caa a22 4500 606154264 CHVBK 20210128100557.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150801xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10988-015-9177-9 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10988-015-9177-9 Predelli Stefano Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK aut Who's afraid of the predicate theory of names? [Elektronische Daten] [Stefano Predelli] This essay is devoted to an analysis of the semantic significance of a fashionable view of proper names, the Predicate Theory of names (PT), typically developed in the direction of the Metalinguistic Theory of names (MT). According to MT, ‘syntactic evidence supports the conclusion that a name such as ‘Kennedy' is analyzable in terms of the predicate (general term) ‘individual named ‘Kennedy''. This analysis is in turn alleged to support a descriptivist treatment of proper names in designative position, presumably in contrast with theories of names as ‘directly referring rigid designators'. The main aim of this essay is that of questioning the significance of PT and MT as theories of designation: even granting for the argument's sake that names are analyzable as (metalinguistic) predicates, their designative occurrences may be interpreted in consonance with the dictates of Direct Reference—indeed, in consonance with the radically anti-descriptivist version of Direct Reference I call Millianism. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2015 Names nationallicence Descriptivism nationallicence Millianism nationallicence Direct Reference nationallicence Linguistics and Philosophy Springer Netherlands 38/4(2015-08-01), 363-376 0165-0157 38:4<363 2015 38 10988 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9177-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9177-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Predelli Stefano Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Linguistics and Philosophy Springer Netherlands 38/4(2015-08-01), 363-376 0165-0157 38:4<363 2015 38 10988