Ideas of Sarah Sawyer, by Theme

[British, fl. 2012, Lecturer at the University of Sussex.]

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5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names

18935	Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful
	Full Idea: A semantic theory of names should deliver a specification of the conditions under which a name names an individual, and hence a specification of the conditions under which a name is empty.
	From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1)
	A reaction: Naming can be private, like naming my car 'Bertrand', but never tell anyone. I like Plato's remark that names are 'tools'. Do we specify conditions for successful spanner-usage? The first step must be individuation, preparatory to naming.

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / c. Names as referential

18945	Millians say a name just means its object
	Full Idea: The Millian view of direct reference says that the meaning of a name is the object named.
	From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 4)
	A reaction: Any theory that says meaning somehow is features of the physical world strikes me as totally misguided. Napoleon is a man, so he can't be part of a sentence. He delegates that job to words (such as 'Napoleon').

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names

18934	Sentences with empty names can be understood, be co-referential, and even be true
	Full Idea: Some empty names sentences can be understood, so appear to be meaningful ('Pegasus was sired by Poseidon'), ...some appear to be co-referential ('Santa Claus'/'Father Christmas'), and some appear to be straightforwardly true ('Pegasus doesn't exist').
	From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1)
	A reaction: Hang on to this, when the logicians arrive and start telling you that your talk of empty names is vacuous, because there is no object in the 'domain' to which a predicate can be attached. Meaning, reference and truth are the issues around empty names.

18938	Frege's compositional account of truth-vaues makes 'Pegasus doesn't exist' neither true nor false
	Full Idea: In Frege's account sentences such as 'Pegasus does not exist' will be neither true nor false, since the truth-value of a sentence is its referent, and the referent of a complex expression is determined by the referent of its parts.
	From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 2)
	A reaction: We can keep the idea of 'sense', which is very useful for dealing with empty names, but tweak his account of truth-values to evade this problem. I'm thinking that meaning is compositional, but truth-value isn't.

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / c. Theory of definite descriptions

18947	Definites descriptions don't solve the empty names problem, because the properties may not exist
	Full Idea: If it were possible for a definite description to be empty - not in the sense of there being no object that satisfies it, but of there being no set of properties it refers to - the problem of empty names would not have been solved.
	From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 5)
	A reaction: Swoyer is thinking of properties like 'is a unicorn', which are clearly just as vulnerable to being empty as 'the unicorn' was. It seems unlikely that 'horse', 'white' and 'horn' would be empty.