Intuitions About the Reference of Proper Names: a Meta-Analysis
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Intuitions About the Reference of Proper Names: a Meta-Analysis Noah van Dongen1 · Matteo Colombo2 · Felipe Romero3 · Jan Sprenger1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The finding that intuitions about the reference of proper names vary cross-culturally (Machery et al. Cognition 92: 1–12. 2004) was one of the early milestones in experimental philosophy. Many follow-up studies investigated the scope and magnitude of such cross-cultural effects, but our paper provides the first systematic meta-analysis of studies replicating (Machery et al. Cognition 92: 1–12. 2004). In the light of our results, we assess the existence and significance of cross-cultural effects for intuitions about the reference of proper names. Keywords Semantic intuitions · Theory of reference · Proper names · Cross-cultural psychology · Meta-analysis · Experimental philosophy
1 Introduction Most people who have heard of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano credit him with inventing the standard axioms of arithmetic. This is all they associate with the name “Peano”. Yet, the axioms were invented by the German mathematician Richard Dedekind, and Peano published a simplified version only afterwards. If people identify Peano only by the description “the inventor of the standard axioms of arithmetic”, to whom are they referring when they use the name “Peano”? To Peano or to Dedekind? And more generally, what kind of meaning must people associate to a proper name like “Peano” in order to be competent users of that name? Supplements: All material, including data and analysis code, is available on the OSF project page: https://osf.io/et86f/. Matteo Colombo
[email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, Turin University, Turin, Italy
2
Tilburg center for Logic, Ethics and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
3
Department of Philosophy, Groningen University, Groningen, The Netherlands
N. van Dongen et al.
In philosophy of language, there are two main classes of theories about the meaning of proper names: descriptivist theories and causal-historical theories. According to descriptivist theories (Frege 1892; Russell 1905; Searle 1958), proper names have definite descriptions as their meaning. The idea is that a proper name can refer to a person only via the descriptive properties that users of the name associate with it. Thus, people who identify Peano only by the description “the inventor of the standard axioms of arithmetic” would actually refer to Dedekind when they use the name “Peano”. After all, it is Dedekind who uniquely satisfies that description. According to causal-historical theories (Kripke 1980), proper names do not imply any descriptive property of the individuals to which they refer. Proper names refer directly to their bearers without being essentially associated with any descriptive properties of an individual. People processing a proper name like “Peano” certainly rely on some mental representations of certain descriptive properties, but these representations play no role in determining the meaning o
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