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Indexicality and Prominence

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  • Ricardo Mena
Ricardo Mena
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1176

Published 2026-03-25

Keywords

  • Maite Ezcurdia,
  • Nombres propios,
  • Filosofía del lenguaje,
  • Indéxicos
  • Maite Ezcurdia,
  • Philosophy of Language,
  • Proper Names,
  • Indexicals
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Ezcurdia, in Complejidad y ambigüedad, proposes and defends functional referentialism. This is a novel proposal about what makes a linguistic expression referential. In her book, Ezcurdia also argues that proper names are not indexical, despite being context-dependent. In this article I explore this idea. Doing so is a fruitful exercise, as it shows interesting connections in the philosophy of Ezcurdia. The conclusion of the article is that, given Ezcurdia’s theoretical commitments, there is no impediment to maintaining that proper names are indexical and that it is best to hold that they are. This conclusion is in accordance with functional referentialism.

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