Naming and Necessity
Encyclopedia
Naming and Necessity is a book by the philosopher Saul Kripke
that was first published in 1980 and deals with the debates of proper nouns
in the philosophy of language. The book is based on a transcript of three lectures given at Princeton University
in 1970. The transcript was brought out originally in 1971 in The Semantics of Natural Language, edited by Donald Davidson
and Gilbert Harman
. Among analytic philosophers, "Naming and Necessity" is widely considered one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century.
, particularly the use of language to express concepts and to refer to individuals.
In Naming and Necessity, Kripke considers several questions that are important within analytic philosophy:
Kripke's three lectures constitute an attack on descriptivist theories of proper names
. Kripke attributes variants of descriptivist theories to Frege, Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, among others. According to descriptivist theories, proper names either are synonymous with descriptions, or have their reference determined by virtue of the name's being associated with a description or cluster of descriptions that an object uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples purporting to render descriptivism implausible as a theory of how names get their reference determined (e.g., surely Aristotle could have died at age two and so not satisfied any of the descriptions we associate with his name, and yet it would seem wrong to deny that he was Aristotle). As an alternative, Kripke adumbrated a causal theory of reference, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of a causal connection with the object as mediated through communities of speakers. He points out that proper names, in contrast to most descriptions, are rigid designators: A proper name refers to the named object in every possible world in which the object exists, while most descriptions designate different objects in different possible worlds. For example, 'Nixon' refers to the same person in every possible world in which Nixon exists, while 'the person who won the United States presidential election of 1968' could refer to Nixon, Humphrey, or others in different possible worlds.
Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities — facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation. Examples include “Hesperus is Phosphorus”, “Cicero is Tully”, “Water is H2O” and other identity claims where two names refer to the same object.
Finally, Kripke gave an argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind, the view that every mental fact
is identical with some physical fact (See talk). Kripke argued that the only way to defend this identity is as an a posteriori necessary identity, but that such an identity — e.g., pain is C-fibers firing — could not be necessary, given the possibility of pain that has nothing to do with C-fibers firing. Similar arguments have been proposed by David Chalmers.
Kripke delivered the John Locke lectures in philosophy at Oxford in 1973. Titled Reference and Existence, they are in many respects a continuation of Naming and Necessity, and deal with the subjects of fictional names and perceptual error. They have never been published and the transcript is officially available only in a reading copy in the university philosophy library, which cannot be copied or cited without Kripke's permission.
Quentin Smith
has claimed that some of the ideas in Naming & Necessity were first presented (at least in part) by Ruth Barcan Marcus
. Kripke is alleged to have misunderstood Marcus' ideas during a 1969 lecture which he attended (based on the questions he asked), and later arrived at similar conclusions. Marcus, however, has refused to publish the verbatim transcript of the lecture. Smith's view is very controversial, and several well-known scholars (for example, Stephen Neale
and Scott Soames
) have subsequently offered detailed responses arguing that his account is mistaken.
In the mid-20th century, the most significant philosophical theory about the nature of names and naming was a theory of Gottlob Frege
's that had been developed by Bertrand Russell
, the descriptivist theory of names
, which was sometimes known as the 'Frege-Russell description theory'. Before Kripke gave his 'Naming and Necessity' lectures, a number of criticisms of this descriptivist theory had been published by leading philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein
, John Searle
and Peter Strawson. However, Kripke believed that the existing arguments against the Frege-Russell descriptive theory of names failed to identify the real problems with the theory.
.
s, develops the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical necessity, and discusses the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind
.
Kripke begins by summarising the conclusions drawn in the first two lectures. First, the referent of names is not usually fixed by some property or set of properties that the speaker believes are possessed by the thing or person named. Instead, the referent of names is usually determined by a series of causal links between people who have used the name. Second, when the referent of a name is determined by a property attributed to the thing named, the link is contingent, rather than necessary or essential. People begin using the name 'Jack the Ripper
' to refer to the person responsible for the murder of five women in London. So, the name was fixed to its referent by a description. However, the person who carried out the murders might have been jailed for another crime and, thus, might never have had the property of murdering those women. So, the link between the property of being a murderer and the person referred to is contingent. Third, identity is not a relation that holds between names. It is a relation that holds between an object and itself. When someone accurately claims that two names refer to the same object, the claim is necessarily true, even though it may be known a posteriori
. Thus, Kripke claims to have successfully refuted the assumption made by everyone before him that anything that is necessarily true will be known a priori.
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
that was first published in 1980 and deals with the debates of proper nouns
Proper noun
A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
in the philosophy of language. The book is based on a transcript of three lectures given at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1970. The transcript was brought out originally in 1971 in The Semantics of Natural Language, edited by Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson (philosopher)
Donald Herbert Davidson was an American philosopher born in Springfield, Massachusetts, who served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton...
and Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman is a contemporary American philosopher, teaching at Princeton University, who has published widely in linguistics, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller...
. Among analytic philosophers, "Naming and Necessity" is widely considered one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century.
Overview
Language is a primary concern of analytic philosophersAnalytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, particularly the use of language to express concepts and to refer to individuals.
In Naming and Necessity, Kripke considers several questions that are important within analytic philosophy:
- How do names refer to things in the world? (the problem of intensionality)
- Are all statements that can be known a priori necessarilyLogical truthLogical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, and there are different theories on its nature. A logical truth is a statement which is true and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than its logical constants. It is a type of analytic statement.Logical...
true, and are all statements that are known a posterioriA PosterioriApart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" – 6:39*"Dreaming of Andromeda" Apart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" (Tocadisco...
contingently true? - Do objects (including people) have any essential properties?
- What is the nature of identityIdentity (philosophy)In philosophy, identity, from , is the relation each thing bears just to itself. According to Leibniz's law two things sharing every attribute are not only similar, but are the same thing. The concept of sameness has given rise to the general concept of identity, as in personal identity and...
? - How do natural kindNatural kindIn philosophy, a natural kind is a "natural" grouping, not an artificial one. Or, it is something that a set of things has in common which distinguishes it from other things as a real set rather than as a group of things arbitrarily lumped together by a person or group of people.If any natural...
terms refer and what do they mean?
Kripke's three lectures constitute an attack on descriptivist theories of proper names
Descriptivist theory of names
Descriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell...
. Kripke attributes variants of descriptivist theories to Frege, Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, among others. According to descriptivist theories, proper names either are synonymous with descriptions, or have their reference determined by virtue of the name's being associated with a description or cluster of descriptions that an object uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples purporting to render descriptivism implausible as a theory of how names get their reference determined (e.g., surely Aristotle could have died at age two and so not satisfied any of the descriptions we associate with his name, and yet it would seem wrong to deny that he was Aristotle). As an alternative, Kripke adumbrated a causal theory of reference, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of a causal connection with the object as mediated through communities of speakers. He points out that proper names, in contrast to most descriptions, are rigid designators: A proper name refers to the named object in every possible world in which the object exists, while most descriptions designate different objects in different possible worlds. For example, 'Nixon' refers to the same person in every possible world in which Nixon exists, while 'the person who won the United States presidential election of 1968' could refer to Nixon, Humphrey, or others in different possible worlds.
Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities — facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation. Examples include “Hesperus is Phosphorus”, “Cicero is Tully”, “Water is H2O” and other identity claims where two names refer to the same object.
Finally, Kripke gave an argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind, the view that every mental fact
Mental fact
Mental facts include such things as perceptions, feelings, and judgments. Mental facts are ultimately caused by physical facts, in that mental facts depend on physical and biological functions which are required for consciousness. The physical and biological processes which are necessary for...
is identical with some physical fact (See talk). Kripke argued that the only way to defend this identity is as an a posteriori necessary identity, but that such an identity — e.g., pain is C-fibers firing — could not be necessary, given the possibility of pain that has nothing to do with C-fibers firing. Similar arguments have been proposed by David Chalmers.
Kripke delivered the John Locke lectures in philosophy at Oxford in 1973. Titled Reference and Existence, they are in many respects a continuation of Naming and Necessity, and deal with the subjects of fictional names and perceptual error. They have never been published and the transcript is officially available only in a reading copy in the university philosophy library, which cannot be copied or cited without Kripke's permission.
Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith
Quentin Persifor Smith is an American contemporary philosopher, scholar and professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has worked in the philosophy of time, philosophy of language, philosophy of physics and philosophy of religion...
has claimed that some of the ideas in Naming & Necessity were first presented (at least in part) by Ruth Barcan Marcus
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Ruth Barcan Marcus is the American philosopher and logician after whom the Barcan formula is named. She is a pioneering figure in the quantification of modal logic and the theory of direct reference...
. Kripke is alleged to have misunderstood Marcus' ideas during a 1969 lecture which he attended (based on the questions he asked), and later arrived at similar conclusions. Marcus, however, has refused to publish the verbatim transcript of the lecture. Smith's view is very controversial, and several well-known scholars (for example, Stephen Neale
Stephen Neale
Stephen Roy Albert Neale is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics and holder of the John H. Kornblith Family Chair in the Philosophy of Science and Values at the Graduate Center, City University of New York...
and Scott Soames
Scott Soames
Scott Soames is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy...
) have subsequently offered detailed responses arguing that his account is mistaken.
A theory of naming
In the first lecture, Kripke introduced a schematic semi-formal version of the kind of "theory of naming" he was criticising (1980:64–65). He began the second lecture by recapitulating the "theses" of this theory, together with the "noncircularity condition" he had discussed in closing the first lecture. Apparently, the theses and condition had been written up on a board for all to see. This text was reproduced, as quoted below, in the "lightly edited" transcript of 1980 (p. 71).- To every name or designating expression
' X' , there corresponds a cluster of properties, namely the family of those properties φ such that A believes 'φX' . - One of the properties, or some conjointly, are believed by A to pick out some individual uniquely.
- If most, or a weighted most, of the φ's are satisfied by one unique object y, then y is the referent of
' X' . - If the vote yields no unique object,
' X' does not refer. - The statement, 'If X exists, then X has most of the φ's' is known a priori by the speaker.
- The statement, 'If X exists, then X has most of the φ's' expresses a necessary truth (in the idiolect of the speaker). For any successful theory, the account must not be circular. The properties which are used in the vote must not themselves involve the notion of reference in such a way that it is ultimately impossible to eliminate.
Lecture I: January 20, 1970
Kripke's main goals in this first lecture are to explain and critique the existing philosophical opinions on the way that names work.In the mid-20th century, the most significant philosophical theory about the nature of names and naming was a theory of Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
's that had been developed by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, the descriptivist theory of names
Descriptivist theory of names
Descriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell...
, which was sometimes known as the 'Frege-Russell description theory'. Before Kripke gave his 'Naming and Necessity' lectures, a number of criticisms of this descriptivist theory had been published by leading philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
and Peter Strawson. However, Kripke believed that the existing arguments against the Frege-Russell descriptive theory of names failed to identify the real problems with the theory.
Lecture II: January 22, 1970
In 'Lecture II', Kripke reconsiders the cluster theory of names and argues for his own position on the nature of reference, a position that contributed to the development of the causal theory of referenceCausal theory of reference
A causal theory of reference is a theory of how terms acquire specific referents. Such theories have been used to describe many referring terms, particularly logical terms, proper names, and natural kind terms...
.
Lecture III: January 29, 1970
In 'Lecture III', Kripke discusses natural kindNatural kind
In philosophy, a natural kind is a "natural" grouping, not an artificial one. Or, it is something that a set of things has in common which distinguishes it from other things as a real set rather than as a group of things arbitrarily lumped together by a person or group of people.If any natural...
s, develops the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical necessity, and discusses the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
.
Kripke begins by summarising the conclusions drawn in the first two lectures. First, the referent of names is not usually fixed by some property or set of properties that the speaker believes are possessed by the thing or person named. Instead, the referent of names is usually determined by a series of causal links between people who have used the name. Second, when the referent of a name is determined by a property attributed to the thing named, the link is contingent, rather than necessary or essential. People begin using the name 'Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
' to refer to the person responsible for the murder of five women in London. So, the name was fixed to its referent by a description. However, the person who carried out the murders might have been jailed for another crime and, thus, might never have had the property of murdering those women. So, the link between the property of being a murderer and the person referred to is contingent. Third, identity is not a relation that holds between names. It is a relation that holds between an object and itself. When someone accurately claims that two names refer to the same object, the claim is necessarily true, even though it may be known a posteriori
A Posteriori
Apart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" – 6:39*"Dreaming of Andromeda" Apart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" (Tocadisco...
. Thus, Kripke claims to have successfully refuted the assumption made by everyone before him that anything that is necessarily true will be known a priori.
Importance
In Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: The Age of Meaning, Scott Soames wrote:In the philosophy of language, Naming and Necessity is among the most important works ever, ranking with the classical work of Frege in the late nineteenth century, and of Russell, Tarski and Wittgenstein in the first half of the twentieth century . . . Naming and Necessity played a large role in the implicit, but widespread, rejection of the view—so popular among ordinary language philosophers—that philosophy is nothing more than the analysis of language.
See also
- Causal theory of referenceCausal theory of referenceA causal theory of reference is a theory of how terms acquire specific referents. Such theories have been used to describe many referring terms, particularly logical terms, proper names, and natural kind terms...
- Descriptivist theory of namesDescriptivist theory of namesDescriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell...
- Rigid designation