Kripke's Millianism itself acknowledges that empty names like 'Sherlock Holmes' function as rigid designators in modal contexts, presupposing some semantic role beyond mere bearer-absence.
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The job that something does in determining what words or sentences actually mean.
empty names(Philosophy of language; e.g., 'Vulcan', the name introduced for a hypothesized planet between Mercury and the sun.)
Names which have no referent.
knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.
rigid designator(Term due to Kripke (1972); used to distinguish expressions whose reference is fixed across circumstances from those whose reference varies.)
An expression which, relative to a context of utterance, refers to the same object with respect to every circumstance of evaluation at which that object exists, and never refers to anything else with respect to another circumstance of evaluation.