I don't know if Kripke mentioned them but according to this Kaplan (1989) did, and argued that they are rigid designators.

(Interestingly, Barack Obama is used as an example in that article, too. Great minds think alike. ;))

Truth, dude, truth. The whole payoff of the theory has to do with truth. — StreetlightX

Indeed, and the LOI is necessarily true, hence how RDs just "pick out" or signify some existant among and relative to others in lieu of LOI obtaining.

That's... really not it but OK.

That's... really not it but OK man — StreetlightX

Well could you explain to me why it's "really not it" and what "it", as in RDs, really are then? The whole point of me starting this thread was to understand and get to grips with RDs, and anyone whose help I receive is appreciated.

Indeed, and the LOI is necessarily true, hence how RDs just "pick out" or signify some existant among and relative to others in lieu of LOI obtaining. — numberjohnny5

Yea. But a strong adherence to the LOI is a route to hard determinism, which is a feature of human thought, but the opposite is also there, manifest in words like could, would, and should.

If you can see some route where the LOI blasts those words out of language and renders us incapable of saying things like "If I'd only known..." "I wish I hadn't done that....", and so on.. then we would dispense with possible worlds because all of that would be completely meaningless to us.

Standard sense? Author and publishing date pls. — StreetlightX

Oops--someone doesn't know what "standard sense" refers to.

The importance of Kripke's intervention though (imo) has to do with the way in which he tackles questions of modality - that is, necessity and contingency with respecting to naming. For Kripke, a name is necessary - but this necessity is itself contingent (upon what he calls a primal baptism). It's no accident that Kripke more or less invented modal logic. It's where all the good stuff is. — StreetlightX

You can however modify descriptivism - that a name has a description lurking invisibly behind it - so that it works in conjunction with modal logic. Or you can call names anaphoric, like pronouns. I confess, having recently driven myself half-crazy trying to understand all this academically, I still don't accept rigid designators. I think however TGW has done heroic work in this thread in explaining the established position.

One difficulty I still haven't resolved in my own mind is what world we're in when we talk about these names, and what 'possible' worlds are. TGW follows the accepted view about 'the world of evaluation' or 'the world of the utterance' but I'm dissatisfied with that. It seems to me a pseudo-objective way of saying who the interlocutors are. Among philosophers, for instance, Socrates is just Socrates, but among football fans he's a Brazilian great, and if you're a philosophical football fan, you need a context to know which is which. (Of course you could be a MOnty Python fan and merge the two) So the pro-rigid-designator says there is no such thing as the meaning of a word 'to you', but there is a meaning of a word in one language community rather than another. I find that awfully muddling. But maybe it's just me.

I need to reread Naming and Necessity . . . I'm going to see if I can find it--that is, basically "dig it out," today.

A problem I have with the SEP entry on rigid designators, for example, is that statements ilke this: "A rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designates anything else," are never actually supported/argued for. They never present how we'd know that there are terms that designate the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designate anything else. Because on the face of it, the idea seems completely dubious to me, especially given what reference is in the first place on my view.

So maybe Kripke argued in support of the idea rather than just presenting it as if it were obvious. I don't remember. Hopefully I'll be able to find my copy of Naming and Necessity.

(. . . just tried a preliminary search for it. If it's where I think it is, it's going to take some time to get to it, as it's in a storage area of my place and I'm going to need to move a bunch of other stuff out to get to it--stuff where I have no idea yet where I'm putting it/what I'm going to do with it, and I need to clean it up anyway.)

I saw someone on another board saying that the idea of rigid designation is wrapped up with the idea of essences, and he seemed to be saying that this was the case explicitly with Kripke. If so, that's going to be a problem for me because I don't buy the notion of essences beyond them being things that individuals contingently/subjectively require to bestow a particular name on something. There's certainly nothing generally rigid or necessary about that.

Nah, p. sure 'standard sense' = 'terrapin sense', but that's no sense at all! And anytime someone says Kripke is dealing with essences, you can be 100% sure they don't know what they are talking about.

Standard sense=a way a term is normally, conventionally used, at least in a particular milieu (so in this case, philosophy, and we could specifically say both metaphysics/ontology and modal logic). So it's not specific to a particular author.

Re the rest, it would at least be nice if someone would present a case for how we'd know/why we'd believe that there are terms that designate the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designate anything else.

Ah--I found Naming and Necessity online: Naming and Necessity

I'll just reread it from there.

Standard sense=a way a term is normally, conventionally used, at least in a particular milieu (so in this case, philosophy, and we could specifically say both metaphysics/ontology and modal logic). So it's not specific to a particular author. — Terrapin Station

In modal logic? You mean the thing Kripke invented? Yes I can see how his usage would be soooo outside of the standard usage of modal logic.

Yea. But a strong adherence to the LOI is a route to hard determinism, which is a feature of human thought, but the opposite is also there, manifest in words like could, would, and should. — Mongrel

I don't quite know what you mean by "a strong adherence to the LOI is a route to hard determinism". LOI is just the application of a logical concept that says some x exists/obtains in different instances of time in which x is identical to itself in every instantation of x.

Re essential properties, he does say, for example, "I want to mention at this point that other considerations about de re modality, about an object having essential properties, can only be regarded correctly, in my view, if we recognize the distinction between a prioricity and necessity. One might very well discover essence empirically."

Here's another passage:

"Then, though we can imagine making a table out of another block of wood or even from ice, identical in appearance with this one, and though we could have put it in this very position in the room, it seems to me that this is not to imagine this table as made of wood or ice, but rather it is to imagine another table, resembling this one in all external details, made of another block of wood, or even of ice. These are only examples of essential properties." (And then in a footnote to that:) "Peter Geach has advocated (in Mental Acts, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1957, Section 16, and elsewhere) a notion of 'nominal essence' different from the type of essential property considered here."

And later: "If I understand Geach correctly, his nominal essence should be understood in terms of a prioricity, not necessity, and thus is quite different from the kind of essence advocated here"

"All the cases of the necessary a posteriori advocated in the text have the special character attributed to mathematical statements: Philosophical analysis tells us that they cannot be contingently true, so any empirical knowledge of their truth is automatically empirical knowledge that they are necessary. This characterization applies, in particular, to the cases of identity statements and of essence."

"The example I gave asserts a certain property-electoral victory-to be accidental to NIxon, independently of how he is described. Of course, if the notion of accidental property is meaningful, the notion of essential property must be meaningful also. This is not to say that there are any essential properties--though, in fact, I think there are. The usual argument questions the meaningfulness of essentialism, and says that whether a property is accidental or essential to an object depends on how it is described. It is thus not the view that all properties are accidental. Of course, it is also not the view, held by some idealists, that all properties are essential, all relations internal."

Kripke was important in the development of modal logic. He didn't invent it.

And he's one person. Again, one person doesn't make standard usage. Many people do.

And anytime someone says Kripke is dealing with essences, you can be 100% sure they don't know what they are talking about. — StreetlightX

Essential properties.. yes he did.

A cool way to look at the impetus behind rigid designators (the answer to the question you asked is at the end:)

"There is a natural and initially attractive conception of inquiry according to which ignorance about a given subject is a matter of lacking information about which, of certain relevantly different possible states the world could be in, it is actually in; and complete ignorance is a condition in which one doesn’t know which, of all the possible states that the world could be in, it is actually in. According to this conception, when an agent is in this condition, (i) all metaphysically possible states of the world are epistemically possible— i.e., every way that the world could possibly be is a way that, for all the agent knows, it might actually be, and (ii) every epistemic possibility is a metaphysical possibility— i.e., every way that, for all the agent knows, the world might be is a way that the world really could be. Inquiry is the process of escaping from this position of ignorance. By investigating the world or relying on the testimony of others, the agent learns contingent truths that distinguish the way the world actually is from other ways it might possibly be, but isn’t. Each time the agent learns one of these truths, he narrows down the class of metaphysical/ epistemic possibilities compatible with what he knows, and within which he locates the way the world actually is. According to this conception, acquiring information is equated with narrowing down the range of metaphysically possible world-states that are compatible with what one knows. We may also speak of the truth of one proposition as providing information supporting the truth of another. On this conception, the truth of a proposition p provides information supporting the truth of a proposition q by ruling out certain possible ways in which q might fail to be true. Thus, the truth of p supports the truth of q only if the set of possible world-states with respect to which both p and the negation of q are true is non-empty. There are two immediate consequences of this conception of inquiry. The first is that necessary truths are uninformative. Since they are true with respect to all possible world-states, knowledge of them provides no information, and is irrelevant to locating the way the world actually is within the range of possible ways it might be. Second, there are no necessary truths which, though knowable, are knowable only aposteriori. To say that a proposition q is knowable only aposteriori is to say that one can have the justification required to know q only if one has empirical evidence supporting its truth. However, according to the conception of inquiry just sketched, this is impossible. In order for the truth of anyproposition p to support the truth of q, and hence to provide evidence for it, there must be possible world-states with respect to which q is untrue, which are ruled out by the truth of p. Since q is necessary, there are no possible world-states with respect to which it is untrue; hence there can be no evidence for q. This means that, on the conception of inquiry just sketched, there can be no necessary truths which, though knowable, are knowable only aposteriori. Although a number of philosophers have taken this conception of inquiry, and the consequences that follow from it, to be plausible and even axiomatic, the conception is directly challenged by the frame-work developed by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. 1 This challenge is illustrated by the following examples. 1. Gregory Soames is not identical with (i.e., is not the same individual as) Brian Soames. 2. If Saul Kripke exists, then Saul Kripke is a human being. 3. This table is not made out of clay. 4. If this table exists, then this table is made of molecules. It seems evident that each of these sentences expresses a proposition that is knowable only aposteriori, on the basis of some sort of empirical evidence. In the case of (1), one needs to find out who Gregory and Brian are, and to assure oneself that they are different. In the case of (2), if the question were ever raised as to whether Kripke was a sophisticated robot, or an alien sent from another world, one would need empirical evidence to rule out these possibilities— though, of course, given their fanciful nature, not much evidence would be required. A similar point is true of (3), the justification of which might be provided by a cursory examination of the table. In the case of (4), the evidence required to know the truth that it expresses is much greater, and more sophisticated. Still, since in all four cases empirical evidence is required to know the truths expressed, all four propositions are knowable only aposteriori. They are also necessary. In each case, the subject expression is a rigid designator— the names Gregory Soames and Saul Kripke, plus the demonstrative phrase this table. 2 Because of this, the sentences express necessary truths iff the properties they attribute to the referents of their subjects are essential properties— the properties of being non-identical with Brian Soames, of being human, of being not made out of clay, and of being made of molecules. These do seem to be essential properties; in fact they seem to be essential properties of anything that has them. For example, it is plausible to think that any individual who really is not the same individual as Brian Soames could not have existed while being the very same individual as Brian Soames. Because the name Brian Soames is itself a rigid designator, we can also make the point in another way: since the property of being non-identical is an essential property of any pair of things that have it, if two individuals (such as my two sons) really are non-identical, then there is no possible circumstance in which they are one and the same individual. Similar points hold for the other properties mentioned in these examples— anything that really is human could not have existed without being human, any object not made out of clay could not have existed while being (originally and entirely) made out of clay, and anything that really is made up of molecules could not have existed without being made up of molecules. Thus, sentences (1– 4) all express necessary truths. Since they are also knowable only aposteriori, they are examples of the necessary aposteriori. How can this be? How can a proposition that is necessary (and known to be necessary) be knowable only aposteriori? Kripke’s answer appeals to our knowledge of which properties are essential. He argues, quite plausibly, that we know apriori that properties like non-identity, being human, being not made out of clay, and being made out of molecules are essential properties of the things that have them. So we know apriori that if things have these properties, then they have them necessarily."


Soames, Scott. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: The Age of Meaning (p. 374). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

All I really get from that are that:

(1) The idea of rigid designation is hinging on some notion of essentialism after all,

(2) Soames is saying that "things are what they are" and "things are not what they are not" are necessary truths, which I have to say that I agree with insofar as that goes.

I still can't manage to square this with a workable support of the concept of rigid designation, because (2), which I agree with, isn't something that I can square very well with any idea of essentialism, and the whole thing seems to be ignoring that we're talking about people naming things, thinking of things referentially, etc.

I also don't agree that my (2) is sufficient for saying that the four numbered propositions he gives could somehow be necessary a posteriori. In other words, I agree that if something is made out of molecules then it's made out of molecules, but that doesn't amount to "If this table exists, then this table is made of molecules" being necessary (at least logically), or "This table is not made out of clay" being necessary metaphysically.

In a nutshell, though, rigid designation kind of rests on a claim that language must be used a particular way, and on my view, there are no true statements of that sort. There's no way that language must be used.

Do you know what intension is?

Yes. I have multiple graduate degrees in philosophy (as I also do in music theory/composition, although that part is irrelevant. ;-))

That's awesome. Can you explain why we can't do without the concept of intensionality?

You want me to support someone else's thesis that I don't agree with by imagining possible arguments for it? (I could do that, but it just seems like an odd request.)

On another note, rereading Naming and Necessity from the start, so far it seems like Kripke's basic idea might have simply been this formula of modal logic: (x) ( y) (x = y --> [] x = y). I'm guessing that he simply took that as being extensible to natural language usage, reading name-bestowal as an instance of stating an equality . . . and then for some reason either equating a logical formula with linguistic behavior in general or simply/effectively discarding actual linguistic behavior in favor of treating it as if it were a logical formula ..................maybe my view on that will change as I keep reading, but this immediately struck me as curious.

Kripke more or less uses the word 'essence' as a synonym for necessity (or rather necessity as a synonym for essence), and to the degree that he does employ the term essence it is in order to mark the distinction of necessity from a prioricity and analyticity (an anti-Quinian move). The attribution of essence to necessity simply serves to pick out necessity as what constitutes the specificity of a rigid designator. See, for instance, the discussion of gold, where he directly equates necessity and essence ("...though each of these items is, indeed, essentially (necessarily) gold, gold might have existed even if the items did not." (p.135)"), and even more tellingly in the index, where 'necessary property' simply asks the reader to refer to 'essential properties' (p. 169).

This also explains his attempt to distance himself from Geach in the long note on p. 155, where he explicitly distinguishes between Geach's 'nominal essence' which is marked by it's appeal to "a prioricity, not necessity, and thus is quite different from the kind of essence advocated here." Finally, he is explicit that 'essential properties' do not serve to pick out objects in either possible or actual worlds: "Some properties of an object may be essential to it, in that it could not have failed to have them. But these properties are not used to identify the object in another possible world, for such an identification is not needed. Nor need the essential properties of an object be the properties used to identify it in the actual world, if indeed it is identified in 'the actual world by means of properties". (p. 53).

I'm happy to maintain to to speak of essences in Kripke is basically playing with fire: what is 'essential' is not essence, but necessity. Essence, if and when it is employed, serves a rhetorical rather than conceptual role. Soames in any case seems to lean on the notion of an 'essential property' far more than Kripke himself, perhaps I think to mark a distinction from Quine's anti-essentialism. But Kripke's own emphasis is always laid not between essentialism and anti-essentialism, but between necessity and a prioricity, which captures the break from Quine in a far sharper - and more philosophically useful - manner. Too many readers of Kripke take essence as primary. This couldn't be a worse mistake.

If x is an essential property of Y, then "Y is/has x" is necessarily true.

Kripke didn't stray much from this meaning of essence. Your statement that he equated essence with necessity is simply not true. I attribute that comment to sloppy language. Typing on a phone maybe... as I am now.

You don't know what intension is... you don't fool me. You need to in order to get Kripke...

Alrighty then.

Yet Kripke speaks a number of times throughout the text of essential vs accidental properties.

(Interestingly, Barack Obama is used as an example in that article, too. Great minds think alike. ;)) — Michael

The use of the sitting U.S. President as a stock example of a proper name in AP goes back at least to Harry Truman, I think. Kripke's lectures use Nixon, for example. It's a really odd unspoken tradition, and you can tell what year range an article was written in by which president is referenced.

If I may, one way to think about this is to consider what allows you to speak of two worlds with different Obamas in the first place. Kripke's point is that your very ability to speak of two different Obamas, has, as it's prerequisite, the ability to think of an entity designated Obama of whom 'can speak mandarin' can be predicated of (or not) in the first place. That is, you wouldn't even understand what it means to speak of 'two different Obamas' had you not already had some idea of a 'an Obama' which can be in some way different in two different worlds to begin with. Otherwise it wouldn't be two different Obamas, it would be two different people altogether. You wouldn't be able to speak of 'different Obamas'. This is why a proper name is a rigid designator: it designates the same thing in all possible worlds. — StreetlightX

The problem is Kripke approach confuses the rigidity of designator for the thing. The two Obamas are not the same thing at all. They are two different people. No doubt people know what it means to be an "Obama," but there is not a single Obama in all possible worlds.

In any case, "Obama" refers to a specific person entirely themselves and unique to their world. They are always two different people altogether. Here "Obamaness" only signifies a similarity in meaning between two all together different people-- it is not actually a proper name and rigid designator.

Proper names are rigid designators, by they aren't defined by the presence of a property ("Obamaness")."Obama" is a precise designator of an individual in each case. There are two (or more) Obamas, each given in themselves, designated by their own "Obama," not several people who are the same thing defined by the property of "Obamaness."