How Do Proper Names Really Work?

The book approaches the problem of reference of proper names by developing a general rule for the identification of their bearer. According to this rule, a proper name refers to its bearer if it satisfies sufficiently and more than any other competitor the condition of localization (time of existence, spatiotemporal career, etc.) and/or the condition of characterization (the reasons why we apply the proper name). This is a meta-rule to be fulfilled by the satisfactions of the descriptions contained in the bundle of descriptions we attach to our proper names. In the case a proper name fulfills this rule, we have its identification rule, which once satisfied warrants the application of the proper name. This identification rule makes a proper name a rigid designator, since it defines its bearer in any possible world, differently from the accidental descriptions belonging to its cluster. Certainly, only privileged users apply this rule in full; the others refer to the bearer secondarily by means of reference borrowing’s mechanisms.