ON BAPTISMS

Hugo Heagren (King's College London)

The seminar is going to be online on zoom at 18.00 EEST (GMT+3). ROMANIAN TIMEZONE

Title: On Baptisms

Abstract: Suppose a causal theory of reference for utterances of proper names is true. According to such theories, there are two important parts of the reference mechanism: baptisms, in which a name is bestowed upon an object, enabling later reference, and borrowing or inheritance, where later tokens of the same name refer to that object because they are appropriately related to the baptism. Much work has been done on how the later tokens must relate to the baptism. Surprisingly, very little work has been done on the nature of baptisms themselves, or even to describe desiderata for what a good theory of baptisms would be like. I offer both. This talk examines the two received approaches to baptisms across the literature and their respective shortcomings, some more sophisticated theories one might hold, and their problems, and finally my own theory which accounts for all the difficulties of the other views. On my theory, a baptism is an act (possible an 'extended' or 'composite' act) which institutes a constitutive rule in virtue of which later utterances of the relevant name will refer to the relevant object. I demonstrate that this view can account for all the cases I discuss.

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83691371602?pwd=Ym1tQWhIWTlTbDJ4YmNwNFRRaFBIZz09

Meeting ID: 836 9137 1602

Passcode: 097096