Is Kripke's theory of reference consistent with Wittgenstein's?
Kripke's theory of reference envisages a causal chain of reference practices which vouchsafes any particular reference through its connection to the initial naming event, Wittgenstein however stresses that the sense of a word, even a name, is highly contextual and depends on the embedding of the name use within a social and historical setting - it seems to me that causal connections are not necessarily practices of language use and thus perhaps the existence of a causal chain does not embed the naming practice within the norms of use; much seems missing from causal chains simpliciter. Does Kripke's account provide any insight on how the sense of a name is vouchsafed through the causal chain?
Comments (60)
1. “Don’t ask: how can I identify this table in another possible world, except by its properties? I have the table in my hands, I can point to it, and when I ask whether it might have been in another room, I am talking, by definition, about it.” N&N SK
2 “Does it matter which we say so long as we avoid misunderstanding in any particular case” PI LW
A language user may intend to use a name in a particular way but with conversation they may learn if there is a common understanding of that name.
Well, not quite. Rather he shows that reference is independent of description. That's what the book is about.
There's still the question of the content of names. Clark Kent and Superman despite being co-referring can suggest different courses of action. Even if this content is non-descriptive, it can still carry information.
There are shades of this in Kripke, the a-posteriori necessity of water = H2O isn't given a complete account by co-reference (though it is still sufficient for the a-posteriori necessity for Kripke IIRC), what the equation also does is allow, say, people studying the thermal properties of water molecules to apply that to climate change.
I'm not saying that the semantic content of a name is necessarily descriptive, mind, I'm saying that there's more to a theory of reference than the fact of reference. Reference brings a chunk of sense along with it too. Invoking quietism here does little to answer any of the problems that Kripke thought were important in writing the book. It's as if you back-project the theory into the behaviour of linguistic communities and render such a projection moot in the same breath; with the same rhetorical device.
Your first point is obviously correct; the question is not whether his argument is "extended" but whether it is sound and adequate. I don't agree the argument is successful for the reasons i already gave. If the 'causal chain" is secondary to the rejection of the description theory, then what is the primary argument against the latter?
You may not "see a problem" or require further explanation, but surely you don't expect that fact about you to be a substitute for an adequate argument to convince those who are skeptical, or who might think that Kripke is glossing over significant aspects of the phenomenology of reference.
You haven't attempted to address the problem I highlighted: that anyone who is not visually acquainted, either in person or via image or film, with the referent, will necessarily rely on description to ascertain who is being referred to.
So, to give you an example you may wish to respond to: you say to me Nixon did such and such, and if I am familiar with Richard Nixon's career, and what you said Nixon did is a part of that official history, then I will of course know just who you are referring to. That history is a description I obviously rely on. If I am not familiar with that history I will probably ask "Who is this Nixon you are referring to"? How will you inform me without resorting to description?
Now, I agree that definite description alone is not sufficient to determine reference in all situations, but neither is rigid designation; both are needed to different degrees in different referential situations. I think there is a kind of continuum with description at one end and rigid designation at the other, and any situation will fall somewhere along that continuum in regards to its degree of dependence on description or rigid designation.
This is similar to the case of demonstratives. To use an example of Howard Wettstein ("Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?"), suppose a friend of mine takes me to a rock concert. Unfortunately, being poor, we don't go in, but merely watch the show from outside, through some windows. Since the vocalist is using some intense makeup, I get confused when looking at his distinct profiles through two different windows, and I say to my friend that the band's two vocalists are amazing. Angry at my ignorance, he slaps his face, points to the vocalist and says "He... [then my friend drags me around to the other window] is he!". The two different pronouns obviously carry different information for me, for otherwise he would just be telling me the triviality that x=x, not the astounding (to me!) revelation that the two people I thought were amazing are actually the same amazing person! However, this is not a semantic difference in the functioning of the associated pronoun. It may not even be a difference in the character of the pronoun, i.e. the way the demonstrative determines reference in a given context. It may be just a difference in the context of use, and hence even extra-linguistic (Kaplan often makes the point, at least at the time of "Demonstratives", that the mechanism by which we determine a reference generally operates "offline", so to speak, and hence is not part either of the character or the content of what is said).
This, I think, goes some way towards assailing 's worries about the Clark-Superman example. Indeed, to some people the different names may carry different information and thus suggest different courses of action (though not to everyone, obviously: if Lois already knows that Clark is Superman, in most contexts it would be indifferent for Batman to tell her that Clark is looking for her or that Superman is looking for her). But this is not a semantic property of the name, so it doesn't tell against Kripke's points. Note that this is also not a "quietist" stance: there may well be a valuable theory to be developed about how semantics interact with cognitive psychology, or even a more general science of information. It just won't be a theory about semantics.
Similarly, this also answers the problem raised by , that a speaker may use descriptive information in tracking down the reference of a name. Indeed, that may very well be the case (and Kripke does address this in his book), but it is totally irrelevant to the semantics of the name. Notice also that in many cases the speaker may not have any descriptive information that allows this tracking: for instance, consider myself. I am shamefully ignorant of Gell Mann. The only thing I know about him is that he is an excellent physicist. But this is not enough for me to distinguish him from, say, Einstein. Yet I still may have true beliefs about Gell Mann (e.g. that he is an excellent physicist), and may refer to him in conversations, for instance by requesting more information about him. But this reference cannot be done via descriptive means, since the only descriptive information I have of Gell Mann is that he is an excellent physicist, and if this was the information used by me to refer to him, I could be referring to Einstein, and not Gell Mann, when I say that "Gell Mann is an excelent physicist". In fact, notice that I may not even have any descriptive information about a person, only non-descriptive information (say, of the perceptual kind) and still be able to refer to a person. So reference cannot be tied to descriptive information (and this even in cases in which the reference was first established by description).
On a completely different note, says that Kripke "sidesteps the issue of imaginary names". This is factually incorrect: he has an entire book, Reference and Existence, dedicated to this issue! Note that the issue with imaginary names is a bit difficult, so I'll just give a sketch here of Kripke's ideas (I recommend that you read the book, if you want the details). Kripke resorts to (at least) two moves: the first is to note that such names are generally not involved in assertions. It is generally agreed that an assertion, in order to be an assertion, must aim at truth. If I don't think I'm telling the truth when I say something, I'm not asserting anything, but rather doing something else, such as lying or telling a narrative. So he argues that such names are not introduced in the typical way, that is, they are not introduced to name anyone (since there isn't someone to be named to begin with, and the author of the fiction or imaginary tale knows that), and hence are not really names. So sentences such as "Sherlock Holmes is a detective" are not really assertions, so are not really talking about anything, and hence there is name or reference involved.
Of course, there is the problem that "Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional character" is talking about a real state of affairs, and hence is an assertion (in fact, a true assertion). So here is Kripke's second move: he introduces fictional characters as abstract objects that are ontologically dependent (or grounded) on the existence of the fictional work as referents of such names. Note that these names refer to abstract objects, works of fiction: so, when considered from this point of view, "Sherlock Holmes is a detective" is false, because Sherlock Holmes is an abstract object, and abstract objects are not detectives! Hence, there are two levels of discourse involved here. First, there are the pretende-assertions, which are not assertions at all, involving the pretend-world of Sherlock Holmes. Second, there are the real assertions involving the real world fictional character (or abstract object) Sherlock Holmes. Obviously, all sorts of complications arise from this picture (though it is a very attractive picture: Amie Thomasson has a similar theory in her Fiction and Metaphysics), but that is the gist of it...
I'm not certain that the distinction between referring using Clark Kent and referring using Superman is just a difference in psychological or behavioural disposition towards their referent. If that were the case, I would expect such psychological or behavioural dispositions to be contingently associated with the referent, whereas in this case we need to associate the referent with at least one of two behavioural regimes in order to refer in that way.
Clark Kent is a reporter who is a citizen of Metropolis, Superman is an alien superhero from Krypton. Superman secretly is Clark Kent, and Clark Kent secretly is Superman. These aren't behavioural dispositions of a referrer towards Clark Kent and Superman, they are behavioural regimes of the referent.
The surprise from learning Clark Kent is Superman comes from learning that two isolated patterns of reference actually have the same referent - forcing us to reconcile one's behaviour with the other. While this will change the referer's disposition towards Clark Kent/Superman, it will also connect two series of facts that are still isolated in the linguistic community.
Maybe this illustrates the point better: 'Who is Clarke Kent?' and 'Who is Superman?' can have different answers despite the two expressions co-referring, and the use of 'Clark Kent' to refer does not mirror the use of 'Superman' to refer. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Clark Kent, obviously.
Whether these patterns of behaviour should be read into the sense of a name, I'm not sure, because I'm not really sure what counts as the semantic content of a name.
I'm not entirely sure what you are calling "behavioral regimes", but I think it's entirely clear that they are contingently associated to the referent. Clark Kent needed not be a journalist. Consider: DC had a nice line of comics that mimicked Marvel's "What if..." series. In one of those, the rocket containing baby Kal-El did not land in Kansas, but rather near Gotham. So Kal-El was adopted by Thomas and Martha Wayne, instead of Jonathan and Martha Kent. There, he was called "Bruce Wayne" (though, obviously, he wasn't Bruce Wayne, since Bruce Wayne didn't exist in that world, as Thomas and Martha Wayne didn't have a biological child there) and never became a journalist. Still, he was Clark Kent, which is why we can truthfully say (or rather, would truthfully say if those were real people and not fictional characters) "Clark Kent might have been a millionaire in Gotham and never have become a journalist".
Here's another example. Suppose there is a user here who is also a colleague of mine (I don't know if there is one, but let's pretend there is). Then that person may not be aware that the Nagase who is her colleague is also the Nagase who posts here, and hence may have different behavioral dispositions towards my name. All that this shows is that this person has come into contact with my name by way of two different routes, not that my name may mean different things on different occasions. Indeed, this is clear, since my spouse, who knows that user and also knows that we both post here, does know that the two Nagases are in fact the same person. So she has the same behavioral dispositions towards the two instances of the name. So the behavioral dispositions cannot be part of the name (unless we want to posit massive ambiguity).
You also asked about semantic content. As I said, the semantic content of an expression is its contributions to the truth conditions of the sentences in which it appears. My contention is that the semantic content of a name just is the referent of the name, since that is what contributes to the truth conditions of the sentences in which it appears.
I'd like to begin with saying I'm not trying to advance a descriptivist theory of reference, or any particular theory of reference. Specifically, what I'm interested in is the sense of names and whether this is just the referent of the name.
'Jake is under 2 meters tall.'
'Can you please get me some water Jake?
The first is truth apt, the second isn't, Jake in the second does not contribute to the truth condition of the sentence because the sentence does not have truth conditions to begin with; but "Jake" is still meaningful and it refers. I would be surprised, considering that "Jake" refers in both of them, if "Jake" referred in a different way in each of them. The first instance of reference has Jake partaking in the truth condition, the second doesn't, nevertheless Jake still picks out Jake.
I raise this issue because a theory of meaning which associates any term with its effect on a truth condition could not account for the meaning of that term in a non-truth apt expression. At least not without a theory which applied in the case of non-truth apt expressions - at which point I'd wonder why reference changes behaviour between proposition and request without any prompts from our folk understanding of reference.
Though, I imagine we'll have a better discussion if we restrict ourselves to sentences with truth conditions; propositions.
Yeah, I agree with that. This is essentially saying, along with Kripke, that reference is stable over counterfactual stipulation (and because of this descriptive accounts of reference fail). What I'd like to make is a distinction between properties of cognitive significance which inform (normatively) the usual functioning of a name in a linguistic community and dispositions held by specific agents towards the referent of a name. The former is a facet of language use in a community, the latter is a mere dispositional relation to the referent by a member of that community. 'Superman' still means Superman even if I think he's a bellend, but 'Superman? Yeah I saw him barking at the moon and riding on Green Goblin's disc last night while punching an old man to death' transgresses the usual function of the word 'Superman' by placing it in a sentence which is unlikely to be produced if we both understand the pattern of reference and Superman's behaviour.
You may say that yes, Superman would still be Superman if indeed he did that (to be honest he probably did in some point in the Crisis on Infinite Earths), but postulating a world in which he did so would be postulating a world with much different linguistic communities insofar as they relate to Superman.
So, the modality associated with 'must' and 'contingent' in my post was closer to a normative 'must' that comes along with the usual function of a word within (the history of) a linguistic community, rather than the counterfactual stipulation associated with Kripke's analysis. We could use 'Jake' to refer to Jim if we wished, but that would go against the usual norms of use. Jim is called "Jim", not Jake. In that sense we must not call Jim 'Jake' or apples "oranges". What is contingent with respect to these uses are, for instance, the age of Jake, how long Jake's hair is, his occupation and so on; counterfactual stipulation allows us to filter out incidental features of reference after a referring relation between Jim and the word "Jim" has been set up. But such filtering only applies to a referring relation when it is already present, and leaves unanswered any questions about the (history of) behaviours of a linguistic community which vouchsafe the reference; the cognitive significance of Superman's part in their form of life.
I suppose this leads to a meta-discussion on what a good theory of reference needs.
I think the case of Superman and Clark Kent presents some issue here. If I believe that Superman and Clark Kent are different people then I intend for “Superman” and “Clark Kent” to refer to the different people, even though they don’t.
At the very least I have (unbeknownst to me) contradictory intentions. How do we resolve this contradiction to maintain intention as the transmitter of reference?
First, note that the fact that semantics is primarily concerned with truth conditions does not mean that it cannot account for speech acts other than assertions. For it may account for them in a derivative way. Here's an example of such a treatment: we may take questions to be a partition of propositions, that is, a collection of equivalence classes of propositions, namely its (conflicting) answers, such that each (conflicting) answer lies in exactly one equivalence class. (I think David Lewis adhered to something like this) So the semantics of questions is derivative to the semantics of its possible answers, which in turn are (generally) assertions. So one may take a term's contribution to the semantics of questions to be its contribution to the truth conditions of its answers.
Leaving this to the side, and using your linguistic community vocabulary, I'd say that the normativity associated with a name is very thin: the only constraint is that linguistic users of a given community all share the intent to refer to the same person by that name. This includes referring to the person in counterfactual conditions, so that we may wonder whether Clark would be called "Clark" if he had been raised by Thomas and Martha Wayne, or if Clark would still be a journalist under those circumstances. But if counterfactuals appear to bring in foreign standards, consider the following case. I am on the bus and, since I am without my headphones, I can't help but overhear the people behind me talking. Since I'm reading Naming and Necessity, I'm not focusing on them, but I still hear the name "Clark". I don't distinctly hear anything else about its referent, but I start to daydream about it, and begin to imagine that Clark is a philosophy professor who challenged Kripke's theory, and I may even mutter to myself "Clark has raised an interesting challenge to Kripke!". But, unbeknownst to me, Clark is a journalist, not a philosophy professor, and has never even heard of Kripke. So my assertion is false. Indeed, the people behind me hear me muttering and immediately correct me on that. Hence, I must have referred to Clark, the journalist, with my assertion, even if I have no knowledge about him and even if my behavioral dispositions towards the name are very thin and don't include reacting-as-if-he-was-a-journalist among them. How can this be?
This can happen because the only thing that establishes a chain of reference is the intentions of the relevant language users to use the name to refer to the same person. I picked the name from the people behind me, and intended to use it to refer to the same person as they did. That's it. That's also why the way that the reference was first established, say by description ("I hereby declare that the first Kryptonian journalist in this planet will be called 'Clark'!"), is irrelevant to the semantics of the name; it's an offline mechanism, that may start the chain of reference, but is not part of it. That's also why, contrary to what seems to assume, there is no problem if I intend to refer to different people by different names, or even by the same name. To use another of Kripke's example, suppose I pick up the name "Paderewski" from a musician and the name "Paderewski" from a friend involved in Polish politics. Since I believe no musicians are politicians, I believe this name refers to two different people; unbeknownst to me, there is just one Paderewski, namely Ignacy Jan Paderewski. But that only means that, unbeknownst to me, I actually referred to the same person using that name in different contexts. What matters is that I intended to use the name to refer to the person referred by whoever it was I picked the name from.
Is that what we intend though? Imagine some historian were to (falsely) believe that his friend Artabanus assassinated Xerxes and wrote the sentence "Xerxes was assassinated by Artabanus" in some historical record (without any further description of Artabanus). I would say that when I repeat this sentence to someone who asked me about Xerxes my intention is to refer to whoever assassinated Xerxes, not to this historian's friend.
Or let's say that someone found the only written account of the first Emperor of Rome and changed his name to his own (Augustus) as a joke to imply that he was the first Emperor of Rome. Does that mean that we've been referring to this trickster and not the first Emperor of Rome when we talk of Augustus? I don't think so.
Thanks for you thoughtful reply, but I remain unconvinced that "it is totally irrelevant to the semantics of a name". I would say you do have descriptive information that allows you to have a more or less vague idea of who you are referring to by the appellation 'Gell Mann'. You know that Gell Mann is a man, and that he is considered an "excellent physicist" and you know that he is not called 'Einstein'. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to think of names, not merely in the usual descriptivist sense, as standing in for descriptions, but as themselves being abbreviated descriptions.
'Gell Mann', in this particular case where we refer to a man (there may be other Gell Manns who are women or children), is an abbreviation of 'the man commonly known as Gell Mann'. Now there may be other men called Gell Mann, so we also need to add 'who is also a renowned physicist'. What if there were two men called 'Murray Gell Mann' who were both renowned physicists working in the same field? We would then need to add further descriptions to distinguish between the two.
In the absence of visual acquaintance, I cannot see how reference to a particular individual could be determined in the absence of any description. I am also yet to hear a convincing argument as to why names themselves should not be considered to be abbreviated descriptions in the sense I indicated above.
The second case, of the joker Augustus, is easier, I think. If the first emperor was also called Augustus, then we're back to the Artabanus case. So suppose that the first emperor was not called Augustus, but, instead, Johannus (say). This would be similar to the Gödel/Schmidt case treated by Kripke, in which we discover that, in fact, the true discoverer of the incompleteness theorems (and much more) was Schmidt, whom Gödel plagiarized. Still, in that case we would not be referring to Schmidt all along when we talked about Gödel; rather, we had erroneous beliefs about Gödel. Similarly, in this case, I would say that we were referring to Augustus, wrongly believing that he was the first emperor, when in fact Johannus was the first emperor. Evidence for this comes from the fact that, if we were to eventually discover our mistake, we would say "Damn that Augustus, he tricked us into believing that he was the first emperor, when in fact he wasn't", a sentence that wouldn't make sense if "Augustus" referred to the first emperor (clearly the trickster didn't trick us into believing that the first emperor was the first emperor, even though the first emperor wasn't the first emperor!).
This, in turn, allows me to reply to . A name is not an abbreviated description because its modal profile is different from the modal profile of any definite description. Consider Gell Mann. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that "Gell Mann" is identical with the description "The man called 'Gell Mann' who is a renowned physicist and etc.". In that case, the sentence "Gell Mann is the man called Gell Mann who is a renowned physicist and etc." is a necessary truth. But that can't be, because Gell Mann could have been called (say) Feynman and could have been a lawyer instead of a physicist, etc. So "Gell Mann" is not identical with any description.
Alternatively, I may be wrong in all my beliefs about Gell Mann and still successfully refer to him. Suppose I actually believe that Gell Mann is a woman lawyer from Austria. Those are erroneous beliefs I have about Gell Mann, not correct beliefs I have about someone else. So I must be able to refer to Gell Mann somehow, independently of the descriptions I associate with him, since those are all, ex hypothesi, incorrect. Indeed, it is the ability to keep track of the reference here that allows me to correct my beliefs: if "Gell Mann" was an abbreviated description, then any change in the description would be a change of meaning, so that, instead of having corrected my beliefs about Gell Mann, I'd instead have replaced my beliefs about a woman lawyer (who? Gell Mann?) with my beliefs about the American physicist. But this can't be right.
I think the source of your confusion (if it is a confusion) is that you think (1) reference is achieved either by acquaintance or by description, (2) reference by way of names is not acquaintance, (3) so it must be a description. Hidden here is the premise (4) reference by acquaintance is reference by perceptual means. But even if we accept (1), I think we should reject (4): names allow us to acquaint ourselves with things with which we don't entertain perceptual relations. Here I can do no best than quote Kaplan:
How can this be? This happens because, in a sense, it's not really that I apprehend, or reach out to you through a name; rather, it's more like that you impress yourself on me through that name. Again, as Kaplan puts it:
This?
Quoting Janus
Kripke clearly shows that reference can occur in the absence of definite descriptions.
Quoting Janus
That's just wrong, as is set out in N&N.
I think you've offered an excellent response here, with much to think about, and when I have the time to think about it some more, I will perhaps become convinced that you are right. For the moment, though, the sticking point for me here is that I cannot see how I could "apprehend" the particular Gell Mann we are discussing here, if the only resource I have is the name and no personal familiarity with, or descriptive context relative to, the referent.
I also don't see how it matters that it is logically possible (if not actually possible) that there could have been an entirely different descriptive context relative to Gell Mann; what seems to matter in terms of reference is the actual descriptive context. Bear in mind though, that I am all but totally unversed in modal logic, so there could be requirements in that discipline which my view cannot provide. Am I wrong to think that even in modal logic all counterfactual considerations in their very counterfactuality, are inextricably tied to what is actually the case in this world?
An example or two would help.
Continuing to make bare assertions is not going to help. Perhaps if you could address my objections in your own language according to your own understanding, or even quote relevant passages from Kripke if you like, perhpas I might become convinced that I have misunderstood.
I would agree that description is necessary but not sufficient (except in cases of more or less direct acquaintance) for determining reference. The fact that you are convinced that Kripke is right is as nothing to me.
For those who are not aware of it, there was a thread on Naming and Necessity in which Janus maintained this odd position despite repeated references to the book that showed his error.
So, have fun, Janus.
@Nagasse has been the opposite of disingenous in presenting detailed arguments and examples for me to consider. You act as though there is no room for disagreement as to whether Kripke is right, that if someone reads the text and understands it (in just the way that you do, of course!) they could not possibly disagree with you, and that attitude alone undermines any confidence I might have had in your credibility in regard to this issue. there is always room for different interpretations and consequent disagreement when it comes to any text.
Anyway I don't really have time for this! Sucked in again! Now I will go and have some fun (actually I have to work, but that can be fun if you let it).
In so far as Kripke is setting out how a reference works - the rules for referring - his account, in Wittgenstein's terms, will be inadequate.
That is, the causal chain might be part of an answer, indeed alongside definite descriptions and other stuff. But it will not be the whole story.
But I did, in detail, in the N&N thread. You didn't accept it. That's not my problem.
Stahp, please. This is obviously unpleasant for both of you. (this post is not written as a mod, it's written as someone who wants to keep a good discussion on topic)
What Kripke and Kaplan are urging, though, is that reference functions in a completely different way from this scenario. We do not "achieve" reference and the referencing task is not an individual one. Rather, it is more like that reference is handed down to us through our participation in a communal practice. Again, I must quote Kaplan:
So, again, to refer to Gell Mann, it's not required that I have some discriminating knowledge that allows me to individually reach out for Gell Mann. His own name does that for me, without requiring me to actively reach out to him. Think about it: that's how I can learn a new name, and use it in conformity to the standards of my linguistic community. Suppose I have never heard the name "Gell Mann", and then someone explains to me who he was. What allows me to follow the explanation is that I know that it is an explanation about Gell Mann, not the other way around. That's why the explanation can be wrong and I still be able to refer to the physicist, Gell Mann, because the reference practice was not tied to any particular descriptive content, but to the man himself.
And that's also why I'm able to formulate counterfactuals about Gell Mann. To understand this point does not require any exotic knowledge of modal logic. Rather, it just requires the platitude that, when I think truly that Gell Mann could have been a lawyer, I'm referring to Gell Mann himself, not some weird surrogate in some weird other dimension (unless you are a counterpart theorist à la Lewis). And what makes the counterfactual true is that Gell Mann could, in fact, have been a lawyer. But then it's not the case that "Gell Mann" is an abbreviated description. For suppose it was, and that the description was "the famous American physicist who blah blah". Clearly "The famous American physicist could not have been the famous American physicist" is false. But "Gell Mann could not have been the famous American physicist" is true (he could have been a lawyer). But if "Gell Mann" is an abbreviated description, the the two sentences are identical, and therefore cannot have different truth values!
To be honest, though, I think this modal (and the variant epistemic) argument is useful for convincing yourself that there is something wrong with the descriptivist picture. But it's not very good in going to the root of the problem, which in my mind is the incorrect background semantical picture that I sketched above. Once you operate the gestalt shift from an individualist semantics to a communal semantics, I think the direct reference theory appears as the natural upshot of the shift, and it actually explains what is wrong with descriptivism and what is right with the direct reference theory. Or so it seems to me.
I'm your neighbour and I tell you that my friend John is coming to visit. John cancels but another friend comes to visit instead. I introduce you but only introduce him as "my friend" and not by name. Later, in his drunken stupor, my friend confesses to you that he slept with my wife. The following day you say to me "John confessed to me that he slept with your wife".
The two questions to ask here are 1) who do you intend to refer to, and 2) who do you actually refer to?
According to the original designator theory you (or rather Kripke) present, you intend to refer to whomever I intended to refer when I first used the name "John". But I think that's clearly false in this case. When you spoke to me about "John" you actually intended to refer to the man who confessed to you that he slept with my wife. So at least regarding the first question the answer isn't determined by the original designator's intention.
As for who you actually referred to, perhaps the answer isn't so clear. Would the answer depend on whether or not my second friend is also named John?
I don't know if this shows that the original designator's intention isn't the source of reference (or at least who you intend to refer to), and that the two simply happen to coincide in most cases, or if there isn't just one way that reference works, and that in the case that I describe it works a different way.
I'd say that (following Kripke's "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference"), in this case, we must separate the speaker's reference from the semantic reference. The semantic reference of a name is the reference that attaches to its historical chain of reference, or, if you prefer, the conventionally established meaning of the term. The speaker's reference is the item to which the speaker wished to refer in using the term. Of course, there is in this case a conflict: in agreement with the Kaplan quotation I supplied earlier, in using the name "John" I intend to comply with the historical chain of reference and refer to John; but, because of your bad manners in not properly introducing your friend, I also intend to refer to the drunkard. There is a huge debate here about what it is that I have actually asserted in uttering "John confessed to me that he slept with your wife": literally, I asserted the falsehood (let's stipulate that it is a falsehood) that John confessed to me that he slept with your wife, whereas it seems that what I implied, or meant to say, was that the drunkard confessed to me that he slept with your wife.
Note that this phenomenon is not specific to names. Here's an example adapted from Donnellan ("Reference and Definite Descriptions"). I am at a party and want to show to my wife who the dean is. I see him holding a martini glass and say to my wife "The man drinking martini is the dean". Unbeknownst to me, he is not drinking martini, but water. We can even imagine that there is another man at the party, drinking martini, but who is not the dean. So what I literally said is strictly speaking false, even though what I meant to say or what I implied is true (that that man is the dean). Examples involving other more bizarre scenarios and other lexical items abound.
Now, there are two ways of approaching this. One is to keep firmly to the divide between what is literally said and what is conveyed by a given utterance. The first is the realm of semantics, the latter of pragmatics (I lean towards this approach). The other way is to maintain that a sentence, in an of itself, does not say anything, but needs some sort of pragmatic enrichment in order to represent a proposition. In this approach, the difference between semantic and pragmatics is blurred, since pragmatic factors may affect what is literally said. To illustrate, consider your case. The first approach would say that you actually, literally, referred to John, and hence literally said a falsehood. The second approach would say that you actually referred to the drunkard, and hence said something true. Similarly in the case of the man drinking martini.
In any case, notice that, either way, this does not affect the general picture of the direct reference theory, though it may affect the details. The first approach attaches more importance in determining what is said to conventional factors, whereas the second approach attaches more importance to whatever it is the speaker has in mind. But both are compatible with the speaker using the name to refer directly to whatever it is she refers to.
I wasn't thinking merely in terms of "individual mental effort" but in terms of the communal conditions or practical context in which reference occurs.
Quoting Nagase
I agree that the classical descriptivist picture, per Russell, is inadequate, but I also think that Kripke's designationist picture is inadequate. I'm not too sure which is the more inadequate.I think Kripke does show that description alone, definite and/or otherwise, is not sufficient to give an adequate account of reference, but I do not think he has shown that it is not necessary.
Granting that what is important to understand referential practices is the communal nexus of conventional practice, I want to ask whether you think that nexus consists exhaustively in designation, rigid or otherwise, and does not consist in a vast network of stories we tell each other, which themselves consist in both designation and description. I also want to ask whether you think rigid designation can somehow be sublimed out of that wholistic context and made to serve as an adequate concept for the generation of a comprehensive phenomenological, or even merely semantic, account of reference.
But what exactly is meant by "that particular person"? Which attributes of a person are necessary and which are not? For example, can I be black, or a woman, or Jewish, or missing limbs, etc. in other possible worlds? Or do I need to be exactly the same person that I am (now?) in the actual world? What does "exactly the same" mean here? Does being male in this world count as a description or as a "constitutive property" of me (i.e. of "that particular person")? Where is the distinction drawn between a description and a constitutive property?
I don't really see the point of the quasi-scientific finding that proper names are rigid designators or its associated language-game(s). Wittgenstein's view in the Philosophical Investigations seems very far removed from Kripke's:
"That particular person" is Luke. No particular, and no set of, attributes determine that the person is Luke.
The identification ins in the specification of the possible world. Consider a possible world in which Luke is female. Consider a possible world in which Luke is Jewish. What guarantees that we are talking about Luke? The very specification that swts up the possible world.
But surely there are a set of attributes (or descriptions?) that determine me as a person? Height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, age, etc. That is, there is a person that goes with the name, just as there is H2O that goes with the word "water". Are we supposed to ignore the (actual world) facts about a particular person for Kripke's purposes?
Quoting Banno
But there are a set of facts about Luke in the actual world, and then counterfactuals about Luke in (other) possible worlds, I thought?
Perhaps. Do these determine your name?
Quoting Luke
Kripke covers such cases, presenting examples of folk for whom we have a proper name and yet no other information; and yet in such cases, the name still refers.
An interesting argument.
It seems to me that this same argument might be used against learning any new terms.
ANd yet we do learn to use language.
So how does this feed into the idea of communal practices? You ask me if the communal practices do not consist in a network of stories we tell ourselves. I'd say no, it does not consist merely in this. Of course, these stories are part of the practice, but they do not exhaust it. One other practice is the practice of tracking down objects throughout time (and other possible worlds), and the linguistic counterpart to this is our use of names. In other words, describing, or narrating stories, is only part of our linguistic practice; referring is another.
Now, this may sound like a triviality: we use names to (rigidly) refer to objects. So what? That is the gist of what I take to be 's remarks. I think this is a bit unfair, at least in historical terms: before Kripke (and Føllesdal, among others), the semantics of proper names was really muddied. This confusion was partially responsible for Quine's attacks on modal logic, and after we understood clearly how names worked, this allowed us to also get clear on the semantics of modal logic, which in turn allowed us to ask more precise metaphysical questions, etc. But this may all be part of the "quasi-scientific" endeavor which Luke is (apparently) disparaging. How does this connect to our linguistic practice? Wasn't all this already answered in the later Wittgenstein's work, anyway?
Personally, I'm unimpressed with Wittgenstein, here. Sure, he has many interesting remarks on language, but we don't want merely remarks, we want a full-fledged theory. And, for obvious reasons, one will never get a full-fledged theory out of Wittgenstein. Kripke, on the other hand, opened the doors for the phenomenon of direct reference, thus allowing for full-fledged treatment of other directly referential expressions, such as demonstratives and indexicals (see Kaplan's work). He also managed to sharply, and correctly, separate semantic issues from pragmatic issues (granted, this was done more in "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference"), as well as semantic issues from epistemic issues, giving a plausible account of how this separation worked. This relieved semantics from the burden of giving intellectualist accounts of meanings (in Frege's vein, for example, to which Frege's Puzzle is central), which in turn allowed it to concentrate on what is relevant, namely truth-conditions. Or so I would say.
Note that has nothing to do with essential attributes or whatever. As is well-known, Kripke also defends in Naming and Necessity a (controversial) theory of essential properties. But this builds upon the semantic theory, so the semantic theory is independent of it. That is, it's not necessary (and not sufficient, either, for the matter) for the semantic theory to work that objects have essential attributes (well, aside from trivial ones such as "being self-identical" or "being such that either it is P or it is not P"). To see this, note that there are modal systems (Fine's S5H) which adopt Kripke's treatment of proper names as rigid designators, but in which there are no essential attributes aside from the trivial ones. This is important, since an early (Quinean) confusion about modal logic was that it was committed to some form of "invidious Aristotelian essentialism", which is definitely not the case.
Finally, one last observation. Unlike what seems to be claimed by , the notion of reference developed by Kripke (and others, such as Føllesdal) does not involve causality, as I said in my first post on this thread. I'm pretty sure that Kripke would deny that causality must be involved, since he countenances reference to abstract objects, which by definition exert no causal powers (and in fact, I remember reading somewhere---perhaps in a footnote to Kaplan's "Demonstratives" or "Afterthoughts"---that, when asked, Kripke explicitly denied that his was a causal theory of reference). According to Føllesdal, the first to propose a causal theory of reference was Gareth Evans, in his "The Causal Theory of Names". Unfortunately, Evans (modestly) presented his theory as an extension of Kripke's, and so many people mistook his theory for Kripke's. But that is a mistake. There need be no causality involved in Kripke's account.
1. An object walks in a room and I name this object “Gell Mann.” “Gell Mann” could not have been the famous American physicist. When I think truly that “Gell Mann” could have been a lawyer, I am referring to Gell Mann, the object I named “Gell Mann”.
2. An object walks in a room. Tattooed on the object is the letters “Gell Mann”. The object with the tattooed letters “Gell Mann” could not have been the famous American physicist.” When I think truly that object with the tattooed letter “Gell Mann” could have been a lawyer, I am referring to the object with the tattooed letters “Gell Mann”.
3. An object walks in a room. I observed this object and come up with a complete description of this object based on what I can observe. The object I completely described could not have been the famous American physicist.” When I think truly that this object I completely described could have been a lawyer, I am referring to that object I had completely described.
Analysis:
Does it matter whether we call this naming or describing, the function it serves is the same, to communicate to avoid misunderstanding. For example, in scenario #3, if someone ask me who could not have been the famous American physicist, I reply with the complete description of the object. This keeps re-occurring with different people, I decide I need to provide an abbreviated description, and call it “Gell Mann” Is this a description or a name, does it matter as long as I avoid misunderstanding?
According to my understanding of classical descriptivism, names are considered to stand in for descriptions. When I said above that names might be counted as a special kind of description I meant something different to that. I meant that a name, whether it be 'John' or 'tree' could be an abbreviation for a description which would go something like 'an entity called 'John'' or 'an entity called 'tree''.
If I am naming something for the first time in the presence of the entity being named and other people, I could point to the entity and say merely "John" or "tree". Or I could be more definite and say "here is the entity we will call 'John'", or here is the kind of entity we will call 'tree'".
Anyway to get to the main point, I am still not seeing how the historical evolution of the "chain of reference" could, once it goes beyond perceptual acquaintance, continue to function without the benefit of descriptions.
Perhaps not, but the name refers to me as a person.
Having just finished a rushed reading of the text, I'd like to note a couple of things. Again, I welcome any corrections, and apologies in advance for the naivety of my questions.
Firstly, it seems that while my name refers to me as a person in all possible worlds, what counts as "me as a person" can really be anything at all. All known facts about me could be false, all descriptions of me could possibly be otherwise, yet my name would still refer...to me?
Secondly, as I understand it, a proper name refers to the same person in all possible words. But what does its being necessary mean? Especially since true descriptions of 'me as a person' appear to be unnecessary to the reference.
Quoting Richard B
I'd agree that in possible world semantics names are merely stipulated to refer to the same person. The metaphysical question as to what is essential to identity does not seem to arise. This reminds me of Leibniz' "Identity of Indiscernibles'; if an entity who shares all my properties cannot but be me, can an entity who does not share all my properties meaningfully be thought to be identical to me?
To answer the question @Luke asked about what it means for the reference of names in all possible worlds being necessary; it seems that it means it is necessarily stipulated in order to coherently and consistently do the kind of counterfactual thinking involved in possible world semantics. Whether that fact tells us anything significant about our actual practices I cannot say.
Quoting Janus
So it just boils down to how the linguistic community uses the name? Pretty much just Wittgenstein's view then? Therefore, Kripke's criticism of Wittgenstein's so-called cluster theory, and Kripke's own causal theory, are mostly irrelevant when it comes to proper names?
I'm not so concerned with the metaphysical question, but don't proper names differ from natural kinds given that proper names lack essential properties, whereas e.g. water = H2O? But perhaps natural kinds also just boil down to community usage ultimately?
Thanks Frank. I seem to recall that being a person (or a human) is one (is that right?). Were there any others?
If it's a proper name for a human, yes. Kripke wanted essential properties to be related to origin, so I guess he would say it doesn't make sense to wonder if Mt Everest could be a naturally occurring part of the moon, which sort of makes sense. There could be a mountain on the moon that's exactly like Mt Everest, but it wouldn't be Mt Everest. I think it's all debatable though.
Were there any other necessary true descriptions for humans, besides being human?
You mean essential properties? I'm not sure. Maybe Nagase could explain it.
Yeah, you can see the issue of doing that if you apply the LEM hard enough? Either that or an ad infinitum kinda arises...
Edit: To phrase this another way. Does the description become the referent for abstract "objects"?
What is being transmitted historically? Not the thing referenced obviously. Not the name itself, that is obviously base on historical record? A concept? That sounds like how the name is associated with descriptive content. Some essence stipulated in every possible world? Sounds like a concept/idea.
If I say this name in the initial dubbing while recording it. Then play the recording for infinity. Is the reference being historically transmitted every time the record sounds the name? Sounds are being preserved over time for sure.
This is all very odd. Maybe nothing at all is being historically transmitted. Just another abuse of language by a philosopher.