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Rigid Designators and Disguised Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Monte Cook
Monte Cook*
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
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Extract

In “Naming and Necessity” Saul Kripke repeatedly uses modal arguments to show that proper names are not abbreviated or disguised descriptions. The arguments take the following form:

  1. (a) “The F might not have been the F” is false.

  2. (b) If N were used to mean the F, then “N might not have been the F” would be false (because of (a)).

  3. (c) But “N might not have been the F” is true.

  4. (d) Therefore, N is not used to mean the F.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 6: New Essays in Philosophy of Language , 1980 , pp. 111 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1980

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References

1 Cp. Loar, Brian, “The Semantics of Singular Terms,” Philosophical Studies, 30 (1976), pp. 372–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See, in addition to Loar op. cit., Brody, Baruch A., “Kripke on Proper Names,“ Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2 (1977), pp. 64–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDonnellan, Keith S., “The Contingent A Priori and Rigid Designators,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2 (1977), pp. 12–27;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDummett, Michael, Frege: Philosophy of Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 110–151;Google Scholar and Linsky, Leonard, Names and Descriptions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 42–65.Google Scholar

3 Though the de re-de dicto distinction is sometimes identified with Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions, I shall not discuss the latter here. For a criticism of such an identification -and of Donnellan's distinction in general -see Kripke, Saul, “Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2 (1977), pp. 225–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Kripke, Saul, “Naming and Necessity,” in Semantics of Natural Language, Davidson and Harman (eds.) (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel, 1972), p. 279.Google Scholar