An Inferentialist Account of Proper Names
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Keywords

inferentialism
substitution
proper names
anaphora
semantics
Robert Brandom

Abstract

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxvii1.03

In this paper, I defend an inferentialist account of proper names. After a review of how the account works in the framework of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism, I focus on two objections. The first one, from a Russellian view, is that the inferentialist account will eventually collapse into a Russellian description theory of proper names. The second, from a Millian view, is that the account fails due to the fact that proper names in fact have no conceptual content, as they are merely meaningless tags. I conclude by recapitulating the advantages of the inferentialist account of proper names.

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References

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