I gave a short overview in excerpts of the question “How does language hook up to the world” with the stations:

• sharing a form: Aristotle and Wittgenstein
• Dialectical inspired conceptions of the relationship “signifier – signified”: Derrida, Hegel and Adorno
• Reductionistic conceptions: Physicalism (Fodor), Language reduction (Rorty)
• Direct/Natural Realism (late Putnam)

After that I presented various approaches to the problem of proper names in a chronological manner:

• Conceptual clearification and psychological theory in Mill
• Descriptional Theories in first generation analytic philosophy:
• Frege and the problem of informal identity
• Russell and the problem of Null-Extension
• Language and it’s usage
• Donellan’s conceptions of different ways of referring (attributive vs. referential usage)
• Kripke’s revolution in “Name and Necessity”
• the causal theory of reference
• “Hesperus = Phosphorus” and necessary statements a posteriori
• “The meter-bar in Paris is one meter long” and contingent statements a priori
• Evans mind experiments (Napoleon, Ibn Khan) and critique on Kripke
• A confusing mind experiment with twins at the end, which shows the inadequacy of all modells above (at least seen as general theoretical claims about meaning of proper names)

My folies can be found here. We had also interesting discussions:

• Hegel’s conception of demonstratives like “this” as being radically singular as well as radically general was confronted with Russell’s conception of logical proper names
• On a request I illustrated some consequences of generalizing Kripke’s causal theory on scientific and natural kind terms (Putnam) and sketched with Putnam’s twin earth argument why meaning are not in the head
• We discussed what happens with the conceptions of proper names if we take into account the plurality of languages (and in how far Evans’ and Donnellan’s view have here also advantages compared to Kripke’s original conception)
• I talked a bit about my personal view on so called analytic and anglo-saxon philosophy and that the time to build bridges between continental or french and anglo-saxon philosophy is better then ever (especially considering the “”deconstructive”" development of thinkers like Putnam or Goodman and the tendency of a expiration of the classical dichotomies like fact/value, perception/cognition, analytic/synthetic, metaphysical realism/antirealism (at least with Putnam), mind/body, etc.)

The athmosphere was very warm and the Gerusija people are super-sympathic. So it was very pleasent and also an honor to have a speech for this great student organization.

Evans offers a hybrid approach, paying tribute to both, the causal theorists and the descriptionalists.

What impresses me most by the paper is the variety of examples, which serve as paradigmatic touchstones of any future (semi-)theory of proper names. The paper can be seen as a good example of what I like to call ‘experimantal philosophy’.

(I made some concept maps of Evans argumentation in german which are available here.)

Tyler Burge’s “Reference and Proper Names” presents a enjoyable variety of non-standard examples of usages of proper names. Pointing out possible pluralities of extension helps him to develop his thesis of proper names being predicates.

I very much like the paper “Über die seltsame Notwendigkeit von Freges “Sinn”-Begriff für Kripkes Theorie der Eigennamen” by Armin Burkhardt. Especially cause I found there a few things which I was searching for already:

• considering Kripkes division of ’speaker’s’ and ’semantical reference’ while discussing his theory of direct reference
• comparing this very division to Saussure’s parole and langue
• a trial to develop a hybrid conception of proper names, especially with the help of Wittgenstein’s philosophy

Then I was swimming a bit

In the evening I worked on slides for a speach about proper names, beginning with a chronological overview of the history of this problem in philosophy (it will be uploaded soon here). Then I added some slides about Mill’s conception of proper names – that is Mill playing on Wittgenstein’s “Vorstellungsklavier”.