Descriptions and Names

Descriptions and Names

The distinction between names and descriptions is not as sharp as we tend to suppose. We are prone to think that names are purely denotative (tags, labels) and descriptions are purely connotative (attributional, predicational), but actually the two overlap. If you favor a description theory of names, you are still up to your neck in names; and if you prefer to take names as primitive, you are still wallowing in descriptive content. There is no such thing as pure description or pure denotation. Pure description theories of descriptions are false, and pure denotation theories of names are false. Both are both. They are not mutually exclusive.

In the case of names, there are several kinds of descriptive content that they carry: a certain natural kind, male or female, family lineage, nationality, language spoken, social class, historical period, being called by the name in question, etc. A person named “Susan Smith” is thereby classified as a human being, female, of the Smith family, likely to be of British descent, a speaker of English, probably not upper class, born at a certain period of history, not nameless, and called “Susan Smith”. There are no names that are purely denotational (“logically proper names”), having no meaning apart from their bearer; that idea is a myth. And we all tend, as users of names, to know these descriptions, or someone in the linguistic community does. They also play a role in fixing the reference of the name—they tell you who or what is in question. They are not purely decorative; they have a semantic function. No one has ever spoken a language in which the names lack such descriptive content. We might even say that names necessarily have such content; it is essential to their being names. The whole institution of names, from baptism to burial, womb to tomb, is steeped in these connotations. Names have sense as well as reference; they contain information. It is not possible to analyze them by means of descriptions that don’t express this sense. Their meaning is not exhausted by their bearer. They are not semantically simple.

Why do I say that descriptions are always name-involving? Two reasons: one, they often contain proper names, and two, the predicates they contain are themselves name-like. Thus “the capital of France” and “the cat in the corner”.  They need to contain names because we don’t typically have purely general descriptions to hand (like “the first dog born at sea”), since we often lack that kind of individuating knowledge; and terms like “cat” are precisely names of natural zoological kinds. They are not, on their face, definite descriptions of the denoted natural kind. Also, adjectives and artifact terms are name-like: “square”, “blue”, “table”, “television”. These all stand for (denote) some attribute or kind of thing: they are classified as “common names”. Naming is not restricted to names of concrete individuals; we name qualities and kinds as well as particulars. So, descriptions don’t dispense with names; they depend on names. You don’t get rid of names by replacing them with descriptions, because the description will contain further names, particular or general. The idea of a purely descriptive name-free language is also a myth. Actually, all language depends on names; we can’t eliminate names and replace them with descriptions, because descriptions are made of names. If we can’t make sense of names, we can’t make sense of language. Language consists of names (“and” is the English name for logical conjunction).

Thus, names are inherently descriptive and descriptions are inherently nominative. The distinction is bogus. Every word of a natural language is both descriptive and nominative—a description and a name. Sense and reference, denotation and connotation, intension and extension. Meaning is inherently connotative and denotative simultaneously. There can’t be theories that are connotational but not denotational or vice versa. Language relies on both working together. The quest for a theory that is purely one or the other is quixotic. The words “Susan Smith” and “navy blue” work in much the same way—both are descriptive names of something (a person or a quality). The name-description distinction, as commonly understood, is an untenable dualism.