Abstract

Evans' theory of proper names has paradoxical consequence; some of those who can perfectly use a proper name to refer to its referent cannot properly understand statements containing that name. In this paper, I try to avoid this counter-intuitive consequence by taking into account to what Evans fails to appreciate, i.e., contributions of social character of proper names to entertaining thought about their referents - we can use a proper name as a tool for discriminating an object. I also illustrate a type of thought component, 'proper name concept', as I call it, that Evans didn't consider of. The proper name concept is objectfile that contains 'descriptions' or 'information' of referent and is connected to the referent by social convention rather than description.