Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 What is language: some preliminary remarks
- PART I FROM MIND TO MEANING
- 2 Content, mode, and self-reference
- 3 Searle against the world: how can experiences find their objects?
- 4 Seeing what is there
- 5 Intentionalism, descriptivism, and proper names
- 6 On the alleged priority of thought over language
- 7 Rule skepticism: Searle's criticism of Kripke's Wittgenstein
- PART II FROM MEANING TO FORCE
- References
- Index
5 - Intentionalism, descriptivism, and proper names
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 What is language: some preliminary remarks
- PART I FROM MIND TO MEANING
- 2 Content, mode, and self-reference
- 3 Searle against the world: how can experiences find their objects?
- 4 Seeing what is there
- 5 Intentionalism, descriptivism, and proper names
- 6 On the alleged priority of thought over language
- 7 Rule skepticism: Searle's criticism of Kripke's Wittgenstein
- PART II FROM MEANING TO FORCE
- References
- Index
Summary
John Searle is famous for his description theory of names. Most regard this theory as having been refuted by Kripke. Yet Searle's theory has definite advantages over the Millian and causal alternatives. I show that the advantages are due to his explaining meaning in terms of the contents of mental states. The arguments against descriptivism refute only the claim that the relevant contents are descriptive. We get a better theory of names by keeping Searle's Intentionalism and dropping descriptivism.
SENSE, REFERENCE, AND INTENTIONAL CONTENT
Searle addressed fundamental questions about proper names: Do names have senses? In virtue of what do names refer to objects? How in the utterance of names do speakers succeed in referring to objects? In answering these questions, Searle develops a broadly Fregean account in which the notion of “Intentional content” plays the fundamental role. Searle's basic principle is that the meaning and referential properties of all linguistic units are derived from the intrinsic Intentionality of mental states (1983: vii, 27).
Since linguistic reference is always dependent on or is a form of mental reference and since mental reference is always in virtue of Intentional content … proper names must in some way depend on Intentional content.
(Searle 1983: 231ff)In order that a name should ever come to be used to refer to an object in the first place there must be some independent representation of the object. This may be by way of perception, memory, definite description, etc., but there must be enough Intentional content to identify which object the name is attached to.
(Searle 1983: 259)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- John Searle's Philosophy of LanguageForce, Meaning and Mind, pp. 102 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007