designats

Designats, or designata in plural, are the objects that linguistic expressions designate or refer to within semantics and philosophy of language. The term designatum refers to a single designated object, while designata denotes the collection of objects that an expression can designate in its uses. In ordinary analysis, a designat is the entity singled out by a term, not merely its meaning or sense.

For proper names, the designatum is the individual named by the expression. For example, the designatum of "Socrates" is the historical person Socrates. For definite descriptions, the designatum is the unique entity that satisfies the description, if such an entity exists; for instance, the designatum of "the current President of France" depends on who holds the office at that time. If no such entity exists, many theories treat there as no designatum rather than a definite referent. For common nouns and general terms, the designata are all objects that fall under the term, and the collection of these objects is often referred to as the term’s extension or denotation.

The concept helps distinguish reference from sense: a term’s sense or cognitive content may be stable while its designatum varies with time, context, or truth conditions. Designata also feature in discussions of existential import, non-referring expressions, and fictional discourse, where terms may be discussed without a real-world referent. Overall, designats provide a framework for analyzing how language points to reality, or to its imagined or hypothetical aspects, through the objects it designates.