Possible Worlds
Let us call a singular term, one that designates different things in different worlds, a flaccid designator. It contrasts specifically with what Kripke calls a rigid designator: a term that is not flaccid, that does not change its referent from world to world, but denotes the very same item in every world (at least in every world in which that item exists.)
Rigidity and proper names
Kripke’s objection to description theories of proper names: a definite description of the sort Russell had in mind is flaccid. Yet proper names, Kripke says, do not usually vary their reference across worlds or hypothetical situations in that way.
Test for flaccid: try the term in the sentence frame, “N might not have been N.” If this sentence comes out true, then the term is flaccid.
How about Russell’s Spot-Check argument, namely when you answer the “who” question, you inevitably give a bunch of descriptions, suggesting that proper names are just abbreviations of definite descriptions? Kripke would reply that description is what is used to determine the name’s reference on an occasion but it does not give the linguistic meaning of the name. Thus, even if a name in someone’s mouth at a time has a firm psychological association with a particular description in that person’s mind, it does not follow that the name is equivalent to the description in meaning.
Direct Reference
Rigidity does not quite amount to Millianism for not all rigid designators are Millian names (remember, a Millian name is one that has no meaning but its bearer or referent). For example, if we assume the fact that arithmetical truths are all necessary truths, then there are arithmetical descriptions, such as “the positive square root of nine” that are rigid because they designate the same number in every possible world but are certainly not Millian because in order to secure their reference they exploit their conceptual content. It does not simply introduce its bearer (the number three) into the discourse, but also characterizes three as being something which when multiplied by itself yields nine. However, others have championed the Millian conception, which has come to be called the Direct Reference theory of names. But how does DR philosophers solve the four puzzles? Consider, again,
(1) Albert believes that Samuel Longhorne Clemens has a pretty funny middle name.
DR theorists would answer that names in question really do substitute without altering the containing sentence’s truth value. On this view,
(2) Albert believes that Mark Twain has a pretty funny middle name
is true, not false. We naturally think otherwise; (2) does not seem true to us. That is because when we see a belief sentence, we usually take its complement clause to reproduce the ways in which its subject would speak or think. But the DR theorists point out that such suggestions are not always true, perhaps not ever true. Consider:
(3) Columbus reckoned that Castro’s island was only a few miles from India.
So it seems undeniable that there are transparent positions inside belief sentences, in which the referring expression does just refer to its bearer, without any further suggestion about the way in which the subject of the belief sentence would have represented the bearer. We might even say:
(4) Some people doubt that Tully is Tully,
meaning that some people have doubted of the man Cicero that he was also Tully.
However, the problem for DR theorists is that they have to remain that names do not have non-Millian readings, and they must explain the reason why we are seduced into hearing such sentences like (1)-(4) opaquely.
So far we have been talking about the semantics of proper names, that is, about theories of what names contribute to the meanings of sentences in which they occur. But then a separate question is, in virtue of what is a thing the referent or bearer of a particular name? A philosophical theory of referring is a hypothesis as to what relation it is exactly that ties a name to its referent — more specifically, an answer to the question of what it takes for there to be a referential link between one’s utterance of a name and the individual that gets referred to by that utterance.
The Causal-Historical Theory
The idea, then, is that a speaker’s utterance of a name is the most recent link in a causal-historical chain of reference-borrowings, whose first link is the event of the referent’s being given that name. All that is required is that a chain of communication in fact has been established by virtue of the speaker’s membership in a speech community that has passed the name on from person to person, which chain goes back to the referent himself.
Problems for the Causal-Historical Theory
Objection 1
How can he Causal-Historical Theorist accommodate empty names, names that have no actual bearers? Perhaps the best bet here is to exploit the fact that even empty names are introduced to the linguistic community at particular points in time, either through deliberate fiction or through error of one kind or another. So the chain’s first link is the naming event itself rather than any putative doings of the nonexistent bearer.
Objection 2
Names can change their reference unbeknownst, through mishap or error, but the Causal-Historical Theory as presented so far cannot allow for that. One possible solution is to allow multiple grounding, an idea that functions quite like that of a public ledger in Bitcoin. There can be many perceptual encounters that can serve as ground of an appropriate historical chain, and the who wins depends on the number of link/leaf following each ground.
KR notes: this solution is quite unpersuasive. Why can’t you just argue that something like a “rename” happened and the causal chain is still linear?
Objection 3
We can misidentify the object of a naming ceremony. Suppose you found a kitten you want to adopt, and on your next visit, the attendant brings out a similar but different kitten. You named her Liz right then. The attendant then takes the kitten away for shots, but the attendant notices the mistake, without telling you, recovers the right cat, and gives her shots. You pick her up and take her home, naturally calling her Liz.
The problem is of course that your cat was not given that name in any ceremony. Yet surely your cat is the bearer of Liz, even right after the naming ceremony you did perform to the wrong cat.
Objection 4
People can be categorially mistaken in their beliefs about referents. Say,
A former colleague of mine used to use the name of Emerson Hall, the building that houses the Harvard philosophy department, as a way of referring to the department, as in “Emerson Hall isn’t going to like this.” A casual hearer might easily have gotten the idea that “Emerson Hall” names a person. In this case it is implausible to say that subsequent uses of the name in question really refer to the categorially erroneous item.
KR note: this objection, seems to me, is simple to solve. A valid causal-historical chain at least needs that the speaker and the listener share a psychologically salient backing of identifying descriptions. At least, such backing needs to be enough to fix reference so that the listener can have a correct identificatory fix on the predecessor’s referent. In the above example, obviously there is no such backing.
Natural-Kind terms and Twin Earth
Natural-Kind terms: common nouns of the sort that refer to natural substances or organisms, like gold, water, tiger…. Kripke argued that they are more like names: semantically they are rigid; each refers to the same natural kind every world in which that kind has membership, and some version of causal-historical theory also applies.
This view opposed Descriptivist theory of natural-kind terms which associated each such term with a descriptive stereotype. Then what does make something a tiger, or water, if not the commonsense stereotype. Kripke and Putman adverted to the scientific natures of natural kind. That is, what makes water water is its chemical composition, H20, and what makes tiger tiger is its DNA.
Twin Earth: say there is a twin earth that is a nearly exact duplicate of Earth with only one difference, what looks and behaves like water on Twin Earth is not H20, but a different substance that Putnam calls XYZ. Of course, the Twin-English-speaking Twin-Earthlings call the XYZ “water,” since they are otherwise just like us. Now consider Earth Tony and Twin Tony, both saying “I want some water,” do they mean the same thing? No. Though Earth and Twin Tonys are exactly physical duplicates, Earth Tony means that he wants H20, while Twin Tony means he wants XYZ. So the linguistic meanings of sentences are not determined even by the totality of speakers’ brain states and bodily states, indeed even by the entire community’s pattern of usage.
