Naming & Necessity
Classical Descriptivism
Representation
Words/ thoughts have meanings.
They are about things. Why do words, for example, represent the
things that they do, instead of other things or nothing at all?
Classical Descriptivism
For every name N, there is a description D that we associate with N
such that:
1. If x satisfies D, then N refers to x.
2. If N refers to x, then x satisfies the description.
Classical Descriptivism
We may say, following Russell: the name
“Moses” can be defined by means of
various descriptions.
For example, as “the man who led the
Israelites through the wilderness”, “the
man who lived at that time and place and
was then called ‘Moses’”, “the man who
as a child was taken out of the Nile by
Pharaoh's daughter” and so on.
Classical Descriptivism
Moses:
• Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
• Parted Red Sea
• Given 10 commandments by God
Classical Descriptivism
This guy
 Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
 Parted Red Sea
 Given 10 commandments by God
Classical Descriptivism
Moses
refers
Classical Descriptivism
This guy
• Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
• Parted Red Sea
• Given 10 commandments by God
Classical Descriptivism
Moses
refers
Kripke against Descriptivism
Saul Kripke, 1940• Published first completeness
proof for modal logic at 18.
• Highly influential in philosophy
of language and mind.
• Developed the causal-historical
theory of meaning
Saul Kripke, 1940Kripke’s account is developed in
his Naming and Necessity.
The background is that he’s
arguing against views on which
the meanings of names are
descriptions or definitions.
Against Descriptivism
Kripke argues that for any name N, there is no description D that we
associate with N such that:
1. If x satisfies the description, N refers to x.
2. If N refers to x, then x must satisfy the description.
Ignorance & Error
He argues against each claim as follows:
Against #1: Arguments from ignorance. Sometimes lots of things satisfy
the descriptions we associate with N, but only one is N.
Against #2: Arguments from Error. Sometimes nothing satisfies the
descriptions we associate with N (or some non-x does), but N still = x.
Ignorance: Feynman
What people know:
• He’s a physicist
• He’s famous
• He’s dead
• He worked on quantum
mechanics
Ignorance: Feynman
But Bohr:
He’s a physicist
He’s famous
He’s dead
He worked on quantum
mechanics
Ignorance: Feynman
it’s not true that ‘Feynman’ means Bohr and it’s not true that it means
nothing. How is that possible for the descriptivist?
Error: Einstein
Who is Albert Einstein? What
people believe:
• Einstein is the inventor of the
atomic bomb.
Error: Einstein
But “the inventor of the nuclear
bomb” can’t be the meaning of
‘Einstein’ because then ‘Einstein’
would refer to Leo Szilard (or
whoever).
Causation & Representation
The Mirror Universe
Secondary Qualities
Possibility of Massive Error
Coordination across Theories
A related upshot is that two people with radically different theories can
nevertheless be talking about the same thing, and hence be
meaningfully disagreeing with one another.
The Causal-Historical Account
Kripke’s Picture
“Someone, let’s say, a baby, is born; his
parents call him by a certain name.
They talk about him to their friends,
other people meet him.
Through various sorts of talk the name
is spread from link to link as if by a
chain…”
Kripke’s Picture
“A speaker who is on the far end of this
chain, who has heard about, say Richard
Feynman, in the market place or
elsewhere, may be referring to Richard
Feynman even though he can’t
remember from whom he first heard of
Feynman or from whom he ever heard
of Feynman.”
Kripke’s Picture
“A rough statement of a theory might
be the following: An initial ‘baptism’
takes place. Here the object may be
named by ostension, or the reference of
the name may be fixed by a
description…”
Kripke’s Picture
“When the name is ‘passed from link to
link’, the receiver of the name must, I
think, intend when he learns it to use it
with the same reference as the man
from whom he heard it.”
The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that
baby ‘Feynman’
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that
baby ‘Feynman’
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Historical Chain of Transmission
Feynman
The Causal-Historical Theory
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Denotation
No Connotations
The causal-historical theory, unlike the other theories, does not use
mental facts (idea, experience, definition) to determine a referent.
Denotations are determined by non-mental facts.*
*Plus one intention for each link in the chain.
Natural Kinds
Kripke and another philosopher
Hilary Putnam wanted to
generalize what was true of
names to “natural kind terms” (a
phrase introduced by Quine).
The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that
thing a “tiger.”
TIGER
TIGER
TIGER
TIGER
Ignorance: Water
In Hilary Putnam’s classic “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” he argues that
“meaning just ain’t in the head.”
In particular, he presents his famous Twin Earth thought experiment,
which is intended to show that what the word ‘water’ is true of is not
determined by what we know or believe about water.
Twin Earth
Twin Earth is a planet on the other side of the galaxy. In most ways, it is
just like Earth, down to the smallest detail.
You have a twin on Twin Earth who’s just like you, I have a twin who’s
just like me, they’re sitting in a twin classroom, and my twin is giving a
lecture just like this one to your twin.
And so on and so forth.
Earth
Twin Earth
Twin Earth
There is however one difference between Earth and Twin Earth. On
Earth, all the watery stuff is H2O. On Twin Earth, the watery stuff is
composed of a complicated chemical compound we can abbreviate
XYZ.
H2O and XYZ look and behave exactly the same. They taste the same,
they boil at the same temperatures at the same distance above sea
level, their conductance is the same, etc.
Twin Earth
Consider two twins,
Arnold on Earth and Twin
Arnold on Twin Earth.
Neither knows any
chemistry. What they
know/ believe about the
stuff they call ‘water’ is
the same. Q: Would it be
true for Arnold to call the
stuff on Twin Earth
‘water’?
Twin Earth
The intuition is supposed
to be that, no, Arnold’s
word ‘water’ is true of all
an only H2O, whereas
Twin Arnold’s word
‘water’ is true of all and
only XYZ
The Moral
The conclusion Kripke and Putnam draw from such cases is that we fix
the referent of ‘water’ by a description like “the stuff around here in
lakes and rivers and streams that falls from the sky and quenches
thirst.”
But this description only fixes the referent. If you replaced all the H2O
on Earth with XYZ, there wouldn’t be any more water here.
Epistemic & Modal Arguments
The Epistemic Argument
Kripke had two other arguments against description theories (which he
took to support his own account). First, suppose someone says
“Aristotle means the last great philosopher of antiquity.” It is true that if
x is named ‘Aristotle’ then x was the last great philosopher of antiquity
and vice versa. So this is not a Feynman or an Einstein case.
The Epistemic Argument
However, it still seems as though you don’t have the same sort of
epistemic access to this fact as to other clearer cases of definition like
‘bachelors are unmarried men.’ You don’t know for sure that Aristotle
was the last great philosopher of antiquity. It could turn out false. It
could turn out that Aristotle was just a medieval forgery. If it were a
definition, you should know for sure. But you don’t.
The Modal Argument
Finally, Kripke argues that the modal properties of names are different
from those of definitions:
FALSE: If things had gone differently, Aristotle might not have been
Aristotle.
TRUE: If things had gone differently, Aristotle might not have been the
last great philosopher of antiquity.