Abstract

This dissertation claims that non-referring names, commonly thought to have no semantic content, do indeed have such content: sentences containing such names can have determinate truth conditions, conditions guaranteed by the existence of stories of origin attached to paradigmatic such names . The discussion begins with a historical overview of the semantics of names, moving from Frege and Russell through recent writers such as Gareth Evans, Nathan Salmon, Mark Richard, and Graeme Forbes. Support for the view that the semantic content of names can be extra-referential comes from the finding that the problem of co-referential names posits the necessity of there being more to semantic content than reference alone. The necessity of the referent as part of the semantic content of a name is addressed in the context of Evans' claim that only the referent can offer proof to communicants that they are speaking of the same thing, when they are. Contra Evans, I find that a story of origin associated with fictional names can also underwrite successful communication, and contra Hilary Putnam, there need not be a causal connection between a referent and any meaningful representation. This opens the path to a development of the conception of the idiosyncratic ontology and an agent's superontology , and a formal presentation of the conditions under which two names are "names of the same thing" even when they fail to refer. It is shown that ontological modeling is necessary to understanding the conditions under which certain belief attributions are true. Finally, the essay presents a formal semantics for belief attributions and indicative sentences containing fictional and imaginary names