Thursday, December 20, 2007

Soames' Competence Conditions for Proper Names

In order to be a competent user of a name n of an object o, two things are required. (i) One must have acquired a referential intention that determines o as the referent of n. Two ways in which this may be done are by picking up n from others who used it as a name of o, and intending use n to refer to the same thing they did, or by being independently acquainted with o and introducing n as a name for o. (ii)One must realize that to assertively utter n is F is to say of the referent, o, of n that it "is F."

--Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity (p. 65)

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