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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Stage Theory and Proper Names

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description

In the contemporary debate about the nature of persistence, stage theory is the view that ordinary objects (artefacts, animals, persons, etc.) are instantaneous and"persist" by being suitably related to other instantaneous objects (see T. Sider 1996, 2001 and K. Hawley 2001, both defenders of the view). In this paper I focus on the issue of what stage theorists should say about the semantics of ordinary proper names, like"Socrates" or"London". This is how I will proceed: after discussing the general features of stage theory (section 1), I will consider the remarks that stage theorists actually make about the semantics of proper names (section 2). I will then point to some hitherto unnoticed problems for the view that emerges from those remarks (section 3), and finally offer an alternative view, which I take to be the best option available to stage theorists (section 4).