A proper name is a word that answers
the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about. The problem
of proper names isa proper name tells us which thing is in question, without
giving us any other informationabout it. But how does it do this? What exactly
is the nature of this information?.
There is a class of words, like ’The
so-and-so’ expressions, whose primary function is to refer to single
particulars. These are proper names like ‘Attila’, ‘London’, ‘John Smith’, and so
on. I have reserved discussion of these for separate section for two reasons.
First, not everything, I have said about other referring expression can be
automatically applied to proper names. Second, there is a traditional
philosophical problem that arises in connection in proper names, which does not
arise in connection with proper names with other referring expressions. The
problem is the plausible arguments can be marshaled to show the proper names
have meaning, and other to show the proper names do not have meaning. There are
prima facie reasons for and against the
view that they have meaning. The prime reasons for saying that proper names do
have meaning is this: how on earth could words having no meaning serve a systematic
function in language.’ Blug’ and ‘grumb’, which are meaningless, have no
systematic function after all. The prime facie reasons against saying that
proper names have meaning is that we do not, as a matter of fact, talk of them
as having meaning. If you say ‘John Smith is necrophiliac’, I might ask ‘what
does necrophiliac’ mean? But not ‘What does “John Smith” mean?
One last, but important point: it
easy to canvass support for the view that proper names have meanings if we
regard, as the sole alternative that proper names are meaningless. But we are
not forced to choose between’ meaningful’ and ‘meaningless’. From the fact that
something does not have meaning. It does not follow that is meaningless. My
nose does not have meaning, but it is not meaningless. Meaningless is a pejorative term which when applied to
words, implies that they have no use,
function, or purpose. In that case, proper names are certainly not meaningless.
What is being overlooked is that words can have uses with out having meanings.
It is not clear, for example, that ‘ouvh’, said when I am stung, has a meaning
; but it certainly has a use and purpose. At any rate, since ’meaning’ is such
a slippery term, it is best not to put the question about proper names in the
bald form ‘ Do they have meaning or not?’ What we should do is what I have
tried to do- namely work out the relation that holds between a proper names and
descriptive expressions. The relation can be explained without bringing in the
notion of meaning at all.
