Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (Meaning and necessity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956) maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field (J Philos 70:462–481, 1973) maintained that confused terms can still refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage.

中文翻译：

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普通语言中的混淆术语

混淆的术语似乎表示多个实体。Carnap（意义和必要性，芝加哥大学出版社，芝加哥，1956 年）坚持认为，任何与相关话语领域中的多个对象相关联的假定名称都不是真正的名称。尽管许多哲学家都同意卡尔纳普的观点，但他们之间并不总是就包含这些术语的原子句子的真值达成一致。有些人认为这样的原子语句总是错误的，而另一些人则声称它们总是没有真值的。Field (J Philos 70:462–481, 1973) 坚持混淆术语仍然可以指称，尽管是部分的，并提供了对它们的语义属性的超值解释，其中一些带有混淆术语的原子句子可能是真的。在概述了支持和反对这些术语的各种语义理论的许多最重要的理论考虑之后，我们报告了一项研究的结果，该研究旨在调查这些帐户中哪些最符合普通语言用户对包含这些术语的句子的真值判断. 我们发现，天真的参与者认为混淆的名称能够成功地指代一个或多个对象。因此，判断它们涉及完全引用失败的语义理论与普通用法的模式不太相符。我们发现，天真的参与者认为混淆的名称能够成功地指代一个或多个对象。因此，判断它们涉及完全引用失败的语义理论与普通用法的模式不太相符。我们发现，天真的参与者认为混淆的名称能够成功地指代一个或多个对象。因此，判断它们涉及完全引用失败的语义理论与普通用法的模式不符。