Understanding Names

Abstract

Frege’s stipulation leads to trouble. Take almost any proper name and you will find users of the name who identify its referent in quite different ways. Are we to conclude that such people speak different languages with the same words? This is what Frege implied. Recently, several philosophers have sought to avoid this awkwardness by being less pedantic. For example, Evans: “the single main requirement for understanding a use of a proper name is that one think of the referent⋯ but is there any particular way in which one must think of the object? It would appear not.”² This relaxed attitude is enough to avert the fragmentation of our language into a thousand peculiar idiolects. But before relaxing, we must ask ourselves why Frege held it was sometimes important that his stipulation be fulfilled.

Accordingly, with a proper name, it is a matter of the way the object so designated is presented. This may happen in different ways, and to every such way there corresponds a special sense of a sentence containing the proper name. The different thoughts thus obtained from the same sentences correspond in truth value, of course; that is to say, if one is true, then all are true, and if one is false then all are false. Nevertheless, the difference must be recognized. so we must really stipulate that for every proper name there shall be just one associated manner of presentation of the object so designated. It is often unimportant that this stipulation should be fulfilled but not always. ¹