Sure.

Let "actual" be an indexical such that "actual P" is a property true of an individual just in case that individual is P at w@, where w@ is the actual world. Then "actual individual named Nixon" is true of any individual in the actual world who is named Nixon. Finally, "the" takes this property and returns the unique individual that instantiates it (assuming we have only one Nixon), which is the individual named Nixon in the actual world.

What happens if we evaluate this definite description at a non-actual world? Let w be an arbitrary world, then "the actual individual named Nixon" denotes at w the individual named Nixon at w@. Since this is true of an arbitrary world, it is true for al worlds – thus, at all worlds, "the actual individual named Nixon" denotes the individual named Nixon at the actual world. Since it denotes the same individual at all worlds, it's therefore a rigid designator, and designates Nixon.

But this was just Kripke's hypothesis.

It follows from the behavior of "actual" as an indexical and the definition of rigid designation. If you'd like an explanation of that, sure, but it's not a contestable point.

For anyone who's interested as to why the view is wrong, it's because it predicts a de dicto reading of "Nixon might not have been named Nixon" that is contradictory. Apparently there is no such reading. One also has to deal with the thorny question of how to characterize name-bearing in a non-circular manner if one seriously adopts such an analysis – think about it seriously for five minutes, and it will dawn how utterly bizarre things become.

Of course, then one might say what they meant is "the individual actually named Nixon," where "actual" is to be read as some sort of indexical picking out the actual world. But then, oh dear, we have a rigid designator referring to Nixon, which was Kripke's hypothesis.

I find the "individual named Nixon" description analysis of the name "Nixon" to be very amusing in a macabre way. It's so perfectly indicative of a certain style of bad philosophizing that it's just, *mwah*. It's almost a perfect confluence of confused thinking.

I can't blame anyone, though – actual analytic philosophers proposed such a thing at various times.

Kant does not posit the existence of a noumenal world. Read "The Ground of the Distinction of All Objects into Phenomena and Noumena." The noumenon is a limitative notion.

Not in principle, but in practice artificial languages tend to be created for the purpose of disambiguation.

However, I think the negative thesis against the descriptivists is an empirical one, and correct. I don't think there's a good case at this point for taking classical descriptivism seriously – is there anyone who still does?

I take no issue with devising a schema of translation into a technical language, if one wants to ask questions in a technical langauge for philosophical (or whatever other) purposes.

But the inherent vagueness of natural language is itself interesting, and in a way provides it an expressive power that artificial languages that settle these questions don't have, and Kripke's claims don't do it justice.

I agree that Kripke doesn't see himself as proposing a way of talking. His views on, let's call it metasemantics, that in virtue of what a word means what it does, strike me as naive.

If we were to find a substance that looks, feels and otherwise functions like water, but had a chemical structure other than H₂O, it would not be water. — Banno

What the word 'water' correctly applies to is a matter of linguistic usage. And so the correctness of this claim depends on whether linguistic usage tracks chemical structure. It does in some technical disciplines, but not in general.

If we found such a substance, would it be water? In all edge cases of the use of a predicate, one has to decide – or not, the predicate can be left with a vague range of applications, with some things perpetually unclear as to whether it applies to them.

Likewise with the cat examples – it's not obvious to me that if we found some new species that looked and acted just like cats, but turned out to be robots, we'd conclude they weren't cats. A perfectly valid conclusion could also be that it turns out some cats can be robots. This is because the word 'cat' does not have a range of application that settles the matter. Further need to precisify the predicate might settle it, or it might not. And where it does settle it, there's no reason to think a priori that it will settle it in the way that Kripke suggests.

Kripke is beholden to a metaphysics of the use of words (those denoting natural kinds being in the first instance predicates, and not names, making the whole discussion a bit mysterious) according to which words intrinsically latch on to some real feature of the world and decide for counterfactual cases which things they would apply to, across worlds – but the use of these words is to a large extent indeterminate, making the modal intuitions equally indeterminate.

There's a bit of a puzzle here for me, looking back. Why would anyone have thought that it was easier to use properties to set up names, rather than names to set up properties? As if it was easier to deal with "orange", "skin", and "narcissist" rather than "Trump". — Banno

So far as I can tell, the reason is historical, and traceable to things that Frege and Russell thought. Their concerns in turn were driven by worries about empty names and epistemological concerns.

The sheer illiteracy in this thread is actually starting to piss me off, so I think I'm going to duck out.

so we end up having to allow silly things like 'if Nixon were a golf ball...' — andrewk

Well, if you'd read the book, you'd know this weren't true, and that Kripke does address this question precisely! Not only that, but these issues, and the part of the book they come from, have been discussed in this very thread! Funny how that works.

Seriously, if you chuckleheads don't start showing some evidence that you have read the book we're supposed to be talking about, I'm just going to stop posting. I know you must think you're so intelligent that you don't need to read anything before criticizing it, but I assure you that is not the case.

Read.

More assertions without argument; this is getting boring. Might as well leave it there if you can't come up with any cogent argument that actually addresses what I have written. — Janus

Read. the. fucking. book. The arguments are given in Lecture I + II.

(for me the 'in this world' is taken for granted, since I believe all reference in possible worlds or counterfactuals must first be established in this world). — Janus

As I showed above, this is not the case.

The general denotation of 'Trump' is Trump, and no particular entity has been specified; so 'Trump' is more properly equivalent to 'an entity called 'Trump''. — Janus

No, this is even worse. The denotation of Trump is Trump (this is an obvious point, which makes it interesting how many confusions people get themselves into). Of course he is called Trump too, in virtue of being the referent of the name. But this doesn't mean that the name means anything to do with being called Trump. It simply refers to the man.

Sure, but the point is that the semantic value of names can be expressed, and best understood, in terms of descriptions as I think I have shown above. — Janus

No, which is the whole point of Lecture I. Names and descriptions have different modal profiles, due to the lack of rigidity of the latter. The same goes for descriptions about who has which name.

Perhaps if you could restate your argument for why Trump is not logically equivalent to an entity called 'Trump' — Janus

The denotation of 'Trump' is Trump.

The denotation of 'the entity called Trump' is whichever entity is called Trump in the relevant world – whether it's Trump or not.

since my contention has been that one of the ways they get established is by description I can't see how it is not relevant to the question. — Janus

The issue is not whether names somehow make use of descriptions to achieve their semantic value, but what their semantic value is, and that it is not descriptive.

The point of what I said there was to show that 'Trump' and 'an entity called Trump' are logically equivalent. — Janus

We've been over this. They aren't. Read above.

The only other way I could think of would be pointing at the individual, or showing a photograph and the like; in other words: ostention. In the case of "baptism", the original act of naming, for those present it would be ostention and for anyone who subsequently met the baptized entity and was told 'it's name is X' it would be ostention also. For remote figures and historical figures, the referent of the name is established by description, and perhaps by ostention in the form of images: photographs if there are any, drawings, prints or paintings. — Janus

I don't think there is any one way in particular names get established, nor is it relevant to the question.

Yes, but all you seem to be saying here is that once the particular entity called 'Trump' that is being referred to in this world is established (by ostention or sufficient description) then we can refer to that entity by the name 'Trump' across possible worlds. — Janus

Yes, that is the point. Minus the 'ostensive/descriptive' stuff, which I never said.

So, the point is that once we have established the entity being referred to in this world, by sufficiently definite description, we can use that definite description as it obtained in this world at a particular place, time and date, to establish the same entity referred to across possible worlds. We need such place/time/date/-indexed descriptions to establish precisely which entity is being referred to in the first place; just a name is not enough. — Janus

There is no reason to think, IMO, that the initial fixing of the individual requires a definite description either.

The former (without any further qualification or description) refers to anyone called 'Trump' — Janus

Not across possible worlds. It may refer to anyone named Trump in the actual world, but once we establish the use of the name by naming conventions, its denotation remains invariant across possible worlds in evaluating counterfactuals. That's not how definite descriptions work.

Yes, that's right. Of course we say that Trump would still be Trump even if he had not been called that, and we say that because he has been called that. But we wouldn't say that if he hadn't been called Trump. All we are really saying is that a particular entity is a particular entity regardless of what you call it, and that is tautologously true. — Janus

That is right.

The name refers to the entity; it doesn't refer to whichever entity has that name. That would be what 'the entity called Trump' refers to. This description refers to people besides Trump in different possible worlds, when they have that name instead of him.

Hence 'Trump' doesn't mean the same as 'entity called Trump.' The former refers to Trump; the latter refers to whoever happens to have that name, whether it's Trump or not.

You seem to be conflating the statement 'it is necessary that the entity that is called Trump is the entity that is called Trump' with the statement 'it is contingent that the entity that is called Trump is called Trump'. — Janus

What is contingent is that Trump is called Trump. He might have been called something else.

If Kripke is not disagreeing then those I have been arguing with have been arguing about nothing. — Janus

That looks to be the case.

But if that were true then Kripke would not really be saying anything that is itself more than trivial. — Janus

No. Kripke's point is that the semantic value of a name is not like that of a non-rigid definite description. The latter varies in what it denotes across possible worlds, while a name does not. This is not a question about the processes, whatever they might be, that cause a word to acquire whatever meaning it might have, but rather about what its meaning is.

Kripke later does present a picture of how names come to acquire their meanings, but that's not what's at issue to begin with.

'N' and 'the entity called N' seem to me to be logically equivalent. — Janus

They are not. It is a contingent matter that Trump is named Trump; it is not contingent that Trump is Trump (i.e. that he is himself). In another world, where someone else is called Trump instead of Trump (say, Clinton), then 'the entity called Trump' refers to Clinton in that world, not Trump.

The fact of the name definitely referring is a fact of this world, and it is on account of that fact that the name can be used to definitely refer to the entity it designates in counterfactual or possible scenarios. — Janus

What is the relevance of this? It's trivial, and doesn't have anything to do with the claim that names are rigid designators. Any word needs to have certain conditions met for it to be employed – there have to be people who speak a certain language, etc. That names have such conditions is unsurprising, and no one has denied it. It is also not the issue on whihc the descriptivist v. Kripkean accounts turn.

So, the name Donald Trump by itself does not definitely designate any entity, since there could be any number of entities (including my car) named Donald Trump. — Janus

Again, this is just not relevant. It doesn't matter who or what might be named this or that. We're not talking about what names could denote if the language had been different in this or that way.

There are two points, which you seem unable to grasp. The first is that names only rigidly designate by virtue of descriptive or ostensive contexts. The second is that names are themselves shorthand descriptions, the definiteness of which depend on further description. 'Donald Trump' is equivalent to 'the entity named 'Donald Trump' and doesn't rigidly designate until further information is provided: 'the man named Donald Trump who was POTUS at December 5 2019' for example; or 'the car that was named Donald Trump at (insert latitude and longitude) at (insert precise time)'. — Janus

I think you are not reading the text, because this is precisely what is at issue, not background to be agreed upon. Kripke also addresses the view than a name N means 'the entity named N,' briefly. This view is not equivalent to the sort of classical descriptivism that Kripke is targeting. I think this latter view has more plausibility than the classical one, though it too is ultimately incorrect, because names are observably rigid in a way that descriptions like 'the entity called N' are not.

I see we've moved on to tone policing. That's a good sign.

What the fuck are you talking about

lol

Because you said so?

No, because the referent of the DD was the Republican candidate. If the Dem candidate was named Peter Nixon, or even Richard Milhouse Nixon, that person would not be the referent of the DD. — andrewk

I'm talking about an alternate world in which the Republican candidate had that name, but was not the same man that actually won the election.

This doesn't work, because in your example, the description is still not rigid. We might imagine a counterfactual scenario where another man named Nixon won the 1968 election, in which case we'd be referring to him using the counterfactual.

We can create the appropriate context easily within a discourse, for example by first saying, 'what if some other guy with the same name won the 1968 election under the same circumstances, etc.? I wonder whether...'

That is not how it works. Expressions are not rigid designators 'for' a particular sentence. Even if it were, having to specify for each sentence on a case by case basis whether it was or not makes the semantic theory useless, since you've basically given up on a compositional account of how the words in the sentence contribute to its meaning.

In other words, if you have to throw up your hands and say that 'they are rigid, except when they aren't,' you don't have a theory.

I didn't say it was; I said it was contingent upon the man named Donald Trump being so named in this world. — Janus

Yeah, so? That's a trivial fact. How does that mean the name isn't a rigid designator?

All reference in counterfactual discourse is established by reference to the actual world; and this goes equally for names as it does definite descriptions. — Janus

No, it doesn't. If we say if the South successfully split from the Union, the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century would have governed a smaller territory. Here the definite description does not depend in any way upon who was the president of the United States at which time in the actual world – only in the counterfactual scenario.

I could name my car 'Donald Trump' if I wished to. In the case where multiple entities are named the same, then further qualifications (descriptions) are required to establish which of those entities is being referred to (except in ostensive contexts as I have already acknowledged many times). — Janus

This is simply irrelevant. Yes you could name anything anything you wanted. So what? The name, as it is actually used, based on the actual naming convention, rigidly designates.

But all modal logic depends on what is the case in this world, and since there is only one country called Albania bordering Greece, and in fact only one country called Albania: "A country called Albania that borders Greece" and even "a country called Albania" picks out just one entity and thus should be considered to be a definite description. — Janus

Read the rest of the post.

The same thing applies when you say that 'Donald Trump' is a rigid designator (leaving aside for the sake of the argument the objection that the name does not pick out just one entity if more than one person is called Donald Trump); it is only contingently so because the man named Donald Trump was named Donald Trump. — Janus

No. 'Donald Trump' picking out Donald Trump is not contingent on his being named so in another world. We can entertain counterfactuals to the effect of If Trump had been named Stephenson..., and in these we entertain possibilities in which Trump has another name, using the name 'Trump' to refer to him in those alternative possibilities.

As a matter of terminology, descriptions with an indefinite article like 'a' are called indefinite descriptions. Descriptions with a definite article like 'the' are called definite descriptions.

As to their semantic values, definite descriptions de jure pick out a single individual: so if there are two salient cats, or none, the cat appears to fail to refer. Indefinite descriptions are not like this: one can say a cat is in the room regardless of how many salient cats there are, and as long as there's at least one, the sentence is apparently true, and a cat looks not necessarily to refer to any individual in particular.

Even if there happens to be only one country called Albania bordering Greece, 'a country called Albania bordering Greece' is not semantically a definite description, since the fact that there is one such is contingent. If in another possible world there are two such countries, then the description will not pick out some one of them at that world, nor will it fail to refer: it will simply again result in true statements as long as there is at least one such country.

Thus, in our two-Albania world, 'the country called Albania bordering Greece sued for peace' might sound odd, since there are two satisfying the descriptive material, and the description purports to pick out the unique individual that does. However, 'a country called Albania bordering Greece sued for peace' is just true, so long as one of the two really did sue for peace. It doesn't matter which one.

I doubt that equative constructions in natural language track the sort of numerical identity that must hold across worlds. Thus, Batman is Bruce Wayne (suppose), but he might not have been. The 'is' here seems to relate two numerically distinct individuals by means of a sort of world-relative coincidence. The identity theorist can lay claim to this sort of identity.

It's also not at all obvious that words like 'pain' are rigid designators. In fact, 'pain' is only apparently referential in one of its uses. It is usually a mass predicate, as in 'a lot of pain,' or 'the pain in my eye.' Here the predicate seems to apply to portions of an experiential quantity, or something like that. It's only when the word appears in argument position, as seeming to name the kind of experience itself, as in 'Pain is irritating,' that it might look to rigidly designate something (the 'experiential kind,' I suppose).

'A country called Albania which borders Greece' is a definite description because there is only one of them; the logic is obvious. — Janus

Dude, no it's not. Accept this and move on.

smdh

"The country called Albania, which borders Greece" is a definite description by your own definition. — Janus

This is a definite description, yes. The same thing, replacing the with a, is not. That would be an indefinite description. The way in which indefinite descriptions refer, if indeed they do, is different, and not at issue here.

It is also a rigid designator — Janus

It is not a rigid designator, since in another possible world, another country, besides the actual Albania, could be called Albania and border Greece. Say, a world with our geography, but in which Macedonia had been given the name 'Albania' instead. In that world, this description picks out (our) Macedonia, not (our) Albania.

whereas 'Albania' by itself is not a rigid designator except in principle, because it could be the name of a country, a person, a pet, a type of vacuum cleaner and so on and on. — Janus

The issue is not what a name could refer to. Being a rigid designator has nothing to do with the alternate ways the language could have been, so that the meaning of the word changes. The point is that the meaning of the word, as it is now, is such that it, as it is actually used, picks out the same individual relative to every world.

Are you serious?

As I understand it, Mackie advocates moral error theory, according to which all moral claims are false. Moral claims are cognitivist – have truth conditions – but since they refer to moral properties that don't exist, any attribution of said moral properties involves a false claim. Therefore nothing is e.g. right or wrong.

I wouldn't mind reading Mackie's Inventing Right and Wrong.

Look at the distinction drawn between de jure and de facto rigidity in the Introduction.

have not found satisfactory answers to, for example, why definite descriptions cannot be rigid designators. — Janus

Definite descriptions can be rigid designators, and Kripke acknowledges this. However, ordinary descriptions used in natural languages are typically not.

There is only one actual world. Every true sentence about the stuff in it is necessarily true. — frank

Necessity is not truth with respect to the actual world. It is truth with respect to all possible worlds (within some restricted domain).