METAPHYSICS AND THE PARONYMY OF NAMES

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Abstract
Paronymy—ambiguity that is not sheer ambiguity—is underdiscussed by philosophers of language. And hardly anyone has noticed that proper names are paronymous; different occurrences of a single name have slightly and subtly different referents. This paper invokes that fact to illuminate some issues in metaphysics: a puzzle about fictional characters; Jennifer Saul’s phenomenon of referential opacity in the absence of opacity-inducing operators; the relation between persons and bodies; death; personal identity through time; and Peter Ludlow’s argument for the zany claim that the distinction between fiction and actuality is merely contextual.

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