Direct reference theory

<h2 id="john-stuart-mill">John Stuart Mill</h2>
The <a href="/facts/Philosophy/zAH5PVD6">philosopher</a> <a href="/facts/John_Stuart_Mill/0QxUR9l7">John Stuart Mill</a> was one of the earliest modern advocates of a direct reference theory beginning in 1843.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9">9</a> In his <a href="/facts/A_System_of_Logic/I5dPErgf">A System of Logic</a> Mill introduced a distinction between what he called "<a href="/facts/Connotation/6GMwFTn9">connotation</a>" and "<a href="/facts/Denotation/oABEtLtA">denotation</a>". Connotation is a relation between a name (singular or general) and one or more attributes. For example, 'widow' denotes <a href="/facts/Widow/BnRePUKg">widows</a> and connotes the attributes of being female, and of having been married to someone now dead. If a name is connotative, it denotes what it denotes in virtue of object or objects having the attributes the name connotes. Connotation thus determines denotation. The same object can, on the other hand, be denoted with several names with different connotations. A name can have connotation but no denotation. Connotation of a name, if it has one, can be taken to be its meaning in Mill.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10">10</a>
In contrast to proper names, most individual concrete names, in Mill's opinion, are not connotative. Proper names, then, have no significance. On the other hand, all general phrases are connotative in Mill's view. Overall, Mill's argument is quite similar to the <a href="/facts/Descriptive_theory/6wCNI0ox">descriptive theory</a>, with the exception of his view on proper names.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11">11</a>

<h2 id="bertrand-russell">Bertrand Russell</h2>
<a href="/facts/Saul_Kripke/qEkI8qW8">Saul Kripke</a>, a proponent of direct reference theory, in his <a href="/facts/Naming_and_Necessity/rBWU6I4G">Naming and Necessity</a> dubbed <a href="/facts/Mediated_reference_theory/PSMqyslN">mediated reference theory</a> the "<a href="/facts/Frege%25E2%2580%2593Russell_view/PSMqyslN">Frege–Russell view</a>" and criticized it (see below).<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12">12</a> Subsequent scholarship refuted the claim that <a href="/facts/Bertrand_Russell/SRpwNX2U">Bertrand Russell</a>'s views on reference theory were the same as <a href="/facts/Gottlob_Frege/FXyStVYj">Gottlob Frege</a>'s, since Russell was also a proponent of direct reference theory.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:13" href="#fn:13">13</a>

<h2 id="saul-kripke">Saul Kripke</h2>
<a href="/facts/Saul_Kripke/qEkI8qW8">Saul Kripke</a> defended direct reference theory when applied to proper names. Kripke claims that proper names do not have any "senses" at all, because senses only offer contingent facts about things.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:14" href="#fn:14">14</a> <a href="/facts/Ruth_Barcan_Marcus/aF5HWYfs">Ruth Barcan Marcus</a> advanced a theory of direct reference for proper names at a symposium in which <a href="/facts/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine/2RrhATxa">Quine</a> and Kripke were participants: published in <a href="/facts/Synthese/6QcPLrTV">Synthese</a>, 1961 with Discussion in Synthese 1962. She called directly referring proper names "tags" (see <a href="/facts/Tag_theory_of_names/aF5HWYfs">tag theory of names</a>). Kripke urged such a theory in 1971 and thereafter. He called such directly referring proper names "<a href="/facts/Rigid_designator/6K72t37M">rigid designators</a>".
Kripke articulated this view using the formal apparatus of <a href="/facts/Possible_worlds/6jr7P8jV">possible worlds</a>. The possible worlds thought-experiment first takes the subject, and then tries to imagine the subject in other possible worlds. Taking George W. Bush, for example. First (1) the thought-experiment must state that the name "George W. Bush" is the name used to describe the particular individual man that is typically meant. Then (2), the experimenter must imagine the possible states of affairs that reality could have been - where Bush was not president, or went into a different career, was never born at all, etc. When this is done, it becomes obvious that the phrase "President of the United States in 2004" does not necessarily describe George W. Bush, because it is not <a href="/facts/Logical_truth/N0bUYhUW">necessarily true</a> in all possible worlds; it only contingently describes him. By contrast, for instance, the word "apple" will always describe the same things across all possible worlds, because of premise (1). So use of the word "apple" to describe apples is true in all possible worlds.
Terms that are true across all possible worlds in this way are called "<a href="/facts/Rigid_designator/6K72t37M">rigid designators</a>".

<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Causal_theory_of_reference/XhNeaRrS">Causal theory of reference</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Contextualism/AY17YuQI">Contextualism</a> and <a href="/facts/Context_principle/cKeLdEqP">Context principle</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Descriptivist_theory_of_names/6wCNI0ox">Descriptivist theory of names</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Entity_realism/wLGRdJ7k">Entity realism</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Frege%2527s_puzzle/uWpYqTGD">Frege's puzzle</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Sense_and_reference/Je4PEFQJ">Sense and reference</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/The_Meaning_of_Meaning/K8HhW4RD">The Meaning of Meaning</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Severin Schroeder (2006), Wittgenstein, p. 30: "This view that the meaning of a word has to be explained in terms of what it stands for, its reference, I shall call referentialism." <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=md-KV6HUueUC&pg=PA30" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=md-KV6HUueUC&pg=PA30</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Andrea Bianchi (2012) Two ways of being a (direct) referentialist, in Joseph Almog, Paolo Leonardi, Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, p. 79 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CnTWQgtTtG0C&pg=PA79" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=CnTWQgtTtG0C&pg=PA79</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ayaz Naseem (2007), Scientism and Education: Empirical Research as Neo-Liberal Ideology, pp. 83–4 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Severin Schroeder (2006), Wittgenstein, p. 30: "This view that the meaning of a word has to be explained in terms of what it stands for, its reference, I shall call referentialism." <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=md-KV6HUueUC&pg=PA30" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=md-KV6HUueUC&pg=PA30</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ayaz Naseem (2007), Scientism and Education: Empirical Research as Neo-Liberal Ideology, pp. 83–4 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ayaz Naseem (2007), Scientism and Education: Empirical Research as Neo-Liberal Ideology, pp. 83–4 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ayaz Naseem (2007), Scientism and Education: Empirical Research as Neo-Liberal Ideology, pp. 83–4 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, Ayaz Naseem (2007), Scientism and Education: Empirical Research as Neo-Liberal Ideology, pp. 83–4 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=F5gveeSYcNQC&pg=PA83</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">Stainton, Robert J. (1996). Philosophical Perspectives on Language. Broadview Press. pp. 61. ISBN 978-1-55111-086-8. <a href="978-1-55111-086-8" target="_blank">978-1-55111-086-8</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">"John Stuart Mill – Connotation and Denotation". University of Helsinki. 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-30. [dead link] <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/s2008/MillFrege.doc" target="_blank">http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/s2008/MillFrege.doc</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">"John Stuart Mill – Connotation and Denotation". University of Helsinki. 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-30. [dead link] <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/s2008/MillFrege.doc" target="_blank">http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/s2008/MillFrege.doc</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:12">Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. p. 27. <a href="/wiki/Saul_Kripke" target="_blank">/wiki/Saul_Kripke</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:13">Howard Wettstein, "Frege-Russell Semantics?", Dialectica 44(1–2), 1990, pp. 113–135, esp. 115: "Russell maintains that when one is acquainted with something, say, a present sense datum or oneself, one can refer to it without the mediation of anything like a Fregean sense. One can refer to it, as we might say, directly." <a href="#fnref:13" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:14">Kripke, Saul (1980). Naming and Necessity. Basil Blackwell. <a href="#fnref:14" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Direct reference theory open-in-new

Direct reference theory