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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Articles

173800

(2010) Axiomathes 20 (2-3).

Are proper names rigid designators?

Pierre Baumann

pp. 333-346

A widely accepted thesis in the philosophy of language is that natural language proper names are rigid designators, and that they are so de jure, or as a matter of the "semantic rules of the language." This paper questions this claim, arguing that rigidity cannot be plausibly construed as a property of name types and that the alternative, rigidity construed as a property of tokens, means that they cannot be considered rigid de jure; rigidity in this case must be viewed as a pragmatic and not a semantic property.

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Full citation:

Baumann, P. (2010). Are proper names rigid designators?. Axiomathes 20 (2-3), pp. 333-346.

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