Page 253 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

seems to generate unwanted necessary truths: if the principal description for Aristotle was 'the teacher of Alexander' then the statement Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander acquires a kind of necessity or analyticity. Yet this relation between Aristotle and Alexander seems paradigmatically a contingent matter.
Strawson, and others following him, refined the description theory by emphasizingthe idea of a speak- er's 'using' a proper name to 'make an identifying reference' (for a hearer); reference, by means of proper names or other devices, was seen as a kind of com- munication. The question then became what knowl- edge a speaker needed, and what assumptions were needed about a hearer, for a successful reference by means of a proper name. Strawson and hisfollowers, notably J. R. Searle (1958), argued only that some identifying knowledge (characteristically, though not essentially, in the form of definite descriptions) about the object of reference was presupposed in the use of a proper name but that this was not part of the mean- ing or content of the name itself.
8. Kripke's Objections to Description Theories
The Strawson/Searle view of proper names remained the orthodoxy until Saul Kripke published his highly influential critique in 1972. Kripke's objections revolve round two features of descriptivist theories: the role of identifying knowledge and the modal impli- cations.
8.1 Identifying Knowledge
Kripke offers a series of examples aimed at showing that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for a suc- cessful (referring) use of a proper name that a speaker should have available identifying knowledge of the object referred to. Against the necessity of suchknowl- edge, he points out that people commonly use names of famous figures—Socrates, Cicero, Einstein—with only the most meagre background knowledge about the persons concerned: afamous philosopher, aRoman orator, the man who discovered the Theory of Rela- tivity, etc. Such knowledge as they have is often not 'identifying' knowledge (i.e., it is true of more than one person); it is often 'circular' (i.e., the knowledge presupposes the referent, in the sense that the Theory of Relativity might be identifiable only as 'Einstein's theory'); and it is often not even knowledge at all but 'false belief (e.g., Columbus was almost certainly not the first European to discover North America, though that might be all that people 'know' about him).
Kripke uses other examples to challenge the sufficiency of identifying knowledge. Among math- ematical logicians, Godel is known as the man who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic. But, Kripke hypothesizes, suppose he did not do this and the proof was really the work of one Schmidt, from whom Godel stole the result. Would it follow that
those logicians whose 'backing description' for the name 'G6del' was 'the discoverer of incompleteness,' would in fact be referring to Schmidt whenever they used the name 'G6del'? That would appear to be a consequence of the descriptivist theory. But Kripke believes it to be quite counterintuitive. They are refer- ring to Godel, he insists, but just have false beliefs about him.
8.2 Modal Implications
According to description theories, speakers cannot have many false beliefs about the objects they name, for the identifying descriptions (or at least a core of them) that they connect with the name, determine what the name stands for. As Searle puts it: 'it is a necessary fact that Aristotle has the logical sum, inclusive disjunction, of properties commonly attri- buted to him: any individual not having some of these properties could not be Aristotle' (Searle 1958: 160). Kripke rejects this modal implication of description theories. He holds that in principle none of the com- monly held beliefs associated with a proper name might be true of any individual, yet still the name could refer to someone. This is particularly true of semi-legendary, e.g., biblical, figures like Jonah: per- haps the biblical stories built round Jonah are all fabrications or exaggerations but it does not follow that 'Jonah' is an empty name. There could be some actual person who is the basis of the stories.
Kripke seeks to capture the modal intuitions, e.g., that Aristotle 'might have been different in many respects' (might not even have been a philosopher), by saying that the name 'Aristotle,' and every other ordinary proper name, is a 'rigid designator'. Some- thing is a rigid designator if in every possible world where it has a designation it designates the same object. There is a possible world in which (i.e., it might have been the case that) Aristotle was not a philosopher, never taught Alexander the Great, never wrote The Nicomachean Ethics, etc. Yet in all such worlds it is still Aristotle that the name designates. Here then is a sharp distinction, on Kripke's account, between proper names and definite descriptions, for the latter are not rigid designators. Take the teacher of Alexander, that description designates different people in different possible worlds, indeed it des- ignates whoever in each possible world satisfies the description. (Note the assumption here that the defi- nite description is being used attributively in Don- nellan's sense.)
9. Causal Theories of Proper Names
Kripke insists that he is not offering a theory of proper names, only an alternative 'picture' to that of descrip- tion theories. His followers, though, have tried to con- struct a theory (commonly called a 'causal' theory) on the basis of his observations about how proper names function. Kripke's picture seems to point back to Mill
Names and Descriptions
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