Are Names Really Empty: A Look into Shona Dog Names

Quantificational logic and empty names

In a number of recent articles Timothy Williamson has built a strong case for the claim that everything necessarily exists. His argument rests on a combination of the derivability of this claim from quantificational logic, with standard modal principles and a robust understanding of the Kripke semantics for quantified modal logic. In this paper I defend a contingentist, non-Meinongian metaphysi...

Empty Names and Pragmatic Implicatures

Truths Containing Empty Names Abstract

On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped...

Recovering What Is Said With Empty Names

I Introduction As our data will show, negative existential sentences containing so-called empty names evoke the same strong semantic intuitions in ordinary speakers and philosophers alike.

We Look Like Our Names

Research demonstrates that facial appearance affects social perceptions. The current research investigates the reverse possibility: Can social perceptions influence facial appearance? We examine a social tag that is associated with us early in life—our given name. The hypothesis is that name stereotypes can be manifested in facial appearance, producing a face-name matching effect, whereby both ...