Proper Name (philosophy)
"A proper name a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1. ii. 5.), "but not of telling anything about it". The problem of defining proper names, and of explaining their meaning, is one of the most recalcitrant in modern analytical philosophy.
Read more about Proper Name (philosophy): The Problem of Proper Names
Famous quotes containing the word proper:
“[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)