Fine on the failure to separate two proposals regarding quantifying-in

  From the beginning of the second complete paragraph on p. 97 to the end of the second complete paragraph on p. 98, Fine reviews what he sees as a conflation of two proposals concerning the difficulty of quantifying into an opaque context. To get clear on the two, he suggests a difference in the term ‘instance’ . A mere substitution instance for the quantified sentence ‘(∃x)φ(x)’ (call it ‘S’) is the sentence ‘φ(t)’ which results from the meaningful substitution of a singular referential term ‘t’ for ‘x’ -- there's no concern over the uniformity of 't' which respect to its substitution for 'x'. Contrast this with a proper (substitution) instance. A proper instance is an instance which is uniform with regard to S. If we're guaranteed that there is a proper instance of S, then we're able to say that it's intelligible. If the quantifier is interpreted such that it is referential, then to show that S is unintelligible we must show that there is no proper substitution instance, not (as Quine leads us to believe in "Notes on Existence and Necessity", for instance) that for some term t, t is irreferential in 'φ(t)'.
  One might suggest that we can circumvent Quinean difficulties on the basis of our choice of singular referring terms. That is, if we choose a term t which is referential, then we can make sense of S because we have an instance that's uniform with respect to S. So, in Fine's terms, all we really need is a proper instance of S. That will give us enough to make sense of S. The choice of a term which provides a proper instance of S is based on its linguistic function; that's what guarantees uniformity.
  On the other hand, there's a proposed remedy to the difficulty of quantifying into opaque contexts in which we should select a class of "standard names" that are such that they have the right core-content for the intensional context in question (perhaps without regard to whether these standard names play any sort of uniform linguistic role). (It seems like this is what is happening in Kaplan's "Quantifying In".) Substitutivity will succeed because the standard names are the things which replace variable in instances and are defined such that it makes sense to carry out this replacement. Fine claims that for this proposal to succeed, it's essential that each member of the domain be named by a standard name. But there's no guarantee that these standard names will be referential in the contexts in question. A bit strangely I think, he claims that "given that they [the standard names] are selected on the basis of their content, it is unlikely that they will be so." After all, standard names are names, and chosen specifically to name; how could they fail to be referential? Perhaps Fine's asserting that its unlikely that they will be purely referential -- they will pick out their referents, but will somehow be more than simple place holding pointers to their referents. The result of dealing with the difficulties of quantification in this manner is that we wind up with a form of autonomous quantification into the chosen contexts: "satisfaction is given in terms of the truth of the instances formed with terms from the class; quantification is explained in terms of satisfaction" (p. 98)
  The reason the proposals are so hard to keep apart is that "the standard terms behave, in regard to their substitutivity properties, as if they were referential in a uniform context." (p. 98).
  It seems that a conventionalist analysis of necessity is really tenable only when these two conditions ("uniformity" and "names-with-the-right-core-content") coincide. That is, only if we have names with the right core-content can we be certain that a certain sentence is true in virtue of meanings alone. For instance, if 'd' is a standard name, and it's part of the core-content one knows if one possesses d, and from this core-content we know that d is P (for some predicate 'P'). Then we have warrant to claim that 'P(d)' is analytically true and so 'P(d)' and '(∃x)P(x)' are both true.
  Now, also I need to be able to argue that only if we have uniformity of a quantified sentence with respect to its instances are we able to hold the conventionalist view of necessity. Uniformity guarantees that the semantics of a quantified sentence and it's substitution instances are given similarly, and this seems to be something we want if the quantified sentences we use are to have meaning similar to their instances. We can put the requirement for uniformity in focus if we consider what happens without uniformity. If there isn't uniformity between a quantified sentence and it's instances, the term t in 'φ(t)' , for example, doesn't play the same semantic role as does the 'x' in '(∃x)φ(x)'. If quantification is taken to be referential, then this must mean that 't' in 'φ(t)' is not (purely) referential. This means that while the quantified sentence makes a claim (most generally) about whether some individual (or other) is in the extension of some predicate (or other) in virtue of the fact that variables are used (in this case) solely to pick out a referent and the semantic structure of the sentence is to make say something about that referent, instances of the sentence to don't do this, as the term 't' is not used (solely) to pick something out. This situation seems to run contrary to the desire we have, in light of holding the conventionalist view, for instances of a quantified sentence to be about something in the same way that the quantified sentence itself is about something. So, viewed this way, a necessary condition on the defense of a conventionalist position is that we must have names with the right sort of correct core-content (in order that the necessity of claims can be explained in terms of meaning) and that semantic uniformity between a quantified sentence and its instances be maintained (in order for the instances to have the same semantics as the quantified sentence and so given the same sort of treatment with regard to an interpretive truth theory of meaning).