[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Proper Names --Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke

  • From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:09:09 -0800 (PST)

(Kirby writes:)

"So in that sense I might contend that the meaning of a proper name remains 
unsettled and/or "up in the air" or "subject to revision" for an open-ended 
period of time, another way of saying "remains subject to change in principle, 
or in perpetuity" (sounds like some sort of legal document). ... It's not 
intrinsic to the meaning of a proper name that it be "settled" or "fixed." ... 
Do you rest easy with this formulation? " 

=============================

... I do agree. I'm working on a paper, and I think just found the right way to 
say it. Here is what a proper name is: it is a set of instructions for 
bearer-assignment, amendable after shipment."

I'm trying to think of similes for games where a play is made that can 
be uncontroversially amended after the play is over. One might be Congress 
(motion to extend and revise remarks). Another might be Spades where going 
"blind nill" allows you to trade a card with a partner after looking at the 
hand. But these are poor comparisons. Perhaps the best is this: The Uniform 
Commercial Code (UCC) in contracts law allows for merchants who deal with one 
another to change the terms of their shipment uncontroversially after the 
bargain (contract) has already been made. Why? It makes capitalism work 
better. Business people deal "on the fly."

So it is with names. They arrive on delivery and provide bearer-assignment 
instructions. Yet, the shipper reserve the right to amend the instructions 
uncontroversially after arrival. 

I want to stress, however, per my comments with J, that the bearer-assignment 
instructions come in the form of modalities. Those modes are: point, 
mark, generality, and tautology. You therefore get the package, deploy the mode 
or modes that assign the bearer, and then wait for the shipper's amendment, if 
elected. 

That's what a name it.

Hail to Wittgenstein! Philosophy as liberation!         
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

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