A Study Of Empty Names From The Viewpoint Of Direct Reference Theory

There is a kind of Name in our natural language,which have not the bearers in reality,just as the Unicorn,Sherlock Holmes,and so on,we call them Empty Names.The problems arised from the Empty Names have been discussed for a long time,since the ancient Greece.The philosophers came up with the idea "how can we talk about the things which doesn't exist meaningfully?And if these things don't exist,how can we refer to them?" The Empty name problems seem inevitable among the theories in philosophy,especially for the Direct Reference Theory,which holds the view that the meaning of a name is its referent.The philosopher's criteria for the division of Direct Reference are different.Based on this,the paper aims to combine these philosophers' views to make a clear definition of Direct Reference,and then,investigate the strategies the direct referentialists made from the viewpoint of direct reference.The main idea of this paper is just as follow:Firstly three contents are shown.The first one is the background and the goal of this paper.Since 1970s,the Direct Reference became well-known,and papers about them emerged a lot.After the history of Direct Reference,it introduces its main thoughts,sorts out the strategies the referentialists made to give the evaluation on them.The second one is to state the research status.After,it mainly talks about the Empty Names of Direct Reference,we'll consult the relevant literature to make clear its development.The third one is the writing method of this paper.It mainly uses three different methods,they are bibliography retrieval,conceptual analysis and comparative study.These methods have different emphasis on different content,such as the chapter two,it mainly uses the conceptual analysis to expound the main idea of Direct Reference.Secondly it mainly expounds the Direct Reference theory and its main points of view and factions.First of all,it introduces the view of the Direct Reference theory.It argues that the Direct Reference theory mainly refers to the theory which holds the view that "name(mainly refer to the proper name)refers to the object directly,without other intermediary".And then,it introduces the main points of Direct Reference theory.It tries to explain the concept of Direct Reference theory from the perspective of the concept of Direct Reference theory.Finally,according to the criteria of this article,the theory of direct reference mainly consists of two factions of picture theory and label theory.Thirdly we mainly show the dilemma of the Direct Reference theory from the problem of the Empty Name.First of all,define the Empty Names,it holds the view that the proper name which has no corresponding physical object in the real world is the Empty Names we study here,it mainly consists of fictional names and historical name.Then,with the study of the Empty Names of different philosophers,the development process of the problem of Empty Names is simply combed.Finally,it expoumds the difficulty of Direct Reference theory.The Empty name problem of Direct Reference theory is mainly about three aspects:what is the referent of the Empty Names,how does the Empty Names refer,and whether the referent of the Empty Names influences the true value of the sentence.Fourthly it mainly summarizes the strategies of Salmon's,Taylor's,Zalta's,Everett's,Soames's,which came up to solve the Empty names from the viewpoint of Direct Reference theory,and to make relevant analysis.First of all,introduce Salmon's solution to solve the problem of the Empty names in his article,and the theory of abstract objects he developed,making a simple evaluation.Then,introduces Taylor's,Zalta's and Everett's theory to deal with the problem of the Empty names.The new interpretation of the Direct Reference of Soames is made at last.In general,these strategies of Direct Reference theory have advantages and disadvantages,and i accept mostly with Salmon's theory.Fifthly it makes a brief evaluation of the strategies of the Empty Names,and summarizes its influence on the theory of name,the theory of reference and the development of logic philosophy.Through an overview of the impact of the strategies of the Empty Names,it stands firmly with the Direct Reference theory,and believes that.the Direct Reference theory will have a bright future.