Death, Epicurus insists, is nothing to us, since while we exist, our death is not, and when our death occurs, we do not exist (LM 124 25); but if one is frightened by the empty name of death, the fear will persist since we must all eventually die.
Highlight it and all that shows up is the highlighted empty name.
All the contradiction shows is that "V" is an empty name (i.e., that it has no reference, that V does not exist), since the ontology of Zermelo's system consists solely of sets.
Since the biblical texts provided no clear and definitive answer to the question whether, after Adam's sin, free will is only an empty name and can only lead man into sin, Erasmus contended that the question must be regarded as debatable.
If I introduce the name 'Herman' stipulating that it refers to the one and only monster under my bed, I introduce an empty name; and sentences containing 'Herman' should not thereby be ontologically committed to monsters.
Thus something, namely RB, is "missing" from each set B. So again, V is not a set, since nothing can be missing from V. But notice the following subtlety: unlike the previous argument involving the direct application of Aussonderungs to V, the present argument hints at the idea that, while V is not a set, "V" is not an empty name.
One recalled in empty name tossed around (one (rev). in anag.
Others hold that while 'SpongeBob' can be used meaningfully in such contexts, it is nonetheless, in such contexts, a mere non-referring empty name, alongside 'Zeus' and 'Vulcan'.
In his 1980, Kripke claims to not know what to say about Frege's puzzle and the related puzzle of cognitive significance, on the one hand, and the problem of negative existentials and the related problem of empty names, on the other.
For the puzzle of empty names, see Braun 1993 and the essays in Everett and Hofweber 2000.
The first of these problems involves the existence of empty names: names which have no referent.
