Description Theory of Names

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Philosophy of Language

Overview

Frege observed that "the morning star is the evening star" can be news to someone who already knows that the morning star is the morning star, although both names pick out the same planet. A name must therefore carry more than its bearer: a sense, a way of presenting the object, which a speaker might express with a description such as "the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great" for "Aristotle". Russell put the view most directly: common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions.

On this account, what fixes a name's reference is content in the speaker's mind: the name picks out whatever satisfies the descriptions the speaker associates with it. Whether Frege's senses are descriptions in this sense is disputed, but the combined Frege–Russell view is the one Kripke attacked, and it remains the standard rival of Causal-Historical Reference.

Position on

• The Grounds of Linguistic Meaning

  On what gives words meaning: the account covers proper names, not meaning in general, and grounds what a name picks out in the descriptive content its speakers associate with it.

Rival positions

• Causal-Historical Reference

  Question scope: The Grounds of Linguistic Meaning

References

• Gottlob Frege, 'On Sense and Reference' (1892), the morning star and the evening star, and the footnote on the senses speakers may attach to 'Aristotle'
• Bertrand Russell, 'Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11 (1910–11) ('common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions')
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Reference, §2.1 'Descriptivist Theories' (a use of a proper name refers when the descriptive content associated with it suffices to pick out a specific object; one standard version is associated with Frege (1892) and Russell (1911))