ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on P. T. Geach's treatment of substantival general terms occurring as general names with a view to explicating the prime difficulties involved. It provides a quite general argument for the thesis that general names rest upon the introduction of symbols, sortals. The chapter examines the details of Geach's case that sortals, or more generally, substantival general terms, can occur as names and are in effect, on one Geachian thesis, reducible to such an occurrence. Geach's thesis that proper names merely suppose the introduction of names has the consequence that he cannot introduce names. The chapter argues that Geach's failure to recognise the category of the sortal results in a fundamental disaster for his own theory of naming and predication. Geach's point that proper names convey a nominal essence is perfectly correct, he has not shown that it follows from this that such nominal essences themselves must be able to stand as logical subjects - be names.
