the so-called death of descriptivism

for a very long time--actually from about russell's "on denoting" paper published in the 1900's (decade, not century) till circa 1980--descriptivism ruled the theory of proper names. names did not actually denote anothing according to this view, but were shorthand versions of descriptions. names were descriptions, which in turn gave meaning to the term. so a proper name gave a unique description to the individual in question and that's what the individual was. the main motivation for this position was a fregean reaction against the millian view of proper names where a name just meant that thing you're talking about.

then of course the young prodigy savior of modal semantics saul kripke came along and revolutionized the entire field of philosophy of language. as mcginn noted in his review of the book in philosophical review, either you hated naming and necessity, you loved it, or you were genuinely confused. this new causal-historical view of names was completely different from the descriptivism that preceded it and there was a huge party for those who feared metaphysical committment and nominalists were happy and ockam had a party in his grave and all that good stuff and blah blah blah blah blah.

but was this celebration justified? was descriptivism really defeated like kripke thought?

as that young, star-crossed poet juliet once said, "what's in a name? a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!" this insight would play right into the conniving hands of kripke, who would make it seem that it shows how names are arbitrarily chosen to baptize a particular entity, whether an individual or a natural kind or whatever. but then i guess the nature of the question shifts as one attempts to pinpoint how names are actually acquired.

according to kripke, in the second lecture of the book, delivered in princeton i believe it was the 22nd of january, 1970, proper names for particular entities or kinds are introduced into a language one of either two ways. the first way is by fixing the reference by means of description. in other words i might say, "i need a name for the hairiest cuban-american raised in miami currently studying in scotland. i shall name him 'G'." see what i did there was that i came up with a definite description. instead of using that definite description every single time i want to refer to this particular individual, i pretty much just came up with a shortcut of sorts.

the other way one can introduce a name into a language is by using ostensive gestures, pretty much. so in other words you might go ahead and visit your local animal shelter and pick out a puppy from there. you take it home and you point at it and you say "i shall name this dog, 'D'." you could just say "D" as you point at it but then, of course as quine might point out, you might be naming the dog, sure, but you also might be naming the puppy slice or the undetatched puppy part or whatever the fuck that crazy quine might say. so even if you don't downright say "the dog's name is 'D'," in your mind you make the connection between the name and the type of thing you're actually naming. however, including this 'type' categorization or as kripke calls it the 'sortal' word as well, you ARE including a descriptive element to the ostensive definition as well.

going back to the famous shakespeare quotation once again, sure that rose could have any other name and smell sweet. but whenever somebody decided to call it a "rose" they said hey, look at that fucking flower over there, i'm gonna name it "rose." so, at the very least in the introduction of the term, the name of the plant was coupled with a recognition of what they were talking about and thus a description.

so basically what i'm trying to say here is that, even in kripke's view, descriptions are INDISPENSABLE, and are thus built in to EVERY noun term--whether it be proper or categorical-- and kripke pretty much fails in debunking good ol' earl of russell.