Names are rigid designators, but what kind of rigidity do they exhibit? Both "obstinately" and "persistently" rigid designators pick out O at every world at which they pick out anything at all. They differ in that obstinately rigid designators also pick out O at worlds at which O fails to exist; persistently rigid designators have no extension whatsoever at worlds at which O fails to exist. The question whether names are obstinate or persistent arises in two contexts: in arguments against rigidified descriptivism (on the grounds that names and rigidified descriptions exhibit different kinds of rigidity) and in considerations about what it means for an expression to be "directly referential." This paper contends that names are persistent, not obstinate. The position thus clarifies the relationship between Millian theories of names and rigid designation, in addition to undermining attempts to rehabilitate the modal argument against rigidified descriptivism.Names are rigid designators. While that thesis is no longer controversial, multiple debates about the meaning of names continue. There is first the skirmish between rigidified descriptivists and their Kripkean opponents. Secondly, antidescriptivists disagree amongst themselves about the meaning of names. In both of these debates, one sometimes hears the claim that names are obstinately rigid as opposed to being merely rigid. This paper argues that such a claim is erroneous; whether descriptivism is true or not, names (like rigid descriptions) are merely persistently rigid.The paper will proceed as follows: Section 1 defines 'obstinacy' and explains the relevance to Kripke's modal argument. Section 2 reviews David Kaplan's content/extension distinction, which is presupposed throughout the paper. Sections 3 and 4 address and rebut arguments alleging a direct connection between (a) obstinate rigidity and (b) direct reference and/or Millian theories of names. Finally, section 5 returns to the debate between rigidified Brendan Murday is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College. His primary research interests are in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, particularly two-dimensional semantics and the problem of the criterion.

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We pose two arguments for the view that sentences containing definite descriptions semantically express multiple propositions: a general proposition as Russell suggested, and a singular proposition featuring the individual who uniquely satisfies the description at the world-time of utterance. One argument mirrors David Kaplan's arguments that indexicals express singular propositions through a context-sensitive character. The second argument mirrors Kent Bach's and Stephen Neale's arguments for pluralist views about terms putatively triggering conventional implicatures, appositive, and nonrestrictive relative clauses. After presenting these arguments, we show that rival explanations (appeals to implicature, referential use, presupposition, etc.) do not offer equally compelling explanations of the data, and defend the methodology employed in the arguments against some criticisms.

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Fictional realists hold that fictional characters are real entities. However, Anthony Everett ["Against Fictional Realism", Journal of Philosophy (2005)] notes that some fictions leave it indeterminate whether character A is identical to character B, while other fictions depict A as simultaneously identical and distinct from B. Everett argues that these fictions commit the realist to indeterminate and impossible identity relations among actual entities, and that as such realism is untenable. This paper defends fictional realism: for fictions depicting non-classical identity between A and B, the realist should hold that there are two salient fragments, one with a single character (named both "A" and "B") and the other with two (named "A" and "B", respectively). Truth according to the fiction depicting indeterminate identity is determined by supervaluating over truth according to those salient fragments. For fictions depicting impossible identity, truth is determined by subvaluating over truth according to those two salient fragments.