T HIS
MANUSCRIPT WILL FOREVER REMAIN UNPUBLISHED . I T WILL BE SUPERCEDED BY A NEW PAPER ,
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P UTATIVE C OUNTEREXAMPLE
TO
P REDICATIVISM ”
( IN PREPARTION )
‘Romanov’ Is Not Always a Name
Delia Graff Fara
Last modified: Thursday, 21 Aug 2014
1
Introduction
What constitutes a counterexample to a theory? And what is it for an advocate of a theory,
in arguing against a proposed counterexample, to be begging the question against the
denouncer of the theory? And on the flip side of that, what is it for the denouncer, in
proposing his counterexample, to be begging the question against the advocate? Although
these methodological questions are not the focus of this essay, they do figure importantly
in my defence of Predicativism about names, which is the focus of this essay. But we will
get to that soon enough.
To present a counterexample to a theory is to present a true statement that is incompatible with the theory. I call that the counterstatement. But since it is not always obvious
whether a given statement is incompatible with a given theory, a counterexample in its
fullest presentation should include not only a counterstatement but also a counterargument
to the effect that the counterstatement is incompatible with the theory. (Just which parts of
the theory are incompatible with the counterstatement, and how so?) The advocate of the
theory then accepts the counterexample if she accepts its counterstatement and also accepts
the validity of the counterargument for its incompatibility with her theory. If the advocate
does this, then she must either revise her theory to accommodate the counterstatement or
junk the theory altogether.
Counterexample in Schematic Form:
Counterargument:
(Partial) Statement of Theory :
T
Counterstatement:
..
.
S
..
.
Conclusion:
⊥
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When the advocate rejects the denouncer’s counterexample, it may be because (i) she
rejects the counterstatement, or because (ii) she rejects the validity of the counterargument
for its incompatibility with her theory.
In cases of disagreement, the advocate could be said to beg the question when her justification for disputing the counterexample appeals essentially to some contentious statement
R that’s already entailed by her theory together with the counterstatement.1 We can call
this the advocate’s contentious commitment. To illustrate with an extreme but not entirely
implausible case, suppose a denouncer of a theory charges that the theory is incompatible
with a certain mutually accepted datum (the counterstatement), it would then be questionbegging of the advocate of the theory to go on to reject the counterexample by saying, “No,
my theory is incompatible with the data only on the assumption that there are people who
speak French. I now say, therefore, that there are no speakers of French. So I am free
to uphold my theory despite your alleged counterexample.” In this case the advocate’s
contentious commitment is to there being no speakers of French.
And the denouncer could be said to beg the question when his claim for the validity of
the counterargument relies essentially on some implicit premiss that it would be coherent
and reasonable for the advocate to reject.1
Advocate begs the question against Denouncer: The
advocate
justifies
either
(i) her rejection of S, or (ii) the rejection of the incompatibility of T with S by appeal to a contentious statement R where, perhaps non-obviously, T, S 6|=⊥ but only
T, S, ¬R |=⊥.
Denouncer begs the question against Advocate: The validity of the denouncer’s counterargument depends, perhaps non-obviously, on some extra premiss P that would
be coherent and reasonable for the advocate to reject. The reliance on the premiss
would be essential in the sense that P, T, S |=⊥, but T, S 6|=⊥.
But this is all a merely formal account of question begging in the face of a putative
counterexample to a theory. It is just an account, that is, of what form question begging
takes. Genuine, or substantive, question begging on the part of the advocate would require
1 Note
that I am analysing what it is to beg the question only in the context of a dispute over a counterexample to a theory. I am not giving an analysis of question-begging in general. See Daniele Sgaravatti (2013)
and the references therein for discussions of the more general notion.
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that she have no independent support for that contentious commitment R of her theory—no
support for it that’s independent of the theory itself.
And on the part of the denouncer, genuine, or substantive, question begging would
require further that he have no independent support for his hidden premiss—no support
for it that’s independent of his rejection of the theory.
But if the advocate can give independent support for her contentious commitment then
she has discharged her obligation not to beg the question. Likewise, if the denouncer can
give independent support for his hidden premiss then he has discharged his obligation not
to beg the question.
These considerations will be brought to bear when we examine Stephen Boër’s (1975)
proposed counterexamples to Tyler Burge’s (1973) Predicativism about names, according
to which names are predicates that are true of just those things that are bearers of the name.
Boër gives us examples which seem to falsify this condition. His argument is still widely
accepted today as a refutation of Predicativism. This is an old debate but nonetheless
important for current theorising about names in the philosophy of language, in large part
because Burge’s Predicativism has been enjoying a revival,2 but no less so because it flies in
the face of Saul Kripke’s still widely accepted Millianism about names (Kripke 1972) and
even more so of David Kaplan’s Direct Referentialism (Kaplan 1989).
Here are Boër’s examples.
(1) Joe Romanov (my barber) is not a Romanov;
(2) Waldo Cox (my gardener) is a Romanov (an exciting fact revealed by recent
historical investigations).
The scenario: Although my barber is a bearer of the name ‘Romanov’ he does not satisfy
the predicate ‘is a Romanov’ as used in the context at hand. In the context at hand the
predicate ‘is a Romanov’ applies just to members of the tsarist dynasty that ruled Russia at
the time of the Bolshevik revolution. And the opposite holds as well. Although my gardener
is not a bearer of the name ‘Romanov’, he does satisfy the predicate ‘is a Romanov’ because
he is a member of that dynasty, in virtue of being a descendant of members of it. Alleged
conclusion: names are not true of just their bearers; Burge’s Predicativism is false.
2 See Jerrold Katz (2001), Reinaldo Elugardo (2002), Paul Elbourne (2005), Ora Matushansky (2006b,
2008), Paul Pietroski (2007), Sarah Sawyer (2010), Yu Izumi (2012), and Delia Fara (2015).
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I will show that Boër’s ‘Romanov examples’ (as I call them) cannot be upheld as counterexamples to Predicativism without ignoring an obvious fact, which leads to the begging
of a key question. In terms of our schema above, there is an implicit premiss P, one unacceptable to the predicativist, on which the counterargument relies for its validity. The
obvious fact is that the grammatical category of a word can vary from occurrence to occurrence. The question begged is whether every occurrence of the word ‘Romanov’ in Boër’s
examples is an occurrence of it as a name rather than as a common noun. (I use the terms
‘name’ and ‘common noun’ to stand for mutually exclusive categories, both included in the
category noun.)
I could give my cheap tin pan the name ‘All-Clad’. Of course that does not entail that my
pan is an All-Clad. In other words, the truth of (3) does not provide for a counterexample
to Predicativism:
(3) All-Clad (my cheap tin pan) is not an All-Clad.
A word may occur as a name in one place while not occurring as a name in another place.
In (3), the word ‘All-Clad’ occurs first as a name, then second as a common noun. The
common noun in question is capitalised to be sure—like the noun ‘Manhattan’ is when it
occurs as a common noun that applies to certain cocktails (‘I’ll have a Manhattan’)—and
whether ‘is an All-Clad’ applies to a thing does have something to do with what names
things have: in its second occurrence, the word ‘All-Clad’ is a common noun that applies
to a thing just in case that thing was made by the company whose name is ‘All-Clad’. Why
not think that Romanov examples are just like that? In the Romanov examples, the final
occurrences of the noun ‘Romanov’ are occurrences of it not as name, but as a common
noun whose applicability to a thing does not depend on what that thing’s name is, but
rather on its membership in a certain dynasty the name of which is ‘Romanov’. If Romanov
examples are like that, then they provide for no counterexample to Predicativism. The
claims that the ‘All-Clad’ example works in the way I just proposed, and that Romanov
examples work just that way too, will be elaborated and defended in what follows.
2
Predicativism
According to predicativists, names always have predicate-type semantic values, whether
they appear in a position that’s typically occupied by count nouns (4–7) or in argument
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position as a bare singular (8–11).3 ‘Bare’ here means without an explicit determiner—like
when we speak of ‘bare plurals’, as in ‘Ducks lay eggs’ or ‘Tigers have stripes’.
Predicative Count-Noun Position
(4) An Alfred joined the club today;
(Burge 1973, 429)
(5) There are two Cecils in my building;
(6) Most Michaels have conservative parents;
(7) Sarahs from Alaska are usually scary.
Bare Singulars in Argument Position
(8) Sarah is scary;
(9) To know Cecil is to love him;
(10) The librarian gave Alfred a look he’ll never forget;
(11) The dog begged to go outside with Michael.
When a name appears as a bare singular in argument position, predicativists believe that
it is the complement of an unpronounced determiner. Definite-predicativists think that the
unpronounced determiner is the definite article.4 Demonstrative-predicativists think that
the unpronounced determiner is a demonstrative.5 We can represent the unpronounced
definite article as ‘Øthe ’ and the unpronounced demonstrative as ‘Øthat ’.
Not only do predicativists have a view about what semantic type names have, they also
have a view about their application conditions. To say that an Alfred joined the club today
is to say that someone whose name is ‘Alfred’ joined the club today. To say that there are
two Cecils in my building is to say that there are two people in my building who have ‘Cecil’
as a name. To say that most Michaels have conservative parents is to say that most people
whose name is ‘Michael’ have conservative parents. To say that Sarahs from Alaska are
usually scary is to say that people from Alaska whose name is ‘Sarah’ are usually scary.
Accordingly, predicativists say that a name N applies to an individual x just in case x has
N as a name. I will call that the name-having condition (NHC).
3 Clarence Sloat (1969) and Tyler Burge (1973) each highlighted the use of names in examples like (4–7)
in order to argue for his own version of Predicativism.
4 This includes Sloat (1969), Elbourne (2005), and Matushansky (2005, 2006b, 2008). Richard Larson &
Gabriel Segal find the view attractive but do not in the end decide firmly in favour of it (Larson & Segal 1995).
Same goes for Segal solo (2001).
5 This includes Burge (1973), Elugardo (2002), and Sawyer (2010).
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(NHC)
a. For any name N, N is true of a thing just in case it has N as a name;
Equivalently, where double brackets represent the function from an expression to its extension:
b. For any name N: [[ N ]] = {x : x has N as a name}.
The name-having condition derives from the application condition for names as predicates that was originally proffered by Burge (p. 430). I’ll call it ‘Burge’s Appropriateness
Condition’ (BAC).
(BAC)
a. For any name N, N is true of a thing just in case it is given the name N
in an appropriate way; equivalently,
b. For any name N, [[ N ]] =
{x : x is given the name N in an appropriate way}.
The difference between Burge’s appropriateness condition and the formulation of it
given by my name-having condition is this: Where I wrote, ‘has N as a name’, Burge writes,
‘is given the name N in an appropriate way’. But this invites the question: Appropriate
for what? I presume that Burge intended to rule out cases in which you’re given a name
without that name becoming a name of yours. For example, because the doctors do not
know their new patient’s name, they give her the name ‘Jane’ in order to talk about her. But
the patient was not given the name ‘Jane’ in the appropriate way, in Burge’s sense, because
the name did not thereby become a name of hers, at least not straightaway.
I take it that for you to be given the name N in an appropriate way in Burge’s sense
is for you to be given it in such a way that it becomes a name of yours, that is, in such a
way that you come to have it as a name. I have taken the liberty of rephrasing Burge’s
appropriateness condition as the name-having condition since the name-having condition
does not have an implicit component and is thus more straightforward.
To further spell out how a name comes to be a name of a particular thing—i.e., to further
spell out the right-hand sides of Burge’s appropriateness condition or my name-having
condition—would be to give an analysis of the predicativist’s analysis of the semantics of
names. That analysis of the predicativist’s analysis would likely look much like Kripke’s socalled ‘causal theory of reference’, which is a theory about how a particular name latches
on to a particular person, in the sense of coming to be a name of that person and being
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usable as such for an indefinite amount of time thereafter.6 But as long as we have some
independent understanding of what it is for Burge to have ‘Tyler’ as a name, for example,
no analysis of the predicativist’s analysis is required.
Since I favour Definite-Predicativism, from here onward I will for the most part ignore
Demonstrative-Predicativism.7 Nevertheless, my primary argument serves to defend both
views.
According to predicativists, then, the following pairs each consist of sentences with the
same syntax and compositional semantics:
(12)
a. Both men had qualities that the other would have admired;
b. Both Aristotles had qualities that the other would have admired.
(13)
a. The model had a long neck;
b. Øthe Audrey had a long neck
Since there is more than one Audrey in the world as well as more than one model, both
of the definite descriptions in (13) are incomplete. No particular theory of incomplete
descriptions, though, is part of Predicativism per se. For the purpose of this paper many
theoretical questions about incomplete definite descriptions may be left open—for example, what is the right account of their contextual sensitivity, e.g., how much do speakers’
intentions matter in determining the denotation of an incomplete definite description, and
is their contextual sensitivity resolved by an unpronounced completer that is also a syntactic constituent?
3
Romanovs, Kennedys, and the Joneses
We now return to Boër’s (1975) putative counterexamples to Predicativism:
(1) Joe Romanov (my barber) is not a Romanov;
(2) Waldo Cox (my gardener) is a Romanov (an exciting fact revealed by recent
historical investigations).
6 Bart
Geurts (1997) makes essentially the same point.
Elbourne (2005), Matushansky (2006b), and Fara (2015) for arguments in favour of ‘The’Predicativism.
7 See
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These sentences were proposed as counterexamples to the name-having condition, the
second thesis of Predicativism. There’s a man who has ‘Romanov’ as a name but to whom
the predicate ‘is a Romanov’ does not apply, and there’s a man who does not have ‘Romanov’
as a name but to whom the predicate ‘is a Romanov’ does apply.
And here’s an example from Jeffrey King which can be used to make the same point.
King’s example shows further that Romanov examples need not involve an indefinite description occurring after a copula.
(14) ‘Many Kennedys died tragically’.
(King 2006, 142)
This can be true even if there weren’t many people called Kennedy who died tragically. And
it can be false even if many people called Kennedy did die tragically. What’s required (in
the right context) for the truth of the claim is that many people in the Kennedy clan have
died tragically, regardless of how many of them had ‘Kennedy’ as a name. The children of
JFK’s sisters do not have ‘Kennedy’ as a name, but they are Kennedys nonetheless.
And the phenomenon does not show up just with the names of famous families:
(15) Fred Smith is not a Smith after all—he’s a Jones.
(Boër 1975, 391)
The scenario: The biological father of Fred Smith turns out to be a different man from the
one originally thought: it is Dylan Jones rather than Rupert Smith. What matters for the
question of whether Fred Smith is a Jones rather than a Smith may (in the right context)
have to do with his biological lineage rather than the surname on his birth certificate or
passport.
Let me introduce one more example, this one due to Robin Jeshion. Jeshion’s mother’s
surname at birth was ‘Kaufman’; she changed it to ‘Jeshion’ upon getting married. And the
mother now sometimes says this:
(16) I am a Kaufman, not a Jeshion.
(Jeshion 2015)
This seems to fly in the face of Predicativism from both sides. The mother does now have
‘Jeshion’ as a name but the predicate ‘Jeshion’ as used here does not apply to her, and she
no longer has ‘Kaufman’ as a name but the predicate ‘Kaufman’ as used here does apply to
her.
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4
Terminology
Terminology is not consistent in the literature on names and mine is not quite standard.
One of a number of methodological points that I wish to make is this: without the right
terminology, it is difficult to make the right generalisations; without the right terminology,
a true theory can appear to be overly disjunctive. In that case the simplicity of a true theory
cannot be adequately gauged. We will see that a reliance on bad terminology is what leads
people to think that Boër’s argument against Predicativism is a good one. Once we have
the relevant distinctions in place we will see how his argument begs the question against
Predicativism.
An important feature of my terminology is that it dispenses with the notion of a ‘proper
name’ as a grammatical category. Use of this phrase suggests that there are names that are
proper and names that are not. But if there are both proper names and improper names,
in the traditional sense, then there is no clear criterion for a name’s being one as opposed
to the other.
This means that my version of Predicativism is about names as such. There is no useful
subcategory of names to be distinguished as ‘proper names’. In my classification system,
names of words are names, and are therefore covered just as much under the umbrella of
Predicativism as a name like ‘Tyler’ is.
So let me now set out my usage of the phrases ‘name’, ‘proper name’, ‘common noun’,
and ‘proper noun’. It should suffice to give just some indication of my use of the following
terms rather than any explicit definitions.
Name: All names are nouns but not vice versa. For the time being, we will otherwise leave
the notion of a name at an intuitive level. It would be nice to say that names are those
expressions that are used by speakers in order to say something about an individual
(or are used by speakers to refer to an individual, in Strawson’s (1950) and Kripke’s
(1977) sense). But that would not do, since other expressions can also be used to
‘speaker-refer’ to individuals (to coin a phrase). Donnellan showed us that definite
descriptions can be used to speaker-refer to individuals—remember ‘the man drinking
a martini’ (Donnellan 1966). And George Wilson later showed us that indefinite
descriptions can equally well be used to speaker-refer to individuals—remember ‘a
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convicted embezzler is trying to seduce your sister’ (Wilson 1978).8 By the end,
though, we will have concrete criteria for being a name. To be a name is to have
specific syntactic and semantic properties. (See §9.)
Proper name: When philosophers and linguists use the phrase ‘proper name’, they usually
mean a name that denotes a certain type of individual, for example, a person, a
pet, a country, or a planet. That list is not exhaustive. Names of companies, e.g.,
‘Polaroid’, are considered to be proper names. According to the Chicago Manual of
Style (16th edition), ‘A proper noun is the specific name of a person, place, or thing, or
the title of a work.’ But for the purposes of this definition, what is a ‘thing’? Specific
names of words, such as the name of the word ‘philosophy’ (‘ ‘philosophy’ ’), are not
considered to be proper names. But surely words are things. So how do we decide
which sorts of things are the ones whose names are proper names? There is absolutely
no linguistically relevant ontological distinction to be made between names that are
proper and those that aren’t. So I will not leave the distinction between proper names
and other names at an intuitive level. Rather, I will stipulate that a proper name is a
name that begins with a capital letter.
Common noun: As I will use the phrase, common nouns include both mass nouns and
count nouns. But common noun and name are to be mutually exclusive categories. In
particular I will never say, as some do, that a name can be used as a common noun.
Officially, the distinction between mass and count is orthogonal to the distinction
between common noun and name. In principle, we could have mass names and
count names as well as common mass nouns and common count nouns. But it is
an open question, in principle, whether there are mass names.I’ll leave this question
aside, though. In any case, in the Burge examples (4–7) that motivate Predicativism,
the names are all used as count nouns.9
Proper noun: As with proper names, I hereby stipulate that a proper noun is a noun that
starts with a capital letter. In the words of Grammar Girl, ‘Proper nouns are capi8 In Wilson’s scenario, there is just one convicted embezzler at their party, and this fact, as well as the
identity of the embezzler, is common knowledge between the speaker and the hearer.
9 When Kathrin Koslicki (1999) evaluates the ‘name view’ of mass nouns, she is not addressing the question
just posed, i.e., whether a name can only ever occur as a count noun as opposed to a mass noun. Rather, she
is evaluating the claim that mass nouns should all be analysed as names.
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talised . . . .’ She might have added ‘. . . in English’, since in German all nouns are
capitalised.10
I should say that unlike me, Grammar Girl takes herself to be providing a guide to capitalisation, assuming that we have an antecedent understanding of what it is to be a proper
noun, using the Chicago Manual of Style definition already mentioned: a proper noun is
the specific name of a person, place, or thing, or the title of a work. I, in contrast, am
stipulating a terminological criterion for a noun’s being a proper noun, given antecedent
‘facts’ about capitalisation. Grammar Girl and I agree on the principle but disagree about
the order of explanation that it provides. For her, one first figures out whether a noun is
proper or common. And on that basis chooses whether or not to capitalise it. I, meanwhile,
first find out what the capitalisation convention is for a particular noun, as dictated in dictionaries and style guides and by the various grammar professionals. And on that basis, I
decide whether or not to call the noun proper. Unlike Grammar Girl, I believe that specific
syntactic and semantic criteria decide whether a noun—be it capitalised or not—is a name
or a common noun.
Take the word ‘Christian’, when used as a common count noun applying to adherents
of certain religions. By Grammar Girl’s criterion it is a proper noun, because capitalised. If
we then apply the ‘specific person-place-or-thing’ criterion, affirmed by the Chicago Manual
of Style (and by Grammar Girl), we conclude that Christians are a specific ‘thing’. But
they are not, at least not in any normal sense. By my criterion, however, ‘Christian’ is a
proper noun, whether it be used as a common count noun that applies to Roman Catholics,
Presbyterians, Lutherans, et cetera; or as a name that applies just to those, like Christian
Bale, who are called Christian.
To illustrate my terminology, it may be helpful to set out some examples in a chart.
10 But
she did not. Rather, she added a false claim. The full quote is, ‘Proper nouns are capitalised and common nouns are not.’ I left out the second clause because it is wrong. If I say that you drank three Manhattans,
I would be using the capitalised noun ‘Manhattan’ as a capitalised common noun that’s true of instances of
a particular kind of cocktail. See http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/capitalizing-propernouns.
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Name
Proper
Saul Kripke
X
X
Who (the first baseman)
X
X
Polaroid (the company)
X
X
Manhattan (the island)
X
X
Champagne (the French province)
X
X
Earth (the planet)
X
X
July (the month)
X
X
spring (the season)
X
bell hooks (the author)
X
007 (the secret agent)
X
‘philosophy’ (the word)
X
Common Noun
philosophy (a principled set of guiding beliefs)
X (count noun)
philosophy (the subject matter)
X (mass noun)
Polaroid (an instant camera)
X
X (count noun)
Manhattan (a cocktail)
X
X (count noun)
Champagne (a kind of sparkling white wine)
X
X (mass noun)
earth (soil)
X (mass noun)
dust
X (mass noun)
furniture
X (mass noun)
For my purposes, the most important feature of this classification is that whether a word
or phrase is classified under any of the headings can vary with use. A word or phrase may
occur as a name on one occasion but not on another. The comedy in Abbott and Costello’s
‘Who’s on First’ sketch derives from Abbott’s using ‘Who’ as a name (for the guy playing
first base) while Costello uses the word in its standard way, as an interrogative pronoun.
Costello:
Abbott:
Costello:
Abbott:
Costello:
Abbott:
11 Of
What’s the name of the first baseman?
Who is on first.
I’m asking YOU who’s on first!
That’s the man’s name.
That’s WHO’S name?
Yes.11
course, if Costello had write down his last question, he would have written WHOSE instead of WHO’S.
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While I reject the idea that a name can be used as a common noun, I emphatically
endorse the idea that a word that can be used as a name, e.g., ‘Manhattan’, can also be
used as a common noun; just as a word that can be used as a common mass noun, e.g.,
‘beer’, can also be used as a common count noun.
Another feature of the classification is that whether a name or a common noun is classified as proper depends only on its orthography and is therefore a matter of convention,
not semantics or grammar, much less metaphysics. When bell hooks chose not to capitalise
her first or last name, her choice was not one to defy the convention of having a name,
it was a choice to defy the convention of capitalising one’s name. It turns out that for a
number of common nouns there is disagreement about whether they should be capitalised,
and in some cases there is a choice about whether to capitalise, depending on the topic
under discussion and the interests of the people engaged in reading and writing about it.
For example, it is generally recommended that words for breeds of cats and dogs not be
capitalised. In which case I should write, ‘I have three korats’, not ‘I have three Korats’.
Meanwhile, in the publications of the Cat Fanciers’ Association, the noun ‘Korat’ is always
capitalised.
So there are common nouns that are capitalised, ones that aren’t, ones about which
there is disagreement whether to capitalise, and ones for which capitalisation is interest
relative. So whether a proper noun is used as a name or as a common noun must not
depend on whether it is capitalised. We have names that are capitalised, such as ‘October’,
‘Saul Kripke’, and ‘Prozac’, as well as names that are not capitalised, such as ‘spring’, ‘bell
hooks’, and ‘fluoxetine’. And we have some common nouns that are or may be capitalised,
such as ‘Korat’, ‘Hoover’ (for a vacuum cleaner), and ‘Manhattan’ (for a certain kind of
cocktail)—as well as those that are not capitalised, such as ‘cat’, ‘vacuum cleaner’, and
‘gin & tonic’. And we have names for which the question of capitalisation does not even
arise—e.g., those that begin with numerals, such as ‘007’.
5
Begging the Question
Let’s return now to Boër’s putative counterexamples to Predicativism. What is it to say that
the Romanov examples are counterexamples to Predicativism? The sentences themselves
are not incompatible with Predicativism, since they say nothing at all about names. Rather,
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they provide for counterexamples to Predicativism by displaying the truth of a statement—
the counterstatement, in my way of setting things up—that is incompatible with Predicativism.
In the case of the sentence (2), the one about Cox the gardener, who turned out to be a
descendant of the Romanov Imperial family, the counterstatement is a statement about the
sentence, namely:
S: In (2), ‘Romanov’ is a predicate that is true of Waldo Cox, even though Waldo
Cox does not have ‘Romanov’ as a name;
In its fullest presentation, recall, the counterexample consists of a counterargument, its
premisses being the counterstatement and a (partial) statement of Predicativism and its
conclusion being a contradiction.
Boër’s counterexample
T: Any name N is a predicate that is true of just those things that have N as a
name;12
S: In (2), ‘Romanov’ is a predicate that is true of Waldo Cox, even though Waldo
Cox does not have ‘Romanov’ as a name;
⊥ : Therefore, the predicate ‘Romanov’ in (2) is both true and and not true of
Waldo Cox.
One predicativist reaction to the counterexample would be to revise the theory so that
it doesn’t entail anything that’s incompatible with the counterstatement. This is what the
predicativist Reinaldo Elugardo (2002) does. He appends an escape clause to the namehaving condition so that it does entail that ‘Romanov’ applies to Cox the gardener:
Elugardo’s Condition:
X is a Romanov if and only if either X is identical with, descended from, is an
ancestor of, or stands in some appropriate family-extending relation R to suchand-such a person named (or called) ‘Romanov’. (2002, 486)
Elugardo’s escape clause is problematic in part because it does not account for the truth
of sentence (1) (on its intended interpretation), the one about Joe Romanov the barber.
12 This
isn’t a full statement of Predicativism, just the bit that’s relevant for the counterexample.
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Since Romanov the barber is identical to someone called Romanov, namely himself, he is a
Romanov according to Reinaldo’s condition. But his not being a Romanov was part of the
data to be accommodated by the theory.
But Elugardo’s clause is also problematic in its disjunctive involvement of so many different conditions. One can often resist a counterexample to a flawed theory by making the
theory’s claims disjunctive and gerrymandered.
I believe, however, that Predicativism is, and can remain, simple and cohesive. So I
take an alternative approach. I say that the contradictory conclusion does not follow since
‘Romanov’ is not a name in (2). More precisely, it does not occur as a name in (2). The
predicativist is not committed to Waldo Cox’s not satisfying ‘Romanov’ in (2) if ‘Romanov’
does not occur as a name in (2).
But can’t the denouncer of Predicativism just accuse me of begging the question? Am I
not just baldly denying that the Romanov examples refute my preferred theory?! Not quite.
In light of our earlier discussion about the occurrence dependence of name-hood, I need
to be more careful in my statement of the name-having condition. I therefore rewrite T
as T0 . This does not constitute a revision of the name-having condition, just a more careful
restatement of it.
T0 : When a predicate N occurs as a name it is true of just those things that have
N as a name;
S: In (2), ‘Romanov’ is a predicate that is true of Waldo Cox, even though Waldo
Cox does not have ‘Romanov’ as a name;
⊥ : Therefore, the predicate ‘Romanov’ in (2) is both true and and not true of
Waldo Cox.
We can now see that the contradictory conclusion does not follow from just the theory
together with the counterstatement. The contradictory conclusion does not follow without
the further premiss P—that in (2), ‘Romanov’ occurs as a name:
P: In (2), ‘Romanov’ occurs as a name.
Not surprisingly, my contentious commitment is just the denial of the denouncer’s hidden premiss. Given the truth of (2), the following is a theorem of Predicativism:
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R: In (2) ‘Romanov’ does not occur as a name.
It might seem that my contentious commitment is tantamount to the claim that Romanov
examples are not counterexamples to Predicativism. Be that as it may, it should seem just
as much that the denouncer’s hidden—and essential—premiss is tantamount to the claim
that Romanov examples are counterexamples to Predicativism. After all, we have already
seen a number of examples in which a word that occurs as a proper name in one place
occurs as a proper common noun in another place. So we are both “formally” begging the
question in the sense schematised in the introduction. But whether either of us counts as
“substantively” begging the question depends on what kind of justification we can provide.
For my own part, I now go on to justify my “contentious” commitment independently of
any considerations about Predicativism.
6
An Abundance of Romanov Examples
The key point for my defence of Predicativism in the face of Romanov examples has been
mentioned a number of times already: the grammatical category of most words is occurrence dependent. For example, many nouns have both mass and count occurrences, as
Kathrin Koslicki (1999) has emphasised. Take the noun ‘sugar’. Mass occurrence: ‘How
much sugar would you like in your coffee?’ Count occurrence: ‘Will that be one sugar or
two?’ One rough start would be to say that when a noun occurs as a mass noun it is true
of a ‘quantity’ of something while as a count noun it is true of individuated things that can
be counted, for example cubes or packets of sugar.13 If a given noun has both mass occurrences and count occurrences, its application conditions in the one case are different from
its application conditions in the other case.14 Consider the noun ‘fish’, which naturally has
both mass occurrences and count occurrences: Whenever I’m eating salmon it is true that
there is fish on my plate but false that there is a fish on my plate. When I serve salmon at a
meal, the only time I serve a fish, as opposed to just fish, is when I poach the whole thing.
If Predicativism is true, then something similar must be said of names and common
nouns. Where ‘Romanov’, ‘Kennedy’, ‘Jones’, and the like do not conform to the beingcalled condition they are not occurring as names but rather as proper (capitalised) common
nouns, whose applicability to a thing does not directly depend on what the thing’s name is.
13 This
14 See
helpful use of the word ‘quantity’ was introduced by Helen Morris Cartwright (1970).
Koslicki (1999, §III.2).
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It should already have been obvious that words that occur as names may also occur as
predicates that do not conform to the name-having condition. Anyone, however hideous,
can change his name to ‘beauty’. (Like bell hooks, he is not required to capitalise it.) But
where ‘beauty’ occurs as a common count noun it does not apply to anyone hideous, no
matter what his name is. In (17), below, the noun ‘beauty’ occurs first as a name for the
cousin, second as a common count noun that’s true of beautiful things.
(17) Your cousin beauty isn’t a beauty at all; he’s hideous! Why he changed his
name to ‘beauty’, I have no idea. It only draws attention to his hideousness.
And consider this: I am a Hominid; you probably are too. But my cat, brilliant as she
is, is not a Hominid. But I have given her the name ‘Hominid’. So this is true:
(18) Hominid (my cat) is not a Hominid.
And although I love my cat dearly, she is not my best friend. Coincidentally, my best friend’s
name is ‘Cat’. (Her surname is not ‘Hominid’, but rather ‘Ciobanu’.)
(19) Cat (my best friend) is a Hominid.
Obviously, this does not refute the name-having condition. Why? One, because in its
second occurrence in these sentences, ‘Hominid’ is not a name but rather a common noun
that’s true of the members of a certain taxonomic family. Two, because whether or not
you’re a member of a certain family (be it the Romanov family or the family Hominidae)
does not depend directly on what your name is.
Similar examples abound. Common nouns are often capitalised, for example, with
makes or models of vehicles or instruments. When I say that I drive a Camaro, I certainly
make no claim that the car I drive has ‘Camaro’ as one of its names. In fact, my Camaro’s
name is ‘Trixie’. My Camaro is a Trixie because that’s how I christened it. When I say that
the guitar that I play is a Les Paul, obviously I don’t mean that the guitar that I play is called
Les Paul. It isn’t. I called it Lola. So these are true.
(20) Trixie, my car, is a Camaro;
(21) Lola, my guitar, is a Les Paul.
But now suppose, counterfactually, that I gave my car the name ‘Les Paul’ and my guitar
the name ‘Camaro’. Then the following would be true when the final occurrences of the
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nouns ‘Les Paul’ and ‘Camaro’ are not occurrences of them as names, but rather as what I’ve
been calling common nouns—in this case ones that are true of guitars, or cars, of a certain
make and model.
(22) Les Paul, my car, is not a Les Paul.
(23) Camaro, my guitar, is not a Camaro.
And of course, I could give my car, the Chevy Camaro, the name ‘Mustang’ and my sister
could give her car, a Ford Mustang, the name ‘Gretch’ (short for ‘Gretchen’), in which case
the following would be true:
(24) Gretch, my sister’s car, is not a Gretch.
(Gretch is a make of guitars.)
(25) Gretch, my sister’s car, is a Mustang.
(26) Mustang, my car, is not a Mustang; it’s a Camaro;
Clearly these are Romanov examples, not different in kind from the originals:
(1) Romanov, my barber, is not a Romanov;
(2) Cox, my gardener, is a Romanov.
So what is going on here? What’s going on is that the names ‘Mustang’ and ‘Romanov’,
which are used as individual proper names on one occasion, are used as common nouns on
another occasion—as proper common nouns because they are capitalised—but as common
nouns nonetheless. Similarly, we had ‘Les Paul’ as a proper name for a person and as a
proper common noun true of the guitars of a certain make and model.
For further illustration, these are true:
(27)
a. Les Paul only ever played Les Pauls;
b. Eric Clapton’s favourite guitar is a Les Paul.
Here, ‘Les Paul’ in its common-noun occurrence is a predicate that is true of Gibson guitars
in the Les Paul line, not as a normally interpreted name, true of individuals who are bearers
of the name ‘Les Paul’.
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7
Constraints on Occurrences (sometimes coincide)
So there are nouns that have both name occurrences and common-noun occurrences, just
as there are nouns that have both count occurrences and mass occurrences. Within each of
these two distinctions, moreover, which kind of occurrence a noun has is constrained by its
grammatical environment.
In the case of the mass-count distinction, here are just a couple of the well-known
constraints.15
Plural Constraint: A plural occurrence of a noun cannot be a mass occurrence.
We can illustrate this with nouns like ‘furniture’ and ‘dust’, which do not readily allow for
count occurrences.
(28) * Heavy furnitures are a pain to move;
(29) * I always sneeze uncontrollably when I’m around dusts.
We can also illustrate it with a noun like ‘avocado’, which readily allows for both mass and
count occurrences.
(30) Put the avocados back in the box.
In the plural, ‘avocado’ can only be interpreted in the count way, as applying to individuated
things, in this case to pieces of fruit rather than to their flesh.
‘Every’ Constraint: An occurrence of a noun after the determiner ‘every’ must be a count
occurrence.
(31) * Every furniture I’ve ever owned has been brown;
(32) * I’m allergic to every dust.16
And again, consider a noun that readily allows for both count and mass occurrences: ‘herring’.
(33) Every herring I’ve ever eaten has been either pickled or smoked.
15 See
Koslicki (1999, §II.) for further diagnostics.
It is possible to use (32) grammatically, but only when the noun ‘dusts’ is coerced to have a count meaning,
such as type of dust. The nouns ‘furniture’ and ‘cutlery’ resist a count interpretation even more strongly than
the noun ‘dust’ does.
16
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In this count-only position, ‘herring’ can only have its count interpretation, on which it’s
true of individual fish that can be counted rather than of quantities of fish that can be
measured, but not counted.
Similarly, there are grammatical constraints on whether an occurrence of a noun is a
name occurrence or a common-noun occurrence. Here are two such constraints.
Unmodified Singular Constraints:
I. When a noun occurs as a bare unmodified singular in argument position, it may
be a name occurrence but it cannot be a common count-noun occurrence;
II. When an unmodified singular noun occurs as a complement to an overt but
unstressed definite article ‘the’, it can be a common count-noun occurrence but
it cannot be a name occurrence.
Here are a couple of illustrative minimal pairs:
(34)
a. Let’s give Polly a cracker;
b. *Let’s give parrot a cracker.
(35)
a. *Where did you see the William?
b. Where did you see the dagger?
These constraints are robust. Take the noun ‘Les Paul’. It can be used as a proper name
for a certain American jazz and country-and-western guitarist who was also an inventor of
guitars and various recording devices. And it can be used as a (proper) common count noun
that applies to Les Paul guitars, which are Gibson guitars of a certain model designed by
the eponymous guitarist. Now, guitars can have hollow bodies but people cannot. So (36a)
would have a plausible interpretation if it were about the guitars but an implausible one if
about the guitarist. Nevertheless, in (36) ‘Les Paul’ can only be occurring as a name, not as
a common count noun, given that its occurrences are as bare unmodified singulars—even
when this yields a counterintuitive interpretation, as in (36a).17
17 There
is a complication deriving from the two following facts. One, mass nouns can also occur as bare
unmodified singulars in argument position. Two, using Pelletier’s universal grinder, we can coerce ‘Les Paul’
to have a mass interpretation when it’s in a mass-only position, as in ‘How much Les Paul came out of the
grinder?’ So why is a mass interpretation of ‘Les Paul’ ruled out here? Is it pragmatic, semantic, or syntactic? I
won’t venture a proposal; I just want to flag the complication.
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(36)
a. Les Paul used to have a hollow body.
b. Les Paul was a great guitar designer;
But, as Burge-type sentences suggest, many other positions that can be occupied by a
common count noun can be occupied by names as well. Singular count nouns when they
are modified—in (37), by a restrictive relative clause—can occur as complements to the
overt definite article while occurring as a name or as a common noun:
(37)
a. The Les Paul that I saw had a hollow body;
b. The Les Paul that I saw was a great guitar designer.
Consequently, both of the sentences in (37) are ambiguous. Each has two interpretations:
one on which the noun ‘Les Paul’ occurs as a name for the guitarist called Les Paul and
another on which it occurs as a capitalised common noun that’s true of the guitars of the
model designed by that guitarist. In each case, however, only one of the disambiguations
is plausible. In (37a), only the common-noun occurrence gives a plausible interpretation
since people do not have hollow bodies. In (37b), only the name occurrence gives a plausible interpretation since guitars do not themselves design guitars. In each case both readings
are available but the implausibility of one of the interpretations leads us to interpret either
of them in one way rather than the other.
So just as there are both truth-conditional and grammatical differences between mass
occurrences of a noun and count occurrences of it, there are both truth-conditional and
grammatical differences between name occurrences of a noun and common-noun occurrences of it.
I will add that just as singular definite descriptions allow both modified names and
modified common nouns, they also allow both modified count nouns and modified mass
nouns.18
(38)
a. The Ivan with the brown hair (as opposed to the Ivan with the blond
hair) was waiting in the hallway.
b. The student with the brown hair was waiting in the hallway.
18 I should say that if the modifier occurs after the noun, then it has to be restrictive if the definite article is
to be overt rather than null. But when the name is followed by a non-restrictive modifier, the definite article
must be ‘Øthe ’. Compare these: ‘The Gretel, who is in the basement, is stuffed’ (h‘the’ + name + nonrestrictive
modifieri is bad); ‘Gretel, who is in the basement, is stuffed’ (h‘Øthe ’ + name + nonrestrictive modifieri is
good); and ‘The Gretel in the basement is stuffed’ (h‘the’ + name + restrictive modifieri is good).
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c. The dust with the brown hair was accumulating in the hallway.
The crucial point here is that although there are grammatical environments that do distinguish count nouns from mass nouns as well as ones that do distinguish common count
nouns from names, not all environments do. This point is crucial because the final occurrences of ‘Romanov’ in Boër’s sentences are in grammatical environments that allow for
both names and common count nouns. Consider some more sentences with unmodified
singular nouns inside indefinite descriptions.
(39)
a. My grandmother was a Mabel, but everyone called her ‘Ruby’.19
b. My grandmother was a laundress.
c. Chris Schmidt (our regular waiter) is a Christian.
Sentences (39a) and (39b) illustrate that both singular unmodified names and singular
unmodified common count nouns can occur as complements to the indefinite article. The
sentences are as a matter of fact true.
But what about (39c)? Consider these dialogues:
I.
Customer:
Chris:
II.
Customer:
Chris:
Chris, are you a Christian?
No, I converted to Judaism when I got married.
No, I meant, are you a Christian or a Christopher?
Oh (chuckling), in that sense, I am a Christian.
So (39c) has two interpretations. It is not out of the ordinary to have ‘Christian’ as a
name, but the noun more often occurs as a noun that applies to Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, et cetera. So ‘Christian’ can have both a name interpretation and a
proper common count-noun interpretation. And in (39c) it is in a position that is grammatically occupiable by both names and common count nouns. In these two respects, (39c)
is like the two ‘Les Paul’ sentences in (37). It is these two features which lead each of
those sentences to have a two-way ambiguity: they each have a name interpretation and a
common-noun interpretation. But (39c) is unlike the sentences in (37) in the respect that
both of its interpretations are plausible.
19 My convention is to put a name in single quotes when it occurs in a “called” construction as used to describe
how people are addressed or referred to independently of what their name is.
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8
Constraints on Occurrences (need not always coincide)
I have been developing an analogy between the mass/count distinction on the one hand
and the common-noun/name distinction on the other. Just as mass nouns and count nouns
have different grammatical distributions, so do names and common nouns. Just as mass
nouns and count nouns have different application conditions, so do names and common
nouns. Those syntactic and semantic differences between mass nouns and common nouns
do not have a bearing on whether mass nouns are predicates that do not apply to things
that can be counted. Likewise, the syntactic and semantic differences between names and
common count nouns do not have a bearing on whether names are predicates that satisfy
the name-having condition.
In the case of the mass-count distinction, we tentatively accepted the following inchoate
analysis of the truth-conditional difference: mass nouns are true of quantities while count
nouns are true of entities. With regard to grammatical differences, we mentioned just
two of them: Mass nouns cannot occur in the plural and they cannot complement ‘every’.
There are many more besides. Here are just two of them: the first shows that mass nouns
cannot occur in indefinite descriptions; the second shows that count nouns cannot occur as
complements to ‘a lot of’.
(40)
a. * A cutlery is an essential thing to have;
b. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
(41)
a. Everybody should drink a lot of water.
b. * Everybody should eat a lot of nut.
With regard to grammatical differences between names and common nouns, we noted
only one, namely, that common count nouns cannot occur as bare singulars in argument
position while names can. This is illustrated again in the pair in (42). Something similar
holds in the reverse. We will sharpen this up later, but the second restriction is that unmodified common count nouns can, but unmodified names cannot, occur as a complement to
the overt definite article ‘the’ if it is unstressed. This is illustrated by the pair in (43), taken
from Segal (2001), below.
(42)
a. Glenn is kind.
b. * Dog is kind.
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a. * I live in the London.
(43)
(Segal 2001, 561)
b. I live in the city.
Some critics of Predicativism have objected to it on the grounds that names do not have
the same grammatical distribution as other count nouns.20 For example, they have pointed
to the difference in grammaticality between sentences like those in (42) and that between
sentences like those in (43).
The criticism falls well short of its mark. Predicativism, it apparently must be emphasised, does not include the thesis that names are like common count nouns in every respect.
In particular, it does not include the thesis that names and common count nouns have the
same grammatical distribution. Names and common count nouns are both predicates, and
they are both count nouns, but they do not have the same syntax. That is no problem
for Predicativism about names. This is just like the syntactic differences between mass
nouns and count nouns: they have no bearing on whether mass nouns are common-noun
predicates,21 much less on whether mass nouns are nouns.
In the case of the truth-conditional distinction between names and common nouns,
predicativists say that the truth-conditional difference is this: names always satisfy the
name-having condition, but common nouns need not.
9
The Syntactic Differences between Names and Common Count Nouns
So what are the syntactic differences between names and common count nouns? We’ve
already noted two.
Unmodified Singular Constraint I:
When a noun occurs as a bare unmodified singular in argument position, it can be
a name occurrence but it cannot be a common count-noun occurrence. This was
illustrated by (34) and (42).
(34)
a. Let’s give Polly a cracker;
b. *Let’s give parrot a cracker.
(42)
a. Glenn is kind.
b. * Dog is kind.
20 See,
21 See
for example, James Higginbotham (1988), Segal (2001), King (2006), and Jeshion (2015).
Koslicki (1999) for in-depth discussion of the view that mass nouns are predicates.
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Unmodified Singular Constraint II:
When an unmodified singular noun occurs as a complement to an overt but unstressed definite article ‘the’, it can be a common count-noun occurrence but it cannot
be a name occurrence. This was illustrated by (35) and (43).
(35)
a. *Where did you see the William?
b. Where did you see the dagger?
(43)
a. * I live in the London.
b. I live in the city.
In fact, as Sloat (1969) pointed out forty-five years ago, these two constraints represent
the only distributional differences between names and common count nouns. Let me describe some of the many grammatical environments that allow for both name occurrences
and common count-noun occurrences. Some have already been mentioned, but for the
purpose of uncovering a simple principle, it is useful to have them all laid out here.
Unmodified names with determiners other than ‘the’:
As with common count nouns, unmodified names can complement number words,
the demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’, and any determiner other than overt unstressed
‘the’. And they can occur as bare plurals. This was suggested by the Burge-type
examples (4–7) and (12).
(4) An Alfred joined the club today;
(Burge 1973, 429)
(5) There are two Cecils in my building;
(6) Most Michaels have conservative parents;
(7) Sarahs from Alaska are usually scary.
(12)
a. Both men had qualities that the other would have admired;
b. Both Aristotles had qualities that the other would have admired.
Singular names preceded by a modifier
As with common count nouns, names can occur in the singular with ‘the’ when they
are preceded by a modifier. The modifier may be restrictive, as in (44), or it may be
nonrestrictive, as in (45).
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(44)
a. The shorter John is teaching ethics this year. (The taller one is
teaching logic.)
b. The shorter logician is teaching intro logic this year. (The taller one
is teaching advanced logic.)
(45)
a. The talented Mr. Ripley was a terrific impersonator;
b. The talented starlet was a terrific impersonator.
Singular names followed by a restrictive modifier:
As with common count nouns, names can occur in the singular with ‘the’ when they
are followed by a restrictive modifier, as in the next two examples, which we’ve already seen.
(37)
a. The Les Paul that I saw had a hollow body;
b. The Les Paul that I saw was a great guitar designer.
(38)
a. The Ivan with the brown hair (as opposed to the Ivan with the
blond hair) was waiting in the hallway.
b. The student with the brown hair was waiting in the hallway.
Unmodified singular names with stressed ‘the’:
As with common nouns, unmodified singular names can occur with ‘the’ if it is stressed.
(46) Wait, you mean the Saul Kripke is at the door?
(47) Wait, you mean the author of Naming and Necessity is at the door?
So how do we account for these facts? Sloat gave a merely disjunctive description of
them:
The definite article will appear as zero before singular proper nouns, except when it
is heavily stressed or they are preceded by restrictive adjectives or are followed by
restrictive relative clauses. (Sloat 1969, 28)
It needs saying that Sloat made a distinction between what he called the ‘orthographically
definable class of proper nouns’ and the ‘syntactically definable class of proper nouns’. In
my terminology, the orthographically definable class of proper nouns is the class of what I
am calling simply ‘proper nouns’. The syntactically definable class is the class of what I am
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calling ‘names’. By the point in his essay at which the passage quoted above appears, Sloat
means by ‘proper noun’ what he had started out calling the syntactically definable class of
proper nouns.
I would like to make two modifications to Sloat’s disjunctive description. First, I replace
‘adjectives’ and ‘relative clauses’ with ‘modifiers’ since the relevant modifiers can fall into
other grammatical categories, for example nouns, as in ‘The designer Marc Jacobs is opening another shop’ or ‘The verb “shuffle” has two syllables’ and prepositional phrases, as in
‘The Gretel in the basement is stuffed’. Second, I hold that when a name is preceded by
a nonrestrictive modifier, not just a restrictive one, it can occur with overt ‘the’, as shown
by (45a).
With these two modifications in place, we can formulate a very simple rule to govern
the interaction of names with the definite article.
Where Øthe : The definite article must appear as Øthe when it forms a constituent with a
name, unless the article is stressed.22
The final qualification is to some extent extraneous since one cannot stress a word, Øthe
included, without sounding it out.23
10
The Denouement
The following sentences are not inconsistent, for both are true. How can that be? The
second has the form of the negation of the first.
(48) Christian Schmidt (the waiter) is a Christian. (He’s not a Christopher.)
(49) Christian Schmidt (the waiter) is not a Christian. (He converted.)
There is not much of a puzzle here. Even though the sentences have the forms ‘a is an F’ and
‘a is not an F’ they can both be true because the noun ‘Christian’ is ambiguous. It has a name
interpretation, on which it satisfies the name-having condition. And it has a common-noun
interpretation, on which it’s true of adherents of certain religions regardless of their names.
22 Cf. Matushansky (2006a, 2006b). She accounts for these facts by proposing a particular rule of ‘head
movement’, which she dubs ‘m-merger’. My rule requires no special syntactic operations.
23 There is also the pesky question of names that do occur with an overt article. Brian Rabern (2015) has
recently offered an extended discussion of these. Among the examples he gives are: ‘the Space Needle’, ‘the
Golden Gate Bridge’, and ‘the Statue of Liberty’. There is much to say about such examples, but not space
enough to do so here.
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Since indefinite descriptions grammatically accommodate both singular unmodified names
and singular unmodified common count nouns, each ‘Christian’ sentence can be interpreted
in two ways.
This is exactly the situation with the Romanov sentences. On Boër’s intended interpretation they are true, but for each of them there is an interpretation on which they are false,
as illustrated by the following.
(50) My barber and my piano teacher are both Romanovs (he’s Joe, she’s Masha),
but they’re not related.
(51) It’s ironic that my barber is a Romanov but that my gardener Cox isn’t, given
Cox’s noble Russian ancestry.
Similar illustrations of name interpretations for other Roamnov-like counterexample are
easily devised.24
In light of the ambiguity of Boër’s Romanov sentences (and their kin) what should
we now say about the counterexamples that they putatively generate? Reconsider the
Romanov sentence about Waldo Cox, the one with the ill-fated Russian ancestors.
(2) Waldo Cox (my gardener) is a Romanov.
Since the sentence has two interpretations, any counterexample involving its truth conditions needs to be relativised to one of those two. Let’s give the name ‘(2N )’ to the name
interpretation of (2) and ‘(2C )’ to its common-noun interpretation.
Counterexample I.
P: In (2N ), ‘Romanov’ occurs as a name.
T0 : When a predicate N occurs as a name it is true of just those things that have
N as a name;
S: In (2N ), ‘Romanov’ is a predicate that is true of Waldo Cox, even though
Waldo Cox does not have ‘Romanov’ as a name;
⊥ : Therefore, the predicate ‘Romanov’ in (2) is both true and and not true of
Waldo Cox.
24 For example, Jeshion’s mother could straightforwardly speak truly by saying: ‘I’m no longer a Kaufman; I
became a Jeshion upon getting married.’
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Counterexample II.
P: In (2C ), ‘Romanov’ occurs as a name.
T0 : When a predicate N occurs as a name it is true of just those things that have
N as a name;
S: In (2C ), ‘Romanov’ is a predicate that is true of Waldo Cox, even though
Waldo Cox does not have ‘Romanov’ as a name;
⊥ : Therefore, the predicate ‘Romanov’ in (2) is both true and and not true of
Waldo Cox.
Both counterarguments are valid, but neither of them is sound. In counterargument I.,
the denouncer’s hidden premise P is true but the counterstatement S is false. And the
reverse holds for counterargument II., in which the counterstatement S is true but the
denouncer’s hidden premise P is false.
In short, each of Boër’s Romanov sentences has two different interpretations. Neither
interpretation, though, supports a successful counterexample to Predicativism. The reason
that there are two different interpretations of the Romanov examples is that in them, we
have a word that is in a position occupiable by names and also by common count nouns.
Thus if the word can have a name interpretation, i.e., one satisfying the name-having
condition, then there will be a reading of the sentence on which the word has its name
interpretation. And if the word can have a common-noun interpretation, then there will be
a reading of the sentence on which the name has its common-noun interpretation.
Perhaps the clearest cases of this phenomenon were those sentences containing the
word ‘Christian’. One of these sentences, namely (49), had the same form as the first Romanov sentence and exhibited the same ambiguity. The reason that the ‘Romanov’ sentence
looks like it will fare better as a counterexample to Predicativism than the ‘Christian’ sentence is that the on the common-noun interpretation of the predicate ‘Romanov’, whether
it applies to a thing has nothing to do with what that thing’s name is but does have something to do with what other things’ names are, in particular, the names of the ancestral
families of the thing in question. In contrast, on the common-noun interpretation of the
word ‘Christian’, its applicability to a thing has nothing to do with what anything’s name
is, not even Christ’s.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for discussion to members of my 2014 Princeton graduate seminar on names and
to audiences at the following: Lectures in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, a conference organized
by the New York Society of Women Philosophers, CUNY, 3 May 2013; The New York Philosophy of
Language Workshop, NYU, 4 September 2014; and a conference on Proper Names: Semantics vs.
Pragmatics, organized by Dolf Rami and Ede Zimmerman, University of Göttingen, 6 June 2014.
I also appreciate detailed comments from Adam Lerner, Thomas Baldwin, and two anonymous
referees for Mind.
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