Some Remarks on the Presuppositional Account of Proper Names

NICOLÁS FRANCISCO LO GUERCIO

Campinas

Workshop; Workshop CLE-SADAF on Semantics and Metaphysics; 2018

Centro de Logica e Epistemologia

In a recent paper in Mind, Garcıa-Carpintero (2017) argues for what he denominates the Mill-Frege theory of proper names. According to the Mill-Frege theory, proper names possess metalinguistic descriptive senses which take part in semantic presuppositions. Allegedly, the view fares better than other forms of metalinguistic descriptivism such as Predicativism, and is able to answer the well-known modal, semantic and epistemic arguments formulated by Kripke. In this short article I present an argument against the Mill-Frege theory, which I call the collapse argument. In short, I argue that the Mill-Frege theory has the unwelcome consequence of making contexts of use and appropriate contexts of use collapse. If this is correct, a presuppositional account of the metalinguistic descriptions allegedly associated with proper names proves incorrect.