Abstract

In this dissertation I will argue that most proper names and indexical expressions express indexed-essences. In particular, I will argue that they express qualitative properties that are indexed to the world of utterance, the time of utterance, and the utterer. These three indexicals themselves are taken as primitive; they don't express indexed essences. Respectively, they express the actual world, the time of utterance, and the haecceity of the utterer. So, on this account "FDR" might express the property being the three-term president of my country who was president approximately fifty years before now in alpha. Note that this property is an essence of FDR, it is such that necessarily, if FDR exists, he exemplifies it, and necessarily, nothing distinct from FDR exemplifies it. ;The dissertation is a systematic argument to this conclusion about the semantics of proper names and indexicals. The argument begins in Chapter 1, where I lay out some of the metaphysical and semantical presuppositions from which I proceed in the dissertation. ;In Chapter 2 I argue that propositions are structured entities, built up out of the semantic contents of the constituent parts of the sentences that express them. I argue that it is impossible for physical objects to be constituents of propositions; hence the direct reference theory is false. ;In Chapter 3 I look at other theories of names and indexicals. In particular, I examine the view that names and indexicals express haecceities, non-indexed properties, properties specifying a complex causal relation between the referent of the term and the term, and object-dependent senses. I argue that each of these views are wanting. ;In Chapter 4 I lay out my own theory in detail, and give thought experiments to show that the triple-indexing to a world, time, and utterer is required for proper names and indexicals to function properly. I spend most of the chapter rebutting objections given by people like Kripke, Devitt, and Donnellan.