I think I addressed the difference between the metaphysical and epistemic terms in my previous posts.

As far as if some characteristic is necessary or contingent of Nixon, Kripke is asking us if we can rationally and coherently speak or conceive of Nixon as having a certain characteristic in all possible worlds. I think that his having the two biological parents he did is a necessary truth. That he was president at all is a contingent truth.

False description unaccompanied by proper name will not pick out the individual, will it - regardless of the speaker's belief?
— creativesoul
Beth works in an office and occasionally sees a person that works on a different floor of the same company, That person has a disability that causes him to slur his words and need a walking stick to get about. Beth doesn't know about the speech disability and thinks the person is always drunk.

One day she sees him trip over in the lobby and goes to help him up. Later, talking to a workmate she says "You know that guy that walks with a stick and is always drunk? He fell over in the lobby today".

She has picked him out, despite the belief about him being drunk being false.

In practice, we have false items in our DDs of just about everybody. Usually they don't matter, because the item is redundant. — andrewk

This doesn't seem to help. What's at issue is whether or not false description(false belief statements) are capable of successful reference all by themselves. Seems to me that they are not. The example you've provided above is not a case of false description(false belief) being able to successfully refer. The guy does walk with a stick. That description/belief statement is true.

The only case I can think of where false description can successfully refer are cases where everyone involved in the discussion shares those false beliefs. Although, even then they have to be beliefs/descriptions of something. Fixing the reference is required for those cases as well then. Description alone cannot fix the reference, can it?.

If you think that that suggested comparison is helpful to the question I'm raising about whether or not false description alone is capable of successfully referring to an individual, then I'm game for reading how.

Care to elaborate?

The example you've provided above is not a case of false description(false belief) being able to successfully refer. — creativesoul

What do you mean by 'successfully refer'? It's not a term used by Kripke in N&N, as I recall.
Yet it seems to have been used a lot in this thread, as if there were general agreement on what it means, yet I haven't seen anybody explain what it means in the bits I've read.

The natural interpretation might be that it means the listener knows who the speaker is talking about. But such an interpretation is hopelessly problematic, as people often don't know who others are talking about, even when they are both familiar with the referent.

If it has no practical, sensible interpretation, why should we care about it?

Hmmm...

We're talking about historical and current convention with regard to theories of reference.

Given this...

Are you asking me why should we care whether or not we know what counts as successfully referring?

Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means?

Are you claiming that there is no sensible interpretation? Are you claiming that even if there is, there is no way to use knowledge of what it takes to successfully refer to something?

I'm puzzled...

Are you claiming that a listener's knowing who the speaker is talking about is somehow inadequate for being a prima facie example of successfully referring?

I'm claiming that whatever criterion we decide, it cannot be a criterion that is existentially dependent upon thinking about thought and belief. However, it must include language use.

We successfully refer solely by virtue of language use. We do so long before being able to talk about our own thought and belief. We successfully refer long before we take our doing so into account with language use. Any position and/or notion of reference which cannot take that into proper account is unacceptable.

...people often don't know who others are talking about, even when they are both familiar with the referent... — andrewk

Then the referent is not equivalent to the person being spoken of.

That doesn't sound right to me...

Have you never failed to catch the gist of something said to you, misheard a name, or heard the name but thought the reference was to somebody else with the same name?

Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means? — creativesoul

Yes! Of course I can guess at meanings, but there are more than one possible meaning, and I want to know which one you mean.

What do you mean by 'successfully refer'?

Have you never failed to catch the gist of something said to you, misheard a name, or heard the name but thought the reference was to somebody else with the same name? — andrewk

Sure, but what relevance does this have to what's at issue? What's at issue is whether or not false descriptions are capable - all by themselves - of successfully referring to some specific individual but nothing else.

In cases where one mishears the name, there's a name being used. What's at issue is whether or not false descriptions - all by themselves - are capable od successfully referring to some specific individual but nothing else. Thus, it's not a valid counterexample. In cases where one correctly hears a name but mistakenly believes that the speaker is talking about someone when s/he is not, there's a name being used. Again, what's at issue is whether or not false descriptions - all by themselves - are capable of successfully referring to some specific individual but nothing else. That's also not a valid counterexample.

Cases of basic misunderstanding(failing to catch the gist) are too numerous to account for here. The discussion is about reference, and what that requires in order to happen.

Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means?
— creativesoul
Yes! Of course I can guess at meanings, but there are more than one possible meaning, and I want to know which one you mean.

What do you mean by 'successfully refer'? — andrewk

I've been setting it out. I'll try to offer the simplest adequate criterion here.

All referring is done with language. It is to direct and/or otherwise guide an other's attention to some thing or other. There is more than one way to do this. One can show an other some thing. One can point to some thing. One can talk about some thing by description, by name, or by both.

Referring to some thing or other can be successful in two ways. The first is when the person referring to some thing or other and the person whose attention is being guided towards some thing or other both pick out the same thing. This is required for all successful reference to initially take place.

Once that initial reference is successful, subsequent successful reference no longer depends upon the listener picking out the same thing. Rather, at that time, one successfully refers by virtue of appropriate name usage and/or adequate description. The listener need not understand...

Seems to me that Kripke has an entire thought process that directly involves offering examples that satisfy/meet some criterion or other for successful reference, and yet clearly do not pick out a specific individual but nothing else. That seems to be the gist of the lectures themselves. or at least the method.

Here's my view on the matters at hand, as I understand them to be. It's a bit beneath others' notions of "reference"...

Initial successful reference(as reported above) instantiates shared meaning. All meaning requires something to become sign/symbol, something to become significant/symbolized, and a creature capable of drawing correlations between the aforementioned different things. All shared meaning requires a plurality of capable creatures making these same connections. All language requires shared meaning. Not all shared meaning requires language. Not all shared meaning requires successful reference. At times it is the birthplace thereof.

Successfully referring to some thing or other is something that we all do prior to our ability to take account of what we'd long since already been doing. Successfully referring to some thing or other does not require our ability to think about the fact that we're doing it. All notions of reference involve complex written language directly involving thinking about thought and belief. Not all successful reference does. Thus, any acceptable criterion for what counts as successfully referring(all notions of reference) must be able to take that into proper account.

So Kripke points out that false descriptions can still successfully refer to a specific individual if they are accompanied by proper name. Is that an "if, and only if..." circumstance? I don't think so...

They(false descriptions alone) cannot guide another's attention to the same thing without being accompanied by proper name unless all people involved share the false belief that the description reports and the description picks out a unique individual and nothing more.

It seems that way to me anyhow.

Rather, at that time, one successfully refers by virtue of appropriate name usage and/or adequate description. The listener need not understand... — creativesoul

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that the first reference by A in a conversation between A and B is successful if B interprets it as referring to the same individual that A intended to refer to. There are a number of interesting 'what ifs' that arise here but let's ignore them for now in order to concentrate on the biggest question I see coming out of this, which is: "what difference is made to this meaning by whether one follows a descriptivist or Kripkean analysis?" It seems to me that for both, unsuccessful references, in the sense you have described, can be accommodated within the theory. Would you not agree?

You have not understood correctly. You have not quoted the relevant material being referred to in the beginning of that reply.

No. I would not agree that the criterion for successful reference that I've just put before you can be accommodated within either, let alone by both...

To be clear here... I mean neither - individually - can take proper account of what I've put forth. I've not only talked about unsuccessfully referring, but also successfully referring...

To be clear here... I mean neither - individually - can take proper account of what I've put forth. — creativesoul

What you appear to be saying in what was above what I quoted is that, when a speaker makes a reference using a description that consists only of false statements about the intended referent, the listener will not pick up the correct referent unless they share most of the same false beliefs about the referent as the speaker.

If that's all you are saying then I think I agree. Indeed the claim seems quite uncontroversial. But I don't really see how it bears on a discussion of naming and necessity, or of descriptivism.

That's how the idea came up to begin with... Kripke's examples... it shows the primacy of the proper name...

I'm afraid you're too cryptic for me. I don't know what 'the primacy of the proper name' means or how it relates to the causal or descriptivist models.

The proper name is irrevocable to being able to successfully refer when positing hypotheticals. This is obvious as a result of proper name and false description still being able to successfully pick out the individual despite the fact that what's been said about him/her is false. A listener who knows better can still pick out the referent as a result of the proper name. A listener who does not know better doesn't matter.

The false description alone is never capable of successful reference.

I think Kripke's lectures(N&N) are in agreement with this, and argue in favor of it.

False description unaccompanied by proper name will not pick out the individual, regardless of the speaker's belief.

[...] the first reference by A in a conversation between A and B is successful if B interprets it as referring to the same individual that A intended to refer to. — andrewk

This is interesting. What do you think about it @Banno.

Sounds something like the Gettier problem. Theories of ambiguity also arise from the above.

What does this have to do with Kripke's theory? All it does is establish that the use of descriptions can cause misunderstood speech acts when the listener and speaker do not share the same beliefs about the referent. Proper names cause misunderstandings for other reasons, such as two people having the same name, or one person having two different names, or somebody having an incorrect belief about what a certain person's name was.

So descriptions and proper names each lead to misunderstandings sometimes, yet both are necessary to practical speech, and both Russell and Kripke would agree with all of that. So how does it tell us anything about whether to favour a descriptivist or a causal theory of reference? So far as I can see, it doesn't distinguish between the two at all.

I badly misread @Noah Te Stroete's post. Hope I've made it clear that I was wrong to assert that necessity and contingency have any overlap. I think I read "contingent" yet understood "a posteriori".

So lesson learned: don't write until after the second coffee.

But there remains this issue.

“A meter is one hundred centimeters” is a contingent truth knowable a priori. It is contingent because the standard meter stick can vary in length due to the temperature of the physical stick. It is knowable a priori because of the meaning of the terms used. ‘Meter’ means ‘one hundred centimeters’. Hope this clears up some confusion. — Noah Te Stroete

I don't agree.

As I understand him, Kripke is saying that "One Metre" is a rigid designator that refers to a certain length in ever possible world.

Now that length was the same as a certain stick in Paris. That fact is contingent.

But by definition a metre consists of 100cm. That fact is necessary.

Nothing of great metaphysical import is being posited here; nothing that will shake the philosophical world. And this is the great merit of Kripke's view.

Can we posit a possible world in which a metre had 110 centimetres? Of course. But what is being posited here is no more or less than a possible world in which the word "centimetres" has a different meaning. A possible world in which the word "centimetre" referred to a length of 0.909090... centimetres...

Can we posit a world in which the stick in Paris had been a different length? Again yes - that would be a world in which the stick was not one metre long - the stick changes, but not the length, because that length is the same in all possible worlds.

Well, now one metre is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second. And what happened there is that the way we use the word "metre" was changed.

What does this have to do with Kripke's theory? — andrewk

If by "this" you're referring to the bits I've been raising about false belief...

Well, in short, Kripke's doctrine doesn't seem capable of properly accounting for false belief. In fact, some cases of false belief are quite problematic for it.

So you may say,
'The man over there with the champagne in his glass is happy',
though he actually only has water in his glass. Now, even
though there is no champagne in his glass, and there may be
another man in the room who does have champagne in his
glass, the speaker intended to refer, or maybe, in some sense of
'refer', did refer, to the man he thought had the champagne in
his glass. Nevertheless, I'm just going to use the term 'referent
of the description' to mean the object uniquely satisfying the
conditions in the definite description.

Nevertheless???

:gasp:

Jane believes Joe killed Bob. She refers to Joe by stating, "You know - the guy who kiled Bob...". She is saying stuff about Joe. She is picking Joe out. The referent of the description is the specific individual that is being picked out of this world by Jane. That is clearly Joe.

Following Kripke's framework demands concluding otherwise when Jane's belief is false.

Let me repeat...

Kripke's framework would be forced to report Jane's belief in a remarkably different way if it were false.

In such a case, according to Kripke's notion of 'referent of the description', the referent of Jane's description could not be Joe. Rather, the referent of Jane's description would have to be someone that she may not even know exists. She believes Joe killed Bob. Allen did. Jane doesn't know of Allen. Yet, according to Kripke's notion of the 'referent of the description', the referent of Jane's description is Allen.

This framework leads one to say that Jane is referring to someone she does not even know about, and that the person she is saying stuff about is not the referent of her description. Are we to conclude that it makes any sense at all to say that Jane can describe and talk about Joe while the referent of Jane's description about Joe is not Joe, but rather it is Allen.

That looks like a fundamental error in taxonomy. If you get thought and belief wrong, you'll have something or other wrong about everything ever thought, believed, stated, written, and/or otherwise uttered.

Kripke's notion of "proper referent" cannot properly account for Jane's referring to Joe by virtue of saying stuff about him that's false. Ask Jane who she is referring to. Tell her that Joe is innocent. Prove it to her.

Ask here again who she was referring to... She will say "Joe". Put Joe in a lineup. She will pick out Joe.

Kripke's got a bit of bullshit mixed in there.

Kripke would tell Jane that the referent of her descriptions about Joe was Allen. Jane would tell Saul that she knows who she was talking about even if she said some stuff about him that was wrong, mistaken, false, and/or otherwise not true. I would agree with Jane.

That's what....

Ya'll have fun...

Kripke's got a bit of bullshit mixed in there. — creativesoul

Or maybe, just maybe...

you misunderstood?

Lecture three.

Kripke does a brief summation again, claiming to have made two hits on the descriptivist account. I had thought here were more - I should go back and have another look. But I like these two accounts because they make clear the shift from an armchair theory of how reference ought to work, to taking a good look at how we use them.

There's the point that a reference can be successful despite the absence of a uniquely identifying description.

And there's the point that someone can successfully refer to an individual despite having only false beliefs about that individual.

I read both of these as bringing out the fact that reference is a part of the games we play with language, and hence is inherently social.

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".

The next paragraph (starting bottom of p.106) I see as an explanation of his attitude towards the length of the metre stick in Paris, again. He is talking about baptism, and reiterates the point that the individual identified in a more or less formal baptism, may well be identified by a list of contingent properties that form a definite description of said individual. We fix the referent of the name in the actual world and in so doing create a rigid designator for that referent in every possible world.

This is distinct from setting the description up as a synonym for the name. There's a line, found hereabouts, that Kripke is mistaken because we set up proper names in the actual world, using definite descriptions, for use in our modal considerations; but rather than being mistaken in this regard, Kripke actually makes this very point.

But he rejects the notion that every proper name is set up in this way.

The next part reiterates his rejection of identity as a relation between names. Again, it would seem that this should be a simple point; the relation of identity does not hold between "Phosphorus" and "Hesperus" - these are not the same word; the relation holds between Phosphorus and Hesperus. And hence, if such an identity statement is true, it is true in all possible worlds - a necessity.

Thanks for that. The context is helpful. I think I might agree with you, but I need to go back and revise the bits around that quote before commenting.

Maybe I've misunderstood? Sure, I mean that can happen. I see no reason to believe that that is the case here. Rather, it seems clear to me that Kripke is just following a mistaken path for definite description. He's conflating the truth conditions of a definite description with the referent thereof.

From pages 25 and 26...

I'm just going to use the term 'referent of the description' to mean the object uniquely satisfying the conditions in the definite description.This is the sense in which it's been used in the logical tradition.

Sure. No problem. I'm painfully aware of my tendency to go off on a tangent without leaving enough breadcrumbs, so to speak, for a reader to follow. Earlier in this thread I objected to some stuff being said regarding false belief. I was told then that I misunderstood. I stood down then, but I do not think I misunderstood then, and do not think that I've misunderstood now...

If we accept Kripke's notion of 'the referent of the description', we are forced to say that the referent of some definite description is not the individual to whom the speaker is referring, but rather it is the individual uniquely satisfying the conditions in the definite description.

Jane is talking about Joe, not Allen. Allen is the individual satisfying the conditions in the definite description. According to Kripke, the referent of Jane's definite description is Allen... not Joe.

That's unacceptable, to say the least...

Something else of equal importance. There are cases where there is no need for use of definitive description being accompanied by proper name in order to successfully refer to a particular individual...

Let's say that Jane does not know Joe's name, but rather can recognize him as the person she believes killed Bob. Her definite description, "the guy who killed Bob" refers to Joe, even when Jane does not know Joe's name. According to Kripke, the referent of Jane's definite description is Allen. Yet if we place Allen and Joe in a line up and ask Jane to whom she was referring, she would pick out Joe.

Kripke's account is contrary to everyday fact(that which actually happens on a daily basis).