Peirce's Pragmatic Theory of Proper Names

Peirce's Pragmatic Theory of Proper Names Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, Volume 46, Number 3, Summer 2010, pp. 341-363 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press

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Abstract Peirce’s pragmatic theory of proper names has commonly been taken to represent a relatively distant historical precedent to the ideas that have floated around the causal- historical theory of names. Yet his theory differs from the causal theory in crucial respects. I will point out its distinctive contextual, cognitive, and epistemic factors, not found in recent formulations of the causal theory, which are largely based on Peirce’s unique conception of the workings of quantification in his logic. His pragmatic approach thus presents an alternative and at 1 the same time broader account of the non- Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen descriptive denotation of proper names than that provided by the causal-historical theory.

Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Proper Names

Keywords: Proper names, Causal-historical theory, Pragmatics, Quantification. Introduction Charles Peirce’s theory of proper names is intimately connected to a number of central topics in contemporary philosophy of language and logic. Several papers have appeared in the past in which Peirce’s theory of names has been attested to be a precursor of the causal-historical theory of reference.2 The causal-historical theory in turn has customarily been pigeonholed as the ‘new’ theories of reference that have been emerging since the 1950s (Devitt 1981; Donellan 1966; Kripke 1980; Marcus 1950; Putnam 1973). Among those who have seen Peirce as such a precursor of the new theory of reference are DiLeo (1997), Hilpinen (1995), Maddalena (2006), Pape (1987), and Thibaud (1987). Related recent publications on the topic include those of Jacquette (2009) and Weber

TRANSACTIONS OF THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 46, No. 3 ©2010

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(2008). The following passage from Peirce is routinely quoted in order to support this linkage: A proper name, when one meets with it for the first time, is existentially connected with some percept or other equivalent individual knowledge of the individual it names. It is then, and then only, a genuine Index. The next time one meets with it, one regards it as an Icon of that Index. The habitual acquaintance with it having been acquired, it becomes a Symbol whose Interpretant represents it as an Icon of an Index of the Individual named. [CP 2.329, 1903, Speculative Grammar: Propositions]

The intricacies of Peirce’s semeiotic jargon notwithstanding, the commentators have quite rightly pointed out that his innovation was that proper names are, at least at a certain juncture of their life, kinds of indexical signs and that their meaning is not exhausted by assigning descriptions to them. The latter is of course the characteristic feature of the causal theory, and Peirce’s writings certainly seem to agree with that feature. However, I will argue that, aside from the simple denial that the identity of proper names and singular terms is reducible to a descriptive account, from Peirce we do not find much else that supports the key tenets of the causal theory of reference. Among the most prominent tenets is that rigid designation of names is in all its interesting and non-trivial senses an unanalyzable notion.3 The causal theory routinely takes names as directly referential designators. It is this feature that epitomises the causal theory as the ‘new theory’ of reference. Peirce did not think, however, that language has any ready-made set of such names at its disposal. The reasons for this have to do with how the theory of quantification is supposed to work in his mature logical theory. Strictly speaking, Peirce’s theory of names does not, I will go on to argue, take reference as the key operative notion in his theory of the meaning of names at all. It might thus seem that a comparison of it with any contemporary reference theory is a non-starter. Yet many have claimed otherwise and rushed on to classify Peirce not only as an anticipator of referential theories but also a keen contributor to what is recognised as the ‘new’ theory. A detailed comparison is therefore in order. The referential view takes expressions to refer to whatever is historically connected with the utterer of the expression. In contrast, Peirce’s theory is grounded upon a set of pragmatic, cognitive, and epistemic presumptions. According to these, for a proper name to fulfil its function, the “object of experience” that it calls “in mind” comes from collateral observation and common information between discourse participants:

A proper name must serve to justify that the “individual object of experience” can reciprocally be agreed to be the topic of the discourse. Peirce penned this entry for “name” for James Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology in 1902 to publicize his preferred definition of a proper name. This entry, though pivotal to his entire project, was not reproduced in the Collected Papers. He continues the entry to explain how, [m]any proper names are names of collective individuals; and a few are grammatically plural, as the Gracchi. A common name, usually now class-name in logic, though common name is better, has a signification as well as a denotation. That is to say, it conveys the idea that whatever it may be that is spoken of, it is of a certain indicated general description, which may be in some sense negative. [ibid.]

The commentators defending Peirce as a causal theorist have de- emphasized the pragmatic, cognitive and epistemic dimensions of proper names. For example, no one has quoted this dictionary entry in support of his or her interpretation of Peirce’s theory. According to the first part of the definition, however, his theory could be defended as a causal theory only under the very strong assumption of a causal theory of knowledge (Goldman 1967). The causal theory of knowledge, however, suffers from fundamental problems and is out of the question as a candidate for Peirce’s epistemology. Hilpinen (1995: 287) states that “the distinction between names and definite descriptions which Peirce made . . . was later rediscovered by Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and others, and has become an essential part of the recently celebrated ‘new theory of reference’ or the theory of ‘direct reference’.” Though this claim is not incorrect, I defend the view according to which nearly all else in the ‘new theory’ stands in a sharp contrast to Peirce’s theory and that Peirce’s theory is therefore best seen as neither a causal nor a descriptivist one. In a similar vein, a modest admission for Peirce as a precursor of the ‘new theory’ is sustained by DiLeo (1997: 593), who writes that “Kripke’s move was significant, because it sidestepped the mistaken Russellian view that demonstrative reference is the only provider of

Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Proper Names • Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

Name (in logic). Two quite different sorts of terms are called in logic names.4 A proper name serves to call in mind an individual object of experience well known both to the speaker and hearer (for if the object is not known to the hearer it is only just beginning to fulfil for him the function of a proper name), and to show that it is that object concerning which information is furnished or desired. [Peirce 1901, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol 1, p. 127] 5

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genuine indices, which in turn led him to hold that in all other cases names are really just disguised descriptions. As such, one can see some of the affinities between Peirce’s and Kripke’s views.” Maddalena (2006: 6) likewise agrees that the “indexical character of the representamen ‘proper name’ brings his theory on the tracks of direct reference theory.” Thibaud (1987: 527) maintains that “[t]his remarkable text [CP 2.329, Speculative Grammar] seems to contain the seeds of the whole modern theory of proper names.” Boersema (2002), in contrast, has criticized the prevailing view that Peirce’s theory anticipates the causal theory. The points Boersema raises are threefold: (i) The idea of rigid designation runs counter to Peirce’s views on names. (ii) Though what a name’s semantic (denotative) function is and what a speaker means by a name may well be different, unlike in Kripke’s semantic account the semantic and pragmatic features of reference are inseparable for Peirce. (iii) There are examples handled by Peirce’s theory but not by the causal theory. For the most part, Boersema’s criticism is well taken. However, my paper maintains that there are some deeper issues to do with the logic of names related, for instance, to Peirce’s theory of quantification, to which no attention has been paid either by the proponents or the opponents of seeing Peirce as a ‘new theorist.’ The conclusions thus not only substantiate Boersema’s critical points (i)–(iii) but also establish that, in the end, Peirce’s theory of proper names must be viewed as a unique and original attempt towards an overall theory of the denotative function and the semantics/pragmatics of proper names.6 Propositions and Rhemas In the next four sections, I will explain the conceptual and technical apparatus that Peirce used to explicate the logical nature of proper names. To begin with his notion of a proposition, he suggests analysing propositions in terms of their parts, which are not propositions themselves. These parts are blank forms of incomplete expression waiting to be filled in with proper names: Take any proposition and erase certain parts of it, so that it is no longer a proposition but only a blank form which after every blank had been filled by a proper name would become a proposition, however nonsensical. Such a blank form of proposition which can be converted into a proposition by filling every blank with a proper name has been called by the writer a rheme. [MS 280: 19, 1905, The Basis of Pragmaticism]

The same idea was published in Speculative Grammar:

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If parts of a proposition be erased so as to leave blanks in their places, and if these blanks are of such a nature that if each of them be filled

The blank forms of expressions acquire the status of propositions only after the process of saturation with proper names. Peirce variously terms these expressions rhemes, rhemas, or rhemata. According to Peirce, natural language does not lend itself well to the analysis of the nature of rhemas, and hence a special logical inquiry is called for. Overall, his philosophy of language is indeed characterised by a relentless development of various kinds of logical languages to be used for the purposes of analyzing natural-language meaning (Pietarinen 2006). What is a rhema? Peirce explained that “a rhema is an indispensable part of speech in every language. Every verb is a rhema” (MS 516: 39, n.d., On the Basic Rules of Logical Transformation). A verb itself “is a fragment of a possible proposition having blanks which being filled with proper names make the verb a proposition” (MS 483, c.1901, On Existential Graphs). We can think of rhemas as uninterpreted predicate terms. Like predicate, function and relation terms, rhemas have a valency, a finite number of argument places ranging from a zero (“medad”) valency up. A medad is a mental proposition and thus a judgement. They need not be asserted or mentally assented to; it suffices for them to be merely comprehended. Monadic, dyadic, and triadic rhemas are in turn not judgements but proper constituents of assertions. Peirce took it to be a grave fallacy of what he generically dubbed “the German logicians” (CP 2.152) to take the analysis of propositions other than medads to consist of judgments. Rhemas are free forms of expression adjoined by blank lines or spaces into which names are plugged. According to Peirce, “[e]ach rhema is equivalent to a blank form such that if all its blanks are filled with proper names, it becomes a proposition, or symbol capable of assertion” (MS 491: 3–4, c.1903, Logical Tracts. No.1. On Existential Graphs). Recall that assertions are not propositions, as propositions remain invariant in different assertions.7 Peirce admitted that “logically their [rhema’s and term’s] meaning is the same,” the only difference being that the rhema “contains no explicit recognition of its own fragmentary nature” (EP 2:310, c.1904, New Elements). Being uninterpreted, yet potentially interpretable by proper names, rhemas are neither true nor false, whereas the propositions that they comprise when filled with suitable proper names do need to be either true or false.8 From Substitutional to Objectual Quantification Having clarified the nature of propositions, let us move on to look at another apparatus connected with the development of Peirce’s theory


by a proper name the result will be a proposition, then the blank form of proposition which was first produced by the erasures is termed a rheme. [CP 2.272, 1903]

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of quantification that we need in order to understand the conceptual status of proper names. By 1885, Peirce had by and large finalised a theory based on his extensive series of works on the algebraic logic of relatives.9 In his 1885 theory, quantifiers bind indices that refer directly to their objects in the universe of discourse. It is important to note that taking quantifiers as indexical signs implies a substitutional interpretation of quantifiers (Pietarinen 2010). According to the substitutional interpretation, the values of quantified indices are names (individual constants), and they emerge from the specific class of names, the repository of the ‘substitutional instances’ for the expressions in question. According to the commonplace causal-historical referential theory of Kripke (1976), these specified substitution instances behave just as rigid designations do. Beginning in the 1890s, however, Peirce shifted towards objectual instead of substitutional interpretation. In the 1885 paper he had realised that existential (that is, the particular) and universal quantifiers cannot generally be identified with the infinite disjunctions and conjunctions of their matrices with specified substitution instances. The identification fails if the universe of discourse is uncountable. The well-known observation concerning the unviability of associating quantifiers with infinite conjunctions and disjunctions was Löwenheim’s famous 1915 result about the impossibility of using first-order logic to distinguish between countable and uncountable domains. Peirce’s 1885 theory of quantifiers emerged out of the algebraic study of relatives. Unlike that earlier study, his mature theories of quantification no longer took quantifiers to be indexical but symbolic signs instead. Symbolic quantification means that the quantifiers are associated with the general rules of action, or habits, by which they are interpreted. This comes close to a game-theoretic interpretation of logic.10 After all this, Peirce developed yet another notation for quantification with a high degree of iconicity, in terms of the diagrammatic logic of Existential Graphs (EGs).11 A symbolic understanding of quantification no longer warrants a substitutional interpretation, according to which variables are substituted by directly referring to instances of names. A symbolic quantifier, however, has to presuppose an objectual interpretation, in which the values of variables are given by a specific rule or a precept that assigns objects of the domain to be the values of the quantified variables. Moreover, these objects may well fail to have a name in language at all. Why is this excursus into the genesis of Peirce’s interpretation of quantifiers so pivotal to the purposes of the present paper? In a nutshell, Peirce’s position implies that there can be no special class of substitution instances available in our language. Objects for names are chosen from the objective domain by the utterers and interpreters of propositions. Yet it has been commonplace that advocates of the ‘new theory

Selectives and Proper Names in the Theory of EGs Peirce’s late theory of quantification aimed at basing it on some iconic, diagrammatic, and topological principles, which he applied in his diagrammatic logic of existential graphs. In this section I argue that EGs yield some significant insights into the workings of the meaning of quantificational expressions and accordingly into the denotation


of reference’ have postulated the existence of such a class and thought of its members as proper names. For Peirce, in contrast, proper names cannot be off-the-peg ‘tags’ to be deliberately attached to the objects of our actual world. Values of quantified variables are, at the first instance, selectives that the utterer and the interpreter must be mutually acquainted with; they are contextually determined and become proper names after being encountered several times in different contexts and under different circumstances. This process is very different from what is supposed to be going on in the postulation of a class of special singular terms in language by the new theorists of reference. Rigid designation is not for Peirce a primitive of a logical system.12 Since Peirce took quantifiers to be symbols interpreted through habits, the objects of the values of the variables quantified by them are not merely those that exist in the actual world, which is the category of secondness for Peirce, but those that are real and can have a being in alternative possible worlds. They pertain to thirdness. The real accommodates entities of possibilia, including fiction, laws, and future courses of events. The Marcus-Kripke theory of reference has sometimes been defended in terms of appealing to its favorable form of realism. Given Peirce’s “extreme scholastic realism” (CP 5.470; CP 8.208, 1905), however, his interpretation of the identity of the objects of quantification should be regarded as far more realistic than that provided by the causal- historical one. Scholastic realism takes possible objects to be just as real, though non-extant, as actual objects. As a result, the well-known scruples causal theory has had with objects of fictional names, abstract entities of mathematics or names denoting future courses of affairs, are circumvented. No postulation of the preservation of link-to-link connection is necessary between the instances of actual objects on the one hand and possible, future, fictional or mathematical objects on the other.13 Hence no recourse to substitutional interpretation is needed, either. Some refined causal theories distinguish between the introduction and transfer of names (reference borrowing), and take causality to be relevant for the latter, but this does not change the main point: Habits exert counterfactual force on the decisions concerning the actions that the utterers and interpreters make in interpreting logical constants. Peirce’s theory has nothing remotely causal in the ways in which these habits operate.

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of proper names. For example, the convention for the first-order beta quantification reads as follows: Convention No. VI. A symbol for a single individual, which individual is more than once referred to, but is not identified as the object of a proper name, shall be termed a Selective. The capital letters may be used as selectives, and may be made to abut upon the hooks of spots. Any ligature may be replaced by replicas of one selective placed at every hook and also in the outermost area that it enters. In the interpretation, it is necessary to refer to the outermost replica of each selective first, and generally to proceed in the interpretation from the outside to the inside of all cuts. [CP 4.408, 1903, Existential Graphs]14

The use of selectives serves to assign meanings to proper names. In the theory of EGs, a proper name is the outcome of two or more instances of the selective being attached to the ends of the lines of identities. A proper name is a conglomerate of selectives in the network of interconnected lines. The selectives come to denote the identities of individuals, which is accomplished by the repeated use of a proper name: In such a case . . . it is advantageous to replace some of [the lines of identities] by signs of a sort that in this system are called selectives. A selective is very much of the same nature as a proper name; for it denotes an individual and its outermost occurrence denotes a wholly indesignate individual of a certain category (generally a thing) existing in the universe, just as a proper name, on the first occasion of hearing it, conveys no more. But, just as on any subsequent hearing of a proper name, the hearer identifies it with that individual concerning which he has some information, so all occurrences of the selective other than the outermost must be understood to denote that identical individual. If, however, the outermost occurrence of any given selective is oddly enclosed, then, on that first occurrence the selective will refer to any individual [universal quantification] whom the interpreter may choose, and in all other occurrences to the same individual. If there be no one outermost occurrence, then any one of those that are outermost may be considered as the outermost. The later capital letters are used for selectives. [CP 4.460, c.1903, On Existential Graphs, Euler’s Diagrams, and Logical Algebra]

“On the first occasion of hearing it,” Peirce explains here, what the selective that is “very much of the same nature as a proper name” denotes with its “outermost occurrence” is “a wholly indesignate individual” (CP 4.460). Now the notion of “a wholly indesignate individual” clashes with the causal theory, according to which no use of the name—provided that how names are taken over from someone else fulfil certain desired conditions—can fail to succeed in its referential function, because all uses are by default linked to the original act of naming the referent.

Convention No. 11. The capital letters of the alphabet shall be used to denote single individuals of a well-understood category, the individual existing in the universe, the early letters preferably as proper names of well-known individuals, the later letters, called selectives, each on its first occurrence, as the name of an individual (that is, an object existing in the universe in a well-understood category; that is, having such a mode of being as to be determinate in reference to every character as wholly possessing it or else wholly wanting it), but an individual that is indesignate (that is, which the interpreter receives no warrant for identifying); while in every occurrence after the first, it shall denote that same individual. [CP 4.461, c.1903, reversed emphasis]

A closely related idea is conveyed in the convention for the spots of graphs: Convention No. 4. In this system, the unanalyzed expression of a rhema shall be called a spot. A distinct place on its periphery shall be appropriated to each blank, which place shall be called a hook. A spot with a dot at each hook shall be a graph expressing the proposition which results from filling every blank of the rhema with a separate sign of an indesignate individual existing in the universe and belonging to some determinate category, usually that of “things.” [CP 4.441, reversed emphasis]

Peirce’s introduction of a separate sign of indesignate individuals implies the failure of substitutional interpretation to fully explain the workings of quantification. As noted earlier, substitutionally understood quantification presupposes a firm relation between quantified variables and members of a class of substitution instances (names), and takes the meaning of quantifiers to be sufficiently and necessarily articulated by that relation. According to Peirce’s interpretation of quantification, however, the meaning of the lines of identity (and more generally the ligatures) comes from the relationship between the signs of indesignate individuals (selectives) and the objects of the universe of discourse, together with the mode of assignment in which this relationship is given. His proposal is therefore in perfect agreement with the objectual interpretation as in contemporary logic. Another reason why substitutional interpretation fails in the system of EGs has to do with Peirce’s “endoporeutic” interpretation of graphs (Pietarinen 2006; CP 4.568). According to it, graphs are read from the outside in. Any line of identity on an area enclosed within another area


Notable in the notion of selectives is that they are names for indesignate individuals.15 Indesignate individuals are individuals for which the interpreter “receives no warrant for identifying.” The idea is once again put in the form of a special convention for the selectives in the theory of beta graphs:

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on which yet another line of identity rests is functionally dependent on the outer line. Substitutional interpretation presupposes that such dependencies are always heeded (Hintikka & Sandu 1995), and in ordinary EGs this is always the case.16 However, substitutional interpretation presupposes one more thing, namely a unique name in a language to stand for each element of the universe of discourse. But according to the endoporeutic interpretation, this is an unfulfillable requirement: we first need to assign a selective to the outermost part of the ligature and then assign to another, nested part of the same ligature another name, which now is a proper name, yet whose denotation must be identical to the first. This is because selectives are names that are ‘not quite yet’ proper names, although they may soon become one. EGs permit two or more names to name an indesignate element. Hence substitutional interpretation is an incorrect way of explicating the meaning of quantification in EGs. Another reason why indesignate individuals are resorted to in Peirce’s theory has to do with communication: they are resorted to for the sake of comprehension and for the conversation to proceed. As such, indesignates appear to fulfil a role not unlike that of the discourse referents of Discourse-Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle 1993). Indeed, EGs lend themselves well to the logical analysis of anaphora and other cross- sentential phenomena. Think of coreference phenomena, for instance, in which the pronoun has no ‘head’ but is nonetheless interpretable, such as “Surely there is live music in our nightclub. Unfortunately, tonight they have a night off.” Certainly any designate individual acquiring an interpreter’s warrant in the first hearing of this expression is out of the question, and some further collateral information is called for. The notion of an indesignate individual as a designation of a name is therefore somewhat foreign to the causal theory of names. The theory does not recognise the gradual stages according to which the interpretations of objects named by proper names may grow and develop in the hearts and minds of the discourse participants. A name’s referent is fixed by an original act of naming, ostension or description in the actual world, once and for all, whereby the name cannot denote anything indesignate and our interpretations of what the name’s denotation is cannot as such vary from context to context or from world to world or from situation to situation. Indesignate individuals named by the selectives, however, are not yet fully identified, and thus what the selectives denote can admit of such variation. What the selectives denote is thus not a question of a user of a name successfully referring or failing to refer to an individual or a thing, but a question of an interpreter of an assertion to identify, partially identify or fail to identify an individual or a thing as a selective’s denotation. The first time one hears a Proper Name pronounced, it is but a name, predicated, as one usually gathers, of an existent, or at least

Peirce’s allusion to one gathering “some additional information” may now suggest a lapse into a descriptive account of proper names. But we must note that the increasing familiarity with the object through multiple encounters with the name is due to collateral information and observation from context rather than information gained through descriptions. No descriptive account is thus implicated in these remarks. Rather, Peirce’s thoughts are in this respect closer to Evans (1982), who took the ‘body of information’ associated with a given name to be constitutive of which object a speaker intends to be referring to. It is worth remarking that Peirce’s notion of identity, which he explicates as a continuous connection between the spots marked by ligatures, is not far removed from the contemporary concept of identification in the semantics of modal predicate logic.17 For Peirce, identification means that the interpreter has met with a proper name recurrently and in varying contexts or else fails to be fully acquainted with it. The first cycle of interpretation connected with a name starts with an utterance of a selective (the outermost occurrence of the name), which then has to be presented to the interpreter repeatedly and on different occasions and contexts. As an example, Peirce’s gamma graphs were intended to tackle the intensional notion of something crossing the boundary of a broken cut or a tincture, thereby entering the area of modality. This seems to have been Peirce’s admittedly cryptic explication of how a ‘rigid designation’ may come to pass for designations of proper names. Such a crossing creates identity in terms of continuity between two or more objects. These objects can at the same time reside in the outer and inner areas, in which the inner area may be a modal context. Therefore, it is not any initial act of naming by which names come to designate rigidly. Now such qualities have to be construed by our interpretive activities. Identity qua continuity therefore provides an explanatory account of the mechanisms of how the de re reference of singular terms and the allied rigid designation emerge in the first place. It is notable how advanced the logical machinery was that Peirce resorted to in analyzing the phenomena that have been the major topics of discussion in the contemporary philosophy of language. The priority for Peirce was to first develop an appropriate logic of quantification and


historically existent, individual object, of which, or of whom, one almost always gathers some additional information. The next time one hears the name, it is by so much the more definite; and almost every time one hears the name, one gains in familiarity with the object. A Selective is a Proper Name met with by the Interpreter for the first time. But it always occurs twice, and usually on different areas. Now the Interpretation . . . is to be Endoporeutic, so that it is the outermost occurrence of the Name that is the earliest. [CP 4.568, 1906, Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism]

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then, by means of that logic, to study the issues having to do with the role and the meaning of names in language. Yet there are some glitches in his logical framework worth mentioning. Peirce’s graphs do not distinguish between proper names and other singular terms. They are both denoted by rhemas and spots: “ is John,” “ is London,” and “ is a cat” are all of the same overall class of logical constants. This is problematic, since the proof transformations yield unsound results in the cases where names as selectives are attached to the ends of the lines of identities, while proper names are denoted by rhemas.18 Peirce does not seem to note this difficulty, which is easily rectified by keeping proper names and singular terms separate, although he does notice another curious asymmetry in graphs in which some selectives are not replaced by proper names: There will therefore be two branches to our inquiry. First, what transformations may be made in the inner part of the graph where all the selectives have proper names, and secondly what transformations may be made in the outer part where each selective occurs but once. It will be found that the second inquiry almost answers itself after the first has been investigated, and further, that the first class of transformations are precisely the same as if all the first occurrences of selectives were erased and the others were regarded as proper names. [CP 4.486, c.1903, On Existential Graphs, Euler’s Diagrams, and Logical Algebra]

Although he does not quite reveal why he thinks the transformations for unique occurrences of selectives in outer areas work just as those in areas in which lines have proper names as their values, we may safely suppose that in general, the proofs are not affected by renaming selectives with ‘fully matured’ proper names. Peirce’s Theory Not the ‘New Theory’ Hilpinen (1995), among others, takes Peirce to have anticipated the ‘new’ theory of reference, the main reason being the clear-cut division between proper names and definite descriptions. Proper names denote but do not signify. They are devoid of Millian connotation (CP 4.155, c.1887, A Theory about Quantity). One of the key passages Hilpinen quotes to this effect comes from one of the unpublished drafts of the 1905 manuscript entitled “The Basis of Pragmatism”: Again, the object of a proper name,—say the name of an acquaintance of the interpreter, can only be recognized by him by means of marks; and when he hears the name mentioned, the image excited in his imagination will be composed of marks (so to say); and any action he may take in consequence will be guided by those marks. Nay more: it may be granted that the name was conferred in the first instance and that its use has been maintained ever since with the definite intention

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“The name conferred in the first instance”; “its use having been maintained ever since”; “the continuity of the history of its object”: these all seem to add to the case that the causal-historical theory of names is the intended conception of proper names going on here. Hilpinen ends here the quotation and its discussion. But the remark that immediately follows the previous paragraph is nevertheless just as relevant: But this would involve the recognition of a standard epoch. Now we ordinarily neither know or [sic] care whether the person with whom we have dealings was ever christened or not. What we care for is the designation [that] ordinarily goes by and which the bank knows him by. And something like this is true of any object that has a proper name. Namely, in using that name one has in mind no reference to any definite occasion. In short, the most satisfactory and perfectly sufficient account of the matter for the purposes of logic is that the interpreter is impelled, without any adequate reason that he can specify, though experience leads him to believe that the impulse will be justified by the event, to think that a certain individual person or thing is the object meant. [MS 280: 145–47]


that the individual should be recognized in the manner thus described. Yet it does not follow and could only very rarely be true that the name signifies certain defining marks, so as to be applicable to anything that should possess those marks, and to nothing else. For not to speak of the fact that the interpreter only uses the marks as aids in guessing at his acquaintance’s identity, and may possibly be mistaken, however extraordinary they may be, there will be no one definite set of marks [= substitution instances of the values of variables, A.-V.P.] which the name signifies rather than another set of equally conclusive marks. If there were any mark which a proper name could be said essentially to signify, it would be the continuity of the history of its object. [MS 280: 143-145, 1905, The Basis of Pragmatism]19

“No reference to any definite occasion,” Peirce adds here, is ordinarily required for the designation of proper names for those using the names—and we might agreeably add “of the act of baptism.” It suffices that the interpreter is “impelled . . . to think that a certain individual person or thing is the object meant.” The interpreter need not have in mind anything that would account for, or give reasons to believe, how a name is, or fails to be, linked with an individual on some “definite occasion,” causally, historically, or descriptively. Therefore, the semantics of proper names under Peirce’s account has first and foremost to do with other kinds of explanations than those provided by the directly referring idea of linking names with their denotations. These other kinds of explanations take cognitive, epistemic and contextual factors in communicative situations into account. Yet for the sake of consistency, proponents of the new theory of reference, 353


subsuming those of the causal-historical theory, would have to refuse to accept the use of such factors as the main vehicles of the semantics of proper names. Peirce’s key concern nevertheless was the contribution such factors have to the constitution of the meaning of names. Part of that concern is the criteria of cross-identification, which has been argued to be a notion conceptually prior to quantification in the contexts of modal logic (Hintikka & Sandu 1995). For instance, in modal semantics with cross-identification, we do not postulate the fact that individuals can appear and reappear in different possible worlds. The entire notion of an individual is a trans-world entity. If we focus solely on what exists in some possible world, then from the point of view of cross-identification, the objects of proper names can in a very appropriate sense be seen as indesignate individuals, to use Peirce’s characterisation of the objects of names that the interpreter is not fully acquainted with. Take, for example, one’s awareness of a single object that has a proper name. The first time I hear or read that name there will probably be some circumstance in the context that is a sign to me of its being a proper name; and more likely than not something in the sign on its context will show whether it is the name of a person, a geographical feature, a star, an abstract quality or form, a general habit of a universe, or whatever other general kind might be called by a proper name. [MS 612, 1908, Common Ground]

Such considerations are nevertheless quite alien to the causal-historical theory. For one thing, and at least as its original presentations had it, the theory could not cope well with reference change. Yet whatever the notions of ‘fixing the reference’ or ‘direct reference’ were intended to mean, they would be misleading terms for Peirce: “A sign must,” he states, “from the nature of it, be applicable to different objects, supposing there happen to exist any such objects. This [is] true even of a proper name. Phillip of Macedon may stand for Phillip drunk, or for Phillip sober, or for the collective Phillip” (MS 9, 1905, [Foundations of Mathematics]). Now as such this comment does not make Peirce’s view incompatible with the fixed-reference idea qualified with an account of a reference change. For example, Kripke admits that the causal theory does not cover all cases of proper names, such as “Jack the Ripper,” which is a name that may refer to one man or many (Kripke 1980: 79). However, Peirce’s remark does communicate the dislike he would have felt towards one of the central tenets of the causal theory, namely the postulation of the existence of a specific class of individual constants in our language exhibiting direct reference. Consequently, its scope of applicability would have been too narrow to be of much use. Devitt (1981) attempts rescuing the causal theory by taking names to be “grounded” in their bearers after the initial “dubbing.” But this

In logic, a proper name is definable as a term that unequivocally designates a singular object. This means as object well-known to exist, and indeterminate only along one line of variation, its being extending continuously along that line, so far as it extends at all. This line of variation is usually time, in which case the singular is at any one instant of time individual, that is, is entirely determinate in every respect. [MS 280: 34–36]


hybridization still presupposes the existence of a bearer of a name as well as an act of dubbing by ostension, description, or otherwise. And what does it mean to “ground a use” in an object in the first place? After all, Peirce’s theory of names is not meant to be a theory of reference but a logical theory of the interpretation of quantifiers in different logics, especially in his diagrammatic logic of EGs. The semantics of those logics presupposes a theory of the criteria of identification for the utterers and the interpreters of assertions who are the users: it is these theoretical agents who identify and pick out individuals as objects of proper names (CP 4.408; 4.460–61). Peirce thus laid a great deal of emphasis on two points: First, that proper names are cognitively meaningful and have significant content or sense as to how the objects they designate are commonly known to be, and second, that the objects of proper names may be indeterminate with respect to the uncertainty of whether their being is in fact continuous. In another version of the unpublished manuscript “The Basis of Pragmaticism,” Peirce takes up the issue of the presupposed continuity of singular objects that are in the process of becoming individuals:

From the considerations of the cognitive significance of proper names, including those of time and continuity, an account of the identity of objects then follows. What Peirce means by existence is worth noting here. To exist is to be a “singular occurrence” in the universe of discourse under consideration. Such universes may include fiction, characters, laws, future courses of affairs, and so on. Therefore, under Peirce’s account and contrary to the views of Kripke (1980) and David Lewis (1983), fictional names do not signify through their use as “pretended names,” but by virtue of denoting objects in hypothetical and logical universes of discourse in which they may exist as “singular occurrences.” Peirce makes two further comments that aim at clarifying the functioning of proper names in logical contexts. The first has to do with the case of hypothetical bearers of names: In the definition of a logical proper name, it is said to denote an object well known to “exist.” Upon this two comments are called for. In the first place, the term existence is properly a term, not of logic, but of metaphysics; and metaphysically understood, an object exists, if

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and only if, it reacts with every other existing object of the same universe. But in the definition of a logical proper name, exist is used in its logical sense, and means merely to be a singular of a logical universe, or universe of discourse. Thus, an abstract form, such as inertia, does not properly, i.e. metaphysically exist, but it may be an object of a logical universe of characters, and such will be a designate individual; and such abstract terms are for the most part logical proper names. [MS 280: 36–37]

The second comment explains how proper names can have a meaning even if they lack signification. Here Peirce considers the question of how that meaning gradually evolves and how it can change. Such changes are relative to the proceedings of the speaker’s and the hearer’s discourse: The other comment is that in what may be called the ideally normal course of a person’s acquaintance with a logically proper name, it passes successively from being an indefinite singular term to being a definite singular term, and after that to being a definite general term. For on the first hearing of it, one gathers20 that it is a singular; but since the word is without signification, the hearer to whom it is strange will be able to gather from any he may hear made of its object only that there exists something having the characters asserted. But as he subsequently meets with the term time and again, he gradually comes to learn enough about its object readily to distinguish it from all the other singulars that exist. The term then first functions for him as a proper name. Finally, when everybody in the community is perfectly familiar with the chief characteristics of the singular object, if one of these should be very prominent, there will be a tendency to use the name predicatively to signify that character. Through just this last process have become familiarly employed as English class-terms, continuing to be definite, but now become general. [MS 280: 37–38]

Summarizing, Peirce distinguishes three stages of development of what proper names mean (MS 280: 41): Stage I: Indefinite Individual, Stage II: Definite Individual, Stage III: Definite General.

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“In its second, or proper, stage of maturity,” Peirce goes on to explain this trichotomy, a proper name “has, of course, no signification; that is, its applicability to a given object is not contingent upon that object’s fulfilling this or that general condition, but depends solely upon the previous establishment of such a wide-spread habit of speech that the word or phrase is reasonably certain of being understood to denote the very singular that was actually intended” (MS 280: 41). My comment is that this second stage of maturity is closest to the causal-historical theory

It is important to recognize just what signification consists in. Like many other terms of philosophy, it is rendered more comprehensible and distinct, even in its more special applications by being taken in a sense that is somewhat broader than the usual one. In that broader sense signification consists in such characters as by being known to belong to objects to which a given term is applicable aid in the ascertainment of the general applicability of that term. Thus, when one has only met with a proper name once or twice and then casually and by the way, the characters that one has found attributed to its object as matter undisputed will constitute one’s whole knowledge of the name, and are thus of the nature of signification, although it is accidental and insufficient signification.


and reflects Peirce’s view that names are devoid of connotation. But as such it would only form a part of the whole story and system of the workings proper names. According to what has been said, then, Peirce’s theory of names is not, contrary to Brock (1997), inconsistent. Brock took the key problem with Peirce to be the discrepancy between the claims that proper names have no connotations of senses or signification but can still be indeterminate. For how can anything that is indeterminate or anything that designates some indesignate individual be devoid of meaning? The answer is in these stages of the development of the semantics/pragmatics of names: In Stage I, the name has a meaning via indesignate singular objects. In Stage II, proper names mature, their significations become definite individuals, and the names lose their connotative virtue. Lastly, in Stage III, the denotations of proper names become real generals. What does it mean that a proper name has no signification? What is signification in the first place, we might ask here? Peirce’s explanation runs as follows:

An illustrative example is then provided: Suppose, for example; one has never heard of Gordius. On first hearing the name, one infers that he is or was some man. Next one may gather that he was some adventurer; next that he was some Phrygian; next that he was some king, etc. But when the name has become familiar and reaches its second stage of evolution,—is, in short, used and accepted as a true proper name,—one places Gordius in his proper place in one’s mental chart of ancient history, and those predicates no longer serve as signification, but as information. The name now neither needs nor bears any ‘signification.’ But if later, the peculiar skill of Gordius in the art of knotting ropes in an inconvenient manner were to become so proverbial, that one could say of a given sailor that he was a Gordius, assured of being understood, then the common noun that the word would have become would have its applicability entirely dependent upon an essential signification. Thus a

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proper name in its proper maturity is wholly devoid of signification and has for its sole function the distinguishing of a single object from all others, and this renders it particularly apt for filling a blank of a rheme and becoming a subject of a proposition. [MS 280: 42-44]

A proper name thus loses its signification as the familiarity concerning it gradually increases. Such evolution is progressive and continuous and is not achieved by acts of naming or by tracing the links causally or otherwise. Direct reference may well be the outcome of such processes, but as such it can only account for a fragment of the full life-cycle of the semantic and pragmatic behaviour of proper names. In yet another manuscript, by a proper name Peirce means “a Sign whose Object is a name of anything considered as a single thing; and this thing which the Proper Name denominates must have been one which the Interpreter was already acquainted by direct or indirect experience” (MS 504: 1, n.d., Peripatetic Talks. No.6.). “A single thing” need not be a denotation of a proper name as a single existent individual, but may also represent a general, idea, character, fictitious object or abstraction. Nevertheless, the interpreter must be more or less acquainted with that which is “denominated” by the proper name. In other words, the interpreter must know who or what that thing is. And knowing who or what means that thing has an identity continuously preserved across different possible worlds. An indexical word, such as a proper noun or demonstrative or selective pronoun, has force to draw the attention of the listener to some hecceity common to the experience of speaker and listener. By a hecceity, I mean, some element of existence which, not merely by the likeness between its different apparitions, but by an inward force of identity, manifesting itself in the continuity of its apparition throughout time and in space, is distinct from everything else, and is thus fit (as it can in no other way be) to receive a proper name or to be indicated as this or that. [CP 3.460, 1896, The Logic of Relatives]

Crucial in Peirce’s explanation is that a complete account of the meaning of proper names is not forthcoming lest the theory not be released from the rigidifying clutches of such names being something that things receive by some initial acts of perceptual contact with the entities in question. It is the epistemic, cognitive and contextual factors, together with the continuity through time and space, that set something to be identified as an individual and hence “fit to receive a proper name.” For Peirce, the identity of individuals is not a necessary phenomenon.

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Conclusions With his new logic, Peirce considerably broadened the scope of logical analysis. And not only in the sense of introducing n-place predicate


terms, that is, spots or rhemas with n hooks, but also in the sense that the hooks may be filled in the first instance not with proper names but with special marks for indesignate individuals. Unlike Kant, whose approach to the construction of concepts was limited to the production of representatives in the mind that correspond to individuals designated by proper names, Peirce broke off from this tradition and thought of the construction of concepts analogous to Anschauung to correspond to a selection of the representatives of proper names as well as of the representative instances of the marks for indesignate individuals. At one point, Peirce even called such unsaturated predicate terms that receive indefinites as their values “onomas”, in contradistinction to hooks or blanks of rhemas whose values are the proper names (MS 491; see Pietarinen 2006, Chapter 1).21 If, as I have argued, Peirce’s theory of proper names is not a descriptivist, causal or a hybrid one, then what is it? Is it, as it certainly appears to be, part of his overall pragmatistic theory of meaning? The question is vexing, since according to Peirce, “pragmaticism fails to furnish any translation or meaning of a proper name, or other designation of an individual object. . . . The pragmaticist grants that a proper name (although it is not customary to say that it has a meaning), has a certain denotative function peculiar, in each case, to that name and its equivalents; and that he grants that every assertion contains such a denotative or pointing-out function” (CP 5.429, 1905, What Pragmatism Is). The reason for Peirce’s dismissal of pragmatistic meaning is that proper names are not intellectual signs. They are not compositions of concepts, complex purports or generalities: they lack propositional content. Pragmaticism set out to furnish a meaning for intellectual signs that have propositional content, whatever such signs are (Pietarinen & Snellman 2006). Yet proper names (i) have ‘sense’ in relation to their interpretants and (ii) are the key building blocks that make rhemas interpretable in the first place. Such rhemas are predicate terms which, in turn, are the interpretants of propositions. Whether or to what extent the broader theory of meaning, pragmaticism, can be extended to also cover the denotation, both in the semantic and pragmatic senses, of proper names is best to be regarded as an open question. University of Helsinki, Finland Kyung Hee University, Korea ahti-[email protected] REFERENCES Boersema, David (2002). “Peirce on Names and Reference,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 38, 351–62. Brock, Jarrett (1997). “The Development of Peirce’s Theories of Proper Names,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 33, 560–73.

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Devitt, Michael (1981). Designation, New York: Columbia University Press. DiLeo, Jeffrey R. (1997). “Charles Peirce’s Theory of Proper Names,” in Houser, Nathan, Don D. Roberts, and James Van Evra (eds.), Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 574–94. Donellan, Keith (1966). “Reference and Definite Descriptions,” Philosophical Review 75, 281–304. Evans, G. (1982). The Varieties of Reference, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alvin (1967). “A Causal Theory of Knowledge,” Journal of Philosophy 64, 357–72. Hilpinen, Risto (1982). “On C. S. Peirce’s Theory of the Proposition: Peirce as a Precursor of Game-theoretical Semantics,” The Monist 65, 182–88. ———. “Peirce on Language and Reference,” in Ketner, Kenneth Laine (ed.). Peirce and Contemporary Thought: Philosophical Inquiries, 272–303. Hintikka, Jaakko and Gabriel Sandu (1995). “The Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference,” Synthese 104, 245–83. (Reprinted in Hintikka, Jaakko, 1998. Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 175–218.) Jacquette, Dale (2009). “Revisionary Early-Peircean Predicate Logic without Proper Names,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 45, 177–213. Kamp, Hans and Uwe Reyle (1993). From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to Model theoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academics. Kripke, Saul A. (1976). “Is there a Problem about Substitutional Quantification?”, in G. Evans and J. McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 324–419. Kripke, Saul (1980). Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lewis, David (1983). Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcus, Ruth B. (1971). “Essential Attribution,” Journal of Philosophy 68, 187–202. Maddalena, Giovanni (2006). “Peirce, Proper names, and Nicknames,” Seminario del Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos, http://www.unav.es/gep/MaddalenaSeminario.html. Pape, Helmut (1982). “Peirce and Russell on Proper Names,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 18, 339–48. Peirce, Charles S. (1902). (DPP) “Name”; “Predicate”; “Proposition”; “Signification”, in Baldwin, James M. (ed.). Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Volume 2, London: Macmillan, pp. 127–28; 325–26; 361–70; 528–29. _____. (1905). “The Basis of Pragmaticism,” unpublished manuscript, MS 280, Peirce (1967). Transcription at http://www.helsinki.fi/~pietarin/courses. _____. (1931–1958). (CP) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 volumes, vols. 1-6, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vols. 7-8, ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. _____. (1967). (MS) Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identified by Richard Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967), and in The Peirce Papers: A supplementary catalogue, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 7 (1971), 37–57. _____. (1992–1998). (EP) The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 1 (1867–1893), ed. by Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, 1992, vol. 2 (1893–1913), ed. by the Peirce Edition Project, 1998. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

NOTES 1. Supported by The University of Helsinki ‘Excellence in Research’ Funds (Peirce’s Pragmatistic Philosophy and Its Applications) and by the International Scholar Programme, Kyung Hee University, Department of Philosophy. My thanks to two referees as well as to Risto Hilpinen and Benjamin Schnieder for in- depth comments on the earlier version presented at the Finnish-German Workshop on Reference and Predication in September 2007, and to Koji Nagatakowa and the participants of the International Workshop on the Philosophy of Saul Kripke held at the University of Hokkaido in February 2010. 2. I will characteristically use the label ‘causal theory’, be it a misnomer or not, as shorthand for the ‘new Marcus-Geach-Kripke-Devitt causal-historical account of the reference of proper names’. 3. Attempts to analyse rigid designation with two-dimensional semantics, for instance, are of course exceptions. 4. The other sort of terms is, according to Peirce, the class of “abstract” names. 5. MS 483 (On Existential Graphs, c.1901) proposes a related definition: “A proper name is a sign denoting something having an identity consisting in continuity of existence and common to the experience of the deliverer and interpreter of the proposition of which it forms a part”. 6. Most of Peirce’s development of his theory of proper names was concentrated in a very intense period of his life from 1901 until about 1905, culminating


Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko (2004). “Peirce’s Diagrammatic Logic in IF Perspective”, in A. Blackwell, K. Marriott & A. Shimojima (eds), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference: Third International Conference, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2980, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 97-111. _____. (2006). Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication (Synthese Library 329), Dordrecht: Springer. _____. (2010a). “Pragmaticism as an Antifoundationalist Philosophy of Mathematics,” in B. Van Kerkhove, R. Desmet and J. P. Van Bendegem (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Mathematical Practice, London: College Publications, 305–33. _____. (2010b). “Peirce’s Development of the Quantification theory,” Peirce and Early Analytic Philosophy, to appear. Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko & Lauri Snellman (2006). “On Peirce’s Late Proof of Pragmaticism,” in Tuomo Aho & Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (eds), Truth and Games, Acta Philosophica Fennica 79, Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 275–88. Putnam, Hilary (1973). “Explanation and Reference,” in G. Pearce and P. Maynard (eds.), Conceptual Change, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 199–221. Roberts, Don D. (1973). The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce, Amsterdam: Mouton. Thibaud, Pierre (1987). “Peirce on Proper Names and Individuation,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 23, 521–38. Weber, Eric Thomas (2008). “Proper Names and Persons: Peirce’s Semiotic Consideration of Proper Names,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44, 346–62.

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in his 1905-1906 The Monist papers and a number of related and mostly unpublished drafts. 7. “One and the same proposition may be affirmed, denied, judged, doubted, inwardly inquired into, put as a question, wished, asked for, effectively commended, taught, or merely expressed, and does not thereby become a different proposition” (EP 2:310). 8. With the obvious exception of Peirce’s three-valued, triadic logic of 1909. 9. “On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation,” CP 3.359-403. 10. According to Peirce, the interpretation of propositions such as ‘Any man is not good’ is left to the opponent of the proposition, while when we say ‘Some man is not good’, the respective selection is transferred to the opponent’s opponent, the defender of the proposition (CP 3.481, 1896, The Logic of Relatives; Hilpinen 1982; Pietarinen 2006). Hence he came to consider the meanings of natural-language expressions involving quantification via dialogic processes between the opponent (the interpreter) and the defender (the utterer). 11. Concurrently with this symbolic stage of development in Peirce’s quantificational logic, another major goal was therefore to find a notation that is capable of unifying various logical conceptions such as logical constants. By 1905, he had invented graphical and diagrammatic notations for a vast selection of logical systems up to the quantified modal and higher-order logics. Interestingly, his theory of existential graphs implies the failure of the Frege trichotomy: the differentiation between the notions of identity, predication and existence are now all conceived under the rubric of a single sign of the line of identity. This innovation brought icons to bear on the formation and meaning of logical constants in their entirety. 12. Rather, it has much more to do with what he in the semiotic terminology calls immediate objects, created after the precepts by which quantifiers are to be interpreted have already been set. 13. For Peirce’s own pragmaticist philosophy of mathematics as well as its avoidance of Benacerraf ’s problem, see Pietarinen (2010a). 14. A brief glossary may be helpful here. Spot: The iconic counterpart to rhema. Hook: A placeholder for lines of identities in spots. Ligature: A combination of two or more lines of identities. Cut: A closed circle around graphs, negation. Area: A space on the sheet of assertion upon which graphs are scribed and distinguished from other areas by cuts. An area is either positive (enclosed within an even number of cuts) or negative (enclosed within an odd number of cuts). Line of Identity: A line attached to a hook and extending to an area of a graph. See Roberts (1973) and Pietarinen (2006) for the essentials of EGs; The Commens Dictionary of Peirce’s Terms lists more (http://www.helsinki.fi/commens). 15. The obsolete English term “indesignate” was common among several authors of logic books in the 19th century. Peirce reviewed many of them for the Nation, including Thomas Fowler’s and Carveth Read’s texts. In these books, the term means, following the Aristotelian tradition, the indefinite propositions. The use of indesignate in relation to individuals named by selectives seems to have been Peirce’s own innovation. 16. An exception is the ‘independence-friendly’ extension of EGs introduced in Pietarinen (2004), in which the linear nesting of areas breaks down.


17. Peirce applied the notion of a continuous line of identity from the beta part of EGs (= a fragment of first-order logic with identity) to various modal logics with quantification developed in his gamma part of EGs (Pietarinen 2006). 18. I am indebted to Risto Hilpinen for this remark. 19. By “marks” Peirce commonly means qualities (see CP 4.514, 1903, The Gamma Part of Existential Graphs). 20. [Alternative continuation:] “. . . that it is a singular; but since the word carries no signification, the hearer to whom it is strange will be able to gather from any assertion he may hear made of its object nothing more than that “something” exists having the characters asserted. But as he subsequently meets with the term again and again, he gradually comes to learn enough about its object readily to distinguish it from all other singulars in existence. The term then functions as a proper name. Finally, when everybody in the community is perfectly familiar with the chief characteristics of the singular object, if one of these should be very prominent, there will be a tendency to use the name predicatively to signify that character. In just this way, some dozens of proper names are now familiarly used as English common class-terms, definite but general.” 21. Here Peirce seems to have developed an idea similar to the discourse referents of Discourse-Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle 1993). DRT recognises that the value of a pronoun or an indefinite often is derived from the discourse context by presupposing the common ground between the interlocutors. Peirce says: “The expressed subject of an ordinary proposition approaches most nearly to the nature of an index when it is a proper name which, although its connection with its object is purely intentional, yet has no reason (or, at least, none is thought of in using it) except the mere desirability of giving the familiar object a designation. Among, or along with, proper names we may put abstractions, which are the names of fictitious individual things, or, more accurately, of individuals whose being consists in the manner of being of something else. A kind of abstractions are [sic] individual collections, such as the ‘German people.’ When the subject is not a proper name, or other designation of an individual within the experience (proximate or remote) of both speaker and auditor, the place of such designation is taken by a virtual precept stating how the hearer is to proceed in order to find an object to which the proposition is intended to refer” (CP 2.357, 1901). Discourse referents denote indesignate individuals, which are not unlike his dynamic, “the really efficient but not immediately present” (CP 8.343) objects, constructed and nurtured in the continuous interaction between the utterer and the interpreter. What a proper name designates is an apt example of the dynamic objects, for recall here Peirce’s remark of how “one places Gordius in his proper place in one’s mental chart of ancient history” (MS 280: 43).

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