Talk:Descriptivist theory of names
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[edit] Too short I think..
I'm surprised how short this one turned out to be. It seemed like it was longer when I was writing it. I'll have to expand a bit.--Lacatosias 17:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Other Languages?
"Hesperus is Phosphorus."
Has anything been said about how these theories propose to deal with translation? Like, "Santa Clause is le pere noel"?
Yes, supposing you did not know that Santa Clause and "Babbo Natale" (I will leave aside "le pere noel" which is a definite description and brings in other considerations) refer to (i.e. designate) one and the same entity. Then the statement that "Santa Claus is Babbo Natale" is a perfectly reasonable, informative and meaningful statment on this theory. For Millian direct reference this represents a serious problem: the meaning of proper names ARE their referents. Saying "Santa Clause is Babbo Natale" and perhaps "Santa Clause is le pere noel" is the same exact thing as saying "Santa Clause is Santa Clause". In a nutshell, the distinction between sense and reference eliminates the problem where a=b is equivalent to a=a by (sort of) postulating two distinct levels of meaning. --Lacatosias 17:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Whooooooaa!! Sorry about that!! My synaptic connections must be withering away in this heat or something. Santa Clause, of course, does not refer to anything and hence any statement/utterance involving Santa Clause is meangingless for Millian direct reference theorists. Hesperus is phosphorus (the morning star and the evening star) both refer to Venus. So, for a simple interlinguitsic example, let's take "the morning star is la stella della sera" . According to Millianism, this statement is just the useless tautology "Venus=Venus". (Of course, Millians respond by invoking pragmatic --ie.communicative intentions, context, etc--considerations to try to resolve these intuitive weaknesses). But for desciptivism,this is not a problem at all (there are OTHER problems) since "the morning star" and "la stella della sera" have sense (modes of presentation, in the Fregean jargin) as well as reference. Thereofre, although the descripstion "the morning star" and "le stellla..." refer to the same thing, they have different senses. One could know about the sense of one and not know abou the sense of the other (not know that they refer to the same thing). The statement is meanignful becaue it informs someone of the fact that the two terms refer to the samr thing.--Lacatosias 11:13, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Paragraph makes sense?
The paragraph beginning "In general, descriptivist theories can be formalized ..." makes little sense to me. Looks like something was lost in the editting. --Philogo 14:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
