 'true'.

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I think Quine is into something about "Pegasus".

It's best to see it as 'p'

Px

x has property P, "Pegasus"

x pegasises.

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Science does not really _need_ names.

I think Harrison (a favourite philosopher of mine) makes the same point in "An introduction to the philosophy of language"). It would be odd to name snow "Arthur" and say that

Arthur is white

as we

say

snow is white.

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Natural kinds don't have names like "Arthur".

Perhaps the problem is Plato's. All problems are Plato's -- Ryle's book, "Plato's progress" is perhaps a misnomer.

Back in old Greece, they did not have much of a choice. Things were 'onomata'.

"Onomaton" being the singular.

This translates, in Latin, as 'nomen'.

English 'name'.

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But we have English 'nominal', which is better.

So, when we speak of 'names and descriptions', are we suggesting 'descriptions' are not names?

Recall that in Latin, there are no articles so that

"Pegasus" "the flying horse"

would come out as

Pegasus flying horse

i.e.

Pegasus horse flying

now it may be and will be argued that the three items above are _names_.

"Pegasus" is dubbed a 'proper' name (as if "Matilda" were an _improper_ name?)

horse is nomen substantivum

and

flying or volatile, if you prefer, is

nomen adjectivum

I.e. names.

So a 'description' does reduce to names, names, names.

Polonius, in "Hamlet", prefers: "Words, words, words."

And it may be argued that Grice is right in WoW:III about 'to'.

"What is the meaning of 'to'?" -- he thinks, is otiose.

We don't think of 'to' as we think of "Fido" or 'dog'.

Alice was equally confused:

"My name is Alice".
What does that mean?
Must a name mean anything?
Of course it must!

But then it's Humpty-Dumpty speaking and with a name that is possibly a logical entailment.

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Grice's example of a vacuous name in "Vacuous Name" is a composite one:

"Marmaduke Bloggs"

--- He doesn't really care much about the _name_ itself, but what Grice calls its associated _dossier_:

_he_ was invented by the journalists as being the first man to climb Mt Everest on hands and knees.

"Are you here for Marmaduke Bloggs?"
"Yes. The party is in his honour."
"But you know he wont' be attending."
"Why?"
"He does not exist."
"How?"
"He was invented by the journalists."
"So, I guess someone won't be attending the party."
"I guess you have not heard me distinctly. I said he doesn't exist."
"So. I guess YOU have not heard me distinctly. I said someone AIN'T attending the party. Surely you won't object me to keep vacuous names as legitimate meaningful topics of my conversations, will you?"

And so on.

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