Editing Proper name (philosophy) (section)

=== Descriptive theory ===
{{Main|Descriptivist theory of names}}
{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right |quoted=true |
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|quote="The only kind of word that is theoretically capable of standing for a particular is a proper name, and the whole matter of proper names is rather curious."
|source= Bertrand Russell, ''Logic and Knowledge'', 1988<ref name=Blackwell>Bunnin, N., & Yu, J. (2008). ''The Blackwell dictionary of Western philosophy''. John Wiley & Sons. Entry "Proper name". p. 567</ref>
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The ''descriptive'' theory of proper names is the view that the meaning of a given use of a proper name is a set of properties that can be expressed as a [[definite description|description]] that picks out an object that satisfies the description.  
[[Bertrand Russell]]  espoused such a view arguing that the name refers to a description, and that description, like a definition, ''picks out'' the bearer of the name.<ref name=Stanford/>  The name then functions as an abbreviation or a truncated form of the description. The distinction between the embedded description and the bearer itself is similar to that between the ''extension'' and the ''intension'' (Frege's terms) of a general term, or between [[Connotation (semiotics)|connotation]] and [[denotation]] (Mill's terms).

[[John Searle]] elaborated Russell's theory, suggesting that the proper name refers to a cluster of propositions that in combination pick out a unique referent. This was meant to deal with the objection by some critics of Russell's theory that a descriptive theory of meaning would make the referent of a name dependent on the knowledge that the person saying the name has about the referent.<ref name=Stanford/><ref>Searle, J. R. (1958). II.—PROPER NAMES. Mind, 67(266), 166-173.</ref>

In 1973, [[Tyler Burge]] proposed a metalinguistic descriptivist theory of proper names which holds that names have the meaning that corresponds to the description of the individual entities to whom the name is applied.<ref>Burge, T. (1973). Reference and proper names. The Journal of Philosophy, 425-439.</ref> This, however, opens up the possibility that names are not proper, when, for example, more than one person shares the same name. This leads Burge to argue that plural usages of names, such as "all the Alfreds I know have red hair", support this view.<ref name=Stanford/>