A pragmatic defense of Millianism |
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Authors: | Arvid Båve |
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Institution: | (1) Filosofiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden |
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Abstract: | A new kind of defense of the Millian theory of names is given, which explains intuitive counter-examples as depending on pragmatic effects of the relevant sentences, by direct application of Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory and uncontroversial assumptions. I begin by arguing that synonyms are always intersubstitutable, despite Mates’ considerations, and then apply the method to names. Then, a fairly large sample of cases concerning names are dealt with in related ways. It is argued that the method, as applied to the various cases, satisfies the criterion of success: that for every sentence in context, it is a counter-example to Millianism to the extent that it has pragmatic effects (matching speakers’ intuitions). |
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Keywords: | Names Mill Millianism Millian Reference Soames Salmon Pragmatic Kripke Direct reference Relevance Proper names Mates Pragmatics Rigidity Sperber Wilson Implicature |
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