How Proper Names Refer: Is Causal Descriptivism Defensible?

Funding:

• General Research Fund, Research Grants Council Hong Kong
  HKD322,500.

Introduction

• In philosophy of names, most studies have focused on the question of to what a proper name refers rather than how it refers. The usual strategy is to take care of the former but leave the latter unanswered. This GRF project fills the research niche by working backward to examine the latter and use the result to challenge dominant theories of the former. The aim is to motivate a causal descriptive theory of names against the current orthodoxy of direct referentialism. This project is innovative methodologically because it employs both empirical and conceptual ways of inquiry in philosophy. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 2019 to collect linguistic intuitions among global academics, to be followed by rigorous analyses and theoretical argumentations.