ABSTRACT

An empty name is a name that fails to name an individual-a name that fails to refer. Fiction, myth, and false theory provide plausible examples. Thus, on the face of it, ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ ‘Pegasus,’ and ‘Vulcan’ fail to refer precisely because there is no such detective as Sherlock Holmes, there is no winged horse Pegasus, and there is no planet Vulcan whose orbit lies between Mercury and the Sun. Nonetheless, some sentences containing empty names can be understood, and hence appear to be meaningful-for example, ‘Pegasus was sired by Poseidon’ and ‘Vulcan was postulated by Le Verrier’; some empty names appear to name the same individual and hence to be co-referential-for example, ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘Father Christmas’; and some sentences containing empty names appear to be straightforwardly true-for example, ‘Sherlock Holmes is a character from fiction,’ and ‘Pegasus does not exist.’ The expression ‘straightforwardly true’ is intended to contrast ‘true according to the fiction/myth/failed theory,’ which require independent treatment. Thus ‘Sherlock Holmes played the violin’ is, on the face of it, true according to the fiction but not straightforwardly true, whereas ‘Sherlock Holmes is a character from fiction’ is, on the face of it, straightforwardly true but not true according to the fiction. A semantic theory of names must make sense of the apparent phenomena of meaning, reference, and truth in the specific context of sentences containing names that fail to refer (either by accommodating the relevant intuitions or by explaining them away).