A Research On Searle’s Reference Theory Of Proper Names

Since the linguistic turn of philosophy, the issues about the meaning of language has been the focus of what philosophers concern about. As one of the most famous contemporary analytic philosophers in America, Searle is committed to the study of proper names. Searle’s reference theory experienced a trasition from the description theory to the intentionality theory. This paper systematically reviews Searle’s reference theory of proper names. Starting from the basic problem, this paper analyzes Searle’s theory about reference in different books and divides his theory into two periods: the theory of cluster descriptions and the intentionality theory, expounding the theoretical perspectives in each periods and showing the reason of the transition.In the early period, Searle developed Frege and Russell’s description theory and inspected the reference of proper names from the use of them and proposed the theory of cluster descriptions, illustrating the referring mechanisms of proper names through the concept of a cluster descriptive words. In the late period, Searle turned to the study of the philosophy of mind. He replaced the cluster of descriptive words with the intentionality, emphasizing the important role of intention contents in determining the reference of proper names. This paper focuses on Searle’s intentionality theory, by the method of comparative analysis, comparing Searle’s intentionality theory with the theory of description and the causal theory of proper names, finding out the essence of the intentionality theory. Then from the perspectives of the relationship between the mind’s content and the semantic content, the pragmatic turn of the research on reference and the collective and individual property of intentional content, this paper analyzes the contributions and shortcomings of the theory, so as to show a possible direction for further development of the reference theory.