Millian direct-reference theorists like Kripke and Salmon hold that the semantic content of a proper name just is its referent, making 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' strict semantic duplicates.
?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.
Sign in or register to share your perspective on this statement.
David Salmon is a philosopher who wrote arguments about identity and how things remain the 'same thing' across different possible situations.
Semantic duplicates(as used in philosophy of language)
Two words or names that have exactly the same meaning—they contain the same information and refer to the same thing in the same way.
proper name(Priscian's Latin grammar)
A subdivision of the nomen that signifies a particular substance and its quality, and may also include apprehension of something common (an associated descriptive sense).
referent(what Russell says is the sole meaning of proper names)
The actual thing in the real world that a word points to or stands for—for example, the referent of 'Abraham Lincoln' is the actual historical person.
semantic content(Cappelen and Lepore's literalist/minimalist framework)
Propositions determined solely by conventions of meaning, precisification, disambiguation, and reference fixing — not by pragmatic inference.