The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Kripke’s First Argument against Descriptivism

◊ Benjamin Franklin
was not the first postmaster-general of the US.

Benjamin Franklin ◊
was not the first postmaster-general of the US.

The modal operator’s scope
in ii) is about Franklin himself; or the possibility that he might
have done such and such. The first example is a de
dicto possibility –
about the possibility of the statement being true. ii) is de
re possibility.The
point about i) and ii) is that we can be clear about the modal
application in that its position tells us its scope. Despite the
placement of the modal operator, the semantic value of the whole
sentence remains the same. What's more important - from this Kripkean
perspective - is that the semantic value of the name ‘Franklin’
remains unchanged in both i) and ii). This is, of course, going to
affect the central argument about Kripkean proper names. However,
this doesn't mean that the name must be somehow ‘empty’ if it
allows us to change the scope of the modal operator.What content does the name have if not, say, a description? Its semantic value is the
named object or person itself. Clearly this conclusion has a de
re feel – it's
about an object, not a statement. Indeed we'll also see that it has
an essentialist feel. In essentialist terms, we see that in
both i) and ii) the object named must retain its semantic value no
matter which world we place it in. In other words, the
name’s semantic value remains fixed right across possible worlds.
And if its semantic value is the object that is its referent, then
the name holds fast to the object-referent it names across possible
worlds. No matter which world the object is placed in, it will be
held by its name despite the world’s differences and the different
counterparts of the object itself. In order for this to be the
case, that object must retain its essence at all possible worlds at
which it is placed.Now in terms of the statement
of possibility which includes a description rather than a proper
name, the case is different. For example, it may only be at our world
that the description "the inventor of bifocals" is correctly
assigned to Franklin. This, according to Kripke, makes this aspect of
Franklin a contingent - not essential - property of the man. It's
shown to be so by the introduction of possible-world scenarios. In
other words, the descriptions of Franklin won't pick out Franklin - our
Franklin - across all possible worlds. So

◊ The man who invented
bifocals was not the first postmaster-general of the US.

doesn't make the same claim
as the statement that uses a proper name. Whereas prima
facie we think "the
inventor of bifocals" and "Franklin" pick out the same person and that they do so contingently. At our world they do so;
but at other possible worlds they may – or do - not. The above,
rather counter-intuitively, isn't about our
Franklin because it's a possibility-statement that doesn't use a proper name. It would
need to use a proper name in order to secure stability and necessity
of reference. The statement above tells us that it could be – or is
– true because Franklin - the barer of the name ‘Franklin’ - does (or may) not exist.There's a possible argument
against Kripke’s conclusion. We can read the above as if it has
wide scope. Strangely enough, it's the case that wide scope refers
to a modal operator embedded within a statement; not one about a
whole statement. In that case, wide scope is about de
re necessity and
possibility, not de
dicto necessity and
possibility. So a re-reading of the above as a narrow scope de
dicto statement can
now be:

The inventor of bifocals ◊
was not the first postmaster-general of the US.

Now we have a statement with
both a singular description and a de
re claim about the
inventor of bifocals. In other words, we have freed the description,
‘the inventor of bifocals’, from the possibility operator. What
does this modal operator movement attempt to achieve? Firstly, we
take the description to be about the inventor of bifocals at the
actual world, but then we hold that semantic value as ‘constant’
at other possible worlds – worlds at which he is not the first
postmaster-general of the US. The status of being the inventor of
bifocals is retained, but not its necessary connection with being the
first postmaster-general (which is the case at the actual world).
Although the statement above uses a description, because that
description lies outside the modal operator it has wide scope. We
must therefore initially be talking about our
inventor of bifocals,
not a possible one at another world. Kripke argues that it is our
Franklin himself who is the semantic value of the description – a
res,
however strange that is - it gives the description its semantic
value. We can now say that this rephrased wide scope de
re statement that
uses a description now makes Franklin’s property being
the inventor of bifocals
a necessary one, whereas being
first postmaster-general
is merely contingent. This, prima
facie, appears to be
a purely arbitrary distinction on the descriptivist’s part.But names do not have a
narrow scope reading. That is, if the modal operator is placed to the
left on the entire statement, the name will not have an equivalent
narrow scope reading in that no matter where the name is placed in
the statement, or how it is used, it will always have the same
semantic value – the object-referent at the actual world as he
appears across other possible worlds. This property of names holding
fast to their referents is encapsulated by Kripke by giving them the
title ‘rigid designators’. They rigidly designate because they
always refer to the same object at every possible world at which that
object exists, even if these worlds are different to ours and the
object itself has different contingent properties.The rigid designator idea is
quite simple. It is about the stability of reference across possible
worlds. However, unlike theories of reference, this has nothing to do
with naming processes such as ‘causal reference’ or ‘direct
reference’. We can say, now, that it is not a ‘theory of
reference’ at all. It is about objects keeping their names; not
about them getting
their names. The
‘rigidity’ of names tell us nothing about how names get attached,
as it were, to objects and persons. It has nothing to do, for
example, with Kripkean ‘naming baptisms’ or direct causal contact
between names and named objects. However, it does apply to the
relation between names and named objects; but only once such objects
have been named. From then on, a name and its object remain together
across possible worlds. The primary purpose of Kripke’s rigidity
thesis is to enable us to identify individuals across possible
worlds.So now we can say more about
the following:

◊ Franklin was not the
first postmaster-general of the USA.

The claim above is not only
true about a possible Franklin or a Franklin ‘counterpart, it is
also true of our own Franklin. These possible worlds are always taken
within the context of our
world. The above is true, but it has nothing to do with the
possibility that someone at a possible world merely has the name
‘Franklin’. It is not about a name, or someone else named
‘Franklin’. It is not about finding a world at which a ‘Franklin’
was not the first postmaster-general of the US either. It is about
the possibility that our Franklin might not have been the first
postmaster-general of the US. And we investigate other possible
worlds to establish this possibility. Again, it is not about the
possibility about another Mr and Mrs Franklin who also named their
child ‘Benjamin’ and that this child did not become the first
postmaster-general of the US. It is not about names at all; it is
about an object/person. More than that, it is about our
person – the person named ‘Franklin’ and how he may
(essentially) be at other possible worlds.All this is an attempt to
show that we cannot rely on any descriptive content for the name
‘Franklin’ to establish its necessary semantic value. At other
possible worlds we could not rely on the description ‘the inventor
of bifocals’, or any other description, to fix the name ‘Franklin’
or pick out the object Franklin. No description can fix what it is
about Franklin that must remain constant across all possible worlds.
Therefore, according to Kripke, names must not have content. What a
name must pick out at every possible world is Franklin’s essence.
This means that all the descriptions we have used of Franklin must
only pick out his contingent properties (in our world). And,
therefore, they may not pick out Franklin at all at other possible
worlds at which he exists because he may not exemplify any of these
contingent properties (which are the source of our descriptions).(A quick digression. What are
the essential properties of Franklin according to Kripke? It is here
that philosophers start to talk about ‘origins’ [see Forbes,
1997]. For example, Forbes must be indirectly talking about a named
man’s beginning in the womb at the moment the zygote is formed from
a sperm and an egg.)One conclusion to all this is
that names are indexed to the actual world. No matter what we say
about the name ‘Franklin’ and the person Franklin at another
possible world, it will still be determined by our
Franklin and
therefore our name ‘Franklin’. That is because no matter what a
possibility-statement says about Franklin, if it uses the proper
name, rather than a description, within that statement it will be
saying:

The object/person who is
actually Franklin might not have been the first postmaster-general of
the US.

Despite all the possible-world scenarios, they are still about our person – the actual
Franklin. With descriptions within a possibility-statement, we will
need to know which possible world is actually being spoken about. A
proper name, on the other hand, is always indexed to the actual
world. And a name is thus indexed because it only depends on the
referent or object of a name, not a Fregean ‘sense’ or a
description. It is, therefore, de
re rather than de
dicto; essentialist
rather than non-essentialist; ontological rather than conceptual,
etc.Now we can take on board a
possible counter-example to Kripke – referential uses of
descriptions as offered by, amongst others, Donnellan [1966].
However, Kripke would argue that such descriptive references are seen
to belong to the ‘pragmatics of use’ and have nothing to do with
the semantics of descriptions. Such a pragmatic reference must be so
because it is indeed the case that particular persons will use
particular descriptions in order to pick out - and then fix - a
particular named object. Of course they will. However, this has
nothing to do with the semantics of proper names or descriptions. The
semantic value of ‘Franklin’ must be the same for all users and
at all times. This could not be the case with any single description,
or even Searle’s ‘cluster’ of descriptions [Searle, 1967]. This
universality and a-historical reality of a proper name is determined
by the fact that its only semantic value is the named object-referent
itself - and nothing more! It is, therefore, de
re. Descriptions, on
the other hand, are conceptual or de
dicto in nature.
Descriptions belong to the pragmatics of use in the sense that they
are used practically by particular persons at particular times, not
by all persons at all times. We can therefore say that semantics, or
Kripkean semantics, is essentialist in nature, whereas pragmatics is
non-essentialist or even anti-essentialist.The thesis of rigid
designators tells us that proper names are given their semantic value
at our world and must retain that value at all possible worlds at
which the named object exists. This means that a
possibility-statement with a proper name has a fixed semantic value
because that value is fixed at the actual world by an actual object
or person. Therefore it is the person himself, as it were, who is
found at different worlds (or his counterparts), not a mere similar.However, Kripke has argued
that rigidity is not just about modal contexts. In the followingAristotle was fond of dogs.the name is rigid without a
mention of modality or possible worlds. And yet Kripke goes on to
write something which does highlight the modal nature of proper
names:

".... the thesis that names are
rigid in simple sentences is, however, equivalent to the thesis that
if a modal operator governs a simple sentence containing a name, the
two readings, with large and small scope, are equivalent [1972/1980)."

To conclude and repeat: the
whole thesis of the rigidity of proper names is not actually a theory
about reference in the sense of our giving an object a name, etc.
However, if one accepts the rigidity thesis, then it automatically
commits us, or so it has been argued, to what has been called a
‘direct theory of reference’. And Kripke, of course, also offers
us a direct - causal - theory of reference to follow his account of
rigidity. The Kripkean conclusion must be, then, that reference must
be either direct or descriptive.ReferencesForbes, G – (1997) ‘Essentialism’, in A
Companion to the Philosophy of Language,
Blackwell PublishersKripke, S - (1972/1980) Naming
and Necessity, Oxford: BlackwellSearle, J – (1967) ‘Proper Names’, in
Philosophical Logic,
ed. P. F. Strawson, Oxford University Press