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Kripke's Objections to Description Theories of Names

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael McKinsey*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University

Extract

In “Naming and Necessity” Saul Kripke describes some cases which, he claims, provide counterexamples both to cluster theories and, more generally, to description theories of proper names. My view of these cases is that while they do not provide counterexamples to cluster theories, they can be used to provide evidence against single-description theories. (I count as single-description theories both “short-for-descriptions” theories of the Frege-Russell sort and what I shall call below “fixed-by-attributes” theories.) In this paper I shall defend both of the claims involved in my view.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1978

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References

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