Zuzanna Hodgson-Gnatek

Whereas neo-Fregeans, such as Hale and Wright, as well as other abstractionists, e.g., Linnebo, employ abstraction principles in their views of reference and objecthood—the idea being that abstraction principles ensure that a relevant term objectually refers—some recent developments, e.g., Schiffer’s and Thomasson’s, aim at avoiding them. The aim of this paper is to question the extent to which this is feasible. In the case of Thomasson, this question has to do with the notion of co-application conditions—that is, with “rules that (supposing the term to have been successfully applied) specify under what conditions the term would be applied again to one and the same entity” (Thomasson, 2007, 40). I argue that Thomasson’s characterisation of co-application conditions requires them to be stated via an abstraction principle. If this is correct, then it is not clear why Thomasson’s view has an advantage over its predecessors, which also reveals some further difficulties for the views under consideration.

David Braun develops two theories of empty names meant to be compatible with the Direct Reference Theory. I first present the main problems that empty names pose for it. Next, I discuss descriptivism , elaborate how a descriptivist might try to deal with these problems, and explain why the descriptivist's approach is unsatisfactory. After explaining Braun's own position I argue that some aspects of his view are still quite problematic, especially his view on the relation between beliefs and propositions, his claim that there are some beliefs which do not express propositions, the fact that some important claims of the Direct Reference Theory have to be modifed to accommodate his account, the lack of semantic differentation between merely syntactically similar sentences, and the coarse-grainedness of the assignment of truth values and identity conditions to certain propositions