Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions

Thomas Hodgson

doi:10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3

Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions

Thomas Hodgson

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Views that treat the contents of sentences as structured, Russellian propositions face a problem with empty names. It seems that those sorts of things cannot be the contents of sentences containing such names. I motivate and defend a solution to the problem according to which a sentence may have a singular proposition as its content at one time, and a nonsingular one at another. When the name is empty the content is a nonsingular Russellian structured proposition; when the name is not empty the content is a singular Russellian structured proposition.

Original language	English
Journal	SYNTHESE
Early online date	5 Oct 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 5 Oct 2018

Keywords

Content
Empty names
Propositions
Reference
Russellianism

Access to Document

10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3

Cite this

@article{37d067f0634c45d9b34d42513e04c731,

title = "Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions",

abstract = "Views that treat the contents of sentences as structured, Russellian propositions face a problem with empty names. It seems that those sorts of things cannot be the contents of sentences containing such names. I motivate and defend a solution to the problem according to which a sentence may have a singular proposition as its content at one time, and a nonsingular one at another. When the name is empty the content is a nonsingular Russellian structured proposition; when the name is not empty the content is a singular Russellian structured proposition.",

keywords = "Content, Empty names, Propositions, Reference, Russellianism",

author = "Thomas Hodgson",

year = "2018",

month = oct,

day = "5",

doi = "10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3",

language = "English",

journal = "SYNTHESE",

issn = "0039-7857",

publisher = "Springer Netherlands",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions

AU - Hodgson, Thomas

PY - 2018/10/5

Y1 - 2018/10/5

N2 - Views that treat the contents of sentences as structured, Russellian propositions face a problem with empty names. It seems that those sorts of things cannot be the contents of sentences containing such names. I motivate and defend a solution to the problem according to which a sentence may have a singular proposition as its content at one time, and a nonsingular one at another. When the name is empty the content is a nonsingular Russellian structured proposition; when the name is not empty the content is a singular Russellian structured proposition.

AB - Views that treat the contents of sentences as structured, Russellian propositions face a problem with empty names. It seems that those sorts of things cannot be the contents of sentences containing such names. I motivate and defend a solution to the problem according to which a sentence may have a singular proposition as its content at one time, and a nonsingular one at another. When the name is empty the content is a nonsingular Russellian structured proposition; when the name is not empty the content is a singular Russellian structured proposition.

KW - Content

KW - Empty names

KW - Propositions

KW - Reference

KW - Russellianism

U2 - 10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3

DO - 10.1007/s11229-018-01971-3

M3 - Article

SN - 0039-7857

JO - SYNTHESE

JF - SYNTHESE

ER -

Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Cite this