When Kripke is starting the third lecture of Naming and Necessity, he takes a second to look back at the accomplishments of the previous lectures. By Kripke’s own account (N&N p. 106), he has thus far shown how descriptivism falls short, how names are reference-fixers, not synonymous to descriptions, and how identity is a property that should be considered de re instead of de dicto., all worthy topics where Kripke undeniably made some progress. However, the prospect of this paper is to show that, even though Kripke challenged the way philosophers were thinking about these issues at the time, the revolutionary interpretation of his work is a bit unfounded, as some of the important projects of the paper don’t manage to connect.
One of the most important accomplishments of the book is the questioning of the descriptivist theory of proper names. Under the influence of Russell and Strawson, descriptivists conceived of proper names as synonymous either to a definite description or a cluster of descriptions that may have either conjunctly or disjunctly added up to the name at hand. This analysis of names conflated statements of a priori and necessary truths. If, in fact, ‘W. Bush’ meant ‘The only former governor of Texas who became president as of 2002,’ then this apparently contingent fact about the person W. Bush becomes a necessary one. However, intuition makes us strongly want to disagree with these consequences, as we feel that, but of course, W. Bush could have lost to Gore in the 2000 election.
That being said, Kripke made us think twice about whether names could really be descriptions because then any cognitive or even linguistic association we have with a give name is not only contingent, but also incomplete. Most people would not be able to give a uniquely satisfying criterion to any proper name, even those of our most intimate acquaintances. At the very least it is not a necessary precondition for proper use of a given name. If I wish to refer to Bach, and all I know of him is that he is a German composer, I can still l properly use his name even though I probably wouldn’t be able to name a single particular work he has created. Nevertheless, I am still talking about him and there is no reason to believe I am in any way misguided in what a descriptivist would have to admit being a meaningless utterance.
However, what comes into question is Kripke’s methodology. Kripke lays out a formal, comprehensive, and rigorous theory regarding proper names under the guise of a proper Descriptivist agenda. To this set of 6 theses and 1 non-circularity satisfaction condition (p. 71), he goes on to prove how each thesis is either misguided or doesn’t satisfy the non-circularity condition. This is fair enough, given his presentation of the theses. However, even though he shows that descriptivism is not the right kind of theory or proper names, he goes on to attempt to prove that a descriptivist picture won’t do either. I’m not so sure he actually makes this point.
Descriptivism, as a picture of names--as opposed to a full on theory, would fail if one could prove that descriptions of any kind are not always necessary for the use of proper names in a language. Further, Kripke would have to show how descriptions are irrelevant to proper names. If there is a way to introduce a name without any descriptive element, the anti-descriptivist wins. Kripke shows us how a name could be used without there being descriptions immediately attached: through the causal or historical chain attached to the name and object. However, how is it thatnames come to be to begin with?
Kripke gives us with two possible alternatives, the first being completely descriptive. One can introduce a name into a language by fixing a reference from a rigid designator. If, for example, I want to talk about the northernmost point in the continental United States, I could designate the name “Tom” to that spot.[1] With this kind of name origination, the description is ever present and thus we should consider the other option.
The second (and last) way Kripke discusses introducing proper names in to a language is through the initial baptism. What does this ceremony entail? Well there is something in front of you, and there is some suggestive gesture that the person who originates the naming will, from that point forward, call that thing by some name. Now, suppose it is a puppy. The owner of the puppy presumably looks at it and says, or even thinks, “I shall name it ‘Max’.” But what is the it? Is it possible, as a Quinian might say, that one is actually naming the un-detached puppy head? Or is it possible that you’re actually talking about the stage of puppy-life when they are that young? Or perhaps even giving a part of the puppy-collective? Well, presumably, no. What one is naming is the puppy itself. So whether explicit or not, one is thinking “I shall name that puppy ‘Max.”
In introducing the name along with the ‘sortal’, one is at least providing some kind of descriptive element when introducing the name, even in the event of baptism. Otherwise it would be left arguably ambiguous what exactly one was naming in the act of the initial baptism. If in fact it is true that all of these cases of baptism involve a sortal, and if sortals are descriptive, then both options explored by Kripke would include descriptions and descriptivism, in some modified way, is still a force to be dealt with. Further, descriptivism would not have been completely defeated.
But are these two methods of introducing proper names exhaustive? A possible counter-example to this line of argumentation, and it would come from the likes of people who might assert that there are times when one privately baptizes things around them. Say one is found in a novel environment, alone, perhaps a foreign wilderness, where one is unfamiliar with the fauna around oneself. Then perhaps it would make sense that this person would look at something and name it in their own mind without externally expressing anything at all. Surely, here there is no descriptive element? Well I think I would argue against that. Perhaps one doesn’t vocalize any sortal description, perhaps one doesn’t even speak to oneself using any sortal terms. Nevertheless, one looks at the certain thing and decides about that thing, whether it is the head of that thing (a head is a thing, after all) or that fauna in its entirety, or whatever one decides of that thing to call it by a certain name. Otherwise the intention of naming something fails to stick on to anything, throwing names into the dark.
Now that we have shown that there is a good argument that even baptisms include descriptions, and that the two options presented are tentatively exhaustive. Also, the previously mentioned method of introducing names via definite descriptions includes descriptions too, thus making both name-introducing mechanisms Kripke proposes dependent on descriptions. Why shouldn’t this theory of proper names be just a peculiar type of descriptivism, perhaps a des-Kripke-vism? Well the answer to this is once again return to the text carefully analyze Kripke’s arguments. The main point of contention seems to be that even if we allow for descriptive elements present at the inception of a name, carrying descriptions through to every possible use of the name, that is, making original descriptions necessarily known at every instance of its use, would lead to unacceptable conclusions including but not limited to: a conflation of the a priori and the necessary, determinism, and circularity.
So how has Kripke fared so far? Well he has definitely pointed out some difficulties in the descriptivist theory of proper names as presented his own manner. As a complete theory, Kripke has irrefutably proven that it fails, especially given the non-circularity conditions. However, in the beginning of his third lecture Kripke is arguing that the descriptivist camp not only failed to provide a theory, but that it also failed to give an adequate picture. Well I guess here it a matter of definition what one means to say that the descriptivist picture has failed. If by descriptivist picture one just means to say that hey, descriptions do play a major part in any theory of names, then Kripke here is just flat out wrong, since even his anti-descriptivist manifesto cannot dispense with descriptions altogether.
On the other hand, if one considers showing that descriptivism was the wrong type of picture we were looking for when it came to proper names was just denying the descriptivism as presented by Russell and potentially his close followers, then I guess Kripke did a very good job. And considering the fact that a whole lot of people still had Russell's “On Denoting” in a special drawer reserved for canonical, unquestionable texts, this achievement alone is very impressive.
The causal theory of names presented by Kripke isn’t held to the same rigorous standards descriptivists are held to. After presenting a theory of descriptivism and refuting it, Kripke doesn’t really show that the picture of descriptivism, as a rough sketch, might be at least in part right. When he provides his alternative, he first doesn’t even provide the audience with a rigorous theory. This is acceptable: he doesn’t intend to provide a rigorous theory. However, the picture he gives us of the causal theory of names is quasi-descriptivist, or at least retains some of the descriptive elements he was setting out to refute. Sure, Kripke’s theory differs from Russell's and in significant ways. Reference and use of a particular name can be continued without uniquely identifying knowledge, and names are passed by mostly if not entirely through the historical connections of use of words in presence of others. The initial users of the name, whether through introduction by rigid designation or through baptism, did have some descriptive association that was necessary for the introduction of the name. When the names are passed down, this necessary descriptive connection could potentially be lost (and, often, it actually is lost). That these names gain new descriptive associations is also a part of the causal-historical chain. However, the original descriptions don’t have to be thereby the time you move to the nth person down the line.
It becomes difficult to me to decide whether or not Kripke’s theory of proper names completely takes descriptivism off the map or not. Ultimately it’s not for me to decide, as a lowly undergraduate student. The social element of passing down names and the potential loss of meaning or descriptive associations with the name was a significant step forward. Conversely, because even when providing a supposed antithesis of the Descriptivist program Kripke ends up relying on descriptions himself, I can’t really say descriptivism was fully eliminates the still-powerful intuition that names have to have been linked to some identifying description
Works Cited
Saul Kripke (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[1] There may be some ambiguity of scope here. I could be talking about the actual northernmost spot and naming it “Tom”, or I could be talking about the northern-most spot, whatever that may be, and naming that spot “Tom”. To clarify, I’m discussing the de dicto implications.
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