Paste your essay in here…Descriptivism Versus Predicativism: Fara and Russell’s Naming Theory
Naming the world we live within is one of the most essential human functions for language. The calling of one thing by a name, and theorizing how this name comes to impact the thing’s existence within the world has been a crucial conversation in the philosophy of language. Among theories presented as to the semantic function and form of names, two of the most foundational have been Bertrand Russell’s descriptivism first detailed in his 1919 work Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy and Delia Fara’s much more recent theory predicativism introduced in her paper Names Are Predicates. The following paper will explore descriptivism and predicativism comparing the nature of both theories and putting these frameworks upon a series of examples to show the nuanced differences they see in natural language practice of naming. Furthermore, it will put the philosopher's theories in conversation with each other to explore the advantages and faults that occur when a given theory is used. From this, I will argue that Fara’s predicativism succeeds in providing semantic framework for the use of names in natural language more than Russell’s descriptivism.
Russell’s theory of descriptivism came to be in the early 20th century, his work building off the past century of dialogue about the Gottlob Frege’s outline of descriptivist philosophy. His main departure from Frege comes from his belief that there is only one level of meaning, that level being reference. Firstly, to Russell there are logical names and ordinary names. Logical names are accompanied by indexicals (words like ‘this’ and ‘that’) to refer to objects in direct contact with the speaker. These proper names have the simple semantic meaning of standing in for a given object; for example if I am talking about my pen and say “that pen”, it is a logically tagged name. Ordinary proper names are the more interesting case for Russell as he considers these to be abbreviated definite descriptions. Definite descriptions are considered any name in the formulation “the x”, for example meaning that a proper name such as Aristotle is an abbreviated definite description for “the teacher of Alexander the Great” or “The most renowned philosopher of ancient Greece”. These definite descriptors must pick out one unique object, for example “the tall student in class” is not a definite descriptor, as there may be more than one student considered tall, but “the tallest student in class” would be a definite description. In this, the name ‘Aristotle’ is a stand in for all the descriptions which refer to that same name. The semantic meaning of a proper name is the same as the descriptions any given speaker associated with it.
Descriptivism advantages come mainly from how well the theory accounts for meaning and semantic value. An example of this is found in the case of co-referring names. In the case of the sentence “Clark Kent is Superman”, other naming theories, particularly Millinism, which was the most prominent naming theory at the time, would view this sentence as not cognitively significant, or conveying any true meaning as both names point out to the same object. In short, in other naming theories would see the sentence “Clark Kent is Superman” the same as “Clark Kent is Clark Kent” or “Superman is Superman”. Descriptivism is able to account for why the sentence does hold cognitive significance in natural language, as it views Superman a descriptor for the Clark Kent, a name which holds other such definite descriptions that can be attributed to it. In this, descriptivism is a theory which folds well and it able to account for natural usage of language, and how names are able to hold semantic value in identity statements.
Arguments against descriptivism are also found in the case of co-referring names. As argued by another philosopher of language, Saul Kripke, Russell’s theories have gaps at the modal, epistemic, and semantic levels. An example of where Russell’s reading faces difficulty can be explained with the previous example. To Russell, as shown above, “Clark Kent is Superman” holds semantic value and cognitive significance, the similar holds true if the sentence were to be turned into a possible negative, “Clark Kent may not be Superman”. But if Russell’s views are to apply, logically the sentence “Clark Kent may not be Clark Kent” seems false. This is to say that if names are placeholders for their descriptors, here Russell’s views lack an ability conceptualize and explain certain phenomena of natural language.
Where descriptivism views names as objects of direct reference, that which is pointed to by a definite description, predicativism, conceptualized heavily by Fara, is an aptly named theory which views names as predicates. In essence, a name is what is ascribed to an individual in the theory of predicativism. To begin, a predicate in the theory of predicativism is everything that is not the subject. In the example “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander the Great”, a predicatavist would take “the teacher of Alexander the Great” to be the predicate. Predicativism is a theory that says that names hold the same semantic value as predicates. In addition, predicates hold a truth value, they are either true or false of their bearers, meaning the name, as an object, will yield true if the predicate is true, and false if the predicate is false. Fara’s main conception of predicativism revolves around the Being-Called Condition or BCC, which formulates the meaning of the name ‘N’ as being called “N”, where ‘N’ is equivalent to ‘the name N’. ‘Aristotle’, thus, as a predicate is true if and only if the thing is called Aristotle; or in a bastardized form to Fara, ‘Aristotle’ is true of a thing in the case it is called ‘Aristotle’. In the theory of predicativism, names themselves hold minimal information, they simply evaluate to true or false based on the truth or falsity of the predicate they attach with, giving the predicate view of names flexibility and ambiguity names do not have in descriptivism and referentialism.
Predicativism has many advantages in explaining the use of names in natural language. One of these has to do with the fact that predicativism accounts for, more that descriptivasim, and of Kripke’s refentialism, that multiple individuals may bear the same name. Perhaps not Clark Kent, but many names are shared, for example Aditi Rao picks out both the person writing this paper, and a Bollywood actress. Predicativism functions on placing little information within the name itself. Whereas the descriptivist would say Aditi Rao is a collection of definite descriptions, the name encoded with meaning regardless of how many referrents may share the name, the predicativist works within the ambiguity of shared names. The ‘Aditi Rao’ in both “Aditi Rao is a Bollywood actress” and “Aditi Rao is a student writing a paper” can both be true given the Being-Called Condition. The connection of name to predicate is in a sense between the speaker and the spoken to, the name itself holds no inherent informational value. This advantage in understanding shared names applies to many named objects, such as places like the Springfield located in every U.S. state. This is all to say, prediciativism is able to blend more into our framework of natural language for it understands that proper nouns are extremely similar in function to common nouns, like cat and pigeon, and treating them as such resolves some of the gaps created by descriptivism.
Many of the disadvantages in predicativism arise from the same root of ambiguity, where in the theory is able to thrive in maneuvering the nuances of natural language in some situations, and in other creates a further gap in understanding. As the prediciate view encodes such minimal information within the name, names too are able to lose some of their importance as tags that help order the world. Let us take the current first family as an example. Remembering that all names contain a truth-value statement, consider average citizen Jane Trump. The Being-Called Condition would evaluate the statement “Jane Trump is not a Trump” to be false, given that she is in fact named Trump. In common language there is some understanding and accountability to the usage of commonly understood terms such as the surname of a well-known family (i.e. in common conversation it would be understood the reference of Trump to refer to a family outside the naming of Jane). In the same vein of thought, the statement “Jared Kushner is a Trump” too would evaluate to be false, though it is in fact true that he belongs to the general Trump family though not named as such. The scope of the theory here feels limited, as the name is encoded with too little information to truly serve the pragmatic purpose that names often do in natural language.