In the philosophy of language, the descriptivist theory of proper names (also descriptivist theory of reference)[1] is the view that the meaning or semantic content of a proper name is identical to the descriptions associated with it by speakers, while their referents are determined to be the objects that satisfy these descriptions.
[2] In the 1970s, this theory came under attack from causal theorists such as Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and others.
However, it has seen something of a revival in recent years, especially under the form of what are called two-dimensional semantic theories.
Logically proper names are indexicals such as this and that, which directly refer (in a Millian sense) to sense-data or other objects of immediate acquaintance.
For Russell, ordinary proper names are abbreviated definite descriptions.
Here definite description refers again to the type of formulation "The…" which was used above to describe Santa Claus as "the benevolent, bearded…."
Notice that this formulation is entirely general: it says that there is some x out in the world that satisfies the description, but does not specify which one thing ‘’x’’ refers to.
Notwithstanding these differences however, descriptivism and the descriptive theory of proper names came to be associated with both the views of Frege and Russell and both address the general problems (names without bearers, Frege's puzzles concerning identity and substitution in contexts of intentional attitude attributions) in a similar manner.
Another problem for Millianism is Frege's famous puzzles concerning the identity of co-referring terms.
Another problem for Millianism is that of statements such as ”Fred believes that Cicero, but not Tully, was Roman.” In his book Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke criticised the descriptivist theory.
(4) states what happens when no object satisfies the properties (Kripke talks in terms of taking a "vote" as to the unique referent).
Kripke notes "(6) need not be a thesis of the theory if someone doesn't think that the cluster is part of the meaning of the name" (p. 65).
Consider the name "Aristotle" and the descriptions "the greatest student of Plato," "the founder of logic" and "the teacher of Alexander."
For descriptivists Aristotle means "the greatest student of Plato," "the founder of logic" and "the teacher of Alexander."
Metalinguistic description theories have been developed and adopted by such contemporary theorists as Kent Bach and Jerrold Katz.
Differently from the traditional theory, such theories do not posit a need for sense to determine reference and the metalinguistic description mentions the name it is the sense of (hence it is "metalinguistic") while placing no conditions on being the bearer of a name.
Katz's theory, to take this example, is based on the fundamental idea that sense should not have to be defined in terms of, nor determine, referential or extensional properties but that it should be defined in terms of, and determined by, all and only the intensional properties of names.
He illustrates the way a metalinguistic description theory can be successful against Kripkean counterexamples by citing, as one example, the case of "Jonah."
The most common and challenging criticism to metalinguistic description theories was put forth by Kripke himself: they seem to be an ad hoc explanation of a single linguistic phenomenon.
Two-dimensional approaches are usually motivated by a sense of dissatisfaction with the causal theorist explanation of how it is that a single proposition can be both necessary and a posteriori or contingent and a priori.