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Full Idea
A baptism which, perhaps through some radical mistake, is the baptism of nothing, is as good a propagator of a new use as a baptism of an object.
Gist of Idea
A new usage of a name could arise from a mistaken baptism of nothing
Source
Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.3)
Book Ref
'Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language', ed/tr. Lepore,E/Smith,B [OUP 2008], p.406
A Reaction
An obvious example might be the Loch Ness Monster. There is something intuitively wrong about saying that physical objects are actually part of linguistic meaning or reference. I am not a meaning!
| 8982 | Vague concepts are concepts without boundaries [Sainsbury] |
| 8983 | If 'red' is vague, then membership of the set of red things is vague, so there is no set of red things [Sainsbury] |
| 8984 | If concepts are vague, people avoid boundaries, can't spot them, and don't want them [Sainsbury] |
| 8985 | Boundaryless concepts tend to come in pairs, such as child/adult, hot/cold [Sainsbury] |
| 8986 | We should abandon classifying by pigeon-holes, and classify around paradigms [Sainsbury] |
| 10429 | It is best to say that a name designates iff there is something for it to designate [Sainsbury] |
| 10425 | Definite descriptions may not be referring expressions, since they can fail to refer [Sainsbury] |
| 10431 | Things are thought to have a function, even when they can't perform them [Sainsbury] |
| 10432 | A new usage of a name could arise from a mistaken baptism of nothing [Sainsbury] |
| 10434 | Even a quantifier like 'someone' can be used referentially [Sainsbury] |
| 10438 | Definite descriptions are usually rigid in subject, but not in predicate, position [Sainsbury] |