ithin the philosophy of language, names and descriptions are traditionally taken to represent different paradigms of reference. Many philosophers draw a sharp contrast be tween the way speakers use names to talk about individuals and the way they use definite descriptions to do so. A proper name is used to pick out one specific individual. A definite description, on the other hand, provides a general formula for picking out distinct individuals in different situations. Metaphorically, a name is a tag attached to an individual, whereas a definite description is a set of instructions for finding an individual that satisfies some criterion. This difference between names and descriptions is said to account for a well-known fact: descriptions exhibit narrow-scope readings with respect to modal operators while names do not. Here is an example in which a definite description has what is normally considered a scope ambiguity with a …