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Single Idea 12974

[filed under theme 5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names ]

Full Idea

Someone who goes wrong in relating an idea to a name will usually go wrong about the thing he wants the name to stand for.

Gist of Idea

People who can't apply names usually don't understand the thing to which it applies

Source

Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.29)

Book Ref

Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.265

A Reaction

This seems to give tentative support to a Millian account of names, whose only content is just the thing which is named. Leibniz's observation certainly seems to be right.

The 32 ideas with the same theme [general ideas about how names function in sentences]:

13777 A name is a sort of tool [Plato]
13790 A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato]
13791 Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato]
12974 People who can't apply names usually don't understand the thing to which it applies [Leibniz]
10427 All names are names of something, real or imaginary [Mill]
18772 We can treat designation by a few words as a proper name [Frege]
8447 In 'Etna is higher than Vesuvius' the whole of Etna, including all the lava, can't be the reference [Frege]
6102 You can understand 'author of Waverley', but to understand 'Scott' you must know who it applies to [Russell]
10423 There are a set of criteria for pinning down a logically proper name [Russell, by Sainsbury]
9364 Names represent a uniformity in experience, or they name nothing [Lewis,CI]
18727 A person's name doesn't mean their body; bodies don't sit down, and their existence can be denied [Wittgenstein]
4139 Naming is a preparation for description [Wittgenstein]
23506 Names are primitive, and cannot be analysed [Wittgenstein]
8453 If we had to name objects to make existence claims, we couldn't discuss all the real numbers [Quine]
10786 Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun [Marcus (Barcan)]
10788 Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference [Marcus (Barcan)]
17505 Using proper names properly doesn't involve necessary and sufficient conditions [Putnam]
14650 Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga]
10437 Names are rigid, making them unlike definite descriptions [Kripke, by Sainsbury]
4949 Names are rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke]
9038 We must distinguish what the speaker denotes by a name, from what the name denotes [Evans]
5824 How can an expression be a name, if names can change their denotation? [Evans]
9042 A private intention won't give a name a denotation; the practice needs it to be made public [Evans]
13360 In logic, a name is just any expression which refers to a particular single object [Bostock]
12648 Names in thought afford a primitive way to bring John before the mind [Fodor]
12650 'Paderewski' has two names in mentalese, for his pianist file and his politician file [Fodor]
3005 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties [Fodor]
13402 We only grasp a name if we know whether to apply it when the bearer changes [Jubien]
13405 The baptiser picks the bearer of a name, but social use decides the category [Jubien]
12876 Philosophy is stuck on the Fregean view that an individual is anything with a proper name [Simons]
13134 We negate predicates but do not negate names [Westerhoff]
18935 Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful [Sawyer]