Foreword
My goal in this book is not to suggest new philosophical hunches about how proper names could work referentially, or even to take a strong stand on the multifarious present discussion. My goal is rather to develop what seems to me, in its foundations, to be an unexpectedly complex, comprehensive, and definitive kind of two-tiered cluster theory of reference for proper names, with wide-ranging consequences for other terms.
My methodological assumptions are also diverse; they constitute a much more pragmatically than formally oriented “philosophizing by examples” (Stroll). This philosophizing by examples was to a large extent inspired by Wittgenstein’s later comprehensive, anti-scientistic, natural-language “therapeutic” philosophy grounded on the idea of a “surveyable representation” (übersichtliche Darstellung) of the way language works—a critical procedure that much of the present metaphysics of language does its best to forget. Along with it comes the multi-faceted technique of using any available resource to approach philosophical problems (Searle). Another influence was the criticism against the fragmentation of present academic philosophy arising from scientism and premature specialization (Haack). Instead, according to her, we should proceed by means of successive approximations, trying to reintegrate philosophical views on the basis of a principle ofconsilience, i. e., the idea that reality, being unified, fosters inter-theoretical agreement. I believe that to a reasonable extent, this can also be the best strategy for the philosophical investigation of reference, which leads me to incorporate in my project ideas foreign to the sub-field. For instance, Donald Williams’ radically empiricist trope theory is here taken as a grounding ontological assumption. For such reasons, all that this book really demands from the reader is not as much proficiency as readiness for a new start.
To make the undertakingprima facie justifiable, some orienting historical remarks are in order. Concerning the investigation of the mechanisms of reference for proper names, there have been two distinct periods in the philosophy of linguistic analysis. The first is that of theold orthodoxy. It was already inaugurated by Frege in the 19th century with the suggestion of a descriptivist view of proper names. In the 20th century, the main actors were Wittgenstein, Russell, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, and P. F. Strawson, along with logical positivist philosophers like Rudolph Carnap, Carl Hempel and, following similar lines, W. V. O. Quine. The old orthodoxy was continued by philosophers like Michael Dummett and Gareth Evans, still in England, and Paul Grice and John Searle in the USA (which also had some later influence in Germany through works by Ernst Tugendhat and Jürgen Habermas). They mainly assumed that the mechanisms of reference were internal, implicitly cognitive, and in one way or another, accessible through descriptions. Moreover, these thinkers tended to be anti-metaphysical.
The second period can be called thenew orthodoxy. This period was initiated by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan in the early seventies with their causal-historical views of proper names. A group of very original philosophers joined them: Hilary Putnam, David Kaplan, David Lewis, John Perry, Tyler Burge, and Nathan Salmon… followed by Scott Soames and many others. Regarding mechanisms of reference, they were typically externalists, causalists, and to a greater or lesser extent, anti-cognitivists and anti-descriptivists. Moreover, much of their work had some metaphysical commitment, for instance, to essences andde re necessities. Gradually, they increased their influence on the philosophy
