Besides, I just wanted to explain how and that why I believe that your charge of irrelevance was unfounded. That's been done. — creativesoul

With that correction in italics, your post appears very reasonable.

That seems strange to me, to say that all the propositions in a DD must be necessarily true, in order for it to be a DD. That would make a DD the same as a RD (Rigid designator). Do you have a ref that indicates Kripke has that position?

I used to be very interested in Albania, because it was closed off from the world throughout my youth - mysterious! All I knew about it was that it was a Southern European country that was closed off to the world, and it had an authoritarian communist government.

In your view does that constitute a definite description? It seems like one to me.

What if I knew even less? What if all I knew is that there was a country called Albania?
It seems to me that just a name can suffice as a DD for a country where it cannot for a person, because no two countries on the Earth have the same name.

I wonder if Kripke would agree that 'the country called Albania' is a DD.

I can't add anything to Janus's response re Albania. My position seems to be the same as his on that.

On Frege and the Hesperus/Phosphorus example: while I think it can be useful to distinguish between meaning and referent, or any of the other words that are used to indicate the difference between the pointer and the pointed-at, I don't find the Hesperus-Phosphorus example a good one. I think it is simply poor communication to say 'Hesperus is Phosphorus', because it can have so many different meanings. What is actually being said is that there is a planet (Venus) that appears in the evening and has been referred to as Hesperus in that manifestation, and appears again in the morning and has been called Phosphorus in that manifestation. So I reject arguments that contain enigmatic statements like 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' in them, because to accept them requires accepting so many dubious, implicit assumptions about exactly what was meant.

All of Einstein's conceptions would be moot and/or irrelevant to all of that which they expanded upon. — creativesoul

Science is forward-looking. It would not matter one whit if Einstein's theory of relativity were irrelevant to Newton's theories of motion and gravitation. It would be easy to conclude that too, as Einstein does not - as far as I recall - mention Newton in his key papers on relativity. We would still use Einstein's theories when useful, and Newton's when they are useful, just as we do now. Fortunately, in most cases, science is about getting results that are interesting or useful, not about scoring points off past writers. I suggest that many philosophers would do well to follow that example.

I find the notion of 'absolute truth' at least just as flawed as you. It's not helpful here. — creativesoul

Being mistaken is always a result of having false belief. — creativesoul

What does it mean for a belief to be 'false' if there is no absolute truth?

Good. Then what does 'mistaken' mean to you, if it is neither 'can be proven to be wrong' nor 'is in contradiction with absolute truth'?

It still does not follow from the fact that there is no formal proof adequate for showing how you're both mistaken, that you're not, that you cannot be, or that different positions in the field cannot be. — creativesoul

It is possible that there is such a thing as absolute truth, whereby something can be the case even if nobody can ever know it. I tend not to believe in absolute truth, but let's adopt the concept for the sake of furthering discussion. Then, I can be mistaken if I hold a belief that contradicts the absolute truth. But if that absolute truth is not knowable then nobody is in a position to say definitively that I am mistaken. The only way to demonstrate that a belief contradicts absolute truth is to show that it leads to a contradiction.

If person A believes in absolute truth, she can have a belief that person B is mistaken in their belief that proposition P is true. However A cannot know that B is mistaken unless she has a proof of the falsity of P. In the absence of such a proof, at best A can have a hunch or suspicion that B is mistaken. To state definitively that B is mistaken cannot be justified and smacks of hubris.

Some might complain that such an analysis implies we cannot do most philosophy at all, and so it must be rejected in order to save philosophy. I say that we can still do all the philosophy we have been doing just fine. It's just that, except in those rare cases where we are dealing with items that are amenable to formal logical proof, we should have the humility to restrain ourselves from saying that others are mistaken. It should suffice to say 'I don't agree' or 'It doesn't seem that way to me' or 'I doubt that'.

I note that both Kripke and Russell suffered from the hubris of saying that other people were mistaken, or wrong, on topics where, even if there were an absolute fact of the matter about it (which in most cases I suspect there isn't), that fact would not be knowable by mere humans, and certainly not by Russell or Kripke.

I think that's the heart of what Kripke is concerned with. My account of such a counterfactual is that The Man in the High Castle imagines a world that was identical to this up to about late 1941 and then started to differ, to the extent that the Axis powers won.

My feeling is that Kripke finds it unsatisfactory to say it is about 'a world that was identical to this' and wants to say that the key protagonists in the novel are the same entities as in this world, rather than simulacra thereof. That, as I understand it, is why he ventures into modal logic and possible world semantics. It appears that, to him, it feels more natural to say that it is the same Winston Churchill in the novel as the one in this world. To me that feels weird. But who can argue feelings?

In my view, the best candidate for the country is anybody but Trump. — Jake

I don't feel that way. The best protection the US has against Trump is his own incompetence as a head of government (as opposed to his competence as a campaigner, which was high). That's what has prevented him from achieving most of his agenda. I shudder to think what could happen with a competent extreme rightist as president. For that reason I hope Trump doesn't get driven out of office before the next election by criminal proceedings. Because if that happens, the President will be Pence, who is - from what I've heard - extreme right, yet unlike Trump, clever and competent.

Personally, I don't think Warren would win because I don't think the US is grown-up enough yet to have a female leader. I don't mean that as an insult. My own country showed back in 2010-13 that it isn't grown up enough yet for that honour either. Unlike New Zealand and Germany.

It quite simply does not follow from the fact that there is no formal proof adequate for showing how you're both mistaken, that you're not, that you cannot be, or that different positions in the field cannot be. — creativesoul

Sure, if all 'mistaken' means is 'has an opinion that I do not agree with'. If the difference between being mistaken and having a different opinion is not the presence of a proof, then what is it?

You're both mistaken if you think and/or believe that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to Kripke's lectures and/or many of the historical positions that he targets. — creativesoul

Do you not find it strange then, that Kripke does not mention 'successful reference' in N&N? If you think he mentions it but calls it something different, what does he call it?

Well, in that case, you're both mistaken. — creativesoul

'Mistaken' is not a relevant concept in this field. There is no correct and incorrect. There are no proofs of correctness. If there were, Kripke's opinion would either have been proven correct and thereby accepted by everybody that is capable of following logic, or it would have been proven incorrect, in which case no logically competent person would accept it. Since neither of those is the case, it must not be amenable to proof, so 'right' and 'wrong', 'mistaken' and 'correct' are not applicable concepts.

What really matters is 'Is it useful?' Does it better help us to understand the psychology and history of language? Does it help us to better understand what went wrong when people misunderstand each other - as they so frequently do? Does it give us clues as to how to communicate more effectively? Does it help us understand how children learn language, so that we can better aid them in that task? Would it help us in a situation where we encountered people with a different language, with no interpreters?

My impression is that Kripke saw his mission as coming up with a theory of language that explained hypotheticals and counterfactuals ('modal discourse'), while still allowing him to say that the hypothetical/counterfactual is about the same person as in this world, rather than an imaginary avatar thereof.

If so, then asking about whether a reference was successful is not relevant to Kripke's purpose, and that may be why he does not talk about 'successful reference', at least not using those words.

The questioner did not use definite description. The questioner successfully referred to Thales nonetheless. — creativesoul

Isn't it a moot point whether or not the questioner 'successfully referred to Thales'? I can't see that any tangible difference follows from a Yes vs a No answer to the question 'was a successful reference made?' Rather, it's just a question of what words one uses to describe the speech acts. It's what David Chalmers calls a Verbal Dispute - something about choice of words with no actual import.

FWIW I regard 'who is Thales?' from an eavesdropper to the conversation as shorthand for:

"Your conversation sounds interesting and, If you don't object, I'd like to join in. I note that you keep on using the word 'Thales' as if it were a name of a person. Is it the name of a person? If so, could you please tell me a little about the person whose name it is, so that I can enjoy your conversation more, and maybe even participate?"

The meaning of that is quite clear, and whether or not the questioner has 'successfully referred to Thales' seems to have no significance.

It's the commonly used definition. What definition would you give of infinity? — Devans99

There are many different 'infinities'. The one that arguably corresponds most closely to the folk notion of infinity is

"(1) the cardinality of the set of integers".

An alternative definition that is a little closer to what is in the OP because it uses the concept of 'greater than' is

"(2) the smallest ordinal that is greater than all integers".

These two definitions give different mathematical objects, but they are both reasonably close to the folk notion. The second one is denoted by a lower case omega.

Note that neither definition uses the word 'number'.

Actually my example was 'What if Donald Trump had not been born a women" — Janus

Oh, sorry. I thought the 'not' was a typo and removed it in a misguided attempt to be charitable. The sex change possibility (or it could just be a woman posing as a man) provides grounds for another useful example. We consider the complete speech act:

"I wonder whether, if Donald Trump had not been born a woman, he would have made that appalling comment about 'grabbing by the pussy'"

The reference is fixed in this world by the implied DD that Trump is POTUS. The context of the speech act is that the speaker believes Trump was born a woman and either has had a sex change or is impersonating a man. The possible worlds being considered are those that split from this one at some time between the birth of the current POTUS and the time Trump made that revolting comment. Given the speaker's beliefs, it seems reasonable that they hypothesise that the comment was made in order to bolster Trump's credentials as a man, in order to head off inquiries that might reveal Trump's sex at birth - since either a sex change or transvestitism would be a liability to a presidential candidate in a conservative country like the US.

Again, analysis of the complete speech act, rather than a fragment thereof, dispels all ambiguity.

What if Donald Trump had not been POTUS?

What if Donald Trump had been born a woman? — Janus

I find that examples like these highlight the inadequacy of trying to analyse parts of speech rather than entire speech acts, and that approaching it correctly (according to me) provides both a defence and a criticism of Kripke's approach. A defence, because some of his examples of how he sees his theory working, that appear nonsensical to many, can be made sensible when analysed as part of a complete speech act, and a criticism because the examples he uses to attempt to demonstrate the inadequacy of descriptivism also rely on analysing a reference out of the context of the speech act in which it occurs.

Consider the first of the two above counterfactuals. We can remove all ambiguity by placing the question in the context of a speech act. For instance:

'I wonder what Donald Trump would have done if he had lost the 2016 presidential election. Would he have tried to incite civil unrest, claiming electoral fraud? Would he have gracefully departed the political scene? Would he have turned back to his business activities with renewed energy or would he have retired to live a life of seclusion and contemplation?

It is clear from the context provided by the full speech act that we are talking about the person that was the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election. The definite description 'the person that was the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election' picks out a single person in this world and is then used to contemplate possible worlds that split from this at some point between the Republican nomination of Trump in mid-2016 and the declaration of the election result in late 2016.

For the second one, a containing speech act might be:

'I wonder whether, if Donald Trump's parents' fourth child had been a girl, they would have continued to have children in the hope of having a second boy.'

Here, a definite description picks out the parents as those that are, in this world, the parents of Donald Trump. It then considers possible worlds that split from this at some time between the birth of that couple's third child and the naming of their fourth child. There is no doubt about which couple we are referring to, and the subject of the 'had been born' part is the fourth child of that couple.

I am confident that, if we reject analysis of references out of the context of a speech act as invalid, much of the metaphysical gymnastics that goes on in philosophy of language is shown to be just an entertaining diversion involving moving words around into new configurations.

The basic principle in such counterfactuals is to use the reference part of the speech act to pick a unique object in this world (the 2016 Republican candidate and Donald Trump's parents, in the above two examples) and then to consider possible worlds that split from this at some time after the entry of that object into that world. We then evaluate the question in relation to that object, or items that relate to it.

I am confident that this process can even work for the 'If Nixon were a golf ball' example but I'll leave it up to someone else to come up with a complete speech act in which that counterfactual is contemplated. If the speech act is complete enough to be understood by an ordinary person, it will point to a path for uniquely identifying the object it is concerned with.

PS Unless I've missed a post, the above discussion of references to Thales gets nowhere because it does not discuss speech acts that contain references to Thales. Discussion of references in the absence of their containing speech act cannot lead to any useful and valid conclusion. I am (fairly) confident that, if someone were to put forward an example complete speech act containing such a reference, it would be easily resolved in any of the situations discussed (1. Thales existed and did what we are told he did. 2. Thales existed but did only some of those things. 3. Thales existed but did none of those things. 4. There was no Thales).

How does the idea of a tree become a real tree? — Jamesk

I think the answer is that Berkeley used the word 'idea' differently from how we use it three centuries later. We think of 'idea' as synonymous with 'notion' or 'concept', which are logical constructions based on sets of properties. When Berkeley talks of idea I think he is referring to the phenomenon of a tree - the collection of sensory impressions one gets from a tree.

So where we talk about potential distinction between a real tree and the idea of a tree, the translation into 18th century English would be the distinction between the concept of a tree and the phenomenon of a tree.

So... — creativesoul

What comes after the ellipsis?

Kripke begins these lectures(ignoring the introduction) by pointing out what we're doing when positing possible world scenarios(hypotheticals) while using proper nouns — creativesoul

At least in the early part of the lectures, Kripke doesn't appear to address hypotheticals, which are events that, for all we know, may happen in the future of this world. Indeed, Kripke tends to only use the word 'hypothetical' in relation to 'hypothetical languages', which is something different altogether. Rather, Kripke is concerned with counterfactuals, which are events that we believe did not happen in this world, such as the loss of the 1968 election by Nixon.

If he were only talking about hypotheticals it would be uncontroversial that we know who we are talking about. For instance, if he were to imagine a world in which Nixon's skeleton is dug up in the year 2020 and put in a museum, there would be no confusion about the skeleton to which he was referring.

But as soon as we move from hypotheticals to counterfactuals, the certainty disappears. Change any thing, however slight, of past events in the world, and statements such as "B did X at time T", where person B is a person that was in our actual world at time T, become uncertain at best, and empty of meaning at worst. What we can say is "imagine a world that was the same as this in every respect and, up to time T has a one-to-one correspondence of objects and events in that world to objects and events in this, except that, at time T, the object in that world that corresponded to the object B in our world at time T, did X instead of the Y that the object in our world did at that time".

I think the term 'imaginary world' is much more appropriate than 'possible world' for such cases, because those worlds are not possible in the sense of being accessible from this one, starting at the time where we are now. We would have to change the past to get there (and doing so generates ambiguity in any reference to an object at a time later than that at which the change is imagined to occur). In contrast, the term 'possible worlds' is fine for hypotheticals, because one can get to such worlds without having to change the past.

All right: most of the Christians I admire do not appear to believe, or to attempt to believe, Catechism 234.

When I was a believer we prayed to God in the figure of God the Father, or sometimes Jesus, also the Virgin Mary which is so dear for Mediterranean people; or to those already dead that were supposed to have a better and more reliable signal to communicate with God wherever they were now. — DiegoT

Yes, I think the Trinity is relevant only to theologians that have sufficient hubris to believe they can understand the nature of God. If they had kept their arcane 'investigations' to themselves there would have been no harm done. Unfortunately, they forced it to be included it in their catechism, which all RCs are 'obliged to believe' (whatever that means):

"The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the 'hierarchy of the truths of faith'. — RC Catechism item 234

IMHO, their doing so is a perfect example of academic arrogance that shows contempt for the concerns of ordinary believers and no thought for the consequences of trying to forces their 'angels dancing on heads of pins' nonsense onto people to whom it is repellant. They miss the whole point of spirituality.

The Christians I admire appear to never waste a moment's thought on the so-called 'mystery of the trinity'

So, I take it you don't like China. — Wallows

On the contrary, I love China. I love the communitarian culture and the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian influences in their culture. I love Chinese music, history and dance.

It's the Chinese government that I detest.

I'm more inclined to take a step back and ask is a social credit system a necessary evil — Wallows

The answer is a straightforward, simple No. New Zealand and Norway have no social credit systems and have harmonious societies with relatively low inequality and high levels of personal freedom. So such systems cannot be necessary. They are just ways for would-be dictators to exert power over ordinary people - to stifle dissent and force them to comply with the will of the autocrats.

It is yet another instrument of the police state. One would get angry, only instruments like that are pretty much par for the course under this Chinese government.

As an enthusiast for David Bourland's language E-prime, which one obtains by removing all uses of versions of the verb 'to be' and synonyms thereof from the English language, I feel pleased to notice that one cannot even state the doctrine of the Trinity in that language.

Bourland had the view, which I think I share, that if a statement cannot be stated in E-prime, it has no meaning.

One can, however, state the more natural doctrine, which I conjecture most Christians intuitively feel, which says that God manifests in three different ways according to time and circumstance. We name those three different manifestations Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So far as I can see that version does not contradict any of the mentioned excerpts from the Bible.

PS: I wrote this post in E-Prime, or at least tried to. Please let me know if I missed a bit.

Yes, my first stab at summarising my notion of a robust descriptivist position is something like this:

When a speaker uses a verbal description to refer to an object, they will usually* use properties that they believe belong to the object and that they believe are sufficient to uniquely identify it amongst the set of objects that might reasonably be considered candidates, given the context.

When a speaker uses a proper name to refer to an object, they will have in mind a description with the above properties.

Whether a listener understands the speaker and picks up the same object as the speaker intended will depend on:

- in the description case, whether that description uniquely picks out the same object as the speaker intended, given the listener's beliefs and the context;

- in the proper name case, whether the proper name leads the listener to pick out the same object as the speaker intended, given the listener's beliefs and the context.

I find the descriptivist account incomplete, but not for the reasons Kripke suggests. Rather, I believe it is often unhelpful to break up a speech act into parts and insist on identifying referents. It is often the case that the speech act has an intent that does not depend on the identity of the presumed referent, or even on whether there is a referent. In this case I think Wittgenstein is the one with the most realistic and helpful account.

*An exception would be when the speaker believes that the listener has a different set of beliefs about the object. In that case it would make sense for the speaker, in order to be understood, to use properties that the listener believes holds, even though the speaker does not believe they hold.

What he's arguing only is that however big or small the core of our true beliefs about this item might be, it's not this true core of beliefs that determines what the reference is. — Pierre-Normand

Where do you believe he argues that?

I don't see any argument on p25-6 to that effect. The only support he offers to his claim that a descriptivist must say that the reference is to the person uniquely satisfying the description (somebody of whom the speaker is presumed to be unaware) is another claim:

"This is the sense in which it's been used in the logical tradition."

I am dubious of that second claim (and he offers nothing to support it) but, even if it were true, that would not mean that it is essential to a descriptivist theory that one takes that interpretation.

When you are thus relying on a true descriptive core (however small) in order to account for the determination of the reference, you move back into the target area of Kripke's objections to descriptivism — Pierre-Normand

Where in N&N do you find that?

If all that Kripke is saying is that, where every single belief that a person has about a person, including that he is standing at 12 o'clock, or that I was introduced to him yesterday in a meeting, or that my grandmother told me a story about him, is false, then one cannot give an account of how the person can be referred to, then the situation he is using is so rare that it is ridiculous to use it as an objection to any theory of anything.

To which I would add that, if every belief I have about a person is false, the question of whether I 'can refer' to that person is moot - it becomes unclear what 'referring to' would mean in that situation. At best the person is 'referring to' an element of a hallucination they had.

The only situation I can think of in which every belief somebody has about somebody is false is where I am undergoing hallucinations or have false memories, so that I am thinking of the person over there but there is no person over there, or I am remembering my grandmother telling me of this person called Nixon, but that memory is false and my grandmother never told me of Nixon.

I am fairly sceptical of Kripke's theory but I don't believe it is as trivial as such an interpretation would suggest. Certainly that's not what I get from N&N.

This account presupposes that your belief about that person indeed is about that person and not about someone else — Pierre-Normand

I do not understand this. How can it be the case that I have a belief about somebody that is in my field of view, and yet the belief is not about that person? Isn't that a bare contradiction - "I have a belief that is about X and not about X"?

Would it help to break it up? My belief is about the person at 12 o'clock (so in the above sentence we can replace 'X' by 'the person at my 12 o'clock'), and the belief is that that person is a young man and has a glass of champagne and has winked at me. As far as I am concerned 'the person at my 12 o'clock' is enough to identify the person. But talking to somebody else, I probably feel a bit more info is needed to avoid confusion - for instance my 12 o'clock may be Sabrina's 10 o'clock. So in my verbal statement I replace the position reference by my belief about the champagne and the age and sex, and the belief about the wink becomes a question rather than a part of the DD.

The speaker must be able to pick out in though who it is that she believes the predicative content of DD to be uniquely true of. But she can't do this by means of the very same DD, on pain of circularity. — Pierre-Normand

Can you help me to see the circularity? I was imagining something like the following in the speaker's mind:

I am aware of the following:
- person 1, a young man, at 12 o'clock, with a flute of champagne
- person 2 at 1 o'clock, a young woman with a white frilly dress holding a tankard of ale
- person 3 at 11 o'clock, a teenage girl in ripped jeans holding two hors d'oeuvres and no drink
- person 4 at 3 o'clock, my best friend Sabrina
Now person 1 just winked at me. The nerve! I am cross. But maybe I imagined it. I will ask Sabrina if she saw it. Speaks:

'Sabrina! Don't look, but did you see how the man over there with champagne in his glass just winked at me?'

In that case, the person who the speaker is looking at does not match the DD (since the DD expresses a false belief about that person), and hence, by your own account, isn't the person who the speaker is talking about. — Pierre-Normand

What I wrote was, not that the facts about the person match the DD, but that the speaker's beliefs about the person match the DD.

See last line of my prev post. I chose my words carefully, as it is imperative to do in this subject area, indeed in most of philosophy.

It is not enough to say that he is being referred to in virtue of the fact that the speaker believes him to satisfy the description. That's because, by saying that, we haven't explained how it is precisely him (and not someone else) who is being referred to.

I couldn't quite follow this. Perhaps you could elaborate on what the difficulty is that you see.

It seems to me that, if the DD picks out a unique individual based on the speaker's beliefs, then that explains how it is precisely that person, and not someone else, to whom she is referring.

One simply lists the people she can see and her beliefs about each one, then compares them to the DD and picks out the one for which the beliefs match the DD.

It is not possible to prove the doctrine either coherent or incoherent, because its explanation contains so many undefined terms. All explanations of the trinity that are not rejected by the RC church as heretical are word salads. Thus, for those that wish to believe that it contains some sort of deep, ungraspable truth, there is enough wiggle room for them to do that. For the majority of humans, who have no interest in believing it, there is plenty of room to dismiss it as meaningless.

Historically, the origin of the doctrine was an attempt by medieval (or earlier) theologians to reconcile the statements in the NT that could be read to imply that Jesus is separate from his 'father' and from the 'spirit', with the doctrine that there is only one god.

Somebody decided early on that the easy explanation - that the references are just to different manifestations of the one entity - must be rejected, and as a result they've had to struggle with it ever since.

I read somewhere that muslim scholars regard the doctrine as blasphemous because it suggests there is more than one god.

BTW I thought of a situation where a listener can pick out the same individual as a speaker was referring to, using a DD that is completely false, without the listener sharing that false belief. It is where the listener knows about the speaker's false belief.

Consider a very young child that thinks their aunt is an astronaut, because of a misheard conversation, or perhaps because he had seen her in a SCUBA outfit or something else that might be mistaken for an astronaut's gear. The parents know about that. The child looks out the window and sees the aunt coming up to the front door. He says excitedly 'look - astronaut come to door!'

The parents know to whom the child is referring, even though they do not share the child's belief that the aunt is an astronaut.

Kripke is saying "Nevertheless..." because although we would, in ordinary cases, understand the speaker to be referring (and indeed, to intend to be referring) to the man who unbeknownst to the speaker doesn't have champagne in his glass, the way Kripke intends to use the phrase 'referent of the description' is to refer to the object uniquely satisfying the conditions in the definite description exactly as descriptivists about proper names understand definite descriptions to refer. — Pierre-Normand

I see this as one of a number of instances of Kripke making an uncharitable interpretation of the descriptivist position. I'm tempted to say 'straw man' but feel that may be a bit strong for what he intended.

I very much doubt Russell would agree with Kripke's claim that Russell's position is that the speaker is referring to the man uniquely satisfying the description - ie the man that would be identified as the referent by an observer that was omniscient enough to know what everybody in the room had in their glass and yet was strangely ignorant of the thought process of the speaker (ie, did not know that the speaker thought that the man she had in mind had champagne in it).

A descriptivist position with less straw in it would be one in which the reference (if it makes sense to talk about one - see my earlier comments about the folly of always dissecting speech acts) made by the speaker is to the individual that she believes satisfies her description. That reference will be correctly interpreted by the listener if that description also uniquely picks out the same individual in the context of the listener's beliefs.

If there is a single listener, we can talk about the reference being 'successful' if the listener picks out the same individual as the speaker intended. But if there are multiple listeners it is possible that some pick out the same individual while others do not, so the notion of 'successful reference' is ambiguous.

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.

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'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.

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.

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?

I don't see it that way. Sometimes they can look similar, because they are both about causing harm, or at least fear. But the harm is not always to the convicted criminal. Consider for instance the policy that I have heard is pursued by the Israeli government of demolishing the family homes of suicide bombers (Caveat - I don't know whether that is an actual policy. It's just something I heard somewhere). That is not retribution, as it cannot harm the culprit who is already dead. Rather it is deterrence against potential future suicide bombers.

Another example is house training a puppy. One doesn't scold or punish it for messes out of retribution, but out of an aim to deter it from making messes in future.