Towards the Semantics of Divine Names

Daniela Vacek (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Comenius University)

The Analytic Philosophy Department, University of Warsaw invites you to a talk by Daniela Vacek (Slovac Academy of Sciences & Comenius University) entitled "Towards the Semantics of Divine Names". The talk is on Thursday, APRIL 20 at 15:00 CET (online), and is part of the department's biweekly seminar. Below you can find the abstract of the talk. The meeting will take place on Zoom. Please write to [email protected] for the link.

All welcome!

ABSTRACT:
The talk focuses on the underexplored topic of the semantics of divine names (understood very broadly, including expressions like God, Jehovah, Krishna, Hades, Allah, and so forth) and provides some initial insights from a religiously neutral perspective. In particular, ideas from two works in progress (in collaborations with M. Duží, M. Kosterec, and M. Zouhar) will be presented: the first idea is that divine names are not proper names (it will be argued that this claim holds at least as a defeasible thesis, if not also as a generally valid one); the second idea is that at least some divine names are necessarily empty. The latter motivates a hyperintensional semantics of divine names.