Naming & Necessity. Classical Descriptivism

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?


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.


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.


Moses:• Lead the Israelites out of Egypt• Parted Red Sea• Given 10 commandments by God


This guy

Lead the Israelites out of Egypt Parted Red Sea Given 10 commandments by God


Moses refers


This guy

• Lead the Israelites out of Egypt• Parted Red Sea• Given 10 commandments by God


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, 1940-

Kripke’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 physicistHe’s famousHe’s deadHe 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’

FeynmanFeynmanFeynmanFeynman


Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’


Historical Chain of Transmission


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).


Let’s call that thing a “tiger.”

TIGERTIGERTIGERTIGER

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 EarthConsider 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.

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Naming & Necessity. Classical Descriptivism