# HOW DO PROPER NAMES WORK?

 

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PROPER NAMES: BEYOND DESCRIPTIVISM AND CAUSALISM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Probleme kann man nicht mit derseben Denkweise lösen, durch die sie entstanden sind. [Problems cannot be solved by the same way of thinking that produced them.]

Einstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

I.               DESCRIPTIVISM

1.     Stuart Mill: names without connotation

2.     Descriptivism (I): Frege and Russell

3.     Descriptivism (II): Wittgenstein, Strawson and Searle

4.     Identification Rules

 

II.            REFERENTIALISM

1.     Some objections to descriptivism

2.     Baptism and causal-hstorical chains

3.     Internal problems

4.     Indirect causalist references

5.     Coincidental references

6.     Empty proper names

7.     Empty names and persistent designators

8.     The complete Kripkean automaton

9.     Causal chains, cognitive links, and causal histories

10.  Descriptivism of causal links

11.  Summarizing

 

III.         METADESCRIPTIVISM: DEVELOPING THE THEORY

1.     Fundamental description-rules

2.     Auxiliary description-rules

3.     Disjunctive rule

4.     Meta-identifying rule: preliminary version

5.     Meta-identifying rule: final version

6.     Proper name’s meaning

7.     Ordinary proper names

8.     Language’s division of cognitive labour

9.     Why are proper names rigid designators?

10.  Why are definite-descriptions accidental designators?

 

IV.           METADESCRIPTIVISM: ANSWERING COUNTEREXAMPLES

1.     Responses to Kripkian counterexamples

Problems of rigidity

Undesirable necessity

Fictional proper names

Elliptical and incorrect descriptions

Circularity

2.     Pierre’s puzzle

3.     Responses to Donnellan’s counterexamples

Thales the well-digger

The philosopher J. L. Alston Martin

The inverted squares

“Tom is a nice person”

4.     Devitt’s objection of epistemic magic

5.     Russellian reformulation

6.     Proper names and the “necessary a posteriori”

7.     Conclusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

 

The theory introduced in this book has been taking shape over a long period of time. It began in 2006, when I was advising a doctoral candidate in Brazil on the problem of the proper names’ reference. Its first printed formulation appeared in a paper called “A Meta-Descriptivist Theory of Proper Names” (Ratio 2011). Later it appeared in partially revised forms in my books Lines of Thoughts (2014, Ch. 2) and Philosophical Semantics (2018, Ch. 3). In its present form, the theory is strengthened and expanded in order to clarify its advantages against its main competitors.

   A few words of praise regarding the main competitors. They are from a constructive side the theories of proper names put forward by Frege, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, P. F. Strawson and, particularly, by J. R. Searle. They provided necessary underpinnings for the neodescriptivist theory of proper names developed in this book. Beyond them, Saul Kripke’s and Keith Donnellan’s original alternative work, together with the subsequent criticisms of descriptivism and internalism (Hilary Putnam, David Kaplan, Michael Devitt…), constructed important dialectic challenges, without which no progress could be made. In a sense, the present book is a work of synthesis, so that without the imaginative production of all these philosophers it would never have had enough fuel to lift off the ground.

    I have written as clearly as possible, assuming that many readers have little or no previous knowledge of the subject matter. The first chapter is dedicated to an exposition and evaluation of the merits and limits of descriptivist theories of proper names developed by philosophers from Gottlob Frege to John Searle, finishing with the understanding of singular terms as possible expressions of meaning-rules inspired in Michael Dummett’s interpretation of Frege and Ernst Tugendhat’s analysis of the singular predicative statement (all these views belong to the so-called old orthodoxy, which was largely influential before the Seventies). The second chapter is a critical exposition of the more recent causal-historical view, developed by Saul Kripke in the Seventies (grounding the so-called new orthodoxy, until now the most influential). It focuses on the unavoidable role of causality in the attempt to explain the proper name’s reference by means of an external causal-historical chain associating the referent with the speech act of naming. Even if I accept the unavoidable existence of causal chains, I believe I have shown that this attempt is condemned to a petitio principii by resorting to cognitions in their identification and, consequently, being committed to some form of descriptivism. Only in the third and fourth chapters do I develop my own neodescriptivist theory. This theory can be seen as a complex metadescriptivist one, since it is based on metadescriptive rules able to be applied to any given proper name’s cluster of descriptions in order to evaluate its referential function. This is in my view the most plausible and powerful theory of proper names to date, clearly overcoming traditional cluster theories and convincingly answering Kripke’s and Donnellan’s challenges.

    I would like to express my gratitude to several persons. To Professor Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, who in 2007 first suggested that I should undertake the hard work of developing my own views on the reference of proper names; to Professor Richard Swinburne for his encouragement regarding the merits of the old orthodoxy; to Professor Wolfgang Spohn for our discussions at the University of Konstanz in 2010; to Professor João Branquinho, who invited me to explain my views at the University of Lisbon in 2011; to Professor Guido Imaguire for discussions at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2013. I also would like to thank Prof^a. Anna-Sofia Maurin and her talented, attentive students at the University of Gothenburg in 2016/1 for discussions, together with Professor François Recanati for inviting me to the IJN in 2016/2. In particular I would like to thank Professor Peter Stemmer, who enabled me to finish this book at the University of Konstanz in 2021. Special thanks are due to my friend Dr. James Stuart Brice for the many suggestions on how to best formulate my ideas in idiomatic English.

Konstanz, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I

 

DESCRIPTIVISM

 

 

 

In this chapter I will begin the investigation of how proper names refer. There are two general kinds of theories of proper names, which might be called the descriptivist and the referentialist.[1] The first emphasize the intermediary cognitive link existing between a name and its bearer, a link supposedly expressible by means of definite descriptions.[2]  The second emphasize the causal relationship between the object (through its tagging by speakers) and its name, rejecting the relevance of the intermediate link as something unavoidable and explanatorily fundamental.

  My goal in this and the next chapter will be to provide theoretical and critical support for chapter III, in which I will present my own “full-blooded” explanation of the referential mechanisms of proper names. Thus, in this chapter I will describe and critically discuss the classic versions of descriptivism and, in the next, the main ideas of Kripkean referentialism. To begin with, however, I want to critically introduce the referentialist theory of proper names suggested by John Stuart Mill in the 19th Century, since it was in the origin of the contemporary discussion.

 

1. John Stuart Mill: names without connotations

Mill began by distinguishing between the denotation and the connotation of a term: denotation is the reference of the term, while connotation (meaning) is the descriptive element, implying an attribute. Among the referential expressions, the definite description (called by him an ‘individual name’) has both a denotation and a connotation. It denotes through its connotation, namely, by expressing attributes that, possessed solely by its object of reference, allow us to identify this object referentially. A description such as ‘the author of Heart of Darkness’ connotes an attribute belonging to a unique individual, namely, the attribute of Joseph Conrad of having written that story. The same is not true regarding proper names. In his own words:

 

Proper names are not connotative: they denote the individuals who are called by them, but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals. When we name a child by the name Paul or a dog by the name Caesar, these names are simple marks used to enable such individuals to be made subjects of discourse. (...) Proper names are attached to the objects themselves, and are not dependent on the continuance of any attribute of the object.[3]

 

In other words: the proper name has no connotation. It has a simple structure. As Mill says, the city of Dartmouth was so called because it is located at the mouth of the river Dart, but if an earthquake changed this river’s course and removed it to a distance from the town, the name of the town would not necessarily be changed. That is, a proper name refers independently of any connotation that it may have. It refers directly, as if it were a label glued to a bottle. Since for Mill the meaning does not lie in what a name denotes, but in what it connotes, it follows that proper names, strictly speaking, “have no signification.” [4]

  I want to pause here only to note that this standard interpretation could not tell the complete story. Mill also made statements that seem to be complementary to what I have just set out, though in dissonance with the standard interpretation. As he wrote some paragraphs later:

 

We put a mark, not indeed upon the object itself, but, so to speak, upon the idea of the object. A proper name is but an unmeaning mark which we connect in our minds with the idea of the object, in order that whenever the mark meets our eyes or occurs to our thoughts, we may think of that individual object. ...By enabling [the reader] to identify the individuals, we may connect them with information previously possessed by him. By saying “This is York” we may tell him that it contains the Minster. But this is not by anything implied in this name.[5]

 

It seems, therefore, that with the word ‘meaning’ Mill understood in our first cited passage the meaning linguistically expressed or at least suggested. This meaning must be distinguished from the idea of the object, which in the English empiricist tradition to which Mill belongs could be understood as a content of meaning (informative content) in a wider sense. In fact, the proper name has no linguistically expressed meaning in a way comparable to that of definite descriptions or, as also happens with general terms (which Mill called ‘general names’) like ‘man’, ‘dog’ and ‘disease’. For him these terms connote their attributes in addition to denoting the sets of all men, all dogs and all sick organisms. However, what Mill calls ‘the idea of the object’ does seem to be simply a psychologist way of speaking of informative content, that is, of senses, which only differ from Fregean senses regarding the different ontological interpretations.[6] If my understanding of this point is correct, then Mill’s conception of what proper names mean ends up being compatible with the suggestion that proper names have something like senses, here understood as psychological modes of presentation, resulting in no contradiction in principle between his views and descriptivism about proper names advocated by philosophers from Frege to John Searle. Although I consider this the fairer and most benevolent way to interpret Mill’s intentions, I will ignore it in the rest of this book for expositive reasons.

  The theory of direct reference allegedly proposed by Mill is easily refuted, and Bertrand Russell did not have any difficulty in doing this. In the way the theory is understood in our first quotation, it is unable to satisfactorily solve the paradoxes of reference answered by Russell in his famous theory of descriptions. The first of them was the riddle of the non-existent reference. How can we make sense of a sentence like “Santa Claus lives at the North Pole” if the name ‘Santa Claus’ has neither a connotation nor a denotation? To this, Mill could answer that Santa Claus refers to an imaginary object. But consider the case of a true negative existential like “Santa Claus does not exist.” If all that belongs to the name is its reference, such a sentence seems contradictory, for in order to apply the name one should already admit its existence. Consider now identity utterances containing co-referential names. Think about the difference between the sentence (a) “Mount Everest is Mount Everest” and the sentence (b) “Mount Everest is Chomolungma”. The first is tautological, saying nothing, while the second can be informative. But for Mill since names have no connotation, co-referential names cannot have different meanings; sentence (b) should be as trivial as (a), which is not the case. Finally, there is the problem of the lack of inter-substitutivity in opaque contexts. Consider a sentence such as “Mary believes that Cicero, but not Tullius, was a great Roman orator.” If the proper names ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tullius’ are only labels for the same person, it seems that Mary needs to be able to believe in totally inconsistent things, such as that Cicero is not Cicero. For reasons such as these and under the opposite influence of Russell’s insightful theory of descriptions, the alleged Millian theory of the direct reference of proper names soon fell into a deserved oblivion.

 

2. Descriptivism (I): Frege and Russell

The descriptivist theory of proper names dominated the 20th century until the 1970s, when it was gradually eclipsed by the new version of Millianism firstly proposed by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan. The general idea of descriptivism is that proper names refer indirectly, as shorthand for sets, bundles or clusters of descriptions applicable to the properties of their bearers. In other words, contrary to Millianism, proper names connote. They connote because their role is that of replacing clusters of descriptions, being therefore more complex and not simpler than the descriptions.

  According to a current interpretation that was disseminated by Kripke,[7] there are two forms of descriptivism: the primitive and the sophisticated. The more primitive one, advocated by Frege and Russell, was a theory according to which a proper name is a shorthand for a single definite description associated with it. The second, more sophisticated one, advocated by philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, P. F. Strawson and John Searle, attached the meaning of a proper name, not to a single description, but to a whole bunch of descriptions. This new theory can be called the cluster theory of proper names, since it identifies the meaning of a proper name with a cluster, a bundle or an aggregate of descriptions.

  My main goal in this chapter (whose real intention is more explanatory than investigative) is to demonstrate that this dichotomous interpretation of the development of descriptivism is an incorrect simplification. My take is that a complex cluster theory of proper names was already alluded to in the writings of Frege and Russell, even though they were not sufficiently and thouthfully thematized. What has happened since then has been a progressive explicitation and addition of aspectual details around a common insight.

  To put my view forward, I want to start considering the Fregean formulation. In the little he wrote about the reference of proper names, he interpreted their senses as expressable by different descriptions or conjunctions of definite descriptions that different speakers associate with them. This interpretation appears in a well-known note from his article “On Meaning and Reference”, which can be considered (pace Dummett) the locus classicus of the descriptive theory of proper names in analytic philosophy:

 

In the case of genuinely proper names such as ‘Aristotle’, opinions as to the senses may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: The pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another sense to the sentence “Aristotle was born in Stagira” than will a man who takes as the sense of the name ‘the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira’. To the extent that the nominatum remains the same, these fluctuations in the sense are tolerable.[8]

 

What this footnote suggests is that different people may associate descriptions or even conjunctions of different descriptions with the same proper name – conjunctions such as ‘Plato’s most famous student’ and ‘Alexander’s tutor’, ‘the philosopher born in Stagira’. Various partial meanings associated with the proper name are expressed by these variable definite descriptions, under the condition that speakers are able to preserve the same reference.

   It would be naïve to think that Frege would believe that a speaker should have always one only definite description in mind. If someone uses the word Aristotle having in mind the pupil of Plato and the tutor of Aristotle, why could he not have other descriptions like ‘the author of the Metaphysics’ and ‘the husband of Pythias’ also in mind? This interpretation attributes to Frege a foolish arbitrariness.

   Furthermore, Frege also observed that fluctuations in sense cannot be so great as to prevent communication: if different language users associate descriptions or conjunctions of totally different descriptions with a proper name, the unity of meaning is lost and it becomes impossible for them to know if they are talking about the same object. Suppose, writes Frege, that Leo Peter went to the residence of Dr. Gustav Lauben and heard him say “I was wounded”, and this is all he knows about Gustav Lauben. Leo Peter tries to comment on what happened to Herbert Garner, who in turn knows of a Dr. Gustav Lauben who was born on September 13, 1875 in N.N., without knowing where Dr. Lauben resides, nor anything else about him. It turns out that Leo Peter and Herbert Garner cannot know if they are talking about the same person. In Frege’s formulation, they

 

do not speak the same language, since, although they do in fact refer to the same man with this name, they do not know that they do so. Therefore, Herbert Garner does not associate the same thought with the sentence “Dr, Gustav Lauben has been injured,” that Leo Peter wants to express with it.[9]

 

From the quotations above it is easy to conclude that Frege, who accepts that definite descriptions are carriers of senses, would easily agree with the idea that a cluster theorist suggestion that the full meaning of a proper name consists of a set of senses typically expressible by means of some set of descriptions, contrarily to the simplified interpretation of his work by John Searle, Saul Kripke and others. Moreover, he would also agree that each speaker usually has access to a certain sub-set of this cluster (‘Plato’s most famous student’, ‘the tutor of Aristotle’.) – Certainly, with the proviso that these sub-sets need to have at least enough in common to allow speakers to know that they are referring to the same object. However, there must be possible that some speakers have in mind the whole cluster, when applying the proper name; then this should be its meaning

   Michael Dummett, Frege’s most original and influential interpreter, protested against the idea that Frege proposed a descriptivist theory of proper names.[10] Dummett’s claim was that Frege used descriptions because they were easy ways to clarify the meaning of some examples, but that this has nothing to do with Russell’s idea that a proper name is short for a complex description, nor with the referential conception of the meaning inherent in Russell’s theory of descriptions... Moreover, writes Dummett, there is no indication that Frege would agree with the idea that the meaning of the proper name can always be expressed through descriptions. According to him, the important thing for Frege is that the proper name is associated with a criterion enabling us to recognize a given object as its referent. Dummett illustrates this point considering the multiple possible ways to identify the River Thames.[11] Often, he writes, this is done indirectly, using collateral information, as in the case of a person who realizes that it is the same river that passes under the Radcot Bridge or through the citadel of Henley... And one can know that it passes through Oxford without knowing that it is the same river that runs through London, still identifying the river correctly. There is, he concludes, no sufficient condition that everyone needs to know for the identification of the River Thames.

   However, none of the reasons put forward by Dummett justifies his protest. First, it is perfectly possible to adopt descriptivism without a commitment to the referential conception of meaning implied in Russellian logical atomism, which seems to me the culprit of the Dummettian reaction. Then, the descriptivist does not need to argue that everything can be expressed through descriptions: from a phenomenal viewpoint, tactile, visual, and auditory sensations and associated emotions cannot in themselves be the “meaning” conveyed through spoken or written words.[12] Descriptions are naturally understood as the linguistic expressions of conventional or conventionally grounded rules – which is what we might call any combination of conventional rules – by which an unlimited range of meanings is able to be added to language. And considering the referential character of these descriptions, what they really express are what may be called semantic-criterial rules, whose main function is to bind a proper name to its bearer in one way or another. This understanding, however, is complementary to Dummett’s own idea that the important thing for the meaning of a proper name is that it is associated with an identity criterion for the identification of its bearer, allowing it to be recognized again as being the same.[13]

   Our conclusion is that a philosopher like Frege was far from thinking of a single description as the complete sense of a proper name used by a speaker. And concerning the whole sense of a proper name he was unspoken cluster theorist. I think Dummett had too narrow a view of what a descriptive theory of proper names can be, based upon a simplified but quite usual understanding of Russell’s own description theory. This will become clearer when we compare his example of the River Thames with Russell’s example of Bismark.

   Let us now move on to Russell’s conception. As already noted, he saw the proper names of ordinary language as abbreviated, truncated or disguised definite descriptions, suggesting that they could be analyzed by the same method with which he analyzed definite descriptions. As he was primarily concerned with logical analysis, he was not very much interested in the ways we really apply proper names in the practice of natural language. However, it was clear that for him a proper name does not abbreviate a single description, as many insisted on interpreting his ideas, and as he himself, for mere convenience of exposition, often did in his more technical texts. His awareness of the real complexity of applying proper names is better shown in a text with fewer formal concerns, his Problems of Philosophy. In this introductory, but nonetheless philosophically deep book, he demonstrates a much more complex understanding of the issue’s pragmatics. Here is a passage:

 

Common words, even proper names, are usually descriptions. That is to say, the thought in the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we replace the proper name with a description. Moreover, the description required to express a thought will vary for different people, or for the same person at different times.[14]

 

What this passage suggests is that language contains a vast repository of information about the object of a name, which can often be expressed in the form of definite descriptions. When we think or spell a proper name, we are usually keeping in mind one or more of these descriptions, so that a listener only needs to know that our descriptions apply to the same entities evoked in his mind.[15]

   Russell presents, as an example, the name ‘Bismark’. A first and peculiar form of access to Bismark is the one that the latter has to himself in a judgment like “I am Bismark.” In this case, according to Russell, Bismark himself is a component of his judgment, without going through a description. Another way to put it is that of persons who were personally introduced to him. In this case, what they considered were Bismark’s body and mind, known through sets of data associated with him and usually able to be expressed by descriptions. But yet another way to get to know Bismark, Russell writes, is through history. In this case, we associate with his person descriptions such as ‘the first chancellor of the German empire is a cunning diplomat’ (which is a composite description, formed by the conjunction of a definite and an indefinite description). In the end, he concluded, what we usually have in mind is a vast set of historical information expressible in the form of descriptions able to identify the person uniquely. As he wrote:

 

When we, who didn’t know Bismark, make a judgment about him, the description in our minds will probably be some more or less vague mass of historical knowledge – far more, in most cases, than is required to identify him. But here, for the sake of illustration, let us assume that we think of him as ‘the first chancellor of the German empire’.[16]

 

This is Russell’s own text and reveals his understanding. What he suggests is that when we use a third-person first name, what we have in mind allows us to express through a complex description (the “mass of information”), which can only be constituted by the composition of a variety of descriptions. Such a composite description must have vague contours (which often vary from user to user and even for the same user on different occasions), belonging to an even larger repository of descriptions that express the non-personal totality of identifying information on the referred object.

   What kind of structure this vast repository of descriptions has, if it has one, is something that was left open. If we want, we can try to analyze this cluster as a conjunction of descriptions about the same x, namely, as a conjunction of unambiguous existential assignments of properties. If the descriptive predicates of these properties are symbolized as the set {F₁, F₂... F_n}, a composite definite description (formed by an indefinite number of definite descriptions) could then be analyzed in Russell’s mode as (Ex) ((F₁x & F₂x... & F_nx) & (y) (F₁y → y = x) & (y) (F₂y → y = x)... & (y) (F_ny → y = x)). No matter how we decide to interpret the notion of a “mass of information,” the fact is that the interpretation of Russell’s suggestions as the defense that when we use proper names we have in mind a single description is nothing but an interpretive chimera caricaturing what he actually thought.

   What these close textual readings also demonstrate is that Russell is willing to analyze the proper name ‘Bismark’ in a way that does not differ substantially from the way by which Dummett analyzed the meaning of the proper name ‘Thames’. A central description, such as ‘the first chancellor of the German Empire’, is for Russell only one of the mass of descriptions that one can associate with Bismark, in the same way that for Dummett the central description ‘the river running through London’ is just one of the many descriptions that we can associate with the proper name ‘Thames.’

If we insist on thinking that Frege wasn’t a descriptivist, then it looks like we should conclude the same with regard to Russell. But since Russell has always been considered the paradigmatic descriptivist, the conclusion can only be that Frege was also a descriptivist and even a potential cluster theorist. And there is a reason to think so: if there is an effective unity in the theoretical object of descriptivist theories, then its various versions need not be inconsistent alternatives to each other, but more or less congruent approximations of the same complex phenomenon, each one of them highlighting different aspects of it, even if diverging in methods and assumptions.

 

3. Descriptivism (II): Wittgenstein, Strawson and Searle

After Frege and Russell, several other philosophers associated with the philosophy of natural language, mainly Wittgenstein, P. F. Strawson and J. R. Searle, presented suggestions of interest for the improvement of the theory of proper names as clusters or aggregates of descriptions only fragmentarily revealed by the former philosophers. I want to briefly consider some interesting suggestions by each of them, since they will be useful to us later.

  In section 79 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein added some commentary to Russell’s conception. According to him, ‘Moses’ may be a proper name abbreviating a variety of definite descriptions, such as:

 

the man who led the Israelites through the desert,

the man who lived in such and such a time and place and was called ‘Moses’,

the man who as a child was discovered in the Nile by the pharaoh’s daughter’, etc.

 

To this he added that the name ‘Moses’ gains different meanings according to the description we associate with him, thus recognizing that a name’s cognitive sense can be expressed by the definite descriptions we associate with it. The question that emerges is: to what extent do descriptions of the cluster of descriptions associated with a name need to be satisfied by the object? Wittgenstein evades a direct response. He limited himself to noting that we use proper names without a rigid meaning, so that even if some descriptions fail to apply, we can still use others as support. Natural language is inevitably vague. Moreover, with time, the body of identifying descriptions of the object referred to by a proper name tends to change: characteristics that previously seemed irrelevant may, in a concept elaborated by science, become relevant and conventionally accepted, while others may weaken or be rejected... [17]

   According to P. F. Strawson, for each proper name there is generally a set of presupposed descriptions, which he calls a propositional-set having indefinite limits. In order to know how to apply a proper name we must normally know a reasonable part of the set which consists of definite descriptions called by him genuinely identifying descriptions, understood as those applying specifically to the name’s bearer. Although neither the limits of the set nor what constitutes a reasonable and sufficient proportion of these descriptions is precisely defined, this should not concern us, because, far from being a fault, this indetermination is part of what makes the use of proper names flexible.

   An important idea from Strawson is that of reference borrowing.[18] He wants to explain how someone can be successful in using a proper name referentially, even without having a proper identifying description. For him, when we do not have a genuinely identifying description, we can borrow the reference credentials offered by another person, who in turn borrows the reference credentials provided by someone else, until they reach those who really know a sufficient proportion of genuinely identifying descriptions to be able to safely identify the object. This is why, after a class, a student can in a sense refer to Aristotle, even if knowing only that he was the philosopher referred to by the teacher. He can do so by borrowing the identifying reference from the teacher, which is sustained by the definite description ‘the philosopher quoted by the teacher in the last class’.

   As for the meaning of a proper name, for Strawson this would be that uniquely identifying description that the speaker associates with the proper name when using it. We may mean different things with a name like ‘Aristotle’, as we associate with him the description ‘Plato’s greatest disciple’ or ‘the author of the Metaphysics’. This makes what we mean by the name something indeterminate. However, that is not a disadvantage, since communication would be much more difficult if each user of the proper name needed to know all the descriptions of the propositional-set in order to be able to apply it.

   John R. Searle, the most recent of these philosophers, was the author of the clearest and most elaborate formulation of descriptivism.[19] Searle notes that we learn and teach the use of proper names only by ostension or by descriptions, and that both methods connect the name to the object only in virtue of specifying enough characteristics of the object to distinguish it from other objects. Hence, there is a close connection between the ability to use a proper name and the knowledge of these characteristics, which can only be expressed by means of descriptions, even if these descriptions are not analytically tied to the object. From this Searle concludes that the use of a proper name has conditions defined by the application of a sufficient but indefinite number of descriptions to a single object; only this indefinite sub-set of descriptions is sufficiently tied to the object to allow references, though no description is necessarily tied to, and no set or sub-set of descriptions requires the existence of the object. He exemplifies this with the name ‘Aristotle’, which is associated with a class of definite descriptions that includes:

 

 the tutor of Alexander the Great,

 the author of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Metaphysics, and the Organon.

 the founder of the Lyceum school in Athens.[20]

 

According to him, the descriptions belonging to the cluster can even possess some indefinite descriptions, such as ‘a Greek’ and ‘a philosopher’. For Searle, the proper name ‘Aristotle’ warrants its application insofar as a sufficient number of such descriptions applies, a number that may vary from speaker to speaker. And we can assume that this number would, in a limiting case, be reducible to a single definite description.

  For Searle, the question of the descriptive condition for applying a proper name is also that for its meaning. Or, in Susan Haack’s summarized paraphrase: proper names have the sense of some indeterminate sub-set of some open-ended set of co-referential descriptions.[21]

  For Searle, the fact that proper names do not connote specific meanings does not mean that they do not connote in any sense. Proper names connote by being shorthand expressions for clusters of descriptions logically connected with characteristics of their bearers in a loose way (in a loose sort of way). But far from being a shortcoming, this is what gives the proper name a flexibility of application much greater than that of an isolated definite description. As Searle wrote:

 

If the criteria for proper names were in all cases quite rigid and specific then a proper name would be nothing more than a shorthand of these criteria, a proper name would function exactly like an elaborate definite description. But the uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of proper names in our language lie precisely in the fact that they enable us to refer publicly to objects without being forced to raise issues and come to agreement on what descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the objects. They function not as descriptions, but as pegs on which to hang descriptions.[22]

 

This version of descriptivism allows us to explain a variety of cases. It is possible, for example, that an object satisfies only a few, or even a single one of the descriptions belonging to the bundle of descriptions usually associated with its name. What cannot happen is that the proper name applies without any of the relevant descriptions being satisfied. As Searle noted, Aristotle cannot be the name of a waiter at a restaurant in Berkeley or the name of a prime number. Or, in his most striking example:

 

If a classical scholar claimed to discover that Aristotle wrote none of the works attributed to him, never had anything to do with the works of Plato or Alexander, never went near Athens, and was not even a philosopher but was in fact an obscure Venetian fishmonger of the late Renaissance, then the discovery would become a bad joke.[23]

 

In possession of this theory of proper names, Searle is enabled to better explain statements of non-existence with proper names. For instance, “Cerberus does not exist” is true, because the set of descriptions associated with the proper name Cerberus (‘the hound of Hades’, ‘the multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld’, ‘the offspring of the monsters Echydna and Typhon’) do not apply in the real world; but Cerberus still has a meaning which is given by descriptions like these. He also has a way to explain analytical and non-analytical identities: we say “Everest is a mountain” when a minimum but indeterminate number of descriptions applies to the object; we affirm an analytical identity, such as “Everest is Everest” or even “Tully is Cicero”,[24] since the same sets of descriptions of each occurrence of the name-word apply to the same object; and we affirm non-analytical identities, such as “Mount Everest is Chomolungma”, since different sets of descriptions apply to the same object. Of the last two proper names he would claim that the different sets of descriptions that people can keep in mind cannot be disjointed; even if they are not identical, they at least need to intersect in a way that enables us to know that we are talking about the same object.[25] In my understanding, these explanations are in perfect agreement with Frege’s own views.[26]

 

  Although Searle developed the most elaborate exposition of descriptivism available, there are objections, good and bad, to it. An interesting objection, proposed by William Lycan in a class, though already anticipated by Searle,[27] is the following: even if the number of descriptions satisfied by the object is not defined, it needs to be more than half the bundle of descriptions, because less than that would allow two totally different objects, each satisfying one half of the descriptions, to be identified by the same name. However, it seems quite possible that an object can be discovered that satisfies less than half of the descriptions, perhaps only one or two, and that it is still referred to by the name.

  Replying to this objection is not difficult. Like all the criteria of application, the criterion of partial satisfaction of a bundle of descriptions has its limits of application. Thus, if one object satisfies one half of the descriptions and another object satisfies the other half (assuming the descriptions have all the same relevance), there is simply no way to know which object to apply the proper name to, and it thereby loses its referential function. This does not, however, rule out the existence of cases in which only a few descriptions of the cluster are satisfied, and that this is enough for the application of a proper name: it is sufficient that no competing object has been found that satisfies a large number of identifying descriptions as relevant as those already satisfied by the supposed bearer of the first application of the same proper name. This objection shows that Searle’s theory requires some addition to keep its explanatory value. It is necessary to add at least the requirement of the absence of competitors with the same descriptive weight as the cluster of descriptions applied to the chosen object. The main problem with the descriptivist theories discussed in this chapter, as we will see later, is not quite that they contain errors, but that they are still vague and fragmentary theoretical sketches, which limits their explanatory power.

   Finally, considering what all these philosophers wrote, we can suggest two kinds of sense or meaning of proper names: (i) the whole sense of a proper name, which can be expressed by the whole cluster of weighted descriptions; (ii) the actual sense of a proper name, which is what (even if tacitly) “is in the mind” of the speaker when he uses the word. The last one must be a sub-set of the whole cluster, or even an only weighted definite description. Frege’s theory clearly tematized the sense (ii), which can change from speaker to speaker. At first appears that Searle’s theory would temathize the sense (i), but in a nearer inspection we see that he is also temathizing cases of individual user, the case in which the speaker “has in mind” a sub-cluster of descriptions belonging to the whole cluster defining the sense (i). Considering Frege’s first example, it is clear that one can count as the meaning of ‘Aristotle’ not only ‘the pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great’, but also ‘the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira’ belong to the whole sense of the proper name ‘Aristotle’, which is confirmed by the fact that one can easily conceive a person who has in his mind both descriptions and also many others by using the name, for instance, a specialist in Aristotle.

   We can end on a positive note. What this short historical excursion demonstrates is that, differently from what some tend to think, there is a strong complementarity and unity in what the defenders of traditional descriptivism have held, since they are in the end all cluster-descriptivists. It is not a question of several competing theories, but of a single research project, which was developed by different authors with various perspectives and interests. This suggests something in favor of its heuristic potential.

 

 

4. Identification rules

It is still worthwhile to add a plausible note about the relationship between descriptivism and identification rules. According to Wittgenstein, “criteria give our words their common meaning.”[28] This view seems to have influenced Michael Dummett’s interpretation of Frege’s concept of sense (Sinn), according to which the sense of a word consists in criterial rules.[29] As he wrote:

 

To know the sense of a proper name is to have a criterion for recognizing, for any given object, whether or not it is the bearer (referent) of that name.[30]

 

Following Ernst Tugendhat, we can understand this view in a somewhat different way, arguing that the sense of a proper name (and of singular terms in general) is given by its identification rule (Identifkationsregel), which we can also understand as a criterial rule, namely, a rule to be satisfied by external criterial conditions that this rule is able to internally require.[31]

   I think that this view can be seen as complementary with a more adequate cluster theory, insofar as a definite description can be understood as the expression of some kind of criterial rule aiming for the identification of an object of reference, while the cluster of descriptions summarized by a proper name can also be seen as having to do with the expression of some kind of identification rule aiming to identify a referent. I am now intentionally speaking in a very vague way. However, much of the third chapter of this book will be dedicated to the development of a sufficiently precise and convincing version of this idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II

REFERENTIALISM

 

 

At Princeton in 1970 Saul Kripke gave the lectures that were recorded and subsequently published as Meaning and Necessity. This extraordinarily original text does not only contain an extremely influential assault on descriptivist theories of proper names. It also contains (among other things) an outline of an innovative referentialist theory of proper names, in its principles very close to J.S. Mill’s direct reference theory, but also extending to the terms of natural species. Since then, the old descriptivist orthodoxy of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and others, has been eclipsed by a new theory of reference, which eventually became for many the most plausible choice.

   While recognizing that these new ideas have definitely transformed the landscape of the discussion, making it more difficult, intricate and disorienting, I am convinced that they are not in themselves sustainable. The main purpose of this chapter will, besides that of presenting the new orthodoxy, be to show its most serious shortcomings.

 

1. Some objections to descriptivism

I want to start didactically, by explaining what are called the three basic objections to descriptivist theories of proper names.[32] Although they are not exhaustive, they give us a good point of departure. They can be called (i) the objection of rigidity (the modal problem) (ii) the objection of unwanted necessity (the epistemological argument), and (iii) the objection of ignorance and error (the semantic argument). I want to limit myself +here to a short critical exposition of these objections, leaving a more detailed discussion of examples for the next chapter.

   Let’s start with (i): the modal objection of rigidity.[33] Before exposing this objection, I wish to explain Kripke’s finding that a proper name is a rigid designator. A rigid designator can be defined as a term that designates the same object a in every possible world where this object a exists and does not designate anything other than this object a in any possible world.[34] A rigid designator contrasts with a non-rigid or accidental designator, which does not have this property.[35] In simpler words, a rigid designator is a term that would designate the same object in any counterfactual circumstance. The point of Kripke’s distinction can be better seen when we compare the behavior of proper names, which are the primary models of rigid designators, with the behavior of definite descriptions, which are normally accidental designators. Compare the proper name Columbus with the definite description ‘the discoverer of the New World.’ Columbus would refer to the same person in a near possible world where not he, but Vasco da Gama, had discovered the New World, since in this world Columbus prefered to remain a merchant in his hometown of Genova. The reference of the proper name Columbus does not change in this different possible world, since Columbus is a proper name. But the reference of the definite description changed from Columbus to Vasco da Gama. The definite description ‘the discoverer of the New World’ would also be applied in a world where Columbus didn’t exist, insofar as Vasco da Gama had discovered the New World.

   There is here a controversy concerning the possible worlds where the bearer of the name does not exist. In the case in which the bearer is a supposedly abstract object like the number 2, it is easy to conceive the bearer as existing in any possible world (for this reason it is called an obstinately rigid designator). But this is not so easily acceptable in cases of empirical names like that of Columbus. In the original presentation of the notion of rigid designator Kripke acknowledged this point:

 

When I use the notion of rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists. All I mean is that in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation in that the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object. In a situation where the object does not exist, then we should say that the designator has no referent and that the object in question so designated does not exist.[36]

 

This seems to me the most reasonable view regarding our robust common sense, for it is a conceptual rule of our language that we are able to use a word to refer only when its object of reference exists, otherwise not. And this also applies, of course, in counterfactual situations: if the object did not exist, we could not use the name to refer to the object. If a name could refer to non-existent objects, then I could invite 10000 non-existent persons to a party in my home, and all of them would find space enough free space to be well accommodated.

   Unfortunately, Kripke spoiled his useful tool by making its idea unreasonably complicated. In his 2019 talk “Naming and Necessity Revisited” he explained that in his main book, Naming and Necessity, there are two notions of rigid designator: (i) a de facto definition in the main text of the book, according to which: “a designator is rigid iff there is an object a that it designates with respect to every possible world in which a exists, and never designates another object with respect to any world”, intending “to be neutral about whether the term designates with respect to worlds where the object does not exist.” On the other hand, there is (ii) a de jure rigidity, for which “the main thing is that a name designates an object a independently of other consideration”, having a corollary that it “designates that object with respect to every world.” However, the only lesson one can learn from this de jure definition is trivial: what it means is only that a proper name is made to designate something in every possible world, even if it does in fact designate only in possible worlds where its designatum exists.

 

   Since this odd problem will have no impact on our further arguments, I prefer to ignore the suggestion that a proper name refers to an object in a possible world where this object does not exist. From now on, I will understand a rigid designator as what is called a persistent rigid designator, namely, a term that only refers in possible worlds where their objects of reference exist.

   Now we are prepared to understand the modal problem caused by the rigidity of proper names in contrast to descriptivism. Because proper names are always rigid designators, necessarily referring to the same object in any possible world where this object exists, and since definite descriptions are typically accidental designators, only possibly referring to the same object in different worlds, proper names cannot be equated with definite descriptions or even with clusters of definite descriptions, since they have different modal profiles: the mechanism by which a proper name refers must in some way be intrinsically different from the one by which a definite description refers.

   Indeed, it seems that for any description that we choose as the constituent of a proper name, it is always possible to imagine cases in which the object exists but the description applies to another object or simply does not apply to any object. As Kripke said against Searle’s version of cluster theory

 

It just is not, in any intuitive sense of necessity, a necessary truth that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him.[37]… It would seem that it is a contingent fact that Aristotle ever did any of the things that we attribute to him today, any of these great achievements that we so much admire.[38]

 

In fact, we can imagine a possible world in which Aristotle actually existed, but died in adolescence. In this world he does not satisfy the definite descriptions of having been the founder of the Lyceum, nor the preceptor of Alexander, nor the person who wrote the great philosophical texts for which his name is remembered. Even descriptions containing his place and date of birth are not guaranteed. We can perfectly imagine, as Kripke did, a possible world in where Aristotle lived five hundred years later, but could still be recognized as our own Aristotle.[39]

   However, the modal objection of rigidity applies only to descriptive theories that identify the meaning (or designator) of a proper name with a definite description or even with a precisely chosen subset of definite descriptions constituting the cluster. For those who read the previous chapter, it must have been clear that Frege did not advocate the simplist idea that a proper name does not have some independent sense, apart from the different senses given by the descriptions his users have in mind, neither Russell, who explicitly understood the senses of a proper names as clusters of descriptions, nor a later descriptivist like John Searle. A theory such as Searle’s is from the start immune to the modal objection, by emphasizing that no specific descriptions belonging to the cluster necessarily must be satisfied, although a sufficient yet undefined number of them must necessarily be satisfied. Even if it is possible to imagine, as Kripke did, that Aristotle does not satisfy the vast majority of descriptions attributed to him, it is not possible to imagine that he does not satisfy any of them. It is not possible to imagine, for example, that he was not a philosopher, but instead a famous Greek shipping magnate who lived in the twentieth century, seduced Maria Callas and married Jakqueline Kennedy, since this person certainly could have nothing to do with our Aristotle. Even the Aristotle who in a near possible world lived 500 years after the Aristotle known by us, would have to have done at least something relevantly “Aristotelian” to be recognized as our Aristotle, for example, he could have written the Nicomachean Ethics.

   Now we will consider (ii): the so-called epistemological objection of unwanted necessity.[40] If proper names replace descriptions, then, if the description applies, the name necessarily applies. If Aristotle replaced descriptions like ‘the author of Metaphysics,’ such descriptions should be analytically a priori, since the description ‘the author of Metaphysics’ would be part of Aristotle’s definition. Hence, to say that Aristotle was the author of the Metaphysics would be to make a tautological utterance, an utterance unable to withstand empirical impugnation. But that is not what happens. Aristotle could as well have existed, without ever having written a word of his Metaphysics.

   Thus considered, the objection of unwanted necessity clearly does not apply to a cluster theory of descriptions such as Searle’s, which does not require a priori necessity of any individual description or even of any group of descriptions belonging to the cluster. The only necessity that needs to be supported by a cluster theory is that at least one undefined minimal amount of weightier definite descriptions belonging to the cluster necessarily applies to the named object, in the case in which this object exists. Hence, there is no specific description or even conjunction of descriptions that is necessarily applicable. If we think in this way, then cluster descriptivism can still be seen as treating the proper name as a kind of rigid designator. Indeed, in the next chapter we will develop a more complex form of cluster theory in which this rigidity is clearly shown as unavoidable, and we will create a theoretical apparatus that allows us to answer descriptively Kripke’s counterexamples in depth, together with a counterexample of Donnellan in which he tries to challenge the minimal need of an only description, showing how even this attempt fails to resist scrutiny.

   Finally, there is the semantic objection (iii) of ignorance and error.[41] Kripke noted that we can associate with a proper name only a single indefinite description and even we can still refer. This is the case of the name ‘Feynman.’ Many people associate this name only with the indefinite description ‘an American physicist.’ And only very few would be able to answer that he was the inventor of quantum electrodynamics or to discourse on his contributions to microphysics. Even so, people are able to refer to Feynman by uttering his name. An indefinite description, however, is incapable of warranting the singularity of the reference. Therefore, descriptivism is insufficient. As for the problem of the errors, Kripke noted that in his time there were people who associated the description ‘the inventor of the atomic bomb’ with the name ‘Einstein.’ Although the description in fact never applied to the bearer of the name, those people could refer to Einstein, having that description in mind. Now, if so, then it seems that descriptions have little to do with the ways proper names refer to their objects.

   To this kind of objection Searle would answer that what matters most is the content that the people of the linguistic community to which the speaker belongs take as relevant to the designation of the object.[42] So, for Searle, assuming that the person has in mind a description such as ‘the individual my community calls Einstein.’ This may suffice to neutralize the divergent content. After learning that Feynman is the name of an American physicist, the speakers realize what Strawson called reference borrowing, which parasitically echoes the work of the effective reference made by specialized users of the word. If these justifications do not seem sufficient to you, a more complete answer will be given on the basis of the more systematic neodescriptivist theory to be developed in the next chapter.

   There are a number of other more interesting and specific objections to descriptivism, particularly the very imaginative counterexamples of Kripke and Donnellan. But I won’t be able to answer them in full until I have explained my own more complex version of a neodescriptivist theory of proper names. Thus, you will need to wait for the next chapter in order to get what I believe to be the most convincing answers. However, the few considerations offered above are already able to suggest that Kripke’s objections to descriptivism do not seem to be as decisive as his supporters like us to believe.[43]

   As already noted, it is difficult to find any decisive objection against a formulation of the descriptivist theory of proper names such as that developed by Searle, and the reason for this is that it was presented in a non-simplifying and sufficiently vague way. But, as will become clear in the next chapter, this advantage is also its greatest weakness, because, due to its own vagueness, this theory lacks the resources to provide more effective and complete answers to a variety of counterexamples and objections.

 

2. Baptism and causal-historical chains

Kripke’s criticism of descriptivism is only attractive because it was complemented by a more sophisticated and consequential version of the conception of reference allegedly introduced by J.S. Mill. Before explaining it, we need to remember once more the phenomenon of the rigidity of proper names. A proper name like Benjamin Franklin is rigid because it applies to the same object – Benjamin Franklin – in any possible world where that object exists. But the same is not true for definite description ‘the inventor of bifocals’, which applies to Benjamin Franklin in our own world, but that could apply to another person in a possible world where Benjamin Franklin had not invented bifocals, or even in a possible world where Benjamin Franklin never existed. And this definite description might also not apply to anyone in a world where bifocals were never invented, even if in this world Benjamin Franklin did exist. What is the explanation? For those sympathetic to the solution attributed to John Stuart Mill, the explanation is at hand. It comes from the idea that descriptions refer indirectly, by connoting attributes of objects, while proper names refer directly to their own objects, as if they were labels that had been stuck on them. This fact must make the references of proper names independent of descriptively representable accidental properties of their owners. The reference should in some way concern the object in itself.

   Kripke thinks similarly, but in a more sophisticated fashion. For him proper names also refer to their objects without connotative intermediaries like descriptions. This alone would explain why, unlike definite descriptions, the objects of reference of proper names remain the same in any possible world. Proper names may not refer to either bare particulars underlying objects, or to bundles of qualities constitutive of the object. As he writes, I suspect, inspired by something innefable like his personal belief in God, the particular simple souls of Midle-Ages and, maybe, by the Leibnizian Monads, which are also simple:

 

What I deny is that a particular is nothing but a ‘bundle of qualities,’ whatever that they mean. If a quality is an abstract object, a bundle of qualities is an object of an even higher degree of abstraction, not a particular. Philosophers have come to the opposite view through a false dilemma: they have asked: are these objects behind the bundle of qualities, or is the object nothing but the bundle? Neither is the case: this table is wooden, brown, in the room, etc. It has all these properties and it is not a thing without properties, behind them. But it should not therefore be identified with the set or ‘bundle’ of its properties, nor with the subset of its essential properties.[44]

 

Indeed, the dilemma as he poses it isn’t acceptable: objects are neither bundles of abstract qualities without individuation criteria, nor unknowable naked substrates as such. But Kripke in the end rejects the dilemma without recognizing it as pointing to a substantial problem. Accepting that there is no alternative, he pretends not to feel the pressure to offer a way out. He just asks us to accept the fact that we identify particulars for what are, as if identification did not demand further explanation, as if it happened in a magical way. Nonetheless, it seems to our commonsense that the right way to avoid magic and find the path of explanation is by admitting that this identification happens by recognizing properties or combinations of object-identifying properties, whatever they may be. When we think that there might be rules ordering the valid combinations of object-identifying properties, we see that not all doors are closed.

   If there were really no alternative, Kripke’s answer would be admissible and our dissatisfaction with it would not be an ontological, but rather an anthropological problem. However, there is an alternative! It consists in resorting to the emerging ontology of tropes. According to this ontological theory, first suggested by Donald Williams,[45] our world, and indeed any possible world, is totally constituted by elements called tropes, (abstract particulars, singularized properties…), which are nothing but spatio-temporally localizable properties. Thus, not only the red color of that sofa, but the weight of this computer, its hardness, its forms, insofar as these things can be spatio-temporally localized, are tropes. Psychological entities also, like pain, are tropes. Furthermore, even invisible but indirectly accessible properties, like the basic forces of nature, properties investigated by advanced science, should be dispersally located properties, hence tropes.[46] This is not so easy when we consider higher order properties like existence or a number, but even so they seem to be primarily spatio-temporally localizable.[47]  It seems clear to me that Williams was trying to rescue our commonse concept of property, which was for too long a time corrupted by philosophers, since when asked what a property is, people will begin by pointing to things belonging to their surroundings, and not to something belonging to any only intellectually graspable abstract entity.

   According to trope theory physical-material objects (particulars) no longer need to be identified with sets of abstract properties. These objects are nothing but more or less systematic groupings of compresent (that is, spacio-temporally localizable) properties. Such particularized properties, the tropes, have nothing to do with the problematic abstract properties (forming supposed ‘bundles of qualities’) targeted by Kripke’s criticism, since trope theory identifies universals (abstract entities) with sets of tropes qualitatively identical to each other (or, to be more realistic, in order to circumvent the requirement of the knowledge of a whole set of tropes, which is usually impossible, the universal can be considered any amount of tropes identical to a given trope used as a model[48]).

  Trope ontology is a metaphysical theory. But from a linguistic perspective these tropes could be identified by means of criterial identifying rules[49] that could be in principle expressed by definite descriptions. Therefore, at least in principle we have a more auspicious response to the Kripkian objection that there is no set or sub-set of essential properties to be identified with the object.

   A trope-theoretical alternative, however, was something relatively ignored in the 1960s, when Kripke developed his ideas. Moreover, it would have been of no value to him, since this theory seems to conform much better to some form of descriptivism, picking out properties by description-rules. After all, if the object referred to by a name is something like a more or less systematic grouping of compresent tropes, it seems that the way in which the name refers to it must be by identifying appropriately chosen tropes or combinations of tropes through which a unique object can be presented to us and identified as such. These varied tropes and their combinations, in turn, would eventually be able to satisfy the criterial conditions demanded by the criterial identification rule (Identifikationsregel, according to Ernst Tugendhat) belonging to the proper name, able to be expressed by definite descriptions. We will see in the next chapter how this kind of rule can be effectively constructed.

   Assuming, for the purpose of discussion, that Kripke’s answer is correct, the question that emerges is about the formation of proper names: how are these rigid designators capable of referring to their bearers without the intermediation of connotated properties? The answer he offers lies in his causal-historical theory[50] of the referential relationship, according to which names refer through an appropriate causal relationship with their objects. Here is how he presents it[51]:

 

A rough statement of a theory might be the following: An initial ‘baptism’ takes place. Here the object may be named by ostension, or the reference of the name may be fixed by a description. When the name is passed ‘from link to link’ the receiver of the name must, I think, intend, when he learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it.[52]

 

In other words: first there is the reference fixing, which can be by baptizing an object with a proper name or by provisionally fixing the reference by means of a definite description. Then, the same object is referred to using the same name by other speakers, who hear it from the first speaker. Even if the description they may link to the name proves insufficient or erroneous, the reference will occur, insofar as the causal chain is maintained and the various speakers preserve the intention to refer to the same specific object referred to by those who first learned the proper name. Thus, if I now write the name ‘Aristotle’ it is because this spelling is located at the end of a (presumed) immensely complex causal-historical chain that began when someone for the first time baptized the baby Aristotle with the name ‘Aristotle’ in Stagira. If my writing of the name ‘Aristotle’ were located at the end of a causal-historical chain that began with the naming of Aristotle Onassis, this would be the wrong chain, and I would not be speaking of the philosopher Aristotle. The ultimate criterion for the correct reference of a proper name would be the right causal chain and not any kind of definite description, even if definite descriptions can be a helpful device in order to indicate where a causal chain must begin.

   One important point is that Kripke demands from the speaker the intention to refer to the same object referred to by the person from whom he heard the name. It should be noted that this intention to refer to the same object cannot be confused with the intention of referring to a specifiable object (like the greatest philosopher of antiquity), since in this case the intention would need to be determined through cognitions capable of being linguistically retrieved by means of definite descriptions of the object.

   We can explain causal-historical theory by designating as primary namers the people who have established the social practices of reference of a name (as with those responsible for baptism, but also experts) and using the term subsequent namers for the users of the same name. With this in mind we can build the following schema of a causal-historical chain:

 

                           Primary namer(s)  ß   causal relationship with the object

                         ¯ ... (causal relations)

                          Subsequent namers

                         ¯ ... (causal relations)

                          Final namer (utterance by some speaker)

 

There are some proper names that are introduced through descriptions and not baptism, as Kripke himself acknowledged. Consider the case of the proper name of an inferred object, such as the planet Neptune. The astronomer Le Verrier calculated that there should be a new planet located in a certain region of space, which would be responsible for deviations in Uranus’ orbit. Le Verrier called this planet ‘Neptune’ before he even found it, keeping in mind the descriptions corresponding to its approximate location and mass. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that once the object is found, the reference turns out to be supported by the causal chain that begins with its naming, so that the description may even be proved false without the name losing its reference.[53]

   From what we have considered so far, we must conclude that there is a fairly convincing intuitive element in causal-historical view that even a descriptivist should take in to account. Our universe is an indescribably intrincate causal ocean. Events are constantly causing and and being caused from multiple sides and in multiple ways. Thus, if I now utter the name ‘Aristotle,’ it is undeniable that I can only designate this philosopher because there is, within the indescribably intrincate causal ocean, one already vastly complex causal chain that ended at my current utterence of the name, and that has its origins in the act of baptism of the baby Aristotle… Furthermore, a causal function may be found even indirectly, as in the case of the previous baptism of the planet Neptune, since this planet has caused a change in the perielium of Uranus, allowing Le Verrier’s inference of Neptune’s existence and location; here there is also a causal chain, though not the chain considered by Kripke. As a Kripkean causal-historical baptism or in any other way, there is no doubt that if the object of reference exists, then there must be some kind of causal chain that ends in our naming of this object, otherwise not. Any descriptivist who knows what causality is will need to admit this point. However, the question that concerns me is how much the evocation of these unknown but hipothetically warranted causal chains will contribute to the explanation of the referential function. My guess is that in themselves they can be of no use.

 

3. Internal problems

I now want to move on to a critical analysis of the Kripkian conception, considering some internal difficulties of his causal-historical theory of the reference.

   The first one is as follows. In the passages where Kripke introduces his idea of the causal-historical chain, he explicitly resorts to at least one intention, which is “to use the name with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it.” This intention serves to select the object referred to in the communication link of the causal-historical chain as being the same, both for the speaker and for the hearer.[54] However, if this intention to preserve the same reference is understood as preserving the same cognitive contents linked to the name, we fall back into descriptivism, because these contents are already those that, in order to be interpersonally accessible, must be expressed through descriptions. But if so, descriptivism emerges from the hearth of the Kripkian causal-historical view, ruining the supposed advantage of causal-historical theory – that of having overcome descriptivism.

   One can try to circumvent the exposed flaw by suggesting that the intention is to preserve the same reference independently of being able to conceive anything of its intentional object. However, if the hearer does not need to have any idea of what the speaker’s intention might be, then the intention of referring to the same object with the same name is reduced to an arbitrary bet. It is like someone who says, “I am going to buy the same things you bought, but you don’t need to tell me what they were” – which translates an empty intention that has no function. The intention to refer to the same thing without knowing anything about what the thing is, is of no use and its explanatory power is null. If anyone asks me who Aristotle was, it is no use to say: “Follow the same causal chain I am following when I utter the name ‘Aristotle’... but don’t forget to have the intention of referring to the same person I am referring to.”

   The second difficulty concerns change in reference. Gareth Evans has formulated a decisive counterexample to this, which concerns the proper name ‘Madagascar.’[55] According to him the name ‘Madagascar’ was once used to refer to the easternmost region of the African continent. But when Marco Polo visited there, an incorrect translation led him to think that Madagascar was the name of the great island situated near the east coast of Africa. Later, due to Marco Polo’s accounts, people came to call the island by the name of Madagascar, forgetting the original reference. Certainly, if the name’s reference were fixed only by appeal to an initial baptism, this change could not have occurred. Marco Polo even intended to refer to the same thing as the person from whom he first heard the proper name and not to introduce a new reference to the same name.

   An answer to this type of objection was suggested by Michael Devitt. According to this author, the meaning of a proper name does not have to do with the reference itself, but is an ability to designate an object.[56] This ability is not often learned by a single baptism, but by many, in a process he called multiple grounding. Thus, the name Madagascar had been fixed through multiple baptisms as an eastern region of the African continent, until it was inadvertently renamed by Marco Polo. If in the subsequent uses people went on to follow Marco Polo in referring to the island, this is because the multiple grounding came into action forming a new habit of referring, thereby giving a different sense to the name.

   What seems problematic to me in this appeal to multiple grounding producing a habit is that it uses a psychological-empirical mechanism that in itself may not be able to reflect the conventional element of the proper name’s use. Apart from that, although it may apply to Madagascar, it does not seem to apply to Aristotle, who was at once baptized and cannot be renamed because he lived so long ago. One answer that seeks to avoid the problem may be that of Kripke himself.[57] For him, an intention, in this case, Marco Polo’s intention to refer to an island, overcomes the intention of past users of the name and establishes a new social practice. His intention gave the proper name a new meaning and a new reference. The change therefore turns out to be mere homonymity. Although this response may be more appropriate, it still suffers from camouflaged descriptivism by reflecting a new consonance of intention. After all, Marco Polo’s intention to refer to the island must be able to be expressed by descriptions such as ‘the great sub-equatorial island near the eastern coast of the African continent,’ since he would have had something like that in mind.

   A descriptivist would have no difficulty with Evans’ example.[58] There were indeed two occasions on which identifying descriptions were built. The first is the reference to ‘Madagascar’ as ‘the eastern region of Africa,’ which could have been multiply grounded. On the second occasion, Marco Polo unwittingly baptized the great sub-equatorial island near to the eastern coast as ‘Madagascar.’

  An additional difficulty, which I want to brief consider, concerns the meaning of several proper names of the same owner. There are cases where these proper names have the same informative content (e.g., “Everyone calls Beatriz Bia”). But there are cases where the informative content differs. For example, Father Marcial Maciel was the founder of the Legionaries of Christ order and unfortunately also a criminal. Among his many illegal activities was to the use of false identities. One of them was Raúl Rivas, a false name under which he claimed to be a Shell employee and CIA agent. In 1976 Rivas met Blanca Gutiérrez, who fell in love with him. Rivas had two children with her without her having discovered his true identity. The informative contents of the names ‘Marcial Maciel’ and ‘Raúl Rivas’ are certainly very diverse, although they referred to the same person. Cluster theory would find no problem in explaining this difference. An advocate of this theory would say that the set of descriptions abbreviated by the false name Raúl Rivas would have been publicly regarded as being completely different from the set of descriptions abbreviated by his real name, which is why their meanings were seen as so diverse. All that occurred is that later it was discovered that the first set of descriptions was actually a subset of the second one, that is, that the meaning-content given by the sub-cluster of descriptions of the false name Raúl Rivas was actually part of the meaning-content of the cluster of descriptions of the real name Marcial Maciel. This explains not only why the two identities were the same person, but also why it was possible for Blanca Gutiérrez not to know that they were the same person.

   It does not seem too difficult to find an explanation for what happened from the perspective of causal-historical theory. Suppose, first, that in the causal-historical theory the meaning of the proper name was given by its ultimate causal source… the given object in the act of baptism. Since this source is the same for both proper names, it seems at first that they should be seen as having the same reference. But that would be counter-intuitive, since it would leave unexplained the reason why Blanca Gutiérrez could not identify Raúl Rivas as being the same person as Marcial Maciel. Suppose, alternatively, that the source of meaning and referential function is the very act of baptism, which is in more conformity with Kripke’s views. In this case, we will have two different acts, one for each proper name (in this case, Marcial Maciel has self-baptized with the nickname of Raúl Rivas, beginning a new causal chain by telling his new name for Blanca Gutiérrez and her family). One could now object that in this case we no longer have any intrinsic reason to say that the two names refer to the same object. The best answer would then be to suggest that, although the baptismal acts of the two names took place at different times, the object of reference that is causally involved is the same. Blanca Gutiérrez learned of the causal chain passed to her through the self-baptized Raúl Rivas with the intention of her referring to him using his alias, although she knew nothing of the causal-historical chain initiated by the baptism of Marcial Maciel with the intention of referring to the latter.

   However, how causal-historical theory be able to explain that Raúl Rivas and Marcial Maciel were the same person? Why didn’t Blanca become aware that Raúl Rivas was Marcial Maciel? How could she much later come to the schocking discovery that Raúl Rivas was in fact the same person as Marcial Maciel? Maybe refinements of causal-historical theory could answer these questions. My suspicion, however, is that something important is missing. It seems that causal-historical theories are not quite capable of standing alone.[59]

 

 4. Indirect causalist references

There are other difficulties that have been pointed out in causal-historical theory, whose consideration can be instructive. One of them concerns names that do not seem to have any causal relationship with their references. I want to start by considering two examples given by John Searle, for whom the cause of the proper name’s utterance by its bearer does not need to exist. First, knowing that there is a 5^th Avenue, we can infer that there is a 4^th Avenue, thus referring to a street in New York that we have never heard of and that cannot be at the causal-historical origin of our utterance.[60] The second example concerns Pharaoh Ramses VIII. All we know about this Pharaoh is that he came after Ramses VII and before Ramses IX. But with this information we can already infer that Ramses VIII existed, without any causal-historical chain having reached us from his baptism.

   Other examples are things that will only exist in the future, such as the hurricane called ‘Katrina,’ which received this name before it developed, or the planned city called ‘Brasília,’ which would have received this name in 1823, a name given by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, who made the proposal to move the capital of Brazil to the interior of the country. Only in 1956, by decision of President Juscelino Kubitschek, did work begin on a new capital with the name Brasília. It is true that the new city can be rebaptized after coming to exist in the material world after long existing in the imagination and being referred to by a definite description: “a capital to be built in the center of the country.” This recalls the example of the planet Neptune, but it is not quite the same. The cause of Neptune’s discovery was that changes in the orbital perielium of Uranus pointed to the hypothesis that the cause of these changes would be the attraction exercized by an external planet. But the causes of the existence of Brasília were ideas and intentions in the minds of certain people. Indeed, if a proper name has a referent, it is always possible to find causes for its function of naming, even if they are not the referent in itself, and if this referent comes to existence, it can be transformed in the cause of the utterance of the name. Nonetheless, although causality is unavoidable for the reference of a proper name, it is clear that it is not always a causal-chain that begins with a baptism. What can we say about the time during which the proper name ‘Neptune’ was applied by Le Verrier before the planet’s discovery? What can we say about the application of the name ‘Brasília’ before the city was built? Suppose, for instance, that President Kubitschek had been wise enough to see that building a capital in the uninhabited center of a coutry was in fact a megalomaniac dream and had decided not build the city. Would the name lose its meaning? Certainly not. Would the name lose its reference? Yes, but lack of reference does not seem to be a sufficient reason why it would cease to be a proper name, at least insofar as we take seriously the normal use of the word.

   Still another example is the reference to merely possible things, such as Lauranda, an imaginary human being who could have been born but was not, conceived from the sperm cell that originated Laura and the egg that originated her sister Amanda.[61] And there are also cases of names of abstract objects, like the number p in geometry, which does not seem able to possess causal efficacy. Kripke does not deny that all these names have reference, but his theory seems insufficient to explain it.

   There are, however, possible answers in defense of the causal-historical view. One would be to require only a potentially existing causal-historical chain, even if it is not actually given to us. In all above described cases this potentiality exists. But this solution may be too weak. Even if it were a necessary condition, it would be insufficient, since it seems to be a mere potentiality which allows us to use the name referentially. An intuitive variant would be to require the existence of any circumstances that make the referential use of the proper name causally possible, circumstances which in one way or another involve the object referred to, whether actual or not, in causal terms. This happens, for example, in the case of Le Verrier, who calculated that a hypothetical planet could be causing the pertubations in the orbit of Uranus, calling it ‘Neptune’: the gravitational force of the supposed planet would modify the axial orbit of Uranus. Having this supposed fact, whose assumption could be credibly caused, causally determined the development of the hypothesis in Le Verrier’s mind – if this fact were not reasonably conceivable, it certainly would not have determined the development of his hypothesis. These two conditions can be united in the formulation of the following causal condition:

 

Cc:

Effective referential use of a proper name is only possible if:

(i) it is adequately caused by a baptism that involves (directly or not) its object of reference,

or if

(ii) there are causal circumstances that somehow involve the object of reference of the name (whether actual or not) and whose knowledge would allow us to infer its existence, which, in its turn, could later be able to become (by means of baptism) the most suitable causal origin of the name’s referential use.

 

We can apply Cc (ii) to the above cases. If we apply this condition to Searle’s two examples, it is possible to respond considering that what we call an efficient cause is only a more relevant element of a distinctive set of causal factors that constitutes a situation, a state of affairs, even a process, many of these factors being such that they can be inferred as existing.[62] Thus, knowing that 5^th Avenue is the effective causal factor that is at the origin of the causal chain that allows us to name it, and knowing that parallel avenues are often consecutively numbered, we infer that 4^th Avenue must be part of a state of affairs constituted by a sequence of numbered avenues assumed as causal factors, and, consequently, that a 4^th Avenue should probably also exist. Along with this, we also conclude that 4^th Avenue could be a potential (baptized) cause of our referential use of this name (which may well be a false conclusion). Likewise, Ramses VII and Ramses IX are part of a causal process of succession of pharaohs that of course should include Ramses VIII. This last pharaoh, though unknown by us, is an element of the causal process that contains the causal chains of Ramses VII and Ramses IX, which effectively reach us, allowing us to recognize Ramses VIII as an associated causal factor. It doesn’t matter that such causal factors are not part of the efficient causal factor that reached us; important is that they must have been part of the respective state of affairs or process that formed the complex of causal factors that initiated the causal-historical chain that came to us under the name of 5^th Avenue.

   In the case of Hurricane Katrina, there were already known causal factors that would allow predicting its appearance, but these elements, although responsible for the name, are not the hurricane itself, although they caused it. In the case of Brasília, the city originally existed only in the mind of José Bonifácio and later in the mind of Kubitschek, the architects and urban planners. The original cause was the President’s intention to build a new capital.[63] All those conditions are already causal factors that involve the object of reference (even if merely conceived and non-actual) as determining causes of its realization. And both Katrina and Brasília became, once they existed, the causal factors determining the referential use use of their proper names in the way Kripke expected. In the case of Lauranda, we should only remember that a merely possible object is not an existing object, and that consequently this proper name must lack reference; it is so even if there are enabling causal circumstances, and even if Lauranda will in fact one day come into the world. Obviously, we can refer to the Lauranda in our immagination, to the possible Lauranda. Finally, the number may be considered the result of circumstances of fixation of the reference. We get to p by dividing the diameter of a circle by its radius (the supposed absence of causality may be only apparent, since we inevitably perceive, draw or imagine approximate real circles in applied geometry). A trope theory of tropical numbers can even be sketched, insofar as numbers are primarily objects of counting, being therefore spatio-temporally localizable.[64] It seems, consequently, that in any of the cases considered so far, at least the causal condition Cc, which can be understood as a clarification of Kripke’s causal-historical view, is capable of being satisfied.

   Another type of objection is one that results from the elaboration of imaginary situations in which the causal-historical chain does not exist. Searle envisioned a small linguistic community in which each proper name is established indexically in the presence of all other speakers, so that no causal chain needs to form. This argument demonstrates that the causal-historical chain may be unnecessary, but it does not demonstrate that baptism is unnecessary, or that no causal relationship is necessary for the constitution of the referential function of proper names.[65]

   One can ask if there are more resistant difficulties with the causal-historical view, concerning what seem to be the coincidental references of some proper names.

   First, it seems possible to imagine situations where the successful referential use of a proper name does not work even through Cc(ii). Let’s say there is a fortune teller who, looking at his crystal ball, is able to guess proper names and inform us of all sorts of things about their reference. He looks at her crystal ball and cries ‘Kamchatka!,’ referring to the many  volcanoes on this isolated peninsula. He looks again at the ball and cries out ‘Tom Castro!,’ going on to discourse on the life of this notorious villain. If, after making all the conceivable tests, we did not discover any trick, we would begin to suspect that she can tell fortunes without having to resort either to causal-historical chains or to any circumstances that allow her to infer the causes for her assertions as to the existence of the bearers of our proper names. By peering into the glass, she effectively refers (even if she resorts to descriptions to prove it). Even so, we would tend to assume that a name has reference whenever we know causally that it has one. Moreover, even if the causal relationship of what she sees is never clarified with causal-historical chains, this does not demonstrate that it does not exist. Finally, one can object that, given our present knowledge, the described occurrences are physically impossible.

   We can even try to conceive of an extreme situation: a possible world endowed with some kind of pre-established harmony, in which people function in a way similar to Leibnizian monads; they do not need to learn the senses or references of proper names, and communicate them to each other in order to learn their uses. Each person would have proper names popping up in his or her mind, with an inexplicable agreement between the senses and references that each person gave to each name; one person would utter a proper name only to communicate something contingent about its bearer that other people still do not know. Nevertheless, this hypothesis again seems too implausible. This is not how we use proper names to refer in our world, nor are we really able to imagine how that would occur in any possible world.

   It seems that none of the objections considered so far is strong enough to destroy the causal conception of reference, as presented by the Cc condition or by some similar formulation, even though Cc weakens the original intuition tending to turn it into the common-place that reference inevitably involves some kind of causal relation between the name and its reference. Anyway, the expected causal path can be in this way more clearly shown.

 

5. Coincidental reference

There are, however, other possible examples that at first glance seem to resist the idea that the Cc condition is indispensable to their reference: this is what we might call coincidental references.

   Consider the following imaginary case of a proper name with no causal relationship to its reference. Let us say that a young called Jaime, who likes to play bland games, knows a girl named Elaine very well. Suppose now that he creates a name, ‘Ivny,’ for a crockery doll he imagines belongs to Elaine, adding to it that the doll was given to her when she was younger, and that she has stored it in the back of a wardrobe. Starting with this, Jaime produced a considerable group of merely invented descriptions which he associates with the name ‘Ivny.’ Let’s just suppose that by an incredible coincidence this guess turns out to be correct, for that is the doll’s name. In that case, could we say that Jaime referred to Yvny? Shouldn’t we admit that he had referred to Yvny, even if only by an absurd coincidence? It would be possible to say that the name ‘Yvny’ has a descriptive meaning and that therefore it is even possible to determine its reference. In this case, the conclusion seems to be that, although there is no causal-historical chain between the object and the utterance of its name, the reference is possible. But it is only possible because the name has meaning in the sense of demanding an appropriate descriptive content be associated with it.

   The same phenomenon seems to be in principle found in indexical utterances. Suppose that Mary is blindfolded and tries to guess what was put on the table in front of her by saying:

 

1.     On this table there is a flower pot.

 

Suppose that by pure chance she hits on the truth: a flower pot was actually placed on the table. Does Mary, when guessing, thinking and saying the sentence (1), refers to the flower pot on the table? It can be remembered that the sentence is true, and that since it is true, she seems to have referred to the flower pot.

    However, an advocate of a causal relation between the act of naming and its object might answer that in both cases there is an error. In the case of Jaime, the name gains reference only for those who knows there is a doll in the wardrobe. And in the case of Mary, she herself does not know that the sentence is true, because although the thought expressed by the sentence is true, it is only true for some witnesses, that is, for example, an interpreter who hears the sentence and compares the thought it expresses with the corresponding fact. In any case, we have the impression that in this case, as in the previous case, the reference is made, albeit in a purely coincidental way. But this is an illusory coincidental reference.

   In the face of examples such as these, the question whether a purely coincidental reference is a reference in the proper sense of the word receives a negative answer. The coincidental reference seems to me as unreal as a name engraved on a stone in an isolated region, which by chance is the same as the name of a traveler who happened to find and read it. The representational process is causal in nature, however indirect this relationship may be. Reference is an association we make between the word and the world and this association must inevitably involve causation from world to word and we might suppose, intention from word to world. The best explanation here would be that purely coincidental reference – even when at first sight it may not seem to be one – it is a merely illusory form of reference.

 

6. Empty proper names

A resilient problem left unexplained by the causal-historical theory concerns proper names without reference. Here are some examples:

 

1. Vulcan
2. Eldorado

3.     Atlantis

4.     Rumpelstiltskin

5.     Sherlock Holmes

6.     Gandalf

7.     Urville

 

Such names cannot satisfy Cc, as they lack even a potentially causal real object. As they have signification, they do not constitute a problem for Fregean or descriptivist theories of reference, according to which the existence of the meaning does not depend on the existence of the reference. For them, what constitutes the proper name is its referential meaning (sense), not the success of its referential function. However, the admission of names without reference can be a serious problem for causalist theories such as Kripke’s, which make the referential function of a proper name dependent on an existing reference, which seems to be what truly makes them proper names.

   The most common strategy for the defender of causal-historical theory is to suggest that proper names without reference are not true proper names, but disguised definite descriptions, which are made to refer by means of a connotative mechanism in some way completely different from the way proper names refer. The problem is that careful examination reveals that many empty proper names are too similar to the most common proper names to be seriously considered disguised descriptions.

   First consider the examples (1)-(3). If we examine them more closely we will see that these names do not replace a single definite description, but a variety of descriptions, leading us back to a cluster theory. In the case of Vulcan, it is the name of a small planet postulated by Urban Le Verrier in the 19th century as orbiting about 21 million Km from the Sun, in order to explain the changes in Mercury’s perihelion (which after 1915 were explained by the general theory of relativity). It is possible to suggest that this last sentence expresses only a single composite definite description. But (3) and (4) can be seen as proper names with even more elaborate informational content, not differing too much from what we expect from cluster theories of proper names.

   The proper name ‘Eldorado’ comes from varied indigenous accounts and rituals, which led the Spanish conquistadors to believe that in some region in the western Amazon there could be a city whose king dressed in gold and possessed unbelievable riches. Based on these and other descriptions, adventurers and explorers descended to the mouth of the Amazon looking in vain to find it and sometimes ending up as a repast of cannibals. The legendary name ‘Atlantis’ was associated by Plato with a variety of descriptions telling of the existence of an island situated between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean; this island, which among other things would have been inhabited by a very rich people, would have disappeared due to a tsunami that occurred about 9,000 years BC. If a place like Eldorado or Atlantis were found, it would be because at least some part of those descriptions and the respective clusters applies.

   It is true that the clusters of descriptions of the examples above are still very poor compared to those of common proper names such as Mars, Paris and Aristotle. But the reason for this must be found in the simple fact that the bearers of the usual proper names persist in their causal interaction with us, allowing us over time to accumulate identifying information, enriching ever more their bundles of descriptions. In contrast, empty first names are in a situation similar to that of the planet Neptune shortly after the discovery of their existence by Le Verrier. Anyway, none of this indicates that it is necessary to postulate an identification mechanism essentially different from that given by descriptions with a supposed causal basis. Moreover, as we will see with the proper name ‘Urville,’ poverty of descriptions is not an unavoidable property of empty names.

   Now compare the operation of the name ‘Atlantis’ with that of the name ‘Troy.’ In the latter case, all that was available was a limited cluster of descriptions taken from Homer’s Iliad. However, unlike the previous cases, Troy was actually found. As is well known, having taken seriously these descriptions and the local indications of Frank Calvert, Heinrich Schliemann found the site where the remains of the true city of Troy lie. What is the difference between the names ‘Eldorado’ and ‘Atlantis,’ on one side, and the name ‘Troy,’ on the other? In my view, only one: the former are almost certainly empty, the latter not. Other than that, they all behave the same way. Therefore, a word like ‘Eldorado’ is (almost certainly) a truly empty name, and the causal-historical theory does not seem able to explain why it is called a ‘proper name’ and why it certainly has meaning. We can admit that, unlike the empty proper name, the true proper name is able to have reference subject to an appropriate causal-historical relationship, current or potential, with its object of reference. But that doesn’t make the former essentially diverse.

Let us now consider the examples (4)-(6), which, unlike (1)-(3), are of purposely fictional names. Here we also have clusters of identifying descriptions of the object, only that they are not made to be applied to the real world, but only to the domain of objects belonging to fictional worlds. ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ abbreviates identifying descriptions of a greedy dwarf in a fairy tale, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ abbreviates those of a brilliant detective from a series of Arthur Conan Doyle short stories, ‘Gandolf’ abbreviates detailed descriptions of a magician belonging to the fictional world created by J.R.R. Tolkien. The identification mechanisms remain the same, changing only the domain of application, which in these cases is that of merely fictional realities; there is a causal-mental relationship here with the fairy tale, with Conan Doyle stories, and with Tolkien’s fictional world.

   One last case I would like to consider is that of the curious fictional city of Urville. This city is located in the southeast of France. It was founded in in the year 1,100 BC by the Phoenicians, was transformed into a city-state in the Middle-Ages, and occupied by the Nazis during World War II... These are the main descriptions by which we build the rule that enables us to locate it. Urville is also the largest city in Europe, the present capital of France, with about 12 million inhabitants... these being only a small part of the uncommonly complex cluster of descriptions constitutive of the criterial rule by means of which we are enabled to identify Urville. The only problem is that Urville obviously does not exist. This city is the product of the imagination of an autistic designer called Gilles Tréhin, who for more than twenty years conceived and drew the city in its smallest details. He created for the name ‘Urville’ a precise and extraordinarily complex fictional cluster of descriptions that should work as its identification rule. Although constructed in the most realistic possible way, this rule does not apply to our actual world. It is as if it belonged to a very close possible world, in which history had had a small but significant change: Urville in place of Paris. The case of the proper name ‘Urville’ definitely shows that an empty name cannot simply be reduced to a definite description, even to a composite one. Urville is an empty proper name replacing a very complex cluster of descriptions, since realism was the main goal of Gilles Tréhin. The city and its history together with more than 300 drawings were published in the form of a book in 2006.

  Even assuming that empty proper names such as (1)-(7) do not abbreviate isolated definite descriptions, but clusters of descriptions, thus satisfying the descriptivist view, there are possible strategies for causal-historical theory to be applied to these cases. The causal theorist can admit that at least the names (1)-(3) and (7) could be true proper names that, although not achieving a reference to real objects, have at least fixing circumstances of reference given by descriptive means. Although such circumstances exist, the object of reference does not exist in the actual world.[66]  However, in many cases, they show us how we could find it if it existed. Their objects of reference would be potential objects, no less than Lauranda. But the fixing circumstances of the reference could already be seen as having a causal role in determining the referential use and supposedly the meaning of the proper name. It can therefore be suggested that a proper name may have meaning and be empty to the extent that it contains circumstances that fix the reference capable of making the existence of its object of reference at least possible.

   Although this solution, like other conceivable ones, may be attempted, it suffers from a serious deficiency with regard to the very concept of the reference’s fixing circumstances. Not being Kripkian objects, such circumstances can only be understood at the end of the day in terms of properties or sets of criterial properties. Such properties, in turn, can be described. And their descriptions end up showing themselves as descriptions or clusters of descriptions abbreviated by empty proper names. With this we again admit assumptions proper to a view of proper names endowed with a descriptivist background.

 

7. Empty names and persistent designators

The admission that proper names should maintain their status, even if not referring to anything, allows us to dissolve the ambiguity existing in the Kripkian conception of rigid designator. Kripke initially defined the rigid designator as what we now call a persistent designator: the one that designates the same object in any possible world in which that object exists, otherwise designating nothing. Later and in other passages he defined the rigid designator as what we now call an obstinate designator: [67] the one that designates the same object in all possible worlds, even in those where this object does not exist. Kripke himself, although at first preferring to remain neutral concerning what definition would be the right one[68], in the end preferred the second and thorniest alternative.[69] As I already noted, I am not concerned here with too subtle interpretative details regarding this point, since they are not strong enough to make the intuitive (grammatical-conceptual) view reasonable, according to which we cannot refer to something that by definition does not exist in a possible world. (The “Gricean” principle involved is: We should not transgress ordinary language led by insufficient reasons.)

   That proper names are persistent designators is in accordance with the assumption that in a world where an object does not exist, the existence of its proper name characterized by its identifying function would not be asked for. But there seems to be an advantage in admitting that proper names are obstinate designators, which is to be able to explain why we can talk about them as designating non-actualized possibilities in the possible world in question. Consider, for example, a world where Aristotle never existed. Even so, it seems that we can assume the possibility of his existence in this world. But this assumption only seems feasible if the proper name ‘Aristotle’ has some reference, even if it is not given in such a world.[70] Hence, one answer for those who accept that proper names are obstinate designators is to say that in worlds where a reference like Aristotle does not exist they refer to the object in our own present world.[71] But how coherent can this answer be, since it seems clear that we cannot use a name for an object in a possible world without inserting the name into that world; and inserting the name into a possible world necessitates relating it to the context of that world. From this it follows that using a name in a possible world so that it refers to our present world would be the same as trying to insert it simultaneously into the contexts of the two worlds, which would lead to confusion about satisfying the criteria for contextual insertion: Aristotle would have written and not written his Metaphysics, he would wear a beard and be clean shaven, etc.

   To this problem we could add the easily forgotten common sense consideration that there is no reference without an object of reference. Using Wittgensteinian jargon, we can say that it is part of the grammar of our concept of reference that we can only assign referential function to a term if we admit that its object of reference exists, so that whenever we discover that this object does not exist, we deny referential success. That is: in no possible way can a proper name refer to something real that does not really exist.[72]

   It is worth noting, however, that our intuition that a proper name can refer to a non-actual object (e.g. Vulcan) in a possible world other than ours is directly dependent on the admission that that name has a descriptive meaning. Only then can we, using our imagination, make an empty proper name designate an object in a counterfactual circumstance where the object could come into existence.

   Thus, the absence of acts of reference without objects of reference does not mean that we cannot talk about non-actualized possibilities of reference. We can, finding ourselves in our present world, refer to objects that are non-actualized possibilities, such as Vulcan, Eldorado, Atlantis... simply in the sense that we can imagine possible circumstances or worlds in which these names have references. It is easy to explain how this is possible if we admit that the meaning of a proper name is given by descriptive modes of presentation in some way building their identification rules (see Chapter III), because, even if these rules are not satisfied in the actual world, they can conceivably be satisfied in some possible world, justifying in this way the possibility of its reference. If we admit – against Kripke – that proper names do not demand the existence of the object as a guarantee of their proper status, the understanding of a proper name as a persistent designator becomes the most natural one. Thus, from now on I will understand rigid designators as being persistent designators.

 

8. The complete Kripkian automaton

We can also demonstrate the indispensability of the cognitive-representational and potentially descriptive element through a reductio ad absurdum. For this we need to resort to the idea of what could be called a complete Kripkian automaton. This would be an automaton capable of creating and using proper names satisfying Kripke’s external causalism in a consequent way. It is complete in the sense that it does not run any risk of implying descriptivism, since it does not need to satisfy even the requirement of being able to have the intention of using words with the same reference as other automatons of the same species in any cognitive sense of the word ‘intention.’ It is, therefore, a primitive mechanism, devoid of any form of mind or consciousness, but still capable of “identifying” people through their photoelectric sensors and “baptizing” them with “proper names.” Imagine now a “society” of these automatons. They would be able to retain images and behavioral traits of the person they have “baptized” with a proper name and even transmit them to other similar automatons, in this way “communicating” them, which enables them to repeat the person’s “name” when they “see” her, or when appropriately “asked” about what a person with such and such characteristics is called. It seems that the reference mechanism is reduced here to a purely external causal-historical chain, that is, to a third person accessible causal chain devoid of any psychological element.

   What is important about this thought-experiment is that it makes evident how unconvincing the act of referring becomes in the absence of a truly cognitive element. We do not really understand how it is possible that, in the senses we actually give to our words, a complete Kripkian automaton is actually able to use proper names to refer in the proper sense of the word. Words such as ‘denotation,’ ‘name,’ ‘identification,’ ‘reference,’ ‘communication,’ ‘seeing,’ ‘society,’ were all applied with quotation marks due to the simplified and analogical use that was made of them. What these automatons would be able to do would only be to produce mechanical imitations of the referential processes that take place in our conscious minds, which is demonstrated by their comparative lack of flexibility, of complexity and of any behavioral sophistication.

   Imagine, however, that there are no longer complete Kripkian automata, but extremely sophisticated androids, such as those appearing in Steven Spielberg’s films[73]: beings able to perfectly share our way of life, to learn all the details of our natural language, using our own names as perfectly as we do. In that case, we would no longer be pleased to consider their acts of naming terminal links of a purely external causal chain. By analogy with ourselves, it will be inevitable to attribute mentality to them. That is, we will be compelled to identify certain nodal points of their causal pathways as internally describable in psychological terms such as cognitions, representations or intentions.

 After all, we cannot prevent ourselves from identifying the consciousness of others by analogy with our own.[74] We are not able to imagine that completely devoid of consciousness androids would be able to speak and behave in the same way as human beings. Even if they came to talk to us, trying to convince us that they are completely devoid of consciousness, not really possessing thoughts, having no intentions, no will, we would not believe their statements, for they would sound ridiculously incoherent. We would be irresistibly forced to endow them with consciousness.

   The conclusion is that if we want proper names to have reference in the proper sense of the word, external physical causation will have to be so elaborate that it will inevitably appear to us in the form of internal psychological processes in which the cognitive-representational-intentional element gains a preponderant role, forcing the return of the descriptively expressible element initially rejected. 

 

9. Causal chains, cognitive links and causal histories

Even if we agree that a causal reason is indispensable for a proper name to have a reference, the question is how to assess its explanatory power. A really consequent causal-historical theory should be fundamentally constructed without the admission of any psychological links such as intentions, cognitions or conscious representations that would be expressed as descriptions. But it does not seem that the mere use of an external causal chain, that is, a causal chain consisting only of interpersonally accessible elements like neuro-physiological phenomena, sound waves, bodily movements...  could be sufficient to explain a reference. Even if Kripke admits that we need to have the intention of referring to the same object, we have already seen that to be really consequent we would need to reduce it to an intention to reproduce an unknown content, which would be the same as nothing.

   More serious difficulties arise when we try to explain the reference of the proper name through a purely external causal chain. A first difficulty is that there are countless causal chains to which we are continually being exposed but whose final link can be anything but the referential use of a proper name. Now, how then can we identify the causal chain that has as its final link the referential use of a proper name? How to know, for example, that the spelled word ‘White’ is being used as a person’s name and not as the name of a color? How can we know that a person is using the proper name ‘Aristotle’ correctly, as the last link of an appropriate causal chain? Let’s say that when first hearing the name ‘Aristotle,’ a school boy concludes that the speaker wants to refer to a college in his city that bears that name. How can we know that this is not the correct causal-historical chain without resorting to cognitions-descriptions that we relate to Aristotle's own person? Imagine now, giving wings to our imagination, that by baptizing Aristotle, the sounds of the words uttered made a nearby mirror swing, which because of this reflected a photon that crossed the stractosphere and speds to the Moon, from whence it was reflected back again, returning by chance to the surface of the earth, where it was absorbed by a carbon atom in a field of grain; imagine that this tiny amount of energy remained stored in that atom, even if it passed through the body of animals that were fed on grains, dancingover about for millennia until the moment when it somehow contributed (slightly) to the movement of the vocal cords of someone who utters the name ‘Aristotle.’ Would this photon reflection be part of the causal chain that caused the person to utter the name ‘Aristotle’? It is important to note the physical absurdity of the issue, since in general we are very little aware of the fact that we live all the time immersed in an inextricable causal ocean. How to choose, among numerous immensely complex external causal chains that simultaneously occur and intersect, the one that is responsible for the reference? As certain as its very existence is the fact that the external causal-historical chain, if considered only in itself, is completely inextricable and inseparable from the innumerable other connections that form the incommensurate vast causal network in which we are immersed. Is there a procedure that allows us, at least in principle, to pick out relevant causal links?

   We can in principle conceive a procedure capable of identifying links of the relevant external causal chain, which has something to teach us. It is based upon the assumption that certain neurophysiological external (accessible to a third person) causal links may also be described in some way in psychological terms, namely, as cognitions, representations or intentions to designate a certain object. However, this admission means that it seems inevitable that we should first consider cognitions or internal representations in order to become able to perceive a correlation between these cognitions or internal representations and their physical part in the form of neuro-physiological links constituting a segment of the external causal chain, whatever it may be. However, as these cognitions and communicable internal representations are typically expressible through descriptions, if we admit that this is the proper way to identify causal chains, it seems that we end up committing ourselves to some form of descriptivism. A way out of this commitment does not seem humanly impossible.

   We can perform thought-experiments that will help us prove the thesis that cognitions and connected descriptions are, in the end, inevitable. The first is the following. Imagine that a very powerful brainscope is invented. This brainscope is a device able to identify when a person, by saying a name like ‘Aristotle,’ follows the final links of the correct causal chain by reading the appropriate type[75] of neurophysiological link in the neuronal behavior of a brain. With this, the brainscope will be able to tell us when another person is using the word ‘Aristotle’ in the final sequence of the correct causal chain by reading in his brain the same type of neuro-physiological link as the one in the first person. However, it will only be possible to know that the brainscope is reading the correct final causal link because both speakers agree that they are referring to the Aristotle generally discussed in philosophy and not to any other Aristotle.This agreement, however, is cognitive and in the end descriptive, being the final criterion for the conclusion that the brainscope identified the correct final causal link. In other words: the identification of the right causal relationship will depend on cognition and therefore description, which suggests a serious petitio principii in the explanatory goal of the Krypkian argument.

   From the viewpoint of the name’s users, at least, some internal cognitive element ends up being at some point indispensable. I want to illustrate the same crucial point with a concrete example of psychological explanation. Suppose I decide to buy a gift for Kate to thank her for a favor. If someone asks me, “Why did you decide to buy the gift?” I will answer, “I was feeling grateful for a favor she did for me.” In this case it is a decision at the psychological level, which is explained by a feeling that is also psychological. Both, the explicandum and the explicans have a similar psychological level. But suppose it is possible to explain my decision to buy the present by appealing to neuro-physiological processes in my brain corresponding to my feeling of gratitude for the favor. Would this isolated explanation be sufficient and appropriate for my decision to buy the gift? Surely not. For it can only be considered appropriate if it is already known in advance that in some way the neurophysiological process in question corresponds to the decision to buy the present, and the feeling of gratitude corresponds in some way to the other person’s mental acts and behaviors. In other words, even if possible, the external causal explanation of conscious acts is justified only to the extent that we are able to translate it into a supervening internal causal-psychological explanation. Something similar happens when we consider a possible explanation of the reference by recourse to external causal chains: such explanations will only make sense to the extent that in some links they are seen as containing external translations of internal processes in which the semantic element is somehow and sufficiently psychologically instantiated.

   Imagine now that nearly omniscient alien beings, while visiting our planet, decided to study our linguistic praxis. Suppose they were able to record all our communicative acts and identify the causal-historical chains that lead us to give our proper names in the most diverse contexts. It seems reasonable to think that they would eventually become able to identify these chains without recourse to our descriptions of cognitive-representational links. This suggests that a purely causal third-person explanation is logically possible.  However, this suggestion is illusory. This is not only because we do not possess a nearly omniscient perspective in relation to ourselves or because aliens know that given all that we are able to do with words we cannot be automatons, but rather conscious beings, capable of cognitive-representational access to the references of the proper names we use. The crucial point is that to identify our language as a proper language and our referential uses as such, the aliens need to be aware of our language by identifying in us cognitive-representational states corresponding to those they themselves may have. In other words, at some previous stage of the process, it will always be necessary to give a pattern consisting of cognitive-representative-descriptive states, explicit or not, which for this reason are demonstrated to be the true causative links interpretable in physicalist terms. The psychologically given element is the ultimate criterion for the identification of external, third-person causative links, even though the latter are irreducible.

   Summarizing the central idea of this chapter: as an isolated explanation for reference, causal-historical externalism inevitably ends up in petitio principii. If you want to avoid the use of a compromising cognitive-descriptive element, a purely external causal chain can be appealed to. But it is impossible within an ocean of external causal chains to find the links that would lead to the correct utterance of a proper name, although we know that external causal chains unavoidably exist. The only satisfactory way to find link of an external causal chain is with the help of cognitions, intentions, internal representations. This is not only true concerning possible neurophysiological links, but also concerning occurrences in the external world like someone naming an object, Aquinas citing Aristotle, a professor teaching etc. However, those cognitions, intentions, and internal representations are usually susceptible to descriptive presentations, which again commits us to some form of descriptivism. Kripke avoids descriptivism through the use of a causal theory that always ends in presupposing descriptivism.

   Should we conclude from these arguments that recourse to the external causal chain is always incapable of playing any role in explaining the reference? I don’t think so. Although screening external causal chains (sounds given in baptismal acts, specific effects on the brains of participants, etc.) is practically impossible, it is often possible to identify what we might call causal history, which would be the history of relevant cognoscible manifestations placed in the spatial-temporal path outlined by the effective causal-historical chain. 

   Consider, for example, the name ‘Socrates.’ We know that Socrates existed due to the testimonies of contemporaries who knew him personally, such as Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes, who were later remembered in writings by Aristotle and the minor Socratics. We can discern in these reports causal histories resulting from causal- historical chains that, through various ramifications, have come down to us. Although we will never identify the specific causal chains that took place between the historical Socrates and what he may have produced in those who may have baptized him with that name and later had repercussions on the brains of Plato, Aristotle and the minor Socratics..., we are still able to identify a causal history that has left permanent memorable landmarks, such as events mentioned in the writings of Plato. Information about causal history may become relevant to the explanation of reference and we can be aware of it. And the finding of the complete absence of causal histories can even lead us to reject a supposed reference as illegitimate.

   It is important to emphasize, however, that causal histories only gain any explanatory force in relation to the determination of the reference because we become aware of the links that constitute them, that is, because we are able to represent them cognitively, which usually means making them susceptible to descriptive representation. Hence, a descriptive theory of proper names should even be able to incorporate information about causal history into the cluster of descriptions constitutive of the meaning of a proper name, thus requiring that the linguistic community (at least through some of its members) be able, at some point, to produce descriptive representations of this history in order to justify the referential use. We will see at least one concrete case of this later, when we critically examine Donnellan’s example of Tales, the first philosopher of the Western tradition, who because he was the first, has a particularly relevant causal history.

   Finally, I want to better clarify the considerations suggested above by appealing to the example of a very simple proper name. This name concerns a little dog named Dodó (corruptela from ‘Dona’), which my wife and I once owned. Before she had a name we already knew how to identify her as ‘our dog.’ We identified her perceptually by her small size, the brown color of her hair, the shape, and white color of her snout, not to mention the fact that she was the only canine inhabitant in the house. When she came to be called Dodó, we used the name, keeping in mind the animal with the newly described characteristics. Thus, what we did was to associate the name with representations capable of being interpersonally shared and to some extent expressed in the descriptive form of a spoken portrait, if necessary. Those who really knew Dodó, knew a description that characterized and located the animal, having the form: ‘the female dog with such and such characteristics, who lived in such and such a place and that belonged to such and such people.’ Of course, I was able to give the name to other people who never saw her without the aid of that description, saying she was our dog. These people knew, therefore, the representation expressed by the partial description: ‘Claudio’s dog.’ It should be noted that there is a causal-historical chain here and that it is indispensable. However, it is even more important to note that the links of the causal chain that I have just described can be described in terms of internal cognitive-representational contents, similar or complementary, which are repetitively updated (perhaps in a non-reflective way) in other people’s minds and are largely expressible-communicable through descriptions expressing identification rules (description-rules).

   It is true that when we speak of Dodó, we satisfy Kripke’s requirement of having the intention of referring to the same object. But this intention was at no time devoid of content, but was the intention to designate the same object by sharing intentional elements, which were descriptions similar to the name’s other users. Of course, these intentional elements only exist because the links of the causal chain are generally neuro-physiological events of a certain type, whatever they may be, which could be presented to us internally in terms of cognitive-representational contents usually able to be descriptively communicated. These links, when thought by the various speakers, present the necessary degree of similarity and complementarity to each other. This example also suggests that, contrary to what might be assumed, a causal-historical chain and a cognition-representation-description are things that complement each other rather than the opposite.

 

10. Descriptivism of causal links

The considerations presented so far suggest that the causal-historical conception will only be able to gain some explanatory power if it is integrated into a descriptivism of causal links resorting to the causal history. The existence of some external causal connection between the name and its reference, no matter how indirect, is an indispensable condition for a proper name to actually possess or be able to have a reference: it is a necessary background condition, since always assumed and never very much stated. This is indisputable and was already agreed on, even by descriptivist philosophers such as P. F. Strawson. But that condition is far from sufficient. A causal connection must be recognized as being appropriate to the referential function of a proper name. However, it will only be recognized as adequate if it is one whose causal links are able to warrant the referential relationship that the name has with its object. And the natural candidate for a causal link capable of preserving this relationship is that constituted by kinds of cognitive/physical contents (representational, intentional) that are reiterated and complemented by different speakers in the establishment of the referential relationship. These cognitive links could then instantiate descriptively expressible rules, able to identify the referent through their singularizing properties, whatever they are. If we assume the condition of the existence of the external causal chain as being to some extent expressible by descriptions presenting cognitions involved in appropriate moments of causal stories… these stories and the resulting descriptions of the cognitive causal links instantiating rules of connection with the object would be able to eventually provide explanatory elements of the referential function of the proper name. After all, it is only to these elements that we can have effective access as conscious language users. Consequently, a more satisfactory version of causal-historical theory would need to assume at least such external causal links, things like types of external neurophysiological states capable of being described internally as generally expressible cognitive causal links through descriptions that express identification procedures appearing as complementary patterns within the general design of the causal chain.[76]

   The following schema aims to illustrate the structure of a causal chain whose most evident links can be internally interpreted as cognitive-representational contents generally susceptible to descriptive formulation:

 

Primary namer(s):

first causal link:     ¬    causal relationship with the object

 (name + cognitions)

¯  ... (purely physical and cognitive(physical)-causal relations)

 Subsequent namers

    … (purely physical and cognitive(physical)-causal relations)

¯  ...

 Final namer (utterance by some speaker)

 

It is necessary to remember that the for us most relevant causal links should be cognitive(physical) states. After all, in many cases this link is only to some extent reproduced by speakers who are secondary namers. These cognitive links are in general internally describable in the first person, as cognitions (representations, ideas, intentions...), and should in principle also be externally accessible, in the third person, in the form of neuronal behavior. We would have no way to guide ourselves by any form of external identification (be it that of causation stories, or that of unknown but assumed causal-historical chains) without the help of internal cognitions supervenient of external (neuro-physiological) causal links.

   Even with the above-mentioned concessions, the causal-historical theory seems far from satisfactory. After all, it is not only the causal link of baptism (which in many cases does not occur and in some cases never occurs) that reaches us. Consider the case of Aristotle. That he wrote the Corpus Aristotelicum seems to be an extremely important fact about Aristotle, which presupposes a causal-historical chain that came to us and without which we could not gain knowledge of those writings or attribute them to Aristotle. That Aristotle was born in Stagira in 384 BC and died in Chalcis in 322 is also an important fact concerning Aristotle; but it is only known by us because there are causal-historical chains that extend from the recording of this fact by others up to our awareness of it. The same can be said of the fact that he traveled to Magna Greece when he was 17 years old to meet Plato, the fact that he was Alexander’s preceptor, that he married Pythias, that he founded the Lyceum… Our awareness of these and many other events is always ultimately assured not only by one, but by many associated historical-causal chains whose existence is certain even if they remain completely unknown to us. But then, why select a specific historical-causal chain, that of baptism, as the only appropriate one? What does a person’s baptism, in itself a perfectly accidental sound or visual linguistic sign, do that will be superior to other historical-causal links producing relevant cognitions associated with a proper name, such as the locating and characterizing cognitions of its bearer?

 

Summarizing

The fundamental point of my criticism of Kripke’s causal-historical theory[77] is that it falls into a petitio principii: the direct or indirect identification of the external links of causal chains responsible for the utterance of a proper name always ends in the assumption of cognitive criteria for their identification, which are only descriptively rescuable. In other words, if we want to justify a reference by making use of external causal chains, this will be logically possible, but at the price of abandoning causal-historical theory. This is so because we will only be able to identify the correct external causal chain through a prior identification of the cognitive events that are supervening their links, descriptively explicit events, based on which we use our proper names in the conscious identification of their objects. Being necessary, but extremely meandering and directly unachievable, if taken only by themselves, these causal chains have in themselves no explanatory power. Kripke’s positive view is unable to explain how do proper names refer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III

METADESCRIPTIVISM:

DEVELOPING A THEORY

 

 

It was already noted[78] that mainstreams of our philosophical community sometimes behave like pendulums, which first oscillate to one side and then to the other. One result of this is that, when considered over a short period of time, it seems to offer us the illusory reassurance that they will continue forever to move in the same direction. The theory of the direct reference of proper names allegedly proposed by John Stuart Mill did not have a long life. It lost credibility with the appearance of the descriptivist theories of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, P. F. Strawson, John Searle and others. In the sixties of the last century it seemed as if the true theory of the reference for proper names had finally been at least outlined. However, what a surprise when in the early seventies the philosophical world was presented with a new conception of how proper names refer that sounded like a rebirth of the millianism, reconceived in the form of the causal-historical theory of proper names advocated by Saul Kripke, Keith Donnellan and later by Michael Devitt, in a movement that persists to the present day? As I endeavored to show in the previous chapter, it is not at all certain that this movement is definitive. Indeed, my goal in this chapter is to reverse the direction of the pendulum’s trajectory in the direction of an essentially descriptivist theory, even if my approach is much more complex and preserves consequennces of the extraordinary range of reflections produced by the causal-historical view.

   My working-hypothesis on descriptivist theories of proper names is that they fail due to “lack of structure.” A proper name cannot take the place of an uncomplicated cluster of descriptions, as orthodox cluster theory claims. Moreover, it seems in some way intuitive that definite descriptions concerning the spatio-temporal localization of the object of reference, as much as definite descriptions concerning the main reasons why we use a proper name must have some priority against more fortuitous descriptions. The descriptions that make up a cluster must be subject to some structuring principle. By not realizing the internal organization of the cluster, the Searlean version of cluster theory loses explanatory power, giving the impression that causal-historical theory costitutes a plausible option.

   Based on this working hypothesis, my goal now will be to show that descriptions that express the meanings of proper names have different values alone or in combination, and that in order to allow reference they must satisfy some general rule able to evaluate them. In agreement with what we have already seen in Chapter I, the constitutive descriptions of the cluster are in fact what we may call description-rules, i.e., linguistic expressions of semantic-cognitive rules,[79] which must somehow connect the proper name with its object of reference. Consequently, the supposed rule structurating the cluster must be a rule of rules, namely, a higher-order rule, a meta-rule that can be expressed through what could be called a meta-description-rule. This is why I call the version of descriptivism that I am searching for a meta-descriptivist theory of first names (I cannot really call this a form of ‘causal-descriptivism,’ since even if it assumes an indispensable causal element, this element, as we have seen, has no explanatory power, being therefore unable to explain how proper names refer.[80])

There are also differences in approach. I want to start by systematically investigating the types of descriptions belonging to the cluster. Philosophers who investigated proper names have always taken randomly chosen replacement descriptions as examples. I want to show that precisely because they are arbitrarily chosen, such descriptions were often dismissed as having no real importance for the identification of the object to be referred to by a proper name. Frege, for example, suggested that the name ‘Aristotle’ could be used in place of the descriptions ‘Plato’s greatest disciple’ and ‘the tutor of Alexander the Great.’ And Wittgenstein suggested that the name ‘Moses’ could be used in place of the description ‘the man who as a baby was found in Nile by pharaoh’s daughter.’ But, as we shall see, none of these folk-descriptions plays a relevant role in identifying the people they have indicated.

 

1. Fundamental description-rules

There are undoubtedly more and less weighted definite descriptions associated with proper names. Consider, for example, the proper name ‘Moses.’ The description ‘the man who led the Israelites to the promised land’ seems far more important than ‘the man who as a baby was found in the Nile by pharaoh’s daughter.’ After all, it is intuitivelly clear that the falsehood of the last description would bring far less semantic damage than the falsehood of the former.

   In an effort to hierarchize description-rules, I want to distinguish three groups of definite descriptions of assigns capable of expressing parts of the informative content of proper names: groups A and B, containing what I call fundamental descriptions, and group C, containing what I call auxiliary descriptions. I want to show that groups A and B are those of the descriptions that are truly relevant to the identification of the object, while group C is that of descriptions that, although often exemplified by and of greater or lesser value for the connection with the object, do not even play a really grounding role, even if they sometimes seem to do so. I want to start by proceeding in a purely classificatory manner.

   Let us first look at what I called fundamental descriptions. To find them I would like to proceed by looking at their relevance in language. But how to do this? J.L. Austin, the ordinary language philosopher, advised that when we do philosophy we should have the Oxford English Dictionary at hand. However, we cannot look for the most important types of descriptions associated with proper names, since proper names are generally not found in dicionaries, which is why some have decided that they make no sense. But that should not discourage us. Because if proper names are not usually dictionarized, at least many of them are encyclopedized. Hence the advice: if you wish to find the descriptions that matter for a certain name, you should start by consulting its article in encyclopedias! Take a look at what we can find, for example, in the ‘Aristotle’ entry of my pocket Penguin Philosophical dictionary. There it is written:

 

Aristotle = (384 BC – 322 AD) was born in Estagira, northern Greece, Aristotle produced the greatest philosophical system of antiquity. (What follows is a short list of Aristotle’s main works.)

 

When we examine this and other entities of the genus for the proper name ‘Aristotle,’ what we have indemended is that they especially abbreviate two description-rules, one establishing the place and time of his birth and death, to which we add the stages of his career in space-time,[81] while the other establishes the most important properties of Aristotle, those which constitute the very reason why we apply the name. These properties are, above all, the ideas and arguments presented in the Aristotelian opus.

   We can now abstract from this concrete case two types of fundamental descriptions-rules forming the groups A and B, respectively:

 

A) Localizing description-rule = expressed by the description that establishes what we consider the space-time location and career of the object.[82]

B) Characterizing description-rule = expressed by the description that establishes what we consider the most relevant properties of the object – those that constitute the very reason why we name it.

 

Let us now consider aristotle’s localizing and characterising description-rules, by more explicitly stating them. They can be briefly summarized as follows:

 

(a) Localizing description-rule of the name ‘Aristotle’ = the person who was born in Estagira in 384 BC as the son of the court doctor of Philip of Macedon, who lived most of his life in Athens, had to flee to Assos, returned to Athens, but in the end had to flee to Chalkis, where he died in 322 AD.

(b) Characterizing description-rule of the name ‘Aristotle’ = the author of the relevant philosophical doctrines explained in Metaphysics, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, Organon, Topics, and other main works of the Aristotelian opus.

 

Such fundamental rules can be more and more descriptively detailed. In Aristotle’s case they are ultimately justified by historical testimonies. Moreover, it seems that in this case the characterizing rule is somewhat more relevant, which would give it greater weight.

   To highlight the importance of fundamental description-rules, here are some examples of definite descriptions of group A, which I took directly from the headings of Wikipedia entries.[83] They are presented as conditions for localizing identifying properties of objects referred to by proper names:

 

1.     Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) = a person born in 10/23/1940 in the city of Três Corações, and who now lives in the city of Santos, Brazil.

2.     Taj Mahal = a mausoleum commissioned in 1632 near the city of Agra, India, existing from 1653 to the present day.

3.     Paris = city of more than ten million inhabitants situated in the center of  northern France, on the banks of the River Seine. Its emergence as a city dates back to the 9th century.

4.     Amazon = the river that rises in the mountains of Peru and empties into the Atlantic, following the line of the equator. Together with its tributaries it forms the world’s largest watershed. It has existed since time immemorial…

 

It should be noted that the localizing description has at least one characterising element, which consists in classifying the kind of object referred to. Thus, Pelé is classified as being a person, the Taj Mahal a mausoleum, Paris a city, the Amazon a river, Venus a planet… This minimum characterization is indispensable for the localizing description to make sense.

   That group B description-rules is also fundamental.  One can make this cear by scanning the heads of encyclopedias in general. In the same order, here is what the Wikipedia briefly says:

 

1.     Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) = the most famous soccer player of our time.

2.     Taj Mahal = the beautiful marble mausoleum constructed by Emperor Shah Johan for his beloved wife, Aryumand Bam Began.

3.     Paris = the capital of France, economic, cultural and political center of the country and one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

4.     Amazon = the river carring the most water and possible also the longest river in the world, source of 1/5 of the fresh water flowing into the oceans.

 

I want to demonstrate that it is basically because of the importance of properties denoted by such definite descriptions that we use these names. They can be considered of essential importance, as they result from agreement among privileged users about what would be the most fundamental objective properties associated with their names.

 

2. Auxiliary description-rules

I now want to consider the definite descriptions that have been left out, namely, the auxiliary descriptions belonging to group C. They constitute a large number of descriptions, some of them used in everyday life in the place of names. That’s why, as I have suggested, they have often confused philosophers, making it difficult to determine what is most important. In the following, I present a classification that, although unsystematic, can be useful.

(1) A first case of group C consists of descriptions that can be called metaphorical, often used in place of the proper name. Examples are descriptions such as ‘the iron marshal,’ ‘the eagle of The Hague’, ‘the city of light,’ ‘the lady of camellias,’ ‘the knight of the sad figure,’ ‘the master of those who know.’ The properties they allude to are not, in general, those that draw attention to their peculiarity. But they do draw attention for their usefulness as suggestive and picturesque mnemonic devices. Thus, ‘the iron marshal’ draws attention by pointing to a striking characteristic of Marshal Floriano Peixoto, which was his authoritarian and uncompromising character. But this is of little value in the sense of helping us to identify Floriano Peixoto univocally, because there were many other persons with similar character traits. What most properly allows us to identify Floriano Peixoto is, certainly, awareness that he satisfies the localizing description (a) of having been ‘the person born in Joazeiro in 1839, who served in the war between Paraguay and Acre and died in 1895 in Barra Mansa,’ in addition to the characterising description (b) of having been, mainly,  ‘the second president and the first vice-president of Brazil, responsible for acts of repression that consolidated the republic.’ Both descriptions are found in encyclopedias.

(2) There are also non-metaphorical auxiliary description-rules, which we can classify as accidental, but well-known. Examples of well-known accidental descriptions are ‘the man who as a child was found in the Nile by pharaoh’s daughter’ and ‘the tutor of Alexander the Great.’ These descriptions are known to most people who know the meanings of the names ‘Moses’ and ‘Aristotle.’ Yet they are quite accidental, for surely neither Moses nor Aristotle would cease to be the persons we consider them to be, if the information provided by these descriptions were false.

   To this type also belongs a very peculiar description, which has the form of ‘the bearer of the name ‘N’,’ for example, ‘the bearer of the name 'Aristotle'.’ Although well-known and already widely examined in implausible metalinguistic theories of proper names, descriptions of this kind are accidental, for their referents would not cease to be what they are, nor to be identifiable as such, if they had received a different name or if they had later changed their name. Indeed, it is a mere accident that Aristotle was baptized with the name ‘Aristotle,’ while it does not seem to have been equally accidental that he wrote the Aristotelian opus or was a renowned Greek philosopher. Imagine that in a possible world Nicomachus, a physician at Philip’s court, instead of baptizing the son born in Stagira in 384 BC as ‘Aristotle’ had baptized him with the name of ‘Pitacus.’ Supposing that Pitacus had studied with Plato, written the entire Aristotelian opus and had exactly the same biography as Aristotle, we would not hesitate to say that in this possible world Pitacus was our Aristotle, only with a different name. That the description-rule of the form ‘the bearer of the name ‘N’’[84] is not fundamental to the identification of a particular object is proved by the fact that we can use a name – as a sensible form, a name-word – and, after discovering that it is incorrect, replace it with the correct name-word for the same person. In addition, we can know who a person is – where and when to find her, and know what is important about her – without remembering or even knowing what the person is called. It seems, therefore, that the proper name, understood as a sensible form, is like the label on a binder that contains the most and least relevant description-rules: We can replace the label (‘Aydes’ changed its name to ‘Adilson’), we can even be deceived as to the most appropriate label, as, in the case of people’s names, the baptized name (‘Raúl Rivas’ was actually called ‘Marcial Maciel’). However, what really matters is the content of the binder. After all, even if some sensible mark is necessary for us to know which binder we are considering, such a mark is in the end the result of arbitrary choices based on criteria that vary according to the type of name. (Consider the case of cities: the city currently called ‘Volgograd’ was previously called ‘Stalingrad’, although it was originally called ‘Tsaritsyn’).

These considerations lead us to a curious conclusion. If we admit that in our reflections on language a philosophically relevant explanation is one that has an epistemological or metaphysical import, then a philosophical theory on the semantics of proper names is not a theory restricted to what we call the name in the current language. This is the sensible form of the name, its phonetic or orthographic expression, which we could call the symbolic expression of the name[85]. This expression is what, for example, leads us to regard the word ‘Köln’ as a different name than ‘Colonia,’ while we could also say that they are respectively the German and the Latin forms of the same proper name. A philosophically relevant theory of proper names needs to be essentially a theory of semantic contents constitutive of proper names, which is able to explain the reference mechanisms contained in the relevant rule-descriptions associated with names as sensible marks. It is a binder theory and not a label theory, although required labels are arbitrary in the sense of being capable of substitution.[86]

   We can make a distinction here parallel to the distinction between the lexical sense and the semantic content of indexicals. Indexical terms are singular terms like ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘she’… which can refer to different things in different contexts. They have a fixed lexical sense, for instance, “‘this’ should indicate something near to the speaker”, “‘I’ should indicate the speaker when she utters it”. However, indexical terms must also have semantic content, the sense they gain when applied to an object given in a particular context (for instance, referring to this computer or myself). The lexical sense of the proper name is that of a term used to name particular objects. This sense can be indicated by descriptions of the type ‘the bearer of the name 'N'.’ A theory of the lexical meaning of the proper name is possible, but it will lack epistemic import, since it will not allow us to distinguish the name’s bearer. A theory of the semantic content of a proper name, in turn, seems to be a theory of its cognitive meaning, of its Fregean senses, of what is common among the rules establishing the criteria for the identification of its bearers.[87] Only such a theory will have explanatory strength to clarify the epistemic relationship between the proper name and its object. But for this very reason the sensible mark of a proper name becomes, in the end, something accidental. This is because it is admitted that a set of different sensible marks can conventionally express an identical or similar semantic content without failing to produce an act of naming the same object. In this case, yes, it does work, and so we call these sensible marks symbolic expressions of the proper name. Therefore, for us a proper name is an identifying (internal) semantic content plus some conventional sensible mark that makes that content communicable.

(3) There are also accidental and generally unknown rules-descriptions. Examples are ‘the husband of Pithias,’ ‘the lover of Herphylis,’ ‘the grandson of Achaeon.’ Few people know that these descriptions are all associated with the name ‘Aristotle.’ Such definite descriptions can, of course, be multiplied at will, being found in abundance in biographies. Consider, for example, the definite description: ‘the Austrian philosopher who, when serving as a soldier in World War I, threatened to commit suicide if his superiors did not send him to really dangerous places,’ which is part of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s biography.[88] Because they are known to only a few persons, such descriptions have no relevant function in their association with their proper name. Thus, imagine that all a speaker knows about Aristotle is that he was Achaeon’s grandson. She will not be able to make use of this name to communicate with other people in general, as a description that is not shared cannot help people recognize it as referring to Aristotle as the famous Greek philosopher, rather than, say, the Greek multi-millionaire Aristotle Onassis.[89]

(4) Finally, there are adventitious auxiliary descriptions, such as that expressed by the description ‘the philosopher mentioned by the teacher’ or ‘the girl who was introduced to us at the feast.’ The rules expressed here associate the name with some context in which it was properly used. They are provisional, usually produced in public speech, then used for some time, and later abandoned and forgotten. They are therefore not permanent semantic constituents and characteristic of the name. However, because these description-rules refer to a context known to a group of speakers in a certain period of time, they may suffice for a speaker to be able to use the attached proper name in conversations. Consequently, the speaker will be uniquely recognized by interlocutors with the possibility of subsequent exchanges of information about the proper name’s bearer.

   At this point the following objection could be made. Apart from the fact that they appear in the headings of encyclopedia entries, there does not seem to be any great reason to privilege so-called fundamental description-rules. After all, just as auxiliary descriptions are contingent, the same can be shown to be the case with fundamental descriptions themselves: it is quite possible that Aristotle did not write his philosophical works, that Pelé did not become a famous soccer player, that the Taj Mahal was not been built near Agra, that Paris did not arise where it did, but rather in the south of France… We can, after all, imagine possible worlds where neither the rules of characterization for Aristotle and Pelé, nor the rules of location for the Taj Mahal and Paris are applicable, but even then the philosopher and the athlete, as well as the ivory-white marble mausoleum and the city of light still exist. In isolation,  fundamental descriptions do not designate anything either necessary or sufficient for the identification of a proper name’s bearer. On the other hand, it seems that we can identify a single object through a single auxiliary description: To know that someone is talking about Aristotle may be enough to know that he speaks of the founder of the Lyceum, or Alexander’s tutor, or even knows that he speaks of the founder of the Lyceum, Pythias’ spouse, Herphylis’ lover, etc.

   The only thing I can do in the face of objections like these is to ask the reader for patience! What I have done so far is to consider with some care the main pieces of a puzzle. Only after the introduction of higher-order rules capable of selecting the combinations of first-order rule-descriptions able to justify the application of a proper name, will the importance of the descriptions of groups A and B become inescapable.

 

3. Disjunctive rule

From what was said above, it seems to follow that we need to search for ways of identifying the combinations among the descriptions of a proper name’s cluster that make possible the name’s referential application. To do this we need to look for a second-order rule (or description-rule) which can be applied to the cluster’s first-order description-rules associated with any proper name, so that the second-order rule is able to select the combinations that make it possible to apply the name. This rule of rules should therefore be a meta-rule, a meta-descriptive rule applicable to bundles of descriptions that we associate with proper names in general.

   How can we find such a rule? To begin with, it seems quite advisable to dismiss group C descriptions as insufficiently relevant. They seem to be identifiers only in the sense of assisting the speaker in his connection with the object, to the extent that they enable its insertion in a communication media, assuming that the true identification rules of the object capable of completing this connection are already known. If they are not known by all, they can at least be known by privileged users of the name or by a set of these privileged users (e.g., specialists), assuming that they may have different focuses of specialization.

   What evidence can we offer for this suggestion? It is not difficult to find: although fundamental description-rules are applicable, the auxiliary description-rules may be absent, even as a whole: we can imagine that Aristotle was neither Plato’s greatest disciple, nor Alexander’s tutor, nor Nicomachus’ son, nor Pythias’ husband, nor Herphylis’ lover, nor the founder of the Lyceum. We can even imagine that his grandfather was not called Achaeon, that he did not have a son named Nicomachus, that he was not called by Dante the master of those who know, etc. Even so he could perfectly well have been the greatest Greek philosopher. However, the same cannot be said of fundamental descriptions. We cannot conceive that no fundamental description-rule applies. Suppose that neither the localizing nor characterizing description-rule applies; we cannot conceive “~A & ~B.” To show this, just remember the example presented by Searle of the expert on Aristotle who informed us he had discovered that Aristotle could not have written any work attributed to him, having actually been an illiterate Venetian fishmonger of the late Renaissance... We will answer that at most he may be talking about someone else named ‘Aristotle’[90] who has nothing to do with the person we have the right reasons to call by this name, since none of the fundamental description-rules that we associate with the name ‘Aristotle’ is minimally satisfied.

   If the meta-identification rule excludes “~A & ~B,” would it include “A & B”? Should it require the conjunction of the localizing description with the characterizing description, or perhaps it should just reject its disjunction? Although usually the objects referred to by proper names satisfy a conjunction of groups A and B of rule-descriptions, it is very easy to conceive of unusual situations and cases where the name refers without the descriptions (or, if one wishes, a complex description) constitutive of one of these two groups being satisfied.

   To highlight this point, consider once again the name ‘Aristotle.’ It is not difficult to imagine possible worlds close to ours, in which he existed without satisfying the conjunction of the rules of location and characterization for that name. The spatio-temporal localizing rule for Aristotle does not necessarily need to be what his identification-rule demands: we can perfectly well conceive of a possible world close to ours where he wrote the Aristotelian opus, even though he was born and died in Rome a few centuries later, and there was no disciple of Plato named Aristotle born in Stagira in 384 BC.

   We can also conceive of a possible world where only the localizing rule for Aristotle is satisfied, but not the characterizing rule, for in this world the philosophy of Aristotle never existed. Suppose that in this world Aristotle was born in Stagira in 384 BC, the son of Nicomachus, the physician at Philip’s court, and that at age 17 he moved to Athens to study under Plato. Unfortunately, shortly after his arrival he was afflicted by a brain fever that left him unable to pursue intellectual activities for the rest of his life, until his death in Chalkis in 322 BC. Despite this, it seems that we have enough elements to recognize that person as our Aristotle “in potentia.” But here only the localizing rule is satisfied.

   Another piece of evidence that the conjunction of identifying rules is not always necessary is that there are proper names that by convention refer to an object only through its location or solely through its characterization.

   As an example of the first type, let’s say someone decides to call the center of a circle z. This point satisfies the condition of type A of having a well-defined space-time location, but to make the identification, it is not necessary for the point to have any relevant distinctive characteristic. In our example, it is just a point, which once established can be used, say, for geometric measurements.

   Another example that can be recalled in this context is ‘Venus.’ The localizing rule is ‘the second planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun between Mercury and Earth, which was identified thousands of years ago (possibly existing since more than a million years),’ while the characterizing rule is of ‘a planet with a third of the Earth’s mass and a very hot, dense, poisonous atmosphere.’ However, what matters here is that the localizing rule must be satisfied, while the characterizing rule does not matter very much. Even if Venus had lost part of its mass or  all its atmosphere, which is what makes it the brightest planet we can see with the naked eye, as long as it remained a planet (a condition already included in the localizing rule), it would remain Venus. We can imagine that if Venus lost so much of its mass that it shrank to the size of an asteroid, then it would no longer satisfy neither its characterizing nor its localizing rule, and would thus change from a planet to an asteroid. We can also imagine that it could for some reason cease to orbit the sun. In this case, it would not fail to satisfy the localizing rule, because at the time when it was called Venus by astronomers it still orbited the Sun. Even if it were discovered that it did not belong to the early solar system, but was a late-comer, only having drifted in from outer space a million years ago, it would still satisfy the localizing rule. On the other hand, it would be wrong to identify Venus only by the satisfaction of the characterizing rule alone, as the disjunctive rule allows. since any planet orbiting any sun could be Venus, insofar as it satisfies this rule. We need to accept that the identifying rule for Venus is a one-foot localizing rule.

   One way to paraphrase what happens in the cases above is to say that for them the characterizing rule is the localizing rule itself. Let us remember that the characterizing rule was defined as the reason why we chose to use the proper name. But in the case of the Z center of the circle this reason is the location itself, and in the case of Venus the localizing rule is the reason that really counts.

There are also examples that require only the satisfaction of the assignment rule. One of them is offered by the name ‘Almostásim,’ which appears in Borges’ short story entitled El aciercamento de Almostásim. Almostásim is a being, possibly a person, who by contact with people emanates perfection. We don’t know where this being is, and if it really exists somewhere in time and space. Some believe that we can approach it by contact with human beings who have become limited repositories of its infinite glory. Only these vague indications constitute the characterizing rule of that name. But there is no rule identifying its spatio-temporal location, as no one has ever encountered Almostásim, and some even deny its existence.

   There is, finally, an example of a proper name that by definition cannot have a localizing rule: this is the word ‘Universe’ (or ‘Multiverse,’ as some assume). The object referred to by that name has as a characterizing rule: it is all that could be proved to be empirically existing. But it cannot have a localizing rule, because by containing all space and all time, the Universe cannot be in space or time.[91]

   However, if we exclude the possibility of “~A & ~B” and the need for “A & B,” it seems that the usual meta-descriptive condition for the application of the proper name should be “A ˅ B,” that is, an inclusive disjunction of the localizing and characterizing descriptions. These considerations are followed by a first and more rudimentary version of the meta-identifying reference rule for proper-names, to be applied to fundamental first-level rule-descriptions belonging to kinds A and B. I call this the disjunctive rule:

 

      DR:

A proper name 'N' refers to an x object belonging to a class G of objects

see,

(i-a) x satisfies L: its localizing description-rule

and/or

(i-b) x satisfies C: its characterizing description-rule.[92]

 

An example will make the application of this rule clear: we can apply the proper name ‘Aristotle’ to an object of the class of human beings (G) if and only if there is an individual who (i-a) satisfies the localizing rule (L) for ‘Aristotle,’ which is that of being born in Stagira in 384 BC, being the court doctor’s son, having lived the main part of his life in Athens... and died at Chalkis in 322 BC and/or (i-b) satisfies the characterizing rule of ‘Aristotle’ (C), who produced the contents of the Aristotelian opus. This instantiation of DR can already be considered an identifying rule for the bearer of the name ‘Aristotle.’ Nevertheless, an identification rule that has this form, as we will see later, is still too insufficient and rudimentary.

   Some additional considerations are needed for RD. A first one is that some condition of the type Cc must be satisfied as a pre-condition for the application of DR. However, since a condition like Cc is an assumed background condition, without any explanatory power, it does not need to belong to what explains how a proper name is applied, it does not need to belong to RD, and its further developments are still to be presented.

   The first is that “'N' refers properly to object x”, where a proper reference means a reference made by idealized users (privileged, specialized, primary users) of the name who know the rule well enough to employ it alone, which is often only possible for privileged users. Here is the case of a reference of its own in the sense that it is made with a sufficient cognitive basis, which usually does not happen when a person employs names such as, say, ‘Murray Gell-Mann,’ ‘Isaac Newton’ or even ‘Aristotle’ without sufficient knowledge of whoever she is referring to.

   The second additional consideration is that class G is something like the genus proximum, a concept used by Aristotle as part of the definition of concepts in order to distinguish the nearest class of properties to which the specific differentia belongs. In our case, G has the limiting function of establishing the nearest, most relevant genre of things to which object x belongs, such as living beings, material objects, celestial bodies, etc. The use of class G serves to limit the scope of the definition in advance, because without this we would have to pick out one among all the objects in the universe, which would be a cognitively impossible task. Concerning the name ‘Aristotle,’ for example, G can designate the class of human beings, since the class of philosophers is already embedded in Aristotle's characterizing rule-description as the greatest philosopher of antiquity. With this we exclude in advance that ‘Aristotle’ is the name of a college or a computer program. Even if in a possible alien world a computer with a computer program called ‘Aristotle’ produced the Aristotelian opus, we would not need, based on G, to admit that this program is our Aristotle, even in the case where it was built by aliens in the year 384 BC in Stagira, used for more than twenty years in Athens and finally dismantled in 322 BC in Chalkis. We would consider this a coincidence or a forgery. Using a stricter G-class can be particularly useful for disambiguating proper names. If G is understood to be the class of ancient philosophers, this excludes the possibility that Aristotle could be a well-known Greek shipping magnate who lived in the 20^th Century, or the name of a philosophy student at the University of Sydney.

   Here we could still ask the following question: in RD auxiliary descriptions disappear; but what then is the role of auxiliary descriptions? The answer begins to emerge when we ask ourselves whether auxiliary descriptions alone would be able to identify the bearer of a proper name. Suppose that a certain object satisfies many or all auxiliary descriptions associated with its name, but without satisfying any of the fundamental descriptions. Consider again a certain Aristotle who lived in the 16th century in Venice and that he was an intellectually obtuse fishmonger. But suppose he still satisfies many auxiliary descriptions for the name. Suppose he was the son of a man named Nicomachus, Achaeon’s grandson, that he was Pythias’ husband and lover of Herphylis, and that he founded a Lyceum and taught an Alexander. However remarkable these coincidences would be, they would not be relevant, as they would lack the appropriate contexts of localizing and characterization. After all, this Nicomachus could  not be the physician named Nicomachus, who we know served at the court of Philip of Macedon, nor can the grandfather Achaeon be the same one who lived in the 4th century BC, and neither Pythias nor Herphylis could be women of ancient Greece, despite their names. The Alexander that this pseudo-Aristotle taught could not have been the famous warrior and conqueror from Macedonia. And the Lyceum that this inept person founded could have nothing to do with the Lyceum of the ancient Aristotelian School. The conceptual mess created in an attempt to conceive a situation where only the auxiliary descriptions remained the same is not able to produce more than a series of curious, odd coincidences, which present themselves to us as a strange imitation of reality, unable to convince us of the authenticity of the proposed Aristotle. One can even imagine circumstances where the application of auxiliary descriptions would be justified. Suppose that the fishmonger called ‘Aristotle’ were a laughable comic figure who worked near a school called the Lyceum, and that schoolboys called his lover Herphylis… or that by chance he taught a young fishmonger called Alexander… No matter how much they complement each other, auxiliary descriptions alone are unable to provide us with a true identification rule. As we will see, the main role of auxiliary descriptions is to help us to insert the proper name into the discourse (the public dialogue or communication), where it can point to the utimate identifying rule.

 

4. Meta-identifying rule: preliminary version

Although the disjunctive rule is important, because it highlights the role of descriptions that really matter, it is by no means sufficient, since it is too narrow on the one side and too broad on the other. Regarding narrowness, we will soon see that there are cases of application where just one of the fundamental description-rules is satisfied, and only partially, while the other is not satisfied at all, although the name is still found to have a reference. As for the the breath, the excessive amplitude, we will see the possibility of imagining cases of application of the proper name where both fundamental rules are applicable, and even then the name still has no reference!

   Let us first consider a case that demonstrates the disjunctive rule’s narrowness of application. This is the obvious case where the localyzing rule is incompletely but sufficiently satisfied, and in that the characterizing rule is not at all satisfied, even though the proper name applies. Imagine a possible world close to ours, where there was never an Aristotelian philosophy, but there was an Aristotle who died at a young age, when his ship sank and he drowned in the Aegean Sea while sailing to Athens for study with Plato. Even so, if we learn that he was born in Estagira in 384 BC, was the son of Nicomachus, the physician of Philip’s court, and was sent by his grandfather Achaeon to Athens at the age of 17 to learn philosophy with Plato, we will have no doubt that he was our Aristotle in potentia, even if DR is not satisfied. Suppose that the localizing rule is partially satisfied, since the information we have of Aristotle’s biography ends at the age of 17. The characterising rule is thus not satisfied at all, since this young man, whose life was so tragically cut short by fate, left behind no writings. The disjunctive rule is too coase grained to explain our intuition that our Aristotle lived in that possible world.

   Let us now consider a case where only the characterising rule is satisfied, and only incompletely. Imagine a possible world close to ours in which there was no Aristotle and no Aristotelian work in the ancient world, although plato and the other Greek philosophers existed. Imagine that in that world, in the 10^th Century, in Damascus, an Arabic philosopher who had read Greek philosophical works wrote in classical Greek the main parts of Aristotle’s work, including the Organon, the Metaphysics, and the Nicomachian Ethics, using the pseudonym ‘Aristotle’ (or, if we wish, in Arabic wrote the basic ideas, the relevant argumentation of the entire Aristotelian opus…). In such a situation, assuming that there is no competitor for the name, we would also tend, with greater or lesser reluctance, to recognize this person as being identical to our Aristotle living in the other world.

   Of course, there are limitations involved in the partial satisfaction of fundamental rule-descriptions. Supose that, in a possible world close to ours, where Aristotelian philosophy never existed, in 384 BC the court doctor in Stagira had an anencephalic son who was called Aristotle, but as expected died shortly after his birth. In this case, although a minimum of the localizing rule and nothing of the characterizing rule is satisfied, this minimum is not enough, and we will have difficulty believing the baby was our Aristotle. And if the Arabic philosopher with the pseudonym Aristotle had written only the first paragraphs of the book Alpha of Metaphysics, we certainly wouldn’t recognize him as our Aristotle. Such cases would tend to be recognized by us as strange and inexplicable coincidences. We conclude that the satisfaction of fundamental conditions does not need to be complete, though it should not be too weakly satisfied.

   To make this suggestion more plausible, let us now consider a case where the characterizing descriptions are conjunctivelly satisfied, though only partially. In this case, it appears that the minimum threshold of satisfaction required for each description would become lower than the minimum threshold for satisfaction of the description in the event that only one of the fundamental description-rules is incompletely, but sufficiently satisfied. So, if in a possible world a single Aristotle had been born in 384 BC, not in Stagira, but in Athens, had studied with Plato, written only the Categories and then died, it seems that this would be enough for us to admit that he is our Aristotle. In this case it seems that insufficient satisfaction of each disjoint results in sufficient satisfaction of the disjunctive rule as a whole. In other words, the requirement of sufficient satisfaction of inclusive disjunction must include consideration of the sum of the satisfaction of the disjoints. Our conclusion is that the the disjunctive meta-descriptivist rule must be supplemented by a a new condition requiring that the sum of the two foundamental description-rules should be sufficiently satisfied in accordance with the given circumstances.

   An important question that remains is about the exact measure of what we should understand as being sufficient. However, I don’t think there’s an answer to that. After all, the empirical language is inevitably vague and our criteria for applying words do not define their extensional boundaries in a perfectly precise way. There are always ambiguous cases, where we cannot decide if our criteria apply. Important is that, despite this vagueness of our natural language, we are in general usually quite capable of publicly designate and communicate the objects of reference. This is why the vagueness of natural language, which supposedly reflects the vagueness of the objective divisions of reality that we intend to categorize, is not an imperfection of our language, but a fact to be admitted, and it is frequent that a vague language is capable of modulating discourse in the most satisfactory way, letting aside useless and sometimes undesirable insistence on precision.

   Another point is that, in counterfactual situations, Aristotle would cease to be our Aristotle if there were competitors who also satisfied the disjunctive rule in equal measure. So, imagine a possible world where it would not be unusual for people to be born with two heads. Imagine then that in 384 BC Nicomachus, the physician at Philipe’s court, had a son with one body but two identical heads, both baptized with the name ‘Aristotle.’ Suppose that the two-headed Aristotle journeyed to Athens to study with Plato and further that working together, these two heads had written the entire Aristotelian opus. Although it is possible to say that this world has two “Aristotles” with parallel spatio-temporal careers (given that the two persons were permanently joined to the same body), from another perspective it is also possible to argue that this world had no Aristotle in the usually given sense of the name, because a proper name is a singular term that by definition can only be applied to a single object able to be distinguished from all others. This consideration leads us to a new condition to be added, which is that a proper name must have only one and the same reference. Consequently, it seems that we need to admit as a condition of application of the meta-referential rule itself the condition of uniqueness, that is, that in the domain considered only a single and the same object satisfies the disjunctive rule.

   The main case where the uniqueness condition is no longer satisfied is one where the localizing rule is satisfied by one object, while the characterizing rule is satisfied by another. This would be the case in a possible world M₁ where there existed (a) a Greek Aristotle, son of Nicomachus, who was born in Stagira in 384 BC, but who contracted brain fever upon arriving in Athens and was affected so severily that he did no work in philosophy until his death at Chalkis in 322 BC, and (b) a philosopher named Aristotle, who wrote part of the Aristotelian opus in Rome about two hundred and fifty years later. In these circumstances, we no longer have a way to decide who the real Aristotle was, whether the Greek or the Roman, because our two fundamental identifying rules conflict with each other. The most natural and immediate alternative is to abandon the assumption that our Aristotle existed in such a world, since the condition of the object’s uniqueness is not satisfied.

   By adding the conditions of sufficiency and uniqueness to the disjunctive rule, we achieve a more appropriate formulation of the meta-identifying rule for the semantic regulating the adequate combinations of the fundamental description-rules concerning each proper name. Here is how (under the assumption of some Cc condition) it can be formulated:

 

MIR_P:

A proper name ‘N’ refers to an object x belonging to a class G of objects

see

(i-a) x satisfies a localizing description-rule L of ‘N’

 and/or

(i-b) x satisfies a characterizing description-rule C of ‘N’

 And

      (ii) the satisfaction of L and/or C of ‘N’ by x is on the whole sufficient and

      (iii) univocal.

     

I call the rule resulting from the application of the meta-identifying rule MIR_P to the fundamental description-rules of a given proper name as the identifying or definitional rule of that proper name – which is somethig equivalend to what Ernst Tugendhat once hipothetically called the Identifizierungsregel of a singular term.[93] (This rule may also be seen, if you prefer, as a simple instantiation of MIR_P in which the variables ‘N’,  G, L,  and C are replaced by constants). Let us also remember that the condition (ii), of sufficiency, is to be applied “as a whole,” that is, to the sum of the satisfaction of each of them together. This allows us to rescue the intuition that the rule can be applied (and is therefore applicable) even when each single fundamental description-rule considered is insufficiently satisfied. The rule will apply if the sum of the satisfaction of each fundanental description-rule is sufficient for its application. Finally, there is surelly a necessary causal relationship of a Cc type between the name and the referred object, with the proviso that it as such does not belong to the identifying rule we effectively use. Although pressuposed, this condition does not in itself have explanatory value. (We will see, however, that when elements of causal-history start to have explanatory value, they are explained in the disjunctive rule itself.)

   Let’s now look at a case where the MIR_P is applied to the specific bundle of descriptions associated with the name Aristotle. By doing this we form what Tugendhat could call the identification rule for the proper name ‘Aristotle,’ which I will abbreviate as MIR_P for ‘Aristotle.’ Here it is:

 

MIR_P-‘Aristotle’:

The proper name ‘Aristotle’ refers properly to an object x belonging to the class of human beings

see

(i-a) x satisfies the localizing description-rule of having been born in Stagira in 322 BC, has lived much of his life in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC (...)

 and/or

(i-b) x satisfies the characterizing description-rule of having been the author of the great ideas of the Aristotelian opus (...)

 And

(ii) the satisfaction of the localizing description-rule and/or of the characterizing description-rule for x is on the whole sufficient and

             (iii) Univocal.

 

As I have already noticed, the name Aristotle is placed here in quotation marks, in order to point out that as a sensible mark it is not an indispensable component: another sign could possibly be agreed on to meet the same conditions. Finally, it is important to notice that the meta-identifying rules we are considering are meant to be applied by ideal types of speakers, for instance, the privileged users of the proper name. As we will see later, we very frequently use proper names “referentially” without having fulfilled this ideal.

   The MIR_P already allows us to give an answer to the famous puzzle of Theseus’ ship, so often cited in philosophical handbooks. Let us suppose Theseus’ ship was named ‘Calibdus.’ In the course of the years, Theseus gradually replaced the worned out planks of his ship until eventually they were all replaced. However, someone then decided to refurbish the old planks that had been saved and keep in storage, repair them and use them to build another ship identical to the first. Let’s say someone then asks, “Which of the two ships is the true Calibdus?” The paradoxical thing here is that we don’t know for sure how to answer. A first assumption could be that both are Theseus’ ship. But that would be contradictory, because a singular term cannot refer to more than one object. Most people will tend to say that the real ship of Theseus is the one on which he sailed all those years; but there will still be discomfort: the second ship is the only one that is really made of the same parts as the one that was initially built! The problem is not irrelevant, because, as Roderick Chisholm once noticed, if the two ships were to collide and start sinking, Theseus, who, like every good capitain is honor bound to go down with his ship, must decide whether to stay on the old ship or jump onto the new one.

   What we have considered so far already makes possible a better answer to this old puzzle. The reason for uncertainty is that we realize that the question of which of the two ships is Calibdus become undecidable due to a criterial conflict between the two fundamental description-rules for that name. The first ship satisfies a localizing rule, which tells us that Theseus’ ship is the one built in a specific place and time, having then enjoyed a long space-time career under the command of Capitain Theseus. The second rule, satisfied by the second ship, belongs to the characterising aspect. It tells us that Theseus’ ship is the one that was built from a certain specific material. We understand here the reason for the uncertainty.

   At this point someone can rightly object that the characterizing rule is more complex. It not only concerns the same material, but includes functional and structural characteristics that were preserved on both ships. As a consequence, it seems that the first ship must be the Calibdus capitained by Theseus, as it more completely satisfies the fundamental description-rules. That is why this is usually the first idea that comes to mind. Nevertheless, we can balance this difference by increasing the speed of replacing the old parts with new ones, so as to shorten the ship’s space-time career until the replacement of all parts is complete. Imagine that the entire series of plank replacements took place in just two months. In that case we’d start having doubts. What if the replacement had occured in just one week? More doubts… Imagine now that the Theseus’ Calibdus is built and baptized with that name, but that it is not even launched. Hours after it’s ready, workers begin to build a second identical ship, next to the Calibdus. When both ships are completely built, the first one is baptized with the name Calibdus, while the second remained unnamed. Then workers begin to substitute planks of Calibdus by planks of the first ship and vice-versa. After two days all planks each ship have been removed and substituted by the planks of the other. Which ship is now the true Calibdus? The answer is obvious to us: the second ship is the real calibdus, because all that happened is that both ships, so to speak, have exchanged their places. What warrants this intuition is the material identity of Calibdus. The MIR_P is able to give us the final explanation to the puzzle of Theseus Ship.

   Finally, MIR_P allows us also to a strait answer the oldest and simplest version of the puzzle. In this version the question was if after having all planks replaced Calibdus would remain the same ship.[94] The obvious answer is that since Calibdus is unique and since it remains satisfying the localizing and most of the characterizing rule, it remains for sure the same ship.

   But let us return to the initial story of Calibdus having sailed for a certain time under the command of Theseus. Because the same name cannot name more than one object, the strategy of renaming ships turns out to be a convenient way to avoid misunderstandings. We can give different names to the ships, assuming the existence of two ships: the Calibdus-1, which fully satisfies the localizing rule and much of the characterizing rule, and the Calibdus-2, which although not satisfying the localizing rule, completely satisfies the characterizing rule, which among other things requires the preservation of the same material of the ship ever since it was initially finished. Similarly, in the previous example we can propose the existence of two Aristotle in the possible world W₁: Aristotle-1, who lived in ancient Greece and satisfies only the localizing rule, and Aristotle-2, who is the author only of a large part of the Aristotelian opus, and satisfies at least part of the characterizing rule, without satisfying the localizing rule. It would be a mistake, however, to see this as an answer to the same problem. It is simply a new move in the naming game, a proposal for new conventions for new reference terms, to be used in place of the term failed.

 

5. Meta-identiying rule: final version

MIR_P is already a very satisfactory rule, explaining most cases of a proper name’s application. However, it results from a still incomplete analysis. After all, it is not difficult to demonstrate that the condition of uniqueness is derived and that MIR_P does not account for counterexamples that depend on a stage prior to this derivation. To do so I want to examine two counterexamples.

   A first counterexample concerns the the Twin Earth fantasy. A Twin Earth must be like ours, and everything on each planet exists and happens identically (or almost identically) to what happens on the other. Thus, all that applies to an object on our Earth should apply to its Doppelgänger on the distant Twin Earth. Nevertheless, even if we knew of a Twin Earth somewhere in outer space, we would continue to have a strong intuition that by pronouncing the name ‘Aristotle’ we are referring to our Aristotle and not to some other Aristotle on the Twin Earth. However, if we consider our first formulation of the identification rule for Aristotle, it no longer seems applicable, for both the Aristotle of our Earth and that of the twin Earth seem to sufficiently satisfy the disjunctive rule. On the one hand, both seem to satisfy the rule of space-time localizaton, since both were born in 384 BC in Estagira, etc. In addition, both Aristotles satisfy the characterizing rule: both wrote the Aristotelian opus down to the last comma. Moreover, concerning the satisfaction of the disjunctive condition “(i-a) ˅ (i-b),” the two Aristotles satisfy the identifying rule for the name ‘Aristotle.’ But if so, condition (iii) of uniqueness is no longer satisfied, resulting in the counterintuitive conclusion that Aristotle did not exist. However, it is intuitively clear that he existed and that he was our Aristotle and not that of the Twin Earth.

   Counterexamples with possible worlds can also be easily imagined. Let us say that in a possible world W₂ in Stagira in 384 BC Nicomachus, the court doctor, became the father of twins, both baptized with the name ‘Aristotle.’ The first became a doctor like his father, joining Alexander’s army and died of thirst and hunger crossing the desert while returning from the East. The second went to Athens, where he learned philosophy from Plato and wrote all the Aristotelian opus. Since both sufficiently satisfy the localizing rule, both sufficiently satisfy the disjunctive condition “(i-a) ˅ (i-b)” required by the identifying rule resulting from the application of MIR_P to the cluster of descriptions associated with the name. However, the condition (iii) of uniqueness is no longer satisfied, leaving the identification rule for the name ‘Aristotle’ inapplicable and leading to the conclusion that Aristotle did not exist. But such a result is counterintuitive. There is no doubt that for us there is a single true Aristotle in W₂ and that he is the second Aristotle and not the first. Only in a possible world W₃, which differed from W₂ by the fact that the second Aristotle was not born, would we consider the first of them our Aristotle in potentia. The MIR_P leads us here to the dissatisfying conclusion that if we have an incomplete Aristotle, we are allowed to call him our Aristotle, but if we have two Aristotles, then we have none.[95]

   The question we should ask here is: what leads us in the first counterexample to choose the Aristotle of the Earth over the Aristotle of the Twin Earth, and, in the second, what leads us to choose the Aristotle who wrote the Aristotelian opus instead of the one who became a doctor? There can be only one answer: the satisfaction of the identifying description rules of a proper name by more than one object eliminates the object that satisfies it less from the competition for the right to apply the proper name. The solution, therefore, is to establish in the place of the condition of uniqueness what could be called a predominance condition: the condition that in the case in that more than one object satisfies the disjunctive rule of a proper name, the bearer of the name must be the object that most completely satisfies it. Such an addition allows us to easily solve the two counterexamples above, for in the first the Earth Aristotle satisfies the disjunctive rule added with the condition of sufficiency better than the Twin Earth Aristotle (the condition of localization implies that he was born in the Stagira on the Earth, lived in the Athens on our Earth, etc.), while in the second counterexample the Aristotle who wrote the Aristotelian opus also better satisfies a rule of identification that replaces the condition of uniqueness by the condition of predominance by being the only one to satisfy the condition of characterization.

   Based on similar considerations I now want to suggest a last and more improved formulation of the meta-identifying rule, which incorporates itself (always under a Cc-type assumption) this last condition. Here it is:

 

MIR_F:

An ‘N’ proper name refers to an object x belonging to a Class G

 see

(i-a) x satisfies N’s localizing description-rule L

  and/or

(i-b) x satisfies N’s characterizing description-rule C,

(ii) x satisfies L and/or C to a sufficient extent, and

      (iii) x satisfies L and/or C more than any other object.[96]

 

Here we replace as a condition (iii), which was once of uniqueness, by the condition of predominance, which is prior to that of uniqueness, since it serves to guarantee it. The predominance condition is applied in such a way as to select the object that sufficiently satisfies the inclusive disjunction of the disjuncts more than any other object of the same class that also satisfies it, from which we obtain an unambiguous identification of the proper name’s reference.

   As in the previous case, when the MIR_F is applied to the fundamental description-rules constituting any proper name (or when its formal variables are instantiated), it produces an identifying or definitional rule for for the proper name, to be applied by an ideal speaker. Here’s how this identifting rule can be summarized for the name ‘Aristotle’:

 

RI_F-‘Aristotle’:

The proper name ‘Aristotle’ must refer to an object x belonging to the class of human beings

iff

(i-a) x satisfies the localizing description-rule of being born in Estagira in 384 BC, lived much of his life in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC (...)

 and/or

(i-b) x satisfies the characterizing description-rule that it was the person who produced the relevant content of the Aristotelian opus (...)

(ii) x satisfies the disjunction (i-a) and/or (i-b) to a measure on the whole sufficient and

      (iii) x satisfies the disjunction (i-a) and/or (i-b) more than any other human being.

 

The identifying rule resulting from the application of MIR_F to aristotle’s fundamental description-rules gives us an intuitive answer to the problem of the Twin Earth’s Aristotle. According to this answer, although both, the Earth Aristotle and the Twin Earth Aristotle, satisfy the disjunctive rule sufficiently, the Aristotle of our Earth is the only one that truly satisfies the condition of spatio-temporal localization. After all, only this Aristotle exists in our spatio-temporal region, and the identifying rule is made to be applied to our spatio-temporal region in a single space that includes both Earths – and not to the analogous space region located in the distant Twin Earth. Thus, our Earth Aristotle satisfies the disjunctive condition “(i-a) ˅ (i-b)” more completely than the Twin Earth Aristotle. In doing so, he fulfils the predominance condition of the identifying rule for Aristotle resulting from the application of MIR_F to the fundamental description-rules associated with that name, which is in full agreement with our intuition that we are referring to our Earth Aristotle.

   The application of RI₂-‘Aristotle’ also solves the problem of the twin Aristotles who satisfy sufficiently the disjunctive condition (i) in W_F. Only in his childhood does the first (who went to India with Alexander) satisfy the localizing rule, satisfying this rule sufficiently, but he never satisfies the characterizing rule. The second (who went to Athens and wrote the Aristotelian opus) not only completely satisfies the locatization rule, but also completely satisfies the characterizing rule. For this reason, due to the great predominance in the satisfaction of the disjunctive rule, we choose the later Aristotle as the true one, which also conforms to our intuitions. In a world where the second Aristotle never existed, but only the first, we will tend to distinguish the former as our Aristotle, even if unfortunately diverted from the great intellectual deeds we expect from him.

  Returning to MIR_F, there remains one question to be answered. Imagine that other names for the same object, with their own identifying rules, would compete with the identifying rule we are considering. Thus, if various clusters of descriptions associated with the various proper names N₁... Nn satisfy MIR_F for the same object, that is, if different identification rules are satisfied, it seems that a condition should be proposed so that we can decide which of the proper names truly refers to that object. Would it not be necessary to have a predominance condition requing that in order to be referred to by a name, an object should satisfy the disjunctive rule of identification for the name in question more than any other rule of identification of another name which also refers to it?

   Fortunately, it does not seem that in the case of proper names this additional condition needs to be introduced, because identity of the object that determines the criterial conditions constituting these identifying rules need to be added rather than excluded, especially with regard to characterising descriptions, since we cannot have two different spatio-temporally localizing descriptions for the same object. A confirming example of two apparent identifying rules that are added for the same object was that of Father Marcial Maciel presented in the previous chapter. He used the pseudonym Raúl Rivas while courting senõrita Gutiérrez, deceiving her with the fraudulent claim to be an Esso employee and CIA agent. These and other descriptions of Raúl Rivas should be added to the descriptions belonging to the cluster associated to the proper name ‘Marcial Maciel.’

   An adverse example, but still in accordance with what we said, is the following. Suppose it is discovered, as was long suspected, that Francis Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s works, and that there was no Shakespeare with the space-time career we attribute to him. In that case it seems that the rules of identification for Bacon and Shakespeare should compete. However, this doesn’t have to be so. We don’t really find ourselves forced to choose between Bacon being Bacon and Bacon being Shakespeare. In this case we will extend the attributes of the same person to encompass the names of Bacon and Shakespeare, saying that in addition to being the scientist, philosopher and diplomat, Bacon also anonymously wrote the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare. What about the Shakespeare born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, who married Anne Hathaway? That must now be another person, another object, for whose identification there must be another identifying rule. The important thing to be noticed is something that no one denies: that for the case in question, the most important is the satisfaction of the characterizing conditions, besides the fact that Bacon lived in London at that same time, thus satisfying something of the localyzing condition. Several utterances could sum up the identity dispute: not only “Bacon was the real Shakespeare” and “Shakespeare was not Shakespeare,” but also “Bacon was the great playwrighter; Shakespeare was just a fellow thespian and theatrical director.”

 

6. Proper name’s meaning

Let us now look at the question of the meaning of the proper name. In order to arrive at an answer, it is sufficient to recall the argument presented in the introductory chapter suggesting that the meaning – understood here as the Fregean meaning (Sinn) of the singular term – is plausibly clarified in terms of rules or combinations of rules that enable the effective application of expressions.[97] The reason seems simple to me. Rules are the originating source from what we call meaning, since rules are meaningful per se. Following a rule is the same as giving meaning to something. If “&%” seems less significant than “à$” it is because we are used to regarding an arrow as a rule indicating a direction. Where there is rule there is meaning of some kind, even if usually not of the kind that may interest us, as in the case of the syntactic rules. More specifically, assuming the Wittgensteinian dictum that “meaning is what the explanation of meaning explains,”[98] it seems clear that when we talk about the meaning of a linguistic expression we are usually considering more properly the rules that we rely on in explaining what we mean by the expression. The inevitable conclusion is that also the meaning of a proper name is what the explanation of its meaning explains. Moreover, a metadescriptive neodescriptivist theory of proper names, being a theory of semantic rules expressed by the descriptions it replaces, is no more or less than a theory of the referential or cognitive meaning of the proper names, since these description-rules explain the referential meaning of the name.

   This view contrasts sharply with the opinion of those who argue that proper names are meaningless. The reasons they offer are well-known: when asked the meaning of a proper name, we do not know what to say…[99] Moreover, as we have already noted, proper names are generally not dicionarized; and as the purpose of dictionaries is to clarify the meanings of words, there is an additional reason here for rejecting the claim that proper names have meanings.[100]

However, this thesis does not withstand close scrutiny. Certainly, the proper name has meaning in the sense of having the lexical function of the proper name, which is to identify a singular object as being its bearer, distinguishing this object from all others. But it also has meaning in the most substantive sense of possessing semantic content. That proper names should have meaning in this last sense is immediately clear when we consider sentences about identity between names. Remembering J. L. Stevenson story of a man with two diametrically opposed personalities alternatively competing in the same person: Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. The statement “Dr. Jeckyll is Mr. Hyde,” for example, should be tautological and non-informative if the proper names ‘Jeckyll’ and ‘Hyde’ did not want to say rather contrasting things, if they did not have diverse semantic contents. After all, Dr. Jeckyll is a good person who from time to time gives in to his bad part by taking a potion that turns him into the demonic Mr. Hyde.

   Moreover, if we admit the Fregean understanding of semantic content, it explains itself as meaning (Sinn), which is an informative content (informatives Gehalt). But if it is informative, then it begins to become clear that in this aspect the proper names should not be lacking, but, on the contrary, be full of meaning. After all, it seems that many of them are repositories of a diffuse mass of variously accessible informational content. Consider, for example, the immense load of informational content that we can associate with the name of the conqueror Napoleon or the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell’s lenghty autobiography is filled with informative content about himself. From such a perspective, the issue is not so much that the proper name contains less meaning, but rather too much. And so much so that the best place to look for the meaning of many proper names is not in a dictionary, but rather an encyclopedia. And in some cases, more than the encyclopedia, the place where we find the most detailed and complete meaning of a proper name is biography. Biographies such as Napoleon’s, autobiographies such as Russell’s, are rich sources where we can find a detailed exposition of the informational content associated with these proper names, that can be easily compressed and abridged into definite descriptions. And in such works the rules of localization and characterization are not presented in an abbreviated form, as we have done here, but rather in much more detailed and complete form.

   But why then have some maintained that proper names are meaningless? One response emerges from the fact that when we accidentally use a proper name, all we often know about it are generally vague and variable aspects of its meaning, restricted parts of its informational content, whose domain generally varies from speaker to speaker. What we have in mind when using a proper name is often some portion of its meaning that may vary from person to person and from occasion to occasion in the same person, given that the full content of many proper names is known only by a few and, if taken very strictly, by nobody in particular. When we contrast this state of affairs with the permanent, distinct and universally shared meaning of the the simplest general terms (such as, say 'red' and 'round'), we have the impression that because they are usually not able to mean anything specific, the proper names are not able to mean anything else. Proper names have so much meaning that they seem to have none.

   Identifying meaning with kinds of rules let us now consider the question of the meaning of proper names from the already considered view of the descriptive expressions. What would be the really important semantic value? A first rule to be excluded is the meta-identifying rule itself, the MIR_F: the distinctive semantic nucleus of a proper name cannot be constituted by it, as it is no more than a simple form shared by the identifying rules of the most diverse first names, while what matters most to the meaning of a term is what distinguishes it from other terms of the same species. The meaning should also not be relevantly constituted by the auxiliary rules expressed by the descriptions of group C, since they are accidental in relation to the application of the name, although they are expected to contribute in some extent to its informative content. The fundamental rules of localization and/or characterization, expressed respectively by the descriptions of groups A and B, remain. The latter may only be those which constitute in a relevant way the meaning of a proper name. If we ask ourselves, for example, which descriptions express the core of what should be meant by the name ‘Aristotle,’ we would tend to accept that it means the philosopher who studied with Plato in Athens and who developed ideas that profoundly influenced the course of Western philosophy; ideas exposed in works such as Metaphysics, Ethics to Nicomachus and Metafísica, and the Organon. When all that a person is able to say of Aristotle is that he was ‘a great Greek philosopher,’ she is saying something that is already being implicated by the fundamental descriptions. Thus, the fundamental description-rules seem to express the indispensable informative content constituting the central nucleus of meaning of that proper name, even if a person who watch in a film about Alexandre that he had as teacher a philosopher called ‘Aristotle,’ attaching to this name only the semantic description-rule telling that he was ‘the teacher of Alexandre.’

   Apart from the central semantic nucleus, we can see that there is certainly a halo of secondary meaning generally expressed by auxiliary description-rules. Thus, it seems that the metaphorical auxiliary description ‘the master of those who know,’ formulated to connote Aristotle, also contributes to the mass of informative content that constitutes the full meaning of this proper name. In the same way, better known accidental descriptions, such as ‘Plato’s greatest disciple,’ ‘the tutor of Alexander,’ ‘the founder of the Lyceum’... do so as well and even better, since those who know them are already able to give some convergent meaning to that name Aristote. Not all auxiliary rules, however, contribute to enriching the informative content of proper names. Ignored accidental rules-descriptions, such as ‘Achaeon’s grandson’, certainly do not contribute in a relevant way. And by their circumstantial nature, adventitious rules-descriptions, such as ‘the philosopher mentioned by the teacher in the classroom,’ contribute nothing to the permanent informative content of the proper name. This is why usually cannot be found in encyclopedias or biographies. Nevertheless, it can be said that adventitious description-rules still express an occasional sense which is being intended by a name when a user employs it and it is understood by his hearers.[101]

   To avoid confusion, it is always indispensable to distinguish between the complete or full meaning and the intended meaning of the proper name. Let’s start with the intended meaning. It is the variable content that different people and even the same person at different times have in mind when employing a proper name. It is what Russell called a “description in our minds.”[102] We can say that it consists in what is, if not consciously, at least willingly intended by the speaker when he thinks or utters the name, considering that the intention does not need to be consciously elaborated. I say that this meaning is at least fully intended because what is intended in terms of description-rules – which can be both fundamental and auxiliary – does not need to be reflexively considered at the time of the name’s application, although it determines the use of the name by the speaker and can in principle be made conscious. It is common for us to know very little of the meanings of the proper names we use, so that the intentioned meaning rarely coincides with the complete meaning.

   As for the complete meaning, it is constituted primarily by what we can call the proper or essential meaning: the set formed by the localizing and charactering description-rules (the primary semantic nucleus). Secondarily it is also formed by what we might call auxiliary meaning: the one constituted by auxiliary rules (the semantic halo).

   The following scheme summarizes the distinctions made above with respect to the meaning of the proper name:

 

                                                                                              Proper meaning

                                               Full meaning                         (semantic core)

                                               (possibly only known

Cognitive                                 by privileged users)            Auxiliary meaning

meaning                                                                                (semantic halo)

(informative

content or the                         Intentional meaning of the proper name                      

fregean sense                          (identifyed with the meaning given by the

of the proper                            proper name’s user when it is applied)

name)

 

With this picture in mind, it becomes easy to clarify the semantic role of the auxiliary rules expressed by group C descriptions. Clearly, a person who knows only one auxiliary description-rule does not yet have sufficient knowledge of the proper name’s meaning. But auxiliary description-rules such as ‘the iron marshal,’ ‘Plato’s greatest disciple,’ or even ‘the philosopher quoted by the professor,’ may already suffice to enable the speaker to insert his own name into the speech in a communicatively effective manner, obtaining referential success in a derived sense of the word. Moreover, if a speaker inserts this insufficient allusion to the referential term into public discourse, it is important that he is aware of his insufficient knowledge of its meaning. After all, this person is only able to rationally insert a proper name in a discourse, if he is using it with the intention of referring in the derived, weak, insufficient sense, even though he is part of a linguistic community that in its linguistic division of labor ultimately has links with interpreters capable of completing the meaning and reference of the proper name. That is: in such a community other people understand to whom the speaker is intending to refer, or at least the social comprehensibility of this intention. This reference understood as the assumption that a complete reference can be socially rescued is something similar to what Strawson had already identified in terms of reference borrowing.[103]

 

7. Ordinary proper names

The reader may now wonder whether MIR_F would apply to the proper names of ordinary people, whose meanings cannot be found in neither encyclopedias nor biographies. I see no essential difference here in relation to the above considered cases; the difference usually lies only in the greater spread of the characterizing descriptions-rules, as we will see. Imagine that I met in my youth a lady named Bärbel Hildish. If asked who Bärbel was, I would say that she was (i) “the nice lady who helped me several times when I went to ask about a room in the Student Housing of the University of Bielefeld, and who had fascinatingy exotic facial features” (adventitious description). Her ex-husband Felix Schneider could say that she was (ii) “the woman who was my wife for sixteen years and who had our two children” (part of the characterizing description-rule).  His children will say that Bärbel was (iii) “our mother and a person with great human understanding” (widelly known accidental description). Her father, Tobias Hildish, will say that she was (iv) “a very playful child” (little known accidental description).

   These descriptions are aspectual, even if this is the way we usually know people. But let’s say someone wants a more accurate characterization of who Bärbel was, for example, a government official. In this case you will use something like your passport or official ID, which typically specifies a place and date of birth, and includes a photo and a fingerprint. Let’s just say that Frau Hildish were involved in a lawsuit. In this case, a history of the addresses where she lived could be required, in addition to personal details, her level of education, professional history, and of course photos, fingerprints, etc. Let’s just say, finally, that someone in her family decides to write a biography of Frau Hildish. In this case, all the above elements will certainly appear. The conclusion we have reached is that, although aspectual knowledge plays a much more important role in the present case, as there is no public reason to remember common names, this knowledge exists in connexion with the fundamental description-rules for the identification of Frau Hildish, which are the localizing description-rule summarized as follows:

 

The person who was born on 12.3.1932 in Berlin, having as parents Tobias and Frida Hildish, having lived her youth in Stuttgart and later in Bielenfeld, where she died on 26.4.2018.

 

Followed by the characteryzing rule-description summarized as follows:

 

The woman who was married to Herr Felix Schneider, with whom she lived for sixteen years, having two children. After their separation, Frau Hildish worked in the Student Administration of the University of Bielefeld, later was a diligent manager of the same, and looked very much like her photos.

 

The descriptions one initially knows are either auxiliary or parts in a greater or lesser extent of the localization and characterization rules of Frau Hildish. Here arises the question: few know in detail the localization and characterization rules; how then is it possible that with as little as the descriptions of (i) to (iv) people are able to refer to Frau Hildish? An answer to such a question will be addressed in the next section.

 

8. Language’s division of cognitive labour

Against the MIRs and the consequent identifying rules, we could still oppose the following objection: we do not need to know the fundamental descriptions associated with a proper name to be able to use it correctly. Perhaps the only thing most people know about Aristotle today is that he satisfies the indefinite description ‘a great philosopher of ancient Greece.’ A person who knows only this, will at most know generalities implied by aristotle’s characterizing and localizing descriptions. Even so, we often say that this person is able to refer to Aristotle. Moreover, a person can be understood as referring to Aristotle, even associating this name with a single auxiliary description such as ‘Plato’s greatest disciple’ after seeing a picture of Raphael’s famous fresco, or associating him with the description ‘Alexander’s tutor’ after watching a film about Alexander’s life, or even an adventitious auxiliary description, such as ‘the philosopher mentioned by the teacher in yesterday’s class.’ Moreover, for a philosopher like Kripke, a person could even refer to Aristotle associating to him an erroneous description, such as ‘a medieval philosopher’ or ‘a Greek general.’ But how is this possible?

   The answer to this last question is based on what we might call a descriptivist-internalist understanding of the hypothesis of the division of labor of language. This division was proposed by Hilary Putnam for a non-descriptivist view of conceptual reference. For Putnam it is common for the same word to be used by different people in different ways, each of which can containing various pieces of information, greater or lesser and more or less specialized than anything that can be said using it. For him, words do not simply function like different tools, as Wittgenstein suggested. The important metaphor used by Putnam, applicable to many words in our language, is that of a steamboat: different people use the boat with different functions and purposes; some use it as passengers who do nothing but wait for the boat to take them to their destination. Others use it like crew members, having more active roles. They can work as pilots, serve in the engine room, perform on-board services... Putnam, committed to his semantic externalism, considers this linguistic division of labour in terms of social groups and does not essentially resort to cognitive-descriptive semantic aspects. However, it is important to note that this commitment is arbitrary, since it is easy to imagine a division of semantic content between diverse the levels of descriptively expressible cognitive abilities that speakers or groups of speakers need to acquire in relation to the use of a word. After all, allusions to something like the division of labor in language can be found in the writings of internalist philosophers prior to Putnam, beginning with John Locke himself, who was the classic advocate of a descriptive semantics in which meanings are psychological ideas.[104]

   It is therefore very easy and natural to interpret the division of language’s work in terms of varied cognitive abilities in the application of descriptively expressible semantic content that various speakers are able to associate with the word, in this case, their proper names. With this we can suggest that when we attribute reference we are talking about referential success, which in turn has at least two meanings:

 

(a)   that of a self-contained sufficient reference

(b)   that of a borrowed, insufficient reference

 

Let us first consider the case (a) of the reference I call sufficient. We can understand it as being that of the reference capable of offering a guaranteed identification of the object as something that exists in the world. The criterion of referential success for the case (a), of the self-suficient reference, can be considered the application by a speaker of the very identifying rule of the proper name, that is, the application of its localizing and/other characterizing description-rules sufficiently and predominantly. There are many proper names, for example, those of our close relatives, whose identifying rule can be completely known to us. But there are other proper names whose meaning, their relevant informative content is known only to privileged users of the name, such as, say, the experts, the historians, the witnesses of the baptism... Consider, for example, the proper names ‘Kublai Khan,’ ‘Andromeda Galaxy,’ and ‘Battle of Salamis.’ A self-sufficient reference to the bearers of these names requires users who are able to truly refer to their bearers, ideally being responsible for their institution and maintenance: these persons are privileged users.  

   However, it ofte happens that wen we attribute reference, we consider only an insufficient description-rule (b), one that is, (b₁) deficient, in the sense of being schematic or accessory, or even (b₂) inadequate in the sense of being erroneous, but still convergent, in a sense to be explained – a reference whose character is derived. As for insufficiency due to deficience, it is customary to attribute this to people who know only generalities or auxiliary descriptions associated with a proper name. This is the case of people who only know from Aristotle that he is a figure of famous fresco from Raphael or that he appeared in a Hollywood movie, where he was Alexander’s tutor. These people are able to refer to the philosopher only in an extended sense of the word, in the sense that they are able to insert the name ‘Aristotle’ in undemanding conversational circumstances, assuming that interpreters who have greater mastery of the identifying rule are able to recognize in this usage an attempt to identify the person that could actually meant to be referred to.

   More than that, as Kripke saw, a person can associate a proper name with an indefinite description as ‘a great physicist’ for  Richard Feynman and even with an inadequate description in the sense of an erroneous one, as ‘the inventor of the atomic bomb’ for Einstein.[105] Usually these people do this with understanding of the grammar of proper names (implicitly knowing MIR_F and having sufficient informational background, which allows them to be aware of what they can – and specially of what they cannot – do with the word). This happens, however, under the assumption that the linguistic community has privileged users, that is, people in a position that allows them to complete the name’s reference by mastering their proper identifying rule. Two people can talk about the existence of a great Spanish painter they call ‘Velázquez’ knowing nothing more about him; we do not deny that they refer (insufficiently) to Velázquez, but it is clear that in a more demanding sense they do not know from who they are talking about; it is once more a case of borrowed reference.

   Nevertheless, there are limits to error in the use of the proper name. If someone uses the proper name ‘Aristotle’ in the erroneous belief that it names a prime number, if someone uses the name ‘Feynman’ thinking it is a brand of perfume, or if they use the proper name ‘Einstein’ thinking that it means a precious stone, he has a divergent understanding of those names – insufficient in the sense of being (c) inappropriate. These are uses in which even class G (e.g. of humans) isn’t recognized. Here the speaker will no longer be able to correctly insert the name into the discourse in the sense that privileged users will conclude that the speaker is unable to make a referential use of these names, even if in a derived sense.

   Keeping in mind the referential use of a name without sufficient knowledge of its identifying rule, we can propose a second sense of referential success, involving cases of references of kinds (b₁) and (b₂), which I have called insufficient, even if wrong, though not inappropriate. For this weakened sense of referential success, the criterion is twofold:

 

SUCCESS CRITERIA FOR INSUFFICIENT REFERENCES:

(b-i) Convergence condition: convergent use of the name associated with descriptions belonging to the cluster or that at least that have to do generically with the descriptions of the cluster. I understand by convergent use the one where a person can at least correctly classify the referred object, so as to make it sufficiently recognizable for privileged users (something equivalent to the knowledge of a genus proximum).

(b-ii) Condition of linguistic competence: knowledge of MIR_F on the speaker’s part. This enables a person to at least know that she does not know. (If all I know about Aristotle is that he was Alexander’s preceptor and I know MIR_F, then I know at least that I do not know who Aristotle really was.)

 

Thus, a person is admitted to be able to use the name referentially, though in an indirect way, even with deficient knowledge, as in the case where she only identifies Feynman with a great physicist, and even with erroneous knowledge, when she identifies Einstein with the inventor of the atomic bomb. Important is the fact that these identifications are convergent, falling within the general classifications of physicist and scientist (satisfaction of b-i). This is so, simply because by inserting the name into language in a convergent manner, a person is already able to communicate under sufficienty vague contexts. Moreover, the spelling of the proper names in these already convergent senses already makes it possible for other users – assuming the ultimate support of privileged users – to insert the proper name into the speech in a sufficiently adequate manner and thereby without blocking the path to a more complete reference. Finally, it is assumed that the person knows MIR_F, the metalinguistic rule for the construction of rules for identifying proper names (satisfaction of b-ii). Usually this makes the person aware that to use the proper name referentially she would need to know more about it than what she really knows.

   In this weak sense of borrowed referential success, what we could call a referential act is little more than a gesture towards an authentic act of referring. The speaker performs his act of reference in an insufficient sense because he is counting with the support of a linguistic community able to complete his reference for him. It is only with the aid of a better qualified speaker that it is possible to cognitively complete the senses of the expressions used by it. Here it is worth remembering that although this process is social, it is obviously internal. The meaning of the proper name is internal, even though it is only very partially in a speaker’s head, and even though it is distributed differently in the heads of the other speakers, including the very interpreters of his reference, since this meaning is internal in all his moments, with exception of its origins.[106]

   Returning to our use of Putnam’s metaphor: a person is successful in referring according to the criterion (b) of referential success concerning an insufficient reference in a way similar to a passenger who says he is taking a boat to go to a certain destination, even knowing that it is the crew that will actually sail and steer it. This is a case that is obviously different from that of a person who is successful in referring according to the criterion (a) of referential success, say, as the captain of the vessel, who actually uses on board control to guide the boat to its final destination. If we want to be precise, we must admit that people who use a proper name without knowing its fundamental description-rules do not really know what they are saying with the name. In fact, we only agree to say that they are able to insert a name into the language referentially because we rely on the existence of privileged users who are actually able to identify its bearer. Finally, insufficient non-inadequate references form a spectrum ranging from the knowledge of almost irrelevant descriptions (such as ‘a philosopher,’ ‘Alexander’s tutor’...) to the knowledge of important or even fundamental descriptions (such as ‘Plato’s greatest pupil’ or ‘the Stagirite’).

   To emphasize the social dependence on insufficient reference we can imagine a situation in which, for some reason, all privileged users disappear. Imagine that a catastrophe like an atomic war occurs and that only a few almost illiterate people survive, reduced to an almost primitive state. Imagine that these people find a paper where it is written an auxiliary description concerning Aristotle, such as ‘Alexander’s tutor’ and nothing more. They would be able, I suppose, to recognize the word ‘Aristotle’ as the name of a person. However, they would not actually be able to refer to Aristotle even in the sense (b) of making an insufficient reference, simply because of the absence of possible support given by a linguistic community, which must include speakers capable of guaranteeing the reference and giving it a sense of what it originaly was. Without privileged users able to (together, at least) master the identifying rule, the possibility of the proper’s name effective referential use would collapse. It is as if the passengers remained on board a ship abandoned in mid-ocean by its crew without having the slightest idea of how to navigate. They could neveer reach their port by their own efforts.

 

9. Why are proper names rigid designators?

The identification rules resulting from the application of MIRs show a way to solve a problem that has long haunted descriptivism, namely, its inability to explain why proper names are rigid designators. To give a neodescriptivist answer to this question, we need to examine some semantic properties of the identification rules for proper names. One is that these rules can always be translated into the form of descriptive sentences to be read as definitions or analytical-conceptual truths. We can make this clear by re-writing (under the assumption of Cc) the identifying rule of the name ‘Aristotle’ in the form of a long definite description to be summarized as follows:

 

      DD-‘Aristotle’:

The proper name ‘Aristotle,’ which refers to the person who satisfies (ii) as a whole sufficiently and, (iii) more than any other, the condition that (i-a) he was born in Stagira in 384 BC, was the son of Philip’s court doctor, lived in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC and/or the condition (i-b) that he was the author of the fundamental ideas of the Aristotelian opus.

 

The important point about this definite description expressing the identifying rule of a proper name is that it expresses a tacitly accepted rigid designator. After all, it applies to the bearer of the name ‘Aristotle’ in any possible world where Aristotle exists and cannot be applied in any possible world where Aristotle does not exist. That is, we cannot conceive of a possible world where Aristotle exists and the identifying rule provided by this description does not apply, since it is this same identifying rule that defines who Aristotle can be for us. We can even say that it is the effective (warranted, continuous[107]) applicability of this description-rule that for us establishes the existence of Aristotle, in other words, who can and cannot be Aristotle in any possible world.

   This should not surprise us very much if we accept the Fregean definition of existence to mean that at least one object falls under a concept. I prefer to say that existence means the satisfaction or effective applicability of a concept, now understood in the non-Fregean sense of an identifying conceptual rule.[108] Let us assume that the concept (which I prefer to understand as Sinn) associated with a proper name is – which seems much more plausible – its own identifying rule. Then existence, the satisfaction of the concept, does not seem to be more than the meta-property of effective and continuous applicability of the identifying rule associated with a proper name.[109] This may seem strange at first, but it can be more reasonably paraphrased as saying that the existence of the object is reduced to the meta-property of its identification rule of being effectively and continuously applicable to it, while an object that does not possess this meta-property is not a real object, but merely an imaginary one.[110] Thus, if we know that the identifying rule for the name ‘Aristotle’ is effectively applicable in a possible world, we know that Aristotle exists in this world. Therefore, the effective applicability of the identification rule is, in some way, “constitutive” of the object, which only gains “being” insofar as this rule is effectively applicable.

   These reflections allow us to explain why proper names are rigid designators. The rigid designator, in the most reasonable sense of this concept, is defined as one that is applicable in all possible worlds where its reference exists. A proper name is a rigid designator because it is essentially constituted by an identifying rule that is necessarily applicable in any possible world where its reference may be seen as existing, and it is not applicable in any possible world where this reference does not exist. This is reflected in the conventionally necessary truth of the description constituting its identifying rule, which is very different from those loose descriptions usually associated with proper names.

   We can ask ourselves now: could there be ambiguous cases, possible worlds where there is no way of knowing whether or not we can apply the rule; could there be worlds where there is only, so to speak, “half” an Aristotle? The answer is yes, but that doesn’t matter at all! Vagueness is a pervasive characteristic of language and of the world as it can be divided by language, and a true semantics of possible worlds also needs to cope with this. Certainly, there are possible worlds where Aristotle does not sufficiently exist so that we can decide whether to apply or not to apply his identifying rule. In such worlds there is no way to attribute either existence or non-existence to Aristotle; and (assuming the plausible idea that vagueness comes from the very nature of things) Aristotle really neither exists nor does not exist. This does not mean that the name ‘Aristotle’ is not a rigid designator, because outside the boundaries of indeterminacy the name can still be guaranteed to apply or not.

   There is therefore a natural way to accommodate the concept of rigid designator to such cases. It is sufficient to more appropriately redefine such a concept as designating the property of a referential expression to apply to all possible worlds where the referred object definitely exists. Rigidity is, in other words, the property of the semantic rule of a referential term of “constituting” the existence of its object in all possible worlds where this rule is (via verifiable acts) warranted and continuously applicable in a defined way, that is, without any doubts about its effective applicability.

   It would still be possible to object to this view by recalling the sorites paradox. If there are frontiers of indeterminacy, where do they begin or end? If there is no clear limit to its extent, what justifies our saying that we have already reached a zone of clarity in the application of the concept, where the bearer of the name definitely exists? However, sorites can be generated for virtually any vague term of our language without this fact making it practically inapplicable. Indeed, even if we are aware of sorites, we do not fail to apply the word ‘bald’ to a totally bald head, nor the word ‘mountain’ to a very large mountain which is impossible to confuse with a hill. We therefore do not need to solve the sorites in order to apply most of our predicates. Similarly, we do not need to make undecidable cases disappear to admit that the proper name ‘Aristotle’ is a rigid designator.[111]

   An interesting question can still be asked: changes in an identification rule are possible; but wouldn’t they destroy the rigidity of a proper name? The short answer is: if changing the rule is able to destroy rigidity, it will also destroy the proper naming function, thereby changing the reference. In other words, we would say that because the identifying rule is definitional regarding the object of a proper name’s reference, if possible, changes in the rule should be limited. Considering the case carefully, we see that auxiliary rule-descriptions can undoubtedly be changed, since they are not what decides the applicability of a proper name (it does not really matter whether or not Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor). Because identifying rules require only disjunction, sufficiency and predominance to be applied, localization or characterization may be lacking, as we have seen in several examples. But this does not imply a need to change the identification rule, but only its application. Nevertheless, in fundamental description-rules the number of details relating to location and character can certainly be increased or even decreased. This often happens with an ordinary increase of the information obtained, insofar as this does not change the reference or the possible worlds to which the name applies. However, we cannot change an identifying rule in a way that changes the possible worlds where a proper name applies. This would happen if we changed Aristotle’s identification rule to say he was a philosopher who lived in the 9th Century and wrote a book in Latin called De Proprietatibus Elementorum. It is certainly a rule for an eponymous of a person’s name, sharing with the original the fact that he was a philosopher.

   Another example that proves this point is the already considered case of the name ‘Madagascar’, suggested by Gareth Evans. The first identifying rule localizes and characterizes Madagascar as a region on the east coast of Africa. Marco Polo mistakenly believed Madagascar was the great island situated near the east coast of Africa, thus completely altering the identifying rule. Because of this error, the practice of calling this great island ‘Madagascar’ became commonplace, resulting in the name ‘Madagascar’ having two meanings corresponding to two identifying rules for two different objects: the ancient name referring to a coastal region of Africa, which fell into disuse, and the name given by Marco Polo, referring to the large island, which became dominant.

 

10. Why are definite descriptions accidental designators?

In this section I present what I regard as an irrefutable demonstration of the greater explanatory power of the theory of proper names so far developed.

   We have already seen that a significant advantage of causal-historical theory would be that it provides an acceptable explanation for the fact that definite descriptions are accidental designators, while proper names are rigid designators. It seems clear that by connecting directly with their objects, proper names identify their bearers in any possible world where they exist; definite descriptions, on the other hand, by doing this indirectly – supposedly by means of their connotative semantic content – are able to identify different objects in different possible worlds.

   This explanation is unsatisfactory, as it must unavoidable resort to a mysterious “direct connection to the object” allegedly possessed by proper names. However, it is a great advantage for the above presented theory of proper names that it allows us to explain the difference in usage between descriptions and proper names. To arrive at this explanation, we will need a long argument. We can start by asking: in what cases do defined descriptions become rigid designators? A case apart is one in which they are artificially rigidified. For this it is sufficient to stipulate, for example, that the description ‘the last great philosopher of antiquity’ necessarily refers to Aristotle, which will exclude, for example, that in another possible world a more influential ancient philosopher succeeded him. But what I want to consider here is something else. We can do whatever we want with language by simply stipulating new conventions, without this taking us anywhere. What I want to consider is the case of perfectly normal assignable defined descriptions, which are still naturally interpreted as rigid designators. They are not rare. Here are some examples:

 

                              (A)

(i)               the square root of nine,

(ii)              the easternmost point in Latin America,

(iii)            the Rafflesia found by Dr. Joseph Arnold on 20 May 1818.

(iv)            the third cavalry regiment of Sintra.

(v)              the last glacial period,

(vi)            the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.

 

By description (i) we mean not only the number 3, but also a method of reasoning from which it results. This description can be considered an obstinate designator, since its formal character makes it abstractly applicable in any possible world.[112] What interests us here is not this case, but that of descriptions (ii) to (v), whose content is empirical. Whether we consider them to be rigid designators does not usually depend on how we interpret them. If we understand the description (ii) as indicating a geographical location in northeastern Brazil, where the city of João Pessoa is located, and where in our world the easternmost point of Latin America is located, then this description will be accidental. This is because in a possible world where Patagonia bends towards Africa so as to be farther east than João Pessoa, the description (ii) would need to be replaced by another indicating a very different geographical location, which makes (ii) an accidental designator. We compared here the description with the location of the city whose name is João Pessoa. However, in the case where we define (ii) as simply indicating any place located on the easternmost point of Latin America, abstracting from its latitude, longitude and any other geographical specification, then even in a possible world where this point is very differently located, it will continue to be the same, namely, that of the easternmost point of Latin America. In this last understanding, (ii) will be a rigid designator, applying to any possible world where there is a Latin America and, therefore, to any geographical location that is the farthest point to the east on it. Thus, if in a possible world, Patagonia curved towards Africa in order to be further east than João Pessoa, the description (ii) would apply to someplace in Patagonia, since it would still designate the same point (the easternmost one). The interesting thing, in this case, is that this reading of (ii) as a rigid designator is not a stipulation, but a natural interpretation of the description’s content.

   My point becomes more obvious when we consider other cases of rigid descriptions. Consider (iii): the Rafflesia Arnoldi is the largest known flower on earth. The first specimen was discovered by Sir Stamford Raffles and Dr Joseph Arnold on 19 May 1818 during an expedition to the Manna River in Sumatra. The description (iii) is rigid, since it is true in any possible world where Dr. Arnold discovered that Rafflesia specimen on 19 May 1818. Consider now (iv): if we have in mind only the third cavalry regiment of the city of Sintra (since there were others), in the abstraction of the soldiers and particular horses that constitute it (as is usual), its description is clearly seen as a rigid designator, applying to the same regiment in any possible world where the regiment exists. It is interesting to note that in this definite description the localizing description-rule (in Sintra) and the characterizing description-rule (the third cavalry regiment) are already clearly expressed. Descriptions (v) and (vi) should be also interpreted as rigid designators. The description (v) can be understood as designating a state of affairs characterized by the last cooling period of the Earth’s history. In our world it lasted from 110,000 years ago until about 12,000 years ago, but in a counterfactual situation it could have occurred in a very different period of time, insofar as it can be still identified as the last glacial period. The description (v) is a rigid designator of a state of affairs located on our planet. The description (vi), finally, is of an event, explicitly containing its characterization as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In our world he was shot by Gavrilo Princip, but in another possible world he could have been poisoned, strangled, etc. His death might not have ignited World War I in some worlds, insofar as other circumstances remained constant. But it would not fail to satisfy the description of the assassination as a rigid definite description, applicable in all possible worlds where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated.

We see, therefore, that there are definite descriptions naturally interpretable as rigid designators referring to points, objects, groups, states of affairs, processes and even events, which are naturally interpretable as rigid designators. Are there features common to all these cases? Certainly, and there are two of them. A first is that they constitute descriptions expressing fundamental rules of localization and/or characterization and not auxiliary rules, as in the case of metaphorical or accidental descriptions. This point is not so important, because we may well invent a metaphorical or accidental description in place of the cases above, and it may also be rigid. The second characteristic, however, is indispensable: it is that there are no proper names corresponding to any of these descriptions. That is why I’m going to call them autonomous descriptions. Below we show that this is a decisive property: autonomous descriptions are by nature rigid.

   As a contrast, let us now consider some examples of common definite descriptions, which behave like clearly accidental or flaccid designators that refer to different objects in different possible worlds. Here are some examples:

 

                 (B)

(i)               the eagle of The Hague,

(ii)              the iron marshal,

(iii)            the founder of the Lyceum,

(iv)            the first Roman emperor,

(v)              the city of light.

(vi)            The third planet of the solar system.

 

These descriptions are designators so typically accidental that they would boast a Kripkian philosopher. Contrary to the previous descriptions, it is only possible to make them rigid by stipulation. Consider (i): it is natural to think of the description ‘the eagle of The Hague’ as a laudatory metaphor for Rui Barbosa’s oratorical power in his passage to The Hague in 1907. But we can conceive a possible world where the ship that carried Rui Barbosa to the congress at The Hague had sunk already at the beginning of its voyage, taking with it that outstanding orator, and that he was replaced by another excellent speaker, who was called by his devoted compatriots ‘the eagle of The Hague.’ The same goes for any other description of group B.

   The question is: what makes group B descriptions accidental, in contrast to the rigid descriptions of group A? The answer is not that descriptions of group B are auxiliary, because we could add to this list descriptions such as (vii) ‘the most famous soccer player of our time’ and (vi) ‘the city of more than ten million inhabitants situated on the shores of the Seine,’ which are fundamental and yet accidental, since in some possible worlds Pelé might not have become a great soccer player, and Paris would not need to have ten million inhabitants or be situated on the banks of the Seine. The almost obvious answer at this point is more profound. It is that descriptions of group B, unlike those belonging to group A, are semantically associated, albeit loosely, with corresponding proper names, which are, respectively (i) Rui Barbosa, (ii) Floriano Peixoto, (iii) Aristotle, (iv) Julius Caesar, (v) Paris, (vi) Earth. Despite the strength of the association, established by the place of definite descriptions of group B in the conditions constituted by the identifying rules of the corresponding proper names, these descriptions do not need to be true for the same objects referred to in all possible worlds where those objects exist. After all, it is certain that there are possible worlds where Rui Barbosa gave up performing diplomatic missions, Floriano Peixoto was a candid adept of the monarchy, Aristotle did not found a Lyceum, Julius Caesar tenaciously defended the Republic, Paris was destroyed in the fourteenth century before becoming the city of light, the planet Vulcan really existed and the Earth was the fourth planet from the Sun. However, these names do not cease to apply to their respective objects, since these objects continue to satisfy the respective identification rules that we have derived from MIR_F.

The consideration of this point strongly weighs against Millian-Kripkian explanations of sagging descriptions, according to which they are accidental because they denote indirectly, based on connotative properties, and not directly, as is the case with proper names. What is shown is that a description is not accidental in itself; and it is called accidental with respect to the association it has with some proper name. More precisely, it becomes accidental by being loose, contingent, not necessarily associated with a certain proper name. This is a conclusion that is valid not only for auxiliary descriptions, but even for fundamental descriptions belonging to proper names, since the identification rule allows the possibility of dissociation between the application of a proper name and the isolated application of both kinds of descriptions.

   We can explain this idea by saying that virtually any description belonging to the cluster of descriptions represented by a proper name has a contingent semantic association with the rest of the description-rules constitutive of the informative content of that name. This association happens because such a definite description is considered by us as associated with, and even contributing to the identifying description-rule that needs to be applied whenever a proper name is applied, although such definite descriptions do not necessarily need to be applied. That is, contrary to DD, the semantic association between any chosen description, except DD, is contingent or accidental in the sense that it is not an indispensable aspect of a proper name’s application, so that the definite description and the proper name with which it is associated only tend to refer to the same object, not necessarily doing so. This is a relationship that we assume to be the case, although we are able to imagine counterfactual situations in which it does not exist. Thus, the auxiliary description ‘Herphyllis’s lover’ applies to the reference of the name ‘Aristotle,’ as far as we know, but it is not impossible to find, for instance, that surviving texts constituting Aristotle’s heritage were incorrectly transcribed... In our world, the characterizing description of Aristotle is ‘the author of the Aristotelian opus’. But in another possible world Aristotle could have died before going to Athens and consequently never wrote the Aristotelian opus. This description – for speakers in that world – will lack the contingent semantic association it has here with the semantic content of the proper name ‘Aristotle,’ even if it is a fundamental (but not indispensable) part of our identification rule for that name. In other words:

 

Because of a possible disconnection between the reference of the proper name and the reference of the descriptions more or less loosely associated with it, these descriptions become capable of designating another or perhaps none of the expected reference in other possible worlds where the proper name associated with them continues to apply or even ceases to apply to the same reference. It is only for this trivial and comparative reason that proper names are called rigid designators and the associated descriptions not. Only the description DD, expressing the proper name’s identifying rule, remains a rigid designator.

                     

An example will clarify this. A description such as ‘the first Roman emperor’ expresses part of the description-rule defining the character of Julius Caesar (he was unofficialy the first emperor). As the DD for the identification of Julius Caesar is more complete, allowing us to identify the object much more specifically, we consider the description ‘the first Roman emperor’ as expressing a contingent, albeit important, property of Julius Caesar. It is contingent because according to its identifying rule, expressed by DD, it can be identified as such even in the event that that description-rule could not be applied. That is the only reason why the description ‘the first Roman emperor’ is accidental, since there could be possible worlds where he didn’t become the first Roman emperor, for instance, where this property belongs to another reference. For example, there could be worlds where Pompey won the Battle of Pharsalus against Caesar and became the first Roman emperor, or even did not become one, or a possible world where Julius Caesar was a vigorously patriotic defender of the Republic and this institution persisted until the end of the Empire.

   Of course, we can stipulate that the proper name ‘Julius Caesar’ abbreviates the definite description ‘the first Roman emperor’. In this case, the description becomes a rigid designator, for it will designate the first Roman emperor in any possible world where he comes into existence. This strategy can be applied to any other description associated with a proper name. However, in the case of descriptions belonging to group A above, stiffness is a natural feature. Consider A-(iii): ‘the third cavalry regiment of Cintra.’ Because of the tacit conventions established by our specialized practice, this description will always apply to the same object in any possible world where this regiment exists. The explanation given above shows why this occurs. Thus, as group A descriptions are still not associated with the semantic content of some proper name related to them, they cannot refer to objects other than those referred to by them in other possible worlds where their objects exist, which makes them rigid designators. We see, therefore, that quite unlike Kripke’s suggestion, the relationship between a description/accidental designator and a proper name/rigid designator has nothing to do with a difference between the indirect reference mechanism of the definite description and a mysterious direct reference mechanism of proper names. But this holds only with the relationship between a definite description and the proper name with which it is loosely associated.

   One point to be added is that in cases where a definite description is auxiliary, the rule of connection to the object is far from sufficient to identify it as the object referred to by the proper name associated with it. A description such as ‘the eagle of The Hague,’ for example, is not capable, by its explicit content, of identifying Rui Barbosa independently of the identifying rule usually associated with this proper name, because this honorific description does not have enough descriptive content to do so. Thus, in another possible world a description such as ‘the eagle of The Hague’ can more easily become contingent; it can easily be associated with another proper name, say, Oswaldo Aranha, belonging then to the semantic halo of this last name.

   Finally, we can still better clarify this loose semantic association between description and name by using the Wittgensteinian distinction between criteria and symptoms.[113] Criteria are defining properties. Once accepted as given, they constitute conditions that guarantee the applicability of a conceptual term. Symptoms or secondary criteria, in turn, are properties that once accepted as given make the applicability of the conceptual term only more or less probable. For instance: plasmodium falciparum in a patient’s blood can serve as a criterion of malaria, while intermittent fever is only a symptom. Now, we can apply this distinction to the relationship between a proper name and a definite description. A criterial rule necessitates the satisfaction of criteria for its application, which means that the term ‘criterion’ is ambiguous, in terms of what the criterial rule requires for its application and what satisfies this demand, and this ambiguity extends to symptoms or secondary criteria.

   The identifying rule of a proper name is a criterial rule. We see that the changing properties demanded for the effective applicability of the identifying rule of a proper name are valid as criteria guaranteeing the name’s applicability. The properties demanded by definite description-rules belonging to the bundle of descriptions associated with a proper name are only probabilizing symptoms for the application of the name, since they only make that application probable. Our considerations so far allow us to predict that the dependency a definite description has on the semantic context of the corresponding proper name should diminish in proportion to its irrelevance for the identification of the object, making them mere symptoms probabilizing the application of the identifying rule. It is easier to consider accidental definite descriptions like ‘the tutor of Alexander’ or ‘the grandson of Achaeon’ or ‘Herphyllis’s lover,’ since they play a secondary role in determining the reference of the name ‘Aristotle.’ But it will be less easy in the case of fundamental descriptions such as ‘the author of Metaphysics’ and ‘the Greek philosopher born in Stagira in 394 BC.’ And if the definite description contains in the right way all that is essential for the proper name to which it is subordinate, it will inevitably become rigid. This is the case with DD-‘Aristotle,’ the descriptive formulation of the identifying rule for the name ‘Aristotle’, which, as we have seen, is a rigid designator.

   If the accidental or flaccid designator is derived from the contrast of a description with the associated proper name, we can ask ourselves if it could also occur through the contrast between one proper name and another. This should be the case for two proper names of the same object, when one of them contingently includes in its cluster the descriptions that belong to the other. Indeed, this can actually happen, especially in the case of nicknames. Consider the case of a young schoolboy, call him Bud, who because he has trouble figuring things out, was nicknamed by mean-spirited schoolmates ‘Anvil-head’, or for short, the ‘Anvil.’ There are possible worlds where Bud was not a slow-witted apprentice, or had no malevolent schoolmates, or where his friend John was the actual recipient of that nickname. In these worlds the nickname ‘Anvil’ either does not apply, or identifies someone other than Bud. That surname is – if considered in contrast to most common proper names – an accidental denominator, an accidental or flaccid proper name.

The above explanation for the difference between the semantic behavior of proper names and that of definite descriptions is much more clarifying than the obscure referentialist view. The latter suggests that through an act of baptism a proper name refers by possessing some secret and incomprehensible intimacy with its object. The former explanation is more powerful, since it justifies exceptional cases. In this view, the rigidity of the proper name ceases to be understood as something arising from a mysterious property of designating the object in itself, without the intermediation of properties. It becomes the meta-property of designating an object that has a multiplicity of combinations of properties that satisfy its identifying rule.

   Finally, it is interesting to consider more carefully the rules for identifying those descriptions that we can call autonomous because they are not properly associated with any proper name. They interest us because they should work in the same way as the identifying rules of proper names. Consider the definite description ‘the last glacial period.’ Because it is autonomous, this description needs to express the identifying rule of a proper name, containing a localizing and a characterizing rule. The first is the following:

 

Localizing description-rule: the last glacial period occurred on the planet Earth and lasted so that there was not another after it until our present time.

 

Although it occurred in the Pleistocene period, approximately 110,000 to 12,000 years before our time and although it was preceded by several other similar glacial periods, it could have occurred in another longer or shorter period of time, ending before or after. But there is also a rule of characterization for the last glacial period. Here’s how we can sum it up:

 

Characterizing description-rule: a long period of decrease in the temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, resulting in the expansion of continental and polar ice sheets, as well as glaciers and alpine snow fields.

 

Because they function as proper names, autonomous descriptions need, for their application, the complexity required of an identification rule, which is not needed by descriptions used in place of names, as is the case with ‘the city of light.’

 

 

 

 

IV

METADESCRIPTIVISM:

ANSWERING COUNTEREXAMPLES

 

 

In what follows I will answer the main counterexamples against descriptivism appliying the metadescriptivist thory developer until now, along with some interesting additions and consequences.

 

1. Responses to Kripke’s counterexamples

I would now like to examine the objections usually made against descriptivist theories of proper names by proponents of causal-historical theories. I want to demonstrate that the meta-descriptive theory of proper names is capable of offering more detailed and convincing answers to these objections, which often fail to distinguish the role of fundamental rules when they do not fail to consider the descriptively relevant role of causal history and context.

 

1. Some problems with rigidity

Let us first consider some objections of rigidity (modal), according to which if descriptivism were correct, then proper names could not be rigid designators, since descriptions are flaccid designators.

The general answer to this objection is that although no usual description-rule associated with a proper name needs to apply in all possible worlds where its object of reference definitely exists, the description-rule DD (that is, the identifying rule) of a proper name necessarily applies in all possible worlds where the object definitely exists. (As we have already seen, there may be possible worlds where one cannot know whether or not the identifying rule of a proper name applies; but such worlds are identical to those where the object also does not have a defined existence, since the very existence of the object is defined by the effective or warranted applicability of its identifying rule.)

   Kripke considers cases where our fundamental definite descriptions do not apply, as in the case where Aristotle died very young and never wrote the philosophical texts for which his name is remembered, or even a possible (even if hardly imaginable) world where Aristotle lived five hundred years later. In these cases, he thinks, we can recognize Aristotle, which implies the conclusion that even the disjunction of the descriptions of the cluster is unnecessary for the application of the name. But this conclusion is false, because all Kripke offers us as an example is the case of non-application of the characterizing rule accompanied by a tacit application of the localizing rule, or vice-versa.[114] However, we have already seen that these cases are fully compatible with the application of a proper name’s identifying rule. What Kripke never considers, as we have noted, is a case where what we see as the identifying rule of a proper name is in no way applicable even though its bearer exists. No one is able to provide us with a concrete example in which none of the descriptions apply to any extent. And this happens for the simple reason that the proper name’s identifying rule is definitional of what its bearer is, which makes such an example inconceivable.

 We now have to deal with an ambiguous and deceitful counterexample to descriptivism suggested by Kripke concerning the proper name ‘Hesperus.’ Kripke at first imagines that someone he calls ‘the mythical agent’ decides to fix the reference of Hesperus by saying: ‘I shall use the word “Hesperus” as the name for the heavenly body appearing in the younder position in the sky.’[115] Kripke then notes that this description cannot express the meaning of ‘Hesperus’, since if Hesperus had been struck earlier by a comet, it might have been visible at a different position at that time. He argues that the name Hesperus is a rigid designator, which means that it cannot be different from Hesperus, even if it occupied a different position in a counterfactual situation.[116] A main problem with this argument is that in a first moment Kripke seems to be speaking of a baptism of a heavenly body with the help of a description. In a second moment, however, he speaks as if Hesperus were a planet baptized much earlier, and the ‘mythical agent’ was there only to localize the luminous body. If we resolve this ambiguity by assuming that the mythical agent is only a person giving a description of something already named, it is clear that this description is only a very partial localizing description. This is in full accord with our view according to which the rigidity of a proper name is given by its identifying rule and not by any particular description belonging to the cluster.

   However, we can elaborate Kripke’s counterexample in order to strengthen it. Imagine that the name ‘Hesperus’ was coined as astronomers saw it at dusk in the direction of the Sun. Imagine that later a rogue planet of the same size collided with Hesperus, so that it would no longer be visible at dusk, or else (to make matters worse) that the wandering planet would become visible in its place at dusk. In this case, it does not seem that with the name ‘Hesperus’ we are referring to the celestial body that satisfied the description ‘the celestial body visible there at dusk,’ even if we mistakenly believe this.

   In order to respond to this new version of the counterexample, I want to consider the question, keeping in mind the meta-descriptivist conception in place of the simplified versions of descriptivism on which Kripke bases his arguments. The elaborated version of the counterexample owes its efficacy to the fact that the proper name ‘Hesperus’ has a double meaning, which can be understood as what we see or as a planet. My conclusion will be that the new version mixes them unduly, using this mixture as if it were what we really understand with the name ‘Hesperus.’

   Let us consider the first sense of ‘Hesperus,’ the sense of what is seen. ‘Hesperus’ or ‘Evening Star’ can actually be understood as referring to something like the celestial body that always appears to us in the direction of the Sun[117] at dusk and as the brightest object visible in the night sky after the Moon. Certainly, this was what was understood with the word before astronomy advanced to its modern form, at a time when humanity was still unable to differentiate Hesperus, the planet, from Hesperus, a shining angel. In this primitive, archaic sense, the identifying rule of what we can call ‘Hesperus-as-the-Evening-Star,’ derived from the application of MIR_F (assuming the satisfaction of Cc), is:

 

IR-‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’:

The proper name ‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’ refers appropriately to an object x belonging to the class of celestial bodies that we can see at dusk in the direction of Sun

see

(i-a) x satisfies its localizing rule of being a celestial body that to this day people have always seen at dusk.

or

(i-b) x satisfies its characterizing rule of being (after the Moon) the brightest celestial body that has been seen.

(ii)       x satisfies the disjunction (i-a) or (i-b) to a degree as a whole sufficient and

(i)               x satisfies the disjunction (i-a) or (i-b) more than any other celestial body.

 

Firstly, it is important to see that the expression ‘that we can see at dusk in the direction of Sun’ used in the beginning has a classificatory sense, since without this any brightest star at any time could satisfy the disjunct (i-b) being Hesperus. Once we have this identifying rule, it cannot be that Hesperus does not satisfy the description only because the name refers to a mere perceptual appearance. But today no one uses that archaic sense of the word, although a child may be able to grasp it in that way. In this first sense of the name, if a wandering planet collided with Venus and hurled it out of the Solar System, we would say that Hesperus had disappeared for good, that it no longer exists. And if the wandering planet took the place of Venus, we would say that surely the same Hesperus continues to exist there in the heavens, because its identifying rule continues to be satisfied, since in this archaic sense of the name we are referring only to a mere phenomenal manifestation and not to a planet. However, as Kripke often refers to Hesperus as a planet, he would not be properly bearing in mind this archaic sense of the name.[118] Let us now look at the most current meaning of the proper name Hesperus, through which we recognize that it is actually the second planet of the solar system, which so far has been seen as the brightest planet, appearing at dusk in the direction of the Sun. Let us call it ‘Hesperus-as-the-planet-Venus’ or simply ‘Hesperus (-Venus).’ Here is the identifying rule[119] resulting from the application of MIR_F (assuming Cc):

 

IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’:

The proper name ‘Hesperus (-Venus)’ refers to an object x belonging to the class of celestial bodies that has till now been seen at dusk as the brightest celestial body (after the Moon) in the direction of the Sun

iff

(i-a) x satisfies its localizing rule of having been to this day the second planet in the solar system, which has orbited the Sun between Mercury and the Earth during the time it has been identified as such and probably for some billion years

and/or

(i-b) x satisfies its characterizing rule of being the planet with a third of the mass of the earth and with dense reflexive atmosphere.[120]

(ii) x satisfies (i-a) to a sufficient extent, and

      (iii) x satisfies (i-a) more than any other celestial body.

 

Let us now consider what we should say regarding the proposed case of a wandering planet crashing into Hesperus(-Venus), hurling it out of the solar system. Should we say that the planet thrown out of the solar system isn’t the planet Venus anymore, since it no longer satisfies the localizing rule of being the second planet in the solar system? No, according to IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’ this would be the wrong answer. The condition (i-a) limits itself to the fate of Hesperus (-Venus) until now. It does not say that it must in the future continue orbiting the Sun as the second planet. It can be that sometime in the future we will need to add that after the year so-and-so Venus was thrown out of the Solar System, and took a very different path through the universe.

   More can be said about that. One can confuse IR-‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’ with IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus).’ And I guess that Kripke, in his short example identifying Hesperus with the celestial body visible there, went in that direction.[121] If we use the IR-‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’ for a situation in which IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’ should be applied, we cannot explain why the planet Venus, once it disappeared from the Solar System, would continue to be recognized by us as Venus, for it fails to satisfy both the localizing and characterizing conditions, contrary to our intuitions. Moreover, if a bright wandering planet had taken the place of our planet Venus, and we now used the IR-‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’ instead of the IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’, we will not be able to explain why the celestial body visible there is not our Venus. If we tacitly apply the description ‘the heavenly body appearing in the younder position in the sky’ to IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’ as it was used for IR-‘Hesperus (-Evening-Star)’, we could complain that that description does not account for the replacement of Hesperus.

   Finally, we can imagine another twist in the example. Suppose that in another possible world near ours, one million years ago a wandering planet collided with the second planet of the solar system, a bright evening star like Venus, breaking it into an immense number of fragments that dissipated into space together with the wandering planet. In this possible world there could be human beings and, as it seems, a Venus that once was the second planet in the solar system, since Venus has existed for 4.5 billion years. Taking the side of Kripke, one could object that there is no description able to explain why we think we can call the original planet Venus (or Hesperus).

   However, in this case it is perfectly possible to say that what we understand as the planet Venus, satisfying IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus),’ does not actually exist and in fact never existed in this possible world. Even in Kripke’s own terms, we have not found a baptism or even anything that satisfies an assumed causal condition of the type Cc. We can, however, imagine something different. We can imagine that there once was an advanced civilization in this possible world that was able to know that Venus (or Hesperus) really existed before the collision and that it satisfied an IR-‘Hesperus (-Venus)’ to be applied from 4.5 billion years to less than one million years ago. Once we admit that for that civilization this planet satisfied the identifying rule of meta-descriptive theory, including some causal path originating the hypothesis, the proper name ‘Venus’ (as much as Hesperus, since they also know that it appeared in the direction of Sun at dusk) continues to refer to the planet based on descriptions, without therefore ceasing to be a rigid designator. We could even, because of the similarity of rules, call this Venus our Hesperus in that possible world, even if it was not the brightest celestial body seen at dusk in the direction of the Sun, but had formerly been seen that way a million years ago… This would be their Venus and, consequently, also their Hesperus as Hesperus (-Venus).[122]

 

2. Undesirable necessity

Let us now look at some objection of undesirable (epistemic) necessity. This objection is based on Kripke’s finding that proper names, being rigid designators, necessarily apply to their objects; because no proper definite description necessarily must apply to its object, proper names cannot be reduced to descriptions.

Considering that this objection, as we have already seen, applies to a caricature of descriptivism, it would be even more foolish to want to apply it to meta-descriptive theory. What necessarily applies, if the object definitely exists, is only the identifying rule that we derive from the application of MIR_F to the cluster chosen to name it (i.e. at least one fundamental description must be sufficiently and predominantly applicable to something). Thus, as we have also seen, the identification rule for the proper name ‘Aristotle’ can be transformed into a necessarily applicable definite description, abbreviated as:

 

        DD-‘Aristotle’:

the person who sufficiently and predominantly satisfies the descriptions of a person born in Stagira in 384 BC, the son of Philip’s court doctor, who lived in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC and/or the person who was the author of the philosophical ideas developed in the Aristotelian opus.

 

In considering this issue, we should not forget that descriptions constituting the meaning of a proper name can easily be altered (when auxiliary)  and very often more detailed (when fundamental), or even minimally altered (e.g. if it turns out that our Aristotle was actually born in 379 BC, and this is incorporated into the extended identifying rule, so that he becomes a person born in 379 BC who was previously thought to have been born in 383 BC[123]), but cannot be truly changed in such a way that it loses the possibility of being applied to one and the same object, differentiating it from all others in any conceivable circumstance, not only because it is the very rule that defines what it is, but also because the existence of its object is no more than the effective (warranted and continuous) applicability of the identifying rule or, to put it another way, the disposition of the object to be not only something conceivable, but also something whose identifying rule is effectively applicable to itself.

   Suppose it were discovered that Aristotle only wrote the Categories, while his students wrote all his other works; to make matters worse we find that he was not born in Stagira, but only years later in Magna Graecia. These unlikely discoveries would have to be accompanied by many other changes in our historical knowledge. Intuitively, we have a different Aristotle. Corroborating intuition, MIR-‘Aristotle’ will certainly no longer apply. But it won’t make sense for us to say that MIR-‘Aristotle’ can be altered to identify this new Aristotle as being the same as our old Aristotle, who no longer exists. The flexible character of the rules for identifying proper names should not be confused with the possibility that they are actually altered, since this would destroy their rigidity. Once its flexibility limits are exceeded, the identified object will no longer be the same, since the identifying rule will be considered the identifier of another object. As always, the limits of applicability are blurred, but this fact does pull down rigidity, as much as the sorites paradox pulls down heaps of sand. This is why the objection that the rules of identification can change does not destroy their rigidity.

  The case of the impostor named ‘Arthur Orton’ may be of some help in clarifying the point.[124] Born in England and having gone to sea at an early age, he was certainly identified through rules of localization and characterization by all who actually knew him. Years later, when he was in Australia, he read in a newspaper that an English woman, Lady Tichborne, was searching for her son Roger Tichborne, who had disappeared in a shipwreck in the Atlantic, and she refused to believe he had died. Back in England, despite his lack of resemblance to Roger Tichborne, Orton introduced himself as her son. Immediately “recognized” by the elderly lady, he lived in her son’s place at least until the death of Lady Tichborne three years later. After that, however, the ill-fated Orton was charged with fraud by relatives of Lady Tichborne (who never believed his claims), convicted and sentenced to 14 years in jail. Note that the identifying rule by which we know Orton is that of a great impostor. Orton was a person who falsely passed himself off as Lady Tichborne’s son by the very partial sharing of an identifying rule with a degree of vagueness in the localizing description, reinforced by the English lady’s desire to believe. That is: rules for identifying the same object that are so vague that they allow the identification of different objects in different possible worlds, cannot be considered the same rules. This is why almost no one believes Arthur Othon was Roger Tichborne. Adding details to an identifying rule or even adding minor changes as a way to defeat rigidity cannot be the same as creating another rule that can be understood as identifying another object in a different possible world.

   Let us now move on to Kripke’s most famous example. It concerns the description that most people associate with the logician Kurt Gödel, which is: ‘the man who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic.’ Kripke asks us to imagine that Gödel did not actually discover the incompleteness theorems. Suppose, says Kripke, that Gödel had a friend, an unknown logician named Schmidt, who alone first developed the theorems of incompleteness in an unpublished article, but died soon after in suspicious circumstances. Gödel then stole the article and published it under his own name. Also imagine that, like many other people, all that a certain person, whom I will call Mary, associates with the name ‘Gödel’ is the description ‘the discoverer of the incompleteness theorems of arithmetic.’ In this case, Kripke thinks, according to descriptivism, when Mary learns that it was Schmidt who discovered the theorems of incompleteness, she must conclude that the name ‘Gödel’ means the same as ‘Schmidt,’ that is, Gödel is Schmidt. But that is not what happens. It remains quite clear, even to Mary herself, that Gödel is Gödel and not Schmidt.[125] Disagreeing with Kripke’s analysis, John Searle noted that a person like Mary will say that Gödel is not Schmidt because she understands by Gödel “the man my community claims has the name Gödel, or at least those members from whom I learned that name, assuming that something else is required.”[126] Indeed, if all Mary knows about Gödel is that he discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic, and if she thinks this is enough for identification, then she does not understand the grammar of proper names, does not know what a proper name is, is not able to give it meaning.

   Now, based on our analysis of the form of the identification rule for proper names we can explain this something else that according to Searle the person assumes to be required. Just look at the identifying rule generated by MIR_F and the conditions (i-a) and (i-b). This alone leads us to realize that Kripke’s conclusion is incorrect. After all, it does not take account of the identifying rule that the linguistic community must have for the name ‘Gödel,’ which includes the assumption made by Mary, as a competent speaker of the language, that she does not know enough to be led to conclude that the reference has changed (Mary certainly grasps MIR_F, knowing that she does not know).

   To take a better look at the case, let’s first consider what the identifying rule for the name ‘Gödel’ would be like for the privileged users of our linguistic community. From the point of view of these users, there are two reasons why Gödel should not be identified with Schmidt. First, the description ‘the discoverer of the incompleteness theorems’ is no more than part of the characterizing description-rule for Gödel. The incompleteness theorems were only the most important of Gödel’s varied contributions to science. Also, even without being Schmidt, Gödel was a sufficiently competent logician that he got to work at Princeton and had friends like Einstein. Thus, the characterizing rule for Gödel would remain partially satisfied by the name ‘Gödel’ (say, 2/3 of it), even if he had not discovered the theorems of incompleteness considered in the example. Furthermore, the main reason why the linguistic community continues to call Gödel ‘Gödel’ is that the localizing description-rule remains fully satisfied by Gödel! After all, it remains the same localizing rule for Gödel, having nothing to do with the unknown localizing rule for Schmidt. Summarizing, here it is:

 

Localizing rule: the man who was born in Brünn in 1906, studied at the University of Vienna and in 1940 emigrated via the Trans-Siberian railway to the USA, where he worked as a logician at Princeton University until his death in 1978.

 

So, after all, the identifying rule remains much better satisfied by Gödel than Schmidt, at least for those who really know this rule, the name’s privileged users.

   Now, what about Mary? She is not a privileged user. She does not know the localizing description-rule for Gödel. However, she is assumed to be a competent speaker of the language, and as such she knows that she does not know enough of the identifying rule for Gödel. Knowing that she lacks information about the localizing description, and that she does not have sufficient information about Gödel, she simply suspends her judgment (following b-2). After all, her mastery of the grammar of proper names allows her to conclude that she does not have enough elements for the assertion that Gödel is Schmidt. Mary is certainly aware that by associating the name ‘Gödel’ with the description ‘the person who established the proof of incompleteness in arithmetic’ she certainly knows only part of Gödel’s characterizing rule-description, which should be more completely known to certain other members of the linguistic community. But the crucial point is that, as a competent speaker of the language, Mary knows that since Gödel is the name of a person there must also be some description-rule of space-time localization for Gödel which she does not know, a rule that must be different from the localizing description-rule for Schmidt, since the information she has is that Schmidt is another person (Gödel could not kill himself in order to steal his manuscript). Knowing this, and knowing that he does not know the localizing description rule, she knows that she is not in a position to conclude that Gödel is Schmidt. However, as privileged speakers, we know that Gödel cannot be Schmidt. She knows only that she doesn’t know enough about the name Gödel to have the knowledge that Gödel is Schmidt.

   There is something odd about it all. As at least part of one of Gödel’s two fundamental descriptions is satisfied by Schmidt, it can be said that Schmidt now inherits something of the meaning of the name ‘Gödel,’ even if it does not gain his reference. And that really happens. Let’s say that a logician, disgusted by the news about the theft of the theorems and feeling pity for Schmidt’s fate, exclaims: “Schmidt was the real Gödel!” This would be a true statement if understood as hyperbole. And the reason is given by the meta-descriptive theory which predicts that the name ‘Schmidt’ inherits something relevant, even if insufficient, from the meaning of the name ‘Gödel.’

   There is, finally, a way to make Gödel really be Schmidt, but while it lets Kripke have his cake it does not let him eat it. Imagine the unlikely story of a young man named Schmidt, who for some reason murdered the teenage Gödel and then assumed his identity. However, Schmidt was not only a murderer, but also a genius as a logician, so he studied at the University of Vienna, discovered the proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic, married a dancer named Adele, fled Nazism via the Trans-Siberian railway and became a professor at Princeton, where he died in 1978. So, don’t be fooled by appearances: that skinny man standing close to Einstein in the famous photo of both was in fact the criminal Schmidt! In that case there is no doubt that Gödel is Schmidt. And the identifying rule explains: he is Schmidt because the predominant characterizing and localizing descriptions-rules, with the exception of irrelevant descriptions concerning a remote childhood, are those of Schmidt and not of the child who was once called Gödel and has long since ceased to exist.

 

3. Fictional proper names

Let us now look at cases involving fictional proper names. They are important because they illuminate the social character of the representational contents involved in the reference.

   A special case of ignorance and error (in addition to undesirable necessity) clarified by Kripke was that of partially fictional proper names, such as Jonah the Prophet. He distinguishes such cases from those of purely fictional proper names, such as Santa Claus. Even though there was a Christian Saint Nicholas in the past, we know that our Santa Claus has almost nothing to do with him and that it is a case of a mere accidental homonym, as much as Napoleon is the name of an historical figure and also the name of a pet dog so baptized. But the same does not occur, thinks Kripke, in Jonah’s case[127]. According to the Bible, Jonah was a prophet sent by God to the city of Nineveh to convert the pagans, but tried to flee from God on board a ship which sank in a storm and was swallowed by a great fish, which saved him from drowning. Of course, no one believes these descriptions to be literally true. Even so, Bible scholars believe that there really existed a person who originated the story. But if so, then descriptivism is wrong, for we have no description capable of uniquely identifying Jonah.[128] And the causal theory must be right, because the semi-fictional use of the name was actually caused based on its bearer.[129] A more appropriate example of a semi-fictional name is that of Robin Hood. Historians believe that the legend of Robin Hood is based on some real person who lived in the 13th century. Among the candidates, however, are people who were not poor and not outlaws, did not live in Sherwood Forest and were not even called Robin Hood! However, the referent of this partially fictional figure is supposed to be one and the same person, despite the fact that it does not properly satisfy any description. For a philosopher like Kripke, the reason we are dealing with people who actually existed is that the causal chain leads us to a real person, independently of any description. Thus, causal-historical theory seems to possess an explanation for something that descriptive theory is not able to explain: semi-fictional names.

   Before we respond, it is helpful to remember that there are things that can be accepted as bearers of a name and others that cannot. Here is an example of a possible cause of the story of Jonah and the whale, followed by two examples concerning Robin Hood:

 

1)     Assuming that an ancient biblical scribe stepped on a sea urchin, and that in the painful period of convalescence that followed, memories of the accident inspired him to invent the story of Jonah.

2)     While crossing a forest at night some 13th-century storyteller was ambushed by an unknown assailant, who beat him unconscious. This accident moved him to imagine Robin Hood’s story.

3)      A medieval bard had a brave, faithful dog that followed him when hunting in Sherwood Forest. This dog had been baptized ‘Robin.’ The dog inspired him to invent the story of a hero named Robin Hood, who lived in the forest and robbed the rich to help the poor.

 

Obviously, no one will say that the sea urchin is Jonah, that the unknown thief is Robin Hood, or that the dog baptized with the name ‘Robin’ was Robin Hood, just because they can be considered causes of the subsequent invention of the character. Someone may at this point object that for Kripke the causal-historical chain needs to be associated with an act of baptism. But the dog named ‘Robin’ was baptized with that name. Why, then, if this could be proven, would we reject the conclusion that Robin Hood is the name of a brave, loyal medieval dog? What is more, this would not have happened with the name ‘Robin Hood’ in a case where the person who originated the legend had been baptized, as some suggest, under another name. As for the name ‘Jonah,’ we can still imagine that the ancient scribe kept the sea urchin in his house and that soon after inventing the story of Jonah and before telling it to his friends, he had taken the sea urchin in his hands and said, “That is why I baptize you with the name Jonah.” It does not seem that he would in this way have become able to originate a causal chain capable of making us apply the name ‘Jonah’ to the sea urchin, for Jonah should have been a person, while a sea urchin would never have been more than a sea urchin, just like the dog would never have been more than a dog. For our part, however, the MIR rules require proper classification, in the case excluding a sea urchin and dogs. Identifying rules for names of humans resulting from MIRs forbid non-human beings from being eventual recipients of proper names such as those of the biblical Jonah and the legendary Robin Hood, thus solving the problem.

   Why do we recognize the causal chain as appropriate for the name holder in certain cases and not in others? The answer already suggested in the previous chapter is that the cause we recognize as adequate is one capable of satisfying cognitive elements that we associate with the name. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that in cases of semi-fictional names such as Jonah and Robin Hood, even if there is a causal chain, what confers adequacy, even if only in a vague way, on this causal chain are descriptively expressible cognitions from which we have received the stories of Jonah and Robin Hood and which suggest where and when they were distributed and elaborated. Indeed, from biblical history we infer something of the localizing description. We infer something of the disjunctive rule containing the localizing description of Jonah as a person who lived in biblical times (between 1,000 and 600 years BC) somewhere in the Middle East, if not something of the characterizing description, such as that he would have been a person belonging to the Hebrew religion. And as for the person propagated in the legend of Robin Hood, we know that the person must satisfy something of the disjunctive rule containing the localizing description of having lived in England around the 13th century AD, if not something of the characterizing description, such as the   property of having been a sort of vigilante. In addition, in both cases vague causal lines may be assumed. According to MIR_F, the meta-identifying rule for proper names, the admission of grounding by a supposed generic satisfaction and description-rules would be what makes these semi-fictional names indicators of things allegedly real. It is true that these descriptions are insufficient for the unambiguous identification of Jonah and Robin Hood, but that is not what we want from them; because after all we are not really able to identify these people. What they allow us to do is just to propose more or less plausible hypotheses, assuming that these legendary persons actually existed.

   We can distinguish two elements in the descriptions associated with the names of semi-fictional persons. The first is the merely fictional element, consisting of generally colorful and fanciful descriptions, which were not made to apply to reality, such as Jonah’s suffering inside the fish or the many heroic deeds of Robin Hood. The second is the non-fictional element: it is based on the very vague localization and characterization descriptions considered above. They are implied by the localizing and characterizing rules that, we assumed, could be completed if we had sufficient information about the name’s bearer. What defines what we call a semi-fictional person is the addition of the imaginative element, based on insufficient identifying criteria that originally would have been bequeathed to us. Added to this is the difficulty of not knowing how to sufficiently dissociate what is a mere product of the imagination from what would be the remaining traits of identifying criteria.

   There is reason to think, however, that in some cases this distinction could be clarified, transforming the semi-fictional proper name into a real proper name. Imagine that scholars discover documents proving that Robin Hood was actually called Robart Hude, an outlaw who actually lived in Sherwood Forest in the early 13th century. But if that is not the case, we may be faced with examples identical to that of Santa Claus, whose connection with some original historical person is merely accidental. There is, consequently, an expected parallel between the uncertainty linked to semi-fictional names and the insufficiency of the descriptions that we are able to associate with them.

 

4. Elliptical and incorrect descriptions

The most interesting form of objection of ignorance and error is one in which Kripke demonstrates that people can usually make a proper name refer, even when it is associated with only one indefinite description or an incorrect description. Examples of the first case are the names ‘Cicero’ and ‘Feynman,’ which many have associated only with some indefinite description such as ‘a famous Roman orator’ for the first and ‘a great American physicist’ for the second. Only a few people would be able to explain the political discourses of Cicero or discuss Feynman’s contributions to microphysics.[130] Even so, people are able to refer to Feynman in this way. More than that, people are able to use a proper name referentially, even when they associate blatantly erroneous descriptions with it. Kripke noted that in his day many associated the name ‘Einstein’ with the description ‘the inventor of the atomic bomb.’ With this phrase people could already refer to Einstein, he believed, although the atomic bomb was produced by the scientists of the Manhattan project, which Einstein never participated in.[131]

   We can return here to the previously stated response that the description supported by a speaker must be convergent with the content held by the linguistic community, in the sense of belonging to a class C of proper names. This convergence already allows an adequate use of the proper name in sufficiently vague contexts. It allows an insufficient, borrowed reference. By associating the names ‘Cicero’ and ‘Feynman’ with indefinite descriptions, and even associating the name ‘Einstein’ with an erroneous but convergent description, people already become able to put these proper names in the orbit of the reference, that is, to use them in linguistic practices where their role is sufficiently vague and adequate to be read by privileged users as publicly denoting their bearers. After all, even in the case of an incorrect description, such as ‘the inventor of the atomic bomb,’ one already knows that the name ‘Einstein’ refers to a scientist and a human being, and not, for example, to a kind of precious stone. Thus, if someone says that Einstein invented the atomic bomb, others can correct them, assumed that the speaker wanted to refer to the same person to whom they refer with that name. To exemplify, I can use the proper name Feynman to say I have heard he was a famous physicist who once paraded in a samba school in front of the Copacabana Palace… without knowing anything about his contribution to quantum electrodynamics, only knowing that he was an American physicist, and this reference, although subjectively insufficient, will be accepted by others. However, there are limits to this. As we have already noticed, if persons used the name ‘Feynman’ to designate a brand of perfume, or ‘Einstein’ to designate a diamond, these uses will almost certainly be contextually inappropriate, as they would not be trying to refer to the same kind of thing to which we refer in using those names, being therefore unable to insert them correctly in dialogical situations. Not even an insufficient reference is achieved here.

   It would be possible to object to the descriptive response that the main reason we remember the physicist Robert Oppenheimer is that he was the person most responsible for producing the first atomic bomb. Therefore, anyone who says Einstein was the inventor of the atomic bomb is using the characterizing rule of the name Oppenheimer, which means that he is using a characterization that should refer to Oppenheimer and not Einstein, which is a mistake... The answer to an objection like this, in addition to relying on the success criterion for insufficient references, depends on what is being emphasized. If the sentence were “The inventor of the atomic bomb was Einstein,” the person would in fact be corrected with the answer that the person most responsible for the atomic bomb was the physicist Oppenheimer and not Einstein. However, when the name ‘Einstein’ is in the position of the subject, what the speaker emphasizes is the rule associated with the auxiliary description ‘the bearer of the name “Einstein”’, which is assumed as belonging to the definitional rule RI-‘Einstein.’ The subject position only becomes important when the information is more detailed. If a person said, “Einstein was the excellent theoretical physicist who directed the Manhattan project through which the first atomic bomb was produced, having been born in 1904 and died of cancer in New York in 1967”, we would not correct it by saying that Einstein was not responsible for the atomic bomb; we would say that the proper name ‘Einstein’ is actually being used to refer to Oppenheimer.

 

5. Circularity

A recent influential argument from Kripke appeals to circularity: the name ‘Einstein’, he says, cannot be explained by the description ‘the creator of relativity theory,’ because the name ‘relativity theory’ is explained by the description ‘the theory created by Einstein.’[132] A similar circularity he points to concerns the explanation of the proper name ‘Giuseppe Peano.’ Many of us associate this name with the description ‘the discoverer of the axioms of arithmetic.’ This is, however, a mistake. Peano only improved the axioms, adding to his text a note in which he correctly attributed their discovery to Dedekind. The mistake, according to Kripke, was perpetuated. One solution, he writes, would be to say that Peano is ‘the person most experts refer to as Peano.’ But that solution would be circular. How to identify Peano experts? Suppose they are mathematicians. It may be that most mathematicians mistakenly associate the name Peano with the description ‘the discoverer of the axioms of arithmetic.’ We could then suggest recourse to the description ‘the person most Peano-experts refer to with the name Peano.’ But this solution would also be circular, because in order to identify Peano-experts, we already need to have identified Peano, we already need to know who Peano is.[133]

   These circularity objections are clearly fallacious, and I wonder if anyone has ever taken them seriously. It is certainly in principle possible that someone could learn the theory of relativity independently of any reference to Einstein’s name. This could become usual some day in the future. And as for Peano, if all you think you know about him is that he was the discoverer of the axioms of arithmetic, that’s a false but convergent description. Just type ‘the discoverer of the axioms of arithmetic’ on Google, and soon you will find out that you are mistaken: Peano’s achievement was only an improvement on previous developments. But because it is convergent, the description already implies true information, such as the fact that Peano was a famous Italian mathematician. So, realizing the mistake, you start again by guiding yourself through the new information. To learn more, you can do research in an encyclopedia or a book on the history of mathematics. There you will find more detailed information, bundles of more or less fundamental descriptions offered by specialized mathematicians. In possession of this information and a bibliography, you will come up with specific texts on Peano written by experts on Peano, and finally texts by Peano himself. More importantly, in this case, you will come up with biographies of Peano explaining fundamental description-rules, the localizing and characterizing rules. The whole process is not circular, but arises in a kind of oscillating movement: based on the generic preliminary information I₁ (in the case derived from an equivocal description) about x, we are able to search and find the additional information I₂ on x; based on the set of information {I₁, I₂} on x, we become able to search and find the information I₃ about x; based then on the set of information {I₁,I₂,I₃}, we come to I₄ and so on. Of course, each new body of information acquired already contains the previous information and initials, including corrections of possible errors, which can give the impression of circularity... But that is not enough to make the process really circular, since it is the information added to, and not the information saved, which makes us acquire more knowledge.

 

2. Pierre’s puzzle

In 1979 Kripke presented a problem that seemed to call into question both the descriptivist and the referentialist answers to the problem of reference. Pierre is a Frenchman, who as a child believed in the truth of the phrase “Londres est jolie” (London is beautiful). As an adult he went to England to live in a London slum, where, as a result of his surroundings, he came to believe the sentence “London isn’t pretty.” He maintains both beliefs without realizing the contradiction. But if the causal origin of the use of ‘Londres’ and ‘London’ is the same, then he should realize that he is attributing contradictory predicates to the same reference, if only because he is a logician and a logician does not contradict himself.

   Our explanation of the proper name’s reference mechanism explains the “Pierre puzzle” much better. He somehow doesn’t know that ‘Londres’ is ‘London.’ Of ‘Londres’ he has only the vague identifying description (i) ‘London is a city,’ and the auxiliary description ‘Londres est jolie,’ which allows a rather insufficient reference to London. But of ‘London’ he knows enough of the localizing description (ii-a) ‘A city located by the River Thames in England’ and the characterizing description (ii-b) ‘London is a big city, capital of the United Kingdom,’ in addition to the knowledge of a somewhat faulty auxiliary description, (ii-c) ‘London is not a beautiful city,’ thus knowing enough of the identifying rule. Since the overly vague identifying description (i) and the identifying description constituted by group (ii) do not have enough in common, Pierre isn’t able to associate them, remaining unable to realize that description (i) and the descriptions of group (ii) refer to the same object. Frege, as we have learned in chapter I, would already know how to solve this “puzzle” in 1918.

 

3. Responses to Donnellan’s counterexamples

In addition to Kripke’s objections, we need to address some counterexamples suggested by Keith Donnellan in an important 1970 article, where he defended a causal-historical theory similar to Kripke’s. These insightful counterexamples are dialectically fruitful to further developing the neodescriptivist view I explain in this book.

 

1. Thales, the well-digger

The most interesting counterexample concerns the philosopher Thales, about whom we know little more than the definite description ‘the ancient Milesian philosopher who proclaimed that everything is water.’ Imagine now that our sources, Aristotle and Herodotus, were misinformed, and that Thales was just a world-weary well-digger who, exhausted by his labor, exclaimed, “I wish everything were water so I wouldn’t have to dig these damn wells!”[134] With little knowledge of the local dialect, a traveler mistakenly understood this as the profound insight of a great philosopher concerning the ultimate nature of reality. This erroneous interpretation was perpetuated by Herodotus and Aristotle, who eventually bequeathed it to the philosophical tradition. Apart from that, Donnellan supposes that in more ancient times there was a hermit who never shared his ideas, but who really claimed everything is water. According to him, a descriptivist should say that the name ‘Thales’ really refers to this hermit, for he was the true owner of the definite description ‘the philosopher who said that everything is water.’ But that is not what would happen in reality. Our tendency, Donnellan writes, would be to think that with the name ‘Thales’ we are not referring to the hermit, but to the well-digger, although he does not satisfy our description. We make references, he suggests, due to some causal-historical connection between the referent and the speech act.[135] That is, what really counts for the reference of a proper name is the causal-historical chain that would begin with some first linguistic tag of Thales, even if this reference was later associated with erroneous descriptions. In favor of this conclusion is the fact that there is no causal relationship between our use of the name ‘Thales’ and the hermit. Suppose the definite description ‘the philosopher who said the world is made of water’ were remembered by successive generations of philosophers as related to the name ‘Thales’. Nevertheless, the thoughts of the hermit (perhaps never communicated to anyone) still cannot make this proper name refer to him, because a causal-historical relationship is lacking.

   Let’s first see how John Searle answered this counterexample. In examining this example, Searle began by relativizing Donnellan’s conclusion. He does this by devising a version of the example that seems to contradict the causal-historical view. Suppose that Herodotus had a well where a frog was coached to emit sounds resembling “Everything is water”, and the frog belonged to a species called ‘Thales’. He could have said, “Thales said that everything is water,” himself giving rise to the misunderstanding. But if the causal-historical theory is correct, once enlightened about this fact, we should conclude that the name ‘Thales’ refers to the frog in Herodotus’s well, which is certainly not the case. What we would conclude, of course, is that Thales never existed. It seems, therefore, that causal origin alone isn’t enough.[136]

   However, what I wish to note here is that the metadescriptivist theory is not only able of producing a response to Donnellan’s counterexample, but a response that enriches its own position. This can be made by the introduction of descriptions regarding what in the previous chapter we called causal history. We can understand this as descriptions of cognitively charged nodal values outlined by causal chains. Searle seemed to have realized this when he observed that:

 

When we say, “Thales was the Greek philosopher who maintained that everything is water,” we don’t just mean that anyone maintained that everything is water, we mean the person who was known to other Greek philosophers as arguing that everything is water, who was referred to in his time or subsequently by some Greek predecessor with the name ‘Thales,’ whose works and ideas came to us posthumously through the writings of other authors and so on.[137]

 

Indeed, more than any other philosopher, the importance of Thales lies in his specific place in the history of Western philosophy, which was that of its origin. As a consequence of the resulting long causal history, what justifies the application of the name has largely been belief in the applicability of a great variety of considerations presented by other philosophers that demonstrate its place, presence and influence in the history of philosophy. After all, if any contemporary philosopher suggested that everything is just water, this statement would be considered simply ridiculous. As a result, if we should discover that Thales was actually just a well-digger, we would tend to hesitate between conceding that he really was a well-digger and (as Searle also noted) deciding that the philosopher ‘Thales’ simply never existed.

   We see that even if we cannot cognitively rescue supposed causal-historical chains, we can cognitively salvage perceptible traits left behind by causal chains that are constitutive elements of a causal history. That is, we can recover important historically remembered space-time events showing nodal points of causal chains, mainly through representational links that occur in the minds of some people and are capable of being linguistically manifested. In Thales’ case there are well-known descriptions, such as that he was ‘the person identified by Herodotus and Aristotle in the doxography as the pre-Socratic philosopher who stated that everything is water...’ Such descriptions allow us to rescue cognitively charged nodal points of the causal-historical chain concerning representations that must have occurred in the minds of Herodotus, Aristotle and others… After all, everything we know of Thales comes from what later philosophers said about him. In this particular case, the importance of these historical elements is so great that they have become part of a more complete characterization rule of ‘Thales’ – the philosopher. It can be very briefly summarized as:

 

Characterizing description-rule: T: The philosopher who left behind no writings, but was referred to in the doxography by Aristotle, Simplicius of Cilicia and others as having been the first Greek philosopher, who stated that everything is water, that all things are full of gods, etc.

 

It is obvious that the characterizing rule remains largely satisfied by the well-digger: Thales was quoted in the doxography by Aristotle, Simplicius and others, as having said the principle of the universe is water. This fact would remain true even if it were not the case that Thales was the first philosopher who said everything is water. Furthermore, we should add to this the condition, requiring the satisfaction of the spatio-time location and career summarized as:

 

Localizing description-rule: The person who, according to doxography, probably lived from 624 to 548-50 BC, who was born and died in Miletus, and probably visited Egypt at one point in his life.

 

We can therefore, with great certainty, continue to say we know the name ‘Thales’ refers to our Thales, even if he was only a well-digger who made no contributions to philosophy. Thales satisfies sufficiently and more than any other his disjunctive rule and, therefore, his identifying rule, so he remains our Thales. Likewise, Donnellan’s hermit satisfies only a little of the localizing condition A and nothing of the characterizing condition B, so he cannot be our Thales. Additionally, we must recognize that Thales could not be a fairytale talking frog who lived around 580 BC in Miletus for the simple reason that the identifying rule specifies that he belong to the G-class of humans.

   The assumption of causal history as part of the rule of characterization in the above discussed case is still of fundamental importance, since in a sense it allows cognitive expressions of the external causal-historical chain to participate in the identification. To highlight its importance, it is enough to imagine that the hermit considered by Donnellan, in addition to having claimed that everything is water, satisfied the localizing condition for Thales of having lived between 624 and 548-50 BC, been born and died in Miletus and visited Egypt. Let us also imagine we discover that Thales the well-digger lived in the same period in Miletus, although he never visited Egypt or was a philosopher. In this case it may be objected that the hermit satisfies the localization rule, and even more the characterizing rule better than Thales. Even so, it seems to us that the hermit could not have been Thales. And this is so because the hermit does not satisfy the expected causal historical nodes incorporated into the characterizing rule. If, on the other hand, the name ‘Thales’ were not so strongly linked to causal history, we would have no difficulty in identifying Thales as the hermit. Finally, of course, by changing the information, we can make the balance shift to either side or even to the conclusion that Thales did not exist.

 

2. The philosopher J. L. Aston-Martin

The second counterexample is about a student at a party who was talking to a person he mistakenly believed was a famous philosopher, J. L. Aston-Martin, author of “Other Bodies.” Although the person shared the name Aston-Martin, he only impersonated the philosopher. Donnellan notes that the phrase (a) “Last night I spoke to Aston-Martin” is false, as it associates the name ‘Aston-Martin’ with the following description:

 

     D1: the philosopher and author of “Other Bodies,” [138]

 

while the statements (b) “At the end of the party Robinson stumbled on Aston-Martin’s feet and fell flat on his face” and (c) “I was almost the last to leave, only Aston-Martin and Robinson, who was still out cold, were left,” are true, as they are associated with the description

 

     D2: the man named ‘Aston-Martin’ whom I met at the party.

 

The objection is that cluster theory does not explain this change: for the student in (a) and (b) and (c) the name Aston-Martin should be associated with the same cluster of descriptions that includes ‘the author of “Other Bodies”.’

   This objection can be effectively answered by applying to proper names a distinction similar to that introduced by Donnellan himself between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions. In the case of definite descriptions, the attributive usage is the one most properly linked to the content of the description, while the referential use is linked to the indexical function associated with the description. In the case of the proper name, the equivalent of the attributive use is one based on the descriptions that express its identifying rule. This explains the meaning of the name ‘Aston-Martin’ in phrase (a), because the description ‘the philosopher and author of “Other Bodies”’ expresses part of the object’s identifying rule. In a case similar to the referential use for the proper name, the indexical element and the context play a decisive role, so that the usual identifying rule no longer matters. This explains the meaning of the name ‘Aston-Martin’ in cases (b) and (c). Here what matters is the adventitious description D2, in place of which the proper name appears. As such, it is provisional and dependent on the conversational situation in which it was acquired. The speaker’s task in these cases is only to identify a certain participant of the party using the name by which he was called, and it no longer matters whether or not this name belonged to a philosopher who ever lived. As for description (a), it really is part of the characterizing descriptions of the philosopher Aston-Martin, but not of the man with the same name whom a student met at a party and confused with the philosopher. It was only the case of someone with insufficient knowledge of a proper name applying it erroneous to the wrong person, while applying correctly adventitious descriptions.

 

3. Inverted squares

Another of Donnellan’s counterexamples is that of a person A who, wearing special glasses, identifies two identical squares on a screen, one placed directly above the other.[139] The square on top is called Alpha, the square underneath is called Beta. The only description provided for the Alpha square is:

 

     (a) the square that is on top.

 

It turns out that, without the person who is wearing the glasses knowing this, her glasses reverse the positions of the squares, so that Alpha square is underneath. But it is intuitive that the person is not referring to the Beta square on top. Donnellan thinks he has thus demonstrated that the square to which the person really refers is the Alpha square (the one below), even if the word is associated with the erroneous description (a).

   In response, I suggest that the person only refers to the Alpha square because, although associating Alpha with an erroneous description, it is a convergent description. This description should be completed as:

 

   (b) ‘The square˺ (which A sees as the Alfa square) ˹on top˺

 

This correction, in turn, is part of the true identifying description of the Alpha square, which is:

 

(c): ˹the square˺ (which A sees as the Alfa square) ˹on top˺...  that is actually underneath, since A is wearing glasses that reverse the positions of the images.

 

Observer A is unaware that the description (a) is part of the most complete identifying description (c). But this fact and this last description are things known to other language users – sufficiently informed users – whom we can call B. These privileged users will say that A refers to the Alpha square, which is underneath, by having the information given by description (c), which expresses the most complete mode of presentation of the object, the most complete identifying rule (which characterizes Alpha as a square seen by the person as on top and locates it as the square that is below). 

   Suitable evidence for what I’m saying is the fact that, once possessing the information offered by the informed users B, which includes description (c), A will agree to review description (a) as part of (b), referring only to how A sees Alpha, which in turn is part of description (c). Although literally false, description (a) is useful to the reference, because it can be reinterpreted as part of the correct identifying description-rule.

 

4. “Tom is a nice person”

One last counterexample offered by Donnellan is that of a child who has already gone to bed and who is awakened briefly by his parents[140]. A friend of the parents named Tom has come over unexpectedly for a visit and asked to meet their youngest son, whom he does not yet know. The mother wakes the child and tells him: “This is Tom.” Tom says: “Hi, youngster!”, and the little boy says hello and goes back to sleep. The next day the child wakes up and all he can tell about Tom is that he is ‘a nice person.’ The child doesn’t even remember being awakened the night before. But he refers to Tom without the aid of definite descriptions. For W. G. Lycan, this is solid evidence of the causal theory of names: the child is able to refer to Tom only through a demonstrative causal transfer![141]

   Considerating to this example, Brian Loar noted that it may well be that in this case language deceives us, as in the case where a person realizes that guests are absent for dinner, but does not remember who; we are entitled to say that the person refers to those who did not attend. However, the word ‘refers’ does not seem to be used here in the appropriate sense. Indeed, if the child remembers nothing when saying that Tom is nice, we cannot even distinguish his uttering this from the mere expression of his willingness to please his parents.[142]

   My own answer depends on a precise consideration of the child’s words. It can be that the child says “Tom is a nice person” only to please his parents, though he does not remember anything from the previous night. In this case, the child is just saying what his parents want him to say, and there can be no reference. We can assume, however, that the child has some kind of semantic cognition, some memory of his encounter with Tom, which could justify him saying that Tom is nice. In this case there is indeed a convergent cognitive element, which allows us to conclude that the child is able to introduce the word into the dialogical situation, referring to a person. However, this would be a case of insufficient reference, of reference borrowing. As everyone knows which person the child means, the example can produce the false impression that he is able to make a complete identifying reference to Tom. But this is an illusion. He does not know who Tom is and couldn’t recognize him if he met him on the street. If he said ‘Tom is a nice person’ to strangers who were unaware of the circumstances, the memory of the testimony being lost, no one would be able to tell us who Tom is. Therefore, the utterance does not refer effectively to Tom for the child who is speaking, but rather for interpreters able to complete the reference, who in this case are the child’s parents. After all, they not only remember that the child was introduced to Tom and assume that it is because of this that he now says that Tom is nice, but they are also those who really know who Tom is and are able to re-identify the person to whom the words refer. Indeed, the child’s parents are privileged speakers who know in a self-sufficient way the identifying rule for the name ‘Tom,’ which can be descriptive of his appearance, his psychological traits, what he does, where he lives and his origin. They also know relevant auxiliary descriptions concerning Tom’s family relationships. As the child’s speech takes place in a public space where these privileged interpreters are present, the child’s intention to refer to a sympathetic person with whom he was in contact is complemented by the referential identification of this person. This is made by the other participants in the conversational situation, leading us to the illusion that the child produced something more than a mere gesture towards the reference.

 

4. Devitt’s objection of epistemic magic

There is, finally, a generic objection raised by externalist philosophers such as Michael Devitt, according to which there is something magical in descriptivism. According to this objection, descriptivism attributes an extraordinary property to the mind, which is the ability to allow its contents to relate as if by magic to things outside it. As Devitt writes in his: criticism of Searle:

 

How could something inside the head determine the reference, which is a relationship with particular things outside of the head? ... to assume that one’s thought can reach particular objects outside the mind is to sustain magical theories of reference and intentionality.[143]

How can something inside the head refer to something outside the head? Searle sees no problem: it just happens. That’s the real magic.[144]

 

Certainly, a commonsense cognitivist will insist that the thesis that words are bound to objects by means of ideas, representations, instantiated conceptual or criterial rules, is perfectly natural and intuitive. Indeed, as philosophers we are here almost inevitably led to the traditional and almost intractable problem of perception, that is, the problem of knowing how we can go beyond the veil of sensations, since it seems all that can immediately be given to experience are sensory impressions (sense data).[145] Here there is for many a mystery that requires magic to be solved. But the magic with which through sensory impressions we can have access to an outside physical world, we have reasons to guess, is merely apparent. At least to me it seems that we use these sensory impressions as something that, when there is joint satisfaction of reality criteria, such as maximum sensory intensity, independence of the will, possible intersubjectivity, the following of natural laws…, automatically allows us to reinterpret these sensory impressions as properties belonging to external reality. This happens simply because external reality can in a sense be defined as all that conjunctively satisfies criteria like these.[146]

Much more extreme, however, seems to me the sorcery of direct referentialism, according to which in some way words themselves have the power to reach their objects in order to refer to them. It is true that Devitt advocates a nuanced form of referentialism, according to which partially cognitive causal networks are responsible for references. Yet, if he does not want to fall into cognitivism and hence into some kind of descriptivism, he will need to ignore the explanatory force originated from the cognitive content of these cognitions. However, such an admission makes the objection return with all its strength: how could external causal chains and the derived spelling of words, independently of their relationship with cognitive content, be able to explain our reference to the particular things that originated them? This makes us suspect that Devitt’s considerations can be explained psychologically as an unconscious projection of the denial of the very problem of referentialism in the enemy field of cognitivism.

 

5. Russellian reformulation

It is worth noting that meta-identifying rules allow a systematic application of description theory methods to the meta-descriptive theory of proper names, which can help us reach the goal of displaying the logical structure of the identifying rule. Consider, for example, the sentence (i) “Aristotle had to leave Athens.” Bearing in mind the application of MIR_F in formulating the identifying rule for the name ‘Aristotle,’ we can paraphrase (i) through the method proposed by Russell in his theory of descriptions as:

 

1.      There is at least one human being x who sufficiently satisfies the condition of having been born in Stagira in 384 BC, lived in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC and/or the condition of having been the philosopher who created the great doctrines explained in the Aristotelian opus.

2.      The human being x who satisfies (1) more than any y.

3.      This x is called ‘Aristotle’ and had to leave Athens.

 

Condition 1 includes the idea of sufficiency, condition 2 conveys the idea of uniqueness, and condition 3 associates what was unequivocally delimited to the name ‘Aristotle,’ adding the remaining part of (i). To formulate the sentence (i) symbolically, we established that N = ‘... is the person named “Aristotle”,’ A = ‘... satisfies (within a whole with B) with sufficiency the condition of having been born in Stagira in 384 BC, lived in Athens and died in Chalkis in 322 BC.’ (localizing description-rule), B = ‘... satisfies (within a whole with A) with sufficiency the condition of having been the author of the great doctrines of the Aristotelian corpus’ (characterizing description-rule), P = ‘satisfies x more than any other z’ (condition of predominance). and T = ‘... had to leave Athens.’ The statement “Aristotle had to leave Athens” can then be formalized as:

 

∃x (Nx & (Ax ˅ Bx) & Px & ∃y ((Ay ˅ By) → y = x) & Tx)

 

With this is required the existence, uniqueness and predominance, which here are associated with the predicates that express the identifying properties. What this brief comment suggests is that the true work of description theory concerning proper names is to display the essential structure of its identifying rules.

 

6. Proper names and the “necessary a posteriori”

The considerations we have just made lead us to one last question, concerning the epistemic status of identities between proper names. According to Kripke, because proper names are rigid designators, two proper names with the same reference need to apply to a single object in any possible world where it exists. Therefore, even though identity sentences connecting proper names can be a posteriori, that is, learned from sensory experience, they are necessary. Hence a statement like “Hesperus is Phosphorus” is according to Kripke necessary a posteriori. However, the conclusion that there are necessary a posteriori propositions has been considered controversial by several philosophers. After all, how is it possible that a proposition we know to be true in all possible worlds would depend on experience in order to be seen as true?

   To begin with, consider the statement “Cicero is Tullius.” The identifying description-rule for the proper name ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero’ can be abbreviated as:

 

       IR-‘Marcus Tullius Cicero’

The proper name ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero’ – as well as, consequently, its name-mark’s constituents ‘Marcus,’ ‘Tullius’ and ‘Cicero’ – refers to an object x belonging to the class of human beings iff sufficiently and more than any other candidate, x was born in Arpino in 106 BC, lived in Rome and died in Formia in 43 BC and/or x was a Roman skeptic philosopher, orator, lawyer and politician, the senator who wrote the Catiline Orations.

 

Considered in view of this intended sense, the statement “Tullius is Cicero” is obviously necessary and a priori, because it is analytical in the sense of being definitory of what is meant by the name ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero.’ Omitting supposed variations of meaning between the different denominations, a person who does not know that Tullius is Cicero is like a person who does not know that “ß is ss”. That is: her ignorance is like not knowing the identities between conventional equivalent orthographic symbols in a name.

   The other examples are more complex. We can have a general rule of the type:

 

      IR-‘Mary Ann Evans’

The proper name ‘Mary Ann Evans,’ like her pseudonym ‘George Eliot,’ refers to an object x belonging to the class of human beings. Object x is sufficiently and more than any other candidate the origin of our consciousness that x is a woman who was born in Nuneaton in 1819, lived much of her life in London and died in Chelsea in 1880. And/or she was perhaps the greatest female English novelist, author of classics such as Adam Bede and Middlemarch, married twice and possessed such and such personality traits.

 

We can consider here three groups of speakers: (i) the group of those who knew the young Mary Ann Evans, such as her relatives and childhood friends before her career as a novelist; (ii) the group of those who knew only ‘George Eliot,’ such as people who read Adam Bede at the time of its publication, when the author’s real name was not yet  public knowledge; (iii) those (privileged users) who not only knew Mary Ann Evans, but also always knew that George Eliot was a pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans. The latter knew the general rule IR-‘MaryAnn Evans.’ In this intentional sense, well known by the two husbands of Mary Evans and by herself, “George Eliot is (the same as) Mary Evans” can be considered a necessary and a priori identity statement. But it doesn’t need to be so. What the people in group (ii) have in mind with the identifying rule for George Eliot could be: ‘the author of Adam Bede, Middlemarch, and other classics of English literature,’ added to some vague indications about the time and place in which that author lived. Finally, people in group (i) have in mind the identifying rule of Mary Evans as ‘the young woman with such and such personal traits, daughter of Robert Evans, born in Nuneaton in 1819...’ The localization and characterization rules used by these three groups of speakers cannot contradict each other, since speakers from groups (i) and (ii) know part of a larger identifying rule (iii), which they can learn by acquiring information. And for that reason, the identity statement “George Eliot is (the same as) Mary Ann Evans” is for them contingent and a posteriori. The statement is a posteriori in the sense that it depends on the learning of information concerning what we could call contingent subfacts, such as the subfact that Mary Evans made the decision to use a certain literary pseudonym, which would be a subfact of the fact that George Eliot is Mary Ann Evans.[147]

   It should be noted that the members of group (iii) can also think of George Eliot’s identity with Mary Ann Evans in the second way, in terms of the person’s modes of presentation, for example, when explaining this identity to someone else. In this case, they are considering the partial rules for each name, wanting to show that they are constitutive parts of Mary Ann Evans’s complete identification rule, which makes the utterance of “George Eliot is (the same as) Mary Ann Evans” for them contingent a posteriori. Hence, the statement “George Eliot is Mary Evans” is ambiguous, and may mean one or two or both, depending on the context.

   Finally, something similar can be said of the statement “Hesperus is (the same as) Phosphorus.” The identifying rule for Venus is today something like:

 

       IR-‘Venus’

The proper name ‘Venus’ – as well as the names ‘Phosphorus’ (emphasizing the ‘Morning Star’) and ‘Hesperus’ (emphasizing the ‘Evening Star’) – refers to the planet that satisfies sufficiently and more than any other the localizing condition of being the second planet in the solar system, discovered to be situated between the Earth and Mercury and/or the characterizing rule of being a planet in the solar system, etc.

 

If we keep in mind this one-foot identifying rule, it is not necessary to consider differences between Hesperus and Phosphorus, which makes “Hesperus is Phosphorus” a necessary and a priori statement, since it derives from the rule.

   But we can also consider the identity in question, as Frege did, as an astronomical discovery. In this case, what we are doing is associating the name ‘Hesperus’ with the auxiliary description ‘the brightest celestial body usually seen at dusk in the direction of the Sun’ and associating ‘Phosphorus’ with the auxiliary description ‘the brightest celestial body usually seen at dawn in the direction of the Sun.’ Each of these descriptions simply refers to the celestial body we see in the sky at a certain time and place and nothing more. What the identity phrase does is to state that, in addition, these two modes of presentation are modes of presentation of the same object, that is, each of these rules of identification is part of the auxiliary rules belonging to the general identifying rule for Venus. As we know, it was empirically discovered by Babylonian astronomers that these two rules of identification for different data objects could be understood as parts of a single more general identifying rule for a single object, so that under such a perspective, “Hesperus is Phosphorus” expresses an a posteriori and contingent truth (which contains the idea that Hesperus’ mode of presentation is not the same as that of Phosphorus), because it might not have been so.

   If there is no disambiguing context, the statement “Hesperus is Phosphorus” retains its semantic ambiguity, and can be interpreted as meaning “(Hesperus)-Venus = (≠) (Phosphorus)-Venus” and “Hesperus-(Venus) ≠ (=) Phosphorus-(Venus),” respectively emphasizing identity and difference. Or, if one wishes, there are two thoughts intertwined in each other: one about the difference in identity, the other about identity in difference. Under the assumptions of this view, what a philosopher like Kripke more often did was to confuse these two ways of understanding identity statements between newly presented proper names, ignoring contextual deviations that could disambiguate them. He confused the forms of understanding by joining the necessity of the identity-thought that makes it conventionally understood as analytic (i.e., necessary and a priori, constituted by a rule that verifies identity) with the a posteriori character of the difference-thought, understood as synthetic (i.e., contingent and a posteriori), which aims to expose modes of presentation (appearances) of different objects to inform us that such objects (like the Morning Star and the Evening Star) are themselves results of modes of presentation of the same more fundamental object (like Venus).

   Finally, it is interesting to observe the curious coincidence between these results, which are derived from our analysis of the identifying rules of proper names, and the results of the analysis of identity statements from the methodologically different perspective of semantic two-dimensionalism. That coincidence doesn’t seem to be causal.[148]

 

7. Conclusion

As is common in philosophy, whenever we believe we have solved a problem, new ones are lying in wait for us around the next corner. However, a little reflection on the arguments discussed here suggests that the proposed path is by far the most feasible. Suppose, for example, that MIR_F is implemented in a computer program, and that proper names are introduced in it along with the necessary information about its fundamental descriptions, causal histories, etc. In this case it seems quite conceivable that the computer will be able to tell us with a good margin of security whether or not the proper name is applicable, provided that it was supplied with the correct information. But the same is far from conceivable to us, when we think of traditional descriptivist theories, and even less with regard to the causal-historical view considered in this book.

   It is certain that the proposed theory, although possessing greater explanatory power, is inevitably more complex. But this is in fact no price to pay for suitability, considering that the advantages of simplicity lie in the foundations of a theory, not in its developments. General relativity theory is based on a very simple principle of equivalence, though amazingly complex in its mathematical ramifications. As in science, simplicity of developments and applications is the least one can expect from more mature theories. It is not our fault that reality – including the reality of our linguistic mechanisms of reference – is much more complex than it appears at first glance.

   Finally, it is said that when philosophy comes to a feasible result, it gives place to science. Indeed, though being aware that there must be many difficulties that cannot be foreseen, my hope concerning the theory presented in this book is that it outlines the beginnings of a really scientific (and not merely scientistic, as we often find) understanding of how proper names really work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Though the words ‘descriptivism’ and ‘referentialism’ are not fully appropriate, they will serve us as well as short, useful labels.

[2] Definite descriptions are phrases like ‘the iron lady’ or ‘the city of light.’ They begin with a definite article or at least are reducible to this form. This makes them more apt to identify one only object distinguishing it from all the others. They are to be distinguished from indefinite descriptions, which are phrases beginning with indefinite articles, like ‘a man with a red cap.’

[3] Mill 2009, book 1, chapter 2, section 5, [036]. This passage provides us with the elements for Mill's standard interpretation.

[4] Mill 2009, book 1, chapter 2, section 5 [037].

[5] Mill 2009, book 1, chapter 2, section 5 [038].

[6] Frege was a platonist regarding senses, the British empiricists were particularists (the meaning-ideas should be in the psychological minds.)

[7] See Devitt & Sterelny 1999, p. 45. Lycan 2006, pp. 256-7. S.P. Schwartz 1977, pp. 18-19. This interpretation was popularized by Saul Kripke, who in turn seems to have taken it from John Searle (1967, p. 488).  

[8] Gottlob Frege 1892, p. 28, original paging.

[9] Frege 1918, pp. 64, 76.

[10] American authors, influenced by Saul Kripke, associate Frege with descriptivism, while English authors, influenced by Michael Dummett, often reject this association. See Dummett 1981, pp. 97-98, 110-111, p. 186 ss. Corroborating Dummett's interpretation are Lynski 1977, pp. 42-43 and, more recently, Luntley 1999, p. 261.

[11] 1982, pp. 97-98, 101-111.

[12] The only form to convey these things linguistically seems to be metaphorically, though artistic representation, which essentially includes poetry.

[13]  1981, p. 73.

[14]  2013 (1911), p. 39. This passage, as the next to be cited, is identical in Russell's article of 1918.

[15]  2013, p. 40.

[16] 2013, p. 40

[17] Leonard Linsky interpreted Wittgenstein as having here suggested the absence of conventional limits to fix the descriptions (Cf. Linsky 1977, p. 99). But there is not sufficient textual evidence for this Idea. Anyway, if Wittgenstein had thought so, he would be wrong. It does not seem conceivable that the proper name can maintain a single and separable reference if the limits of its application result from arbitrary decision.

[18] 1952, see p. 185, footnote.

[19] Searle’s formulation appeared in a paper published in 1958 and was completed by his contribution to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Paul Edwards (1967).

[20] 1967, vol. V, p. 490.

[21] 1978, p. 58. 

[22] Searle 1958, 171.

[23] Searle 1967, p. 490.

[24] Searle 1967, p. 490.

[25] 1969, 171.

[26] Searle misinterprets the Fregean example of Herbert Garner and Leo Peter as demanding that both should have the same descriptive contribution to the name. But this interpretation is contradicted by the remark on the innocuous fluctuation of senses in Frege’s footnote on proper names in “Sense and Reference”. The two sub-sets must only intersect. Cf. Searle 1969, pp. 168, 170.

[27] Searle 1958, p. 170

[28] 1986, p. 57. See also Backer 1974.

[29] 1981 p. 194.

[30] 1981b, p. 229.

[31] The word ‘criterion’ is ambiguous, denoting internally part of the criterial rule and also, externally, what satisfies this part. Moreover, Wittgenstein distinguishes between primary and secondary criteria (symptoms). The finding of primary criteria is seem as warranting the application of the term, while the finding of secondary criteria makes this application only probable. See Costa 2018, pp. 138-140.

   According to Tugendhat, in order to be true, a predicative singular statement needs to have (i) the identification rule (Identificationsregel) of its singular term applied to an object, (ii) the application rule (Applicationsregel) of its general term applied on the base of the application of (i), and (iii) a co-called verification rule (Verifikationsregel) of the statement applied, insofar as it is concerned with the application of (i) and (ii).  See his 1976, pp. 259, 484, 487-8. See also Tugendhat & Wolf, 1983, 235-6.

[32] See Salmon 2005, p. 23-31. See also Arif Ahmed 2007, Chap. 2. (I do not follow verbatim what Salmon and other authors say, but try to describe the objections in the strongest way possible.)

[33] Kripke 1980, pp. 61-63, 74-76.

[34] 1980, p. 48. See also Kripke 2019.

[35] 1980, p. 48, 1971 pp. 145-146.

[36] 1971, p. 173,

[37] 1980, p. 74.

[38] 1980, p. 75.

[39] Kripke 1980, p. 62.

[40] Kripke 1980, p. 87.

[41] Kripke 1980, pp. 81-85.

[42] See Searle 1983, p. 253. Searle dedicated the last chapter of his 1983 book to a brilliant defense of his descriptivist cluster theory against the objections of Kripke and Donnellan. It is curious to note that this defense remained virtually unanswered on the part of partisans of the causal-historical view.

[43] This is also the conclusion of specialists like David Braun and Marga Reimer in their respective articles for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For a supportive defense of Kripke, see Scott Soames 2002, chapter 2. For a more cautious approach, see Arif Ahmed 2007, Ch. 2.

[44] Kripke 1982, p. 52.

[45] D. C. Williams’ groundbreaking work (1953) was the proposal of a radically naturalist alternative against the traditional but always controversial forms of realism and nominalism used in ontology. A relevant attempt to develop a trope-ontology was made in Keith Campbell’s 1990 study. Since then the literature devoted to trope-ontology has grown steadily, though usually weakening Williams’ original insight. The construal of a fully adequate trope-theory remains an unfinished task.

[46]  Keith Campbell (1990) call them quasi-tropes, though I can see no good reason for this.

[47] “I am counting the Three Sisters, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, I believe they still exist”. The applied number three is localizable there and not elsewhere, as much as is their existence. To argue for this is, however, no easy task. (See Costa 2018, Appendix 3, and Costa 2018b).

[48] See Costa 2018, Appendix 3.

[49] Dummett, influenced by Wittgenstein, was probably the first to see Fregean senses as criterial rules (1981, pp. 129, 194). Ernst Tugendhat made a systematic development of this idea in his long investigation of the predicative singular statement, in which the singular term has a rule of identification (Identifikationsregel), which once applied allows the employment of the application rule (Applikationsregel) of the general term, both building some kind of verification rule (Verifikationsregel). (1983, pp. 235-6; 1976, pp. 259, 484, 487-8).

[50] Kripke correctly denies that he is proposing a theory in the strict (scientific) sense; it is just a suggestion, a rudimentary sketch. But as descriptivist theories like Frege’s are also nothing but rudimentary sketches, I prefer to use the word ‘theory’ in this generic sense. Anyway, philosophical theories don’t usually grow beyond conjectural sketches.

[51] There are other versions of “causal-historical theory,” such as those of Keith Donnellan (very similar to Kripke’s) and Michael Devitt (a deviant view). For simplicity of explanation I present only that of Kripke, which over time established itself as a kind of standard version.

[52] Kripke 1982, pp. 96, 91.

[53] G.W. Fitch 1992, p. 41.

[54] Kripke 1982, pp. 91, 96. Searle realized the difficulty in noting that the explanations given by Kripke and Donnellan for introducing proper names are entirely descriptivist: “Implicitly,” wrote Searle, “he also resorts to an intention when he speaks of the perception of the object by the speaker and hearer in the act of baptism, since the perception has an intentional content, which ends up presupposing descriptivism.” However, a causalist philosopher can answer that the act of baptism (even if intentional) includes a mechanical (non-conscious), unintentional sharing of the reference, assuming that this is all that matters as a causal factor. (Cf. Searle 1983, pp. 234-235).

[55] Evans 1973.

[56] Devitt 1981, 2.1-2.3

[57] 1982 Saul Kripke, p. 163, appendix.

[58] As far as I know Evans’ example was invented and there was never a place of easter continental Africa called Madagascar.

[59] I disregard here the additional difficulty of the identity statement “Raul Rivas is Marciel Marcel”, since here we have two rigid designators building a necessary identity that could not be perceived by Señora Gutiérez.

[60] Most of these examples were considered by Searle in 1983, pp. 238 f.

[61] Christopher Hughes, p. 45, based on Salmon.

[62] In his classic work on causality, J. L. Mackie (1974, caps. 2 and 3) says that what we call the ‘cause’ is the result of the pragmatic choice of a causal factor that is a necessary but not sufficient part of a set of causal factors that is sufficient, although not necessary, for the effect to take place. There is much more to learn about causation, but Mackie's definition serves well in the context of the present discussion.

[63] Descriptive theory has no problem in explaining any of this. We can always find definite descriptions, such as a localizing description of Brasília as the city located in the geographic center of the country and a characterising description of Brasília as its capital (the importance of these two kinds of descriptions will be shown in the next chapter).

[64] See Costa 2018.

[65] Searle added that this reference is only possible because people form intentional representations of objects when baptizing them. See Searle 1983, pp. 240-241.

[66] In my judgment this answer does not differ too much from Keith Donnellan’s attempted solution of the problem of empty names in his paper “Speaking of Nothing” (1974). According to Donnellan, the empty proper name is the one whose causal chain “ends in a block.” I understand here that this block would be nothing more than the reference’s own fixing circumstances.

[67] Kripke 1971.

[68] Kripke 1982, pp. 21, 48.

[69] In a letter to Kaplan, Kripke noted that he would rather remain neutral in this regard. See Fitch 2004, p. 36. See also Kripke 2019 and my remarks on rigid designators at the beginning of this chapter.

[70] Fitch 2004, pp. 45, 46.

[71] David Kaplan played with this idea concerning indexicals.

[72] It is true that we can refer to fictional objects such as Sherlock Holmes and Gandolf. But in this case, we are just assuming the (fictional) existence of these objects in fictional domains. What we cannot do is to refer to things supposedly belonging to the real world that certainly do not exist in it, any more than do Vulcan and Eldorado.

[73] Particularly A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

[74] I say this assuming it is physically possible the construction of such androids, but I don’t think it is possible. It seems to me much more defensible to claim that only biological beings produced by carbon chemistry, with lives similar to ours, would actually be able to use natural languages as we do. One does not have to know much about human brains and computers to realize that “brains” of silicium and human brains are immeasurably diverse things.

[75] I say type because I hope to surround a possible objection of multiple realizability.

[76] It is important to note the proximity of this point with the version of the causal historical theory once developed by Michael Devitt, according to which the cognitive fixator of the referent is not a description, “but a system of d-chains generated by conceptual role links ranging from thoughts to peripheral stimuli to the external world” (1989, p. 227). This system is generally not external, since “a large part of the d-chain system for a name consists of process and mental functioning” (p. 217), although almost none of this needs to be conscious (p. 227). In my judgment, what Devitt is identifying with the sense is a mixture of psychological representations explicit in terms of rule descriptions, even if non-conscious, with the reading of these same representations in terms of types of neuro-physiological occurrences. However, since it seems clear now that everything that presents itself in psychological terms should also potentially be described in terms of neuronal behavior, what Devitt is advocating is at the bottom a form of causal-descriptive theory, which he mistakenly interprets in essentially externalist terms.

[77] This conclusion can be easily extended to Donnellan’s causal-historical chain. See Donnellan 1972, p. 337

[78] Hermanno Bencivenga 1987, pp. 129-130.

[79] The term ‘expression of rule’ was coined by Wittgenstein (1986).

[80] The term ‘causal descriptivism’ was coined by David Lewis to designate mixed theories of proper names in his 1984 article. See also Lewis 1997 and Kroon 1987. 

[81] The fact that the spatio-temporal localizing rules have a privileged role has not gone completely unnoticed. Paul Ziff, for example, argued that localizing descriptions or localizing-implications form a central part of the proper name’s reference mechanism (1960).

[82] It should be noted that the space-time career may include paths before and after the existence of the object as long as they are relevant: it is relevant to Aristotle that he was the son of Philip of Macedon’s court doctor, it is relevant to James Mill that he was the father of John Stuart Mill, it is relevant to Queen Elisabeth II that she was the daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York, who later became King George V…

[83] I chose the Wikipedia because of its easy of access; but any other encyclopedia will highlight these kinds of data in a similar order.

[84] Here Kripke has reason to think that even the sentence “Aristotle is the individual called ‘Aristotle’” is not a priori (1982 p. 68 ff.).

[85] One reason why the philosophy of language is distinguished from linguistics is not only the breadth of its scope, which goes beyond particular languages, but also the presence of epistemological and even metaphysical implications in its aims.

[86] Kripke recommended that we consider homonyms as different names, since different referents should be enough to determine different names, even if their sensible marks are identical. (1980, p. 8)

[87] There are good reasons to deny that John Perry has shown how Frege’s view of indexicals is wrong. For a criticism of Perry’s views, see Costa, 2014.

[88] Monk 1990, p. 138.

[89] I suppose here that the person knows nothing about who Achaeon was and about when and where he lived, for this already implies that he associates the name descriptions as a Macedonian philosopher from the 3rd century BC.

[90] 1967, p. 490.

[91] The Christian God could also have no location, because he is said to be simultaneously everywhere . But this is a problematic case, because his existence is either unverifiable, or his nature may be distorted. As for our comfort Baudelaire wrote: “Dieu est le seul être qui, pour régner, n’ait même pas besoin d'exister.” (“God is the only being who to reign does not even need to exist.”) (1867, 75-76)

[92] It is assumed that a causal condition of type Cc must be applied as a pre-condition for the application of DR.

[93] 1983, p. 235.

[94] This is the version already present in Plutarch’s Theseus.

[95] It should be noted that the Kripkian theory of baptism would also find it difficult to explain our preference for the second Aristotle in W₁. This theory would not be able to distinguish the true Aristotle, for it would not have at its disposal the resource of using descriptions to privilege it. Besides, it couldn’t explain why the real Aristotle happens to be the first one in W₂. However, as descriptions are causally determined, it is always possible to develop some explanatorily defficient causal-historical solution for such cases as well as for any other. Such a solution would always ultimately depend on the conscious identification of the relevant descriptions generally involved in the intention of preserving the same reference.

[96] Computers can be digital (working with discrete values) or analog (working with continuously changing aspects of physical phenomena). It is as if in order to deal with conditions (ii) and (iii) the human brain should act more as an analog than a digital computer. It seems interesting to note that regardless of this distinction, we are used to regarding cognitive functions as if they should follow discrete values.

 

[97]  The cognitive, epistemic or informative meaning (Sinn or Erkenntniswert) is, as we have seen, much more than the literal sense, and I think it should be taken as constituted by internal tropical elements able to be equaly repeated in the same or in different minds. Nevertheless, here is no place to argue on this matter.

[98] Wittgenstein 1984b, sec. 560.

[99] Ziff 1960, pp. 93-94. Since Stuart Mill this idea has often been considered.

[100] It should be noted that there are specific dictionaries for proper names, such as those that explain the etymological meanings of people’s proper names and provide generic information about their most well-known bearers. An etymological meaning, at least, is not what we are searching for, since it might belong to a proper name’s sensible mark independently of its circunstantially many different bearers.  

[101] Not necessarily transient, as it is attested by the famous gretting of H. M. Stanley upon locating Sir Livingstone in Africa: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”, or the less famous skathing remark from a London critic about James Joyce and his almost illiterate wife: “I was introduced to a sick old man accompanied by a cow.” (O’Brien, 2011)

[102] Russell 1980 (1912), p. 30

[103] “... one reference can borrow its credentials as a genuinely identifying reference of another, and the latter from still another. But this return is not infinite.” (1959, p. 185.)

[104] See Locke 1975: 2.31.4-5, 2.32.12, 2.29.7, 3.10.22, 3.11.24. This commitment with a division of linguistic work from philosophers like John Locke and C. S. Peirce was remembered by A. D. Smith (1975, pp 70-73).

 

[105] 1980, pp. 81-85.

[106] The basic mistake of externalism is a genetic fallacy: to confuse external origins of meaning with the meaning itself. (I do not have space to justify this point here.)

[107] I take this terminology from my reconstruction of J. S. Mill’s definition of matter as the permanent possibility of sensations. See Costa, 2018, chap. IV.

[108] Frege understood the concept as an abstract object at the level of reference of a concept-word, telling us nothing about the sense of the conceptual word. I prefer to see the concept at the level of the sense of the conceptual word, letting properties or tropes be at the level of reference.

[109] With this we accept the traditional view of existence as the property of a concept, which I find much more plausible than the presently very popular view of existence as the property of an object. For a detailed defense of this point, see Costa 2018, Ch. IV.

[110] There is no anthropomorphism here: an object can have its rule of identification effectively and continuously applicable to itself (thus not being merely imaginary), even if this rule has never been thought of or applied by any cognitive subject.

[111] Notice that a similar problem could be posed against causal-historical views: there could be a half-Aristotle insufficiently baptized or tagged, etc.

[112] In fact, this is only a way of speaking since if something is abstracty applicabe it is not being really applicable in any possible world (one needs to imagine someone in a world doing the abstract calculus in his head.)

[113] 1958, p. 24; 2001, p. 28. The precise interpretation is controversial; here I am giving my own.

[114] Kripke 1980, pp. 62-63.

[115] 1980, p. 57.

[116] 1980, p. 58.

[117] It appears in the direction of the Sun, because it is an inner planet with an orbit closer to the Sun than is the Earth’s.

[118] The example was initially suggested by Ruth Barcan Marcus, using the name ‘Venus’ at a conference Probably she was assisted by Kripke, but Kripke gave the idea a more sophisticated turn. See Marcus 1993, p. 11.

[119] For considerations on the identifying rule for the name ‘Venus’, see Ch. III, sec. 3.

[120] On the lack of relevance of (i-b), see remarks on section 3 of this chapter.

[121] This would be an example of the deep confusion among linguistic practices identified by Wittgenstein as common in metaphysics, requiring philosophical therapy.

[122] This seems to me a more appropriate approach than my first attempt to refute this counterexample in 2014, p. 67.

[123] One could ask: what about those possible worlds where Aristotle was born in 383 BC after our rule has changed? – Only remember that our concept of rigidity allows vagueness.

[124] J. L. Borges fictionally rewrote this story in the tale “El inverosímil impostor Tom Castro,” in his book Historia universal de la infamia.

[125] Kripke 1980, pp. 83-84.

[126] Searle 1983, p. 251.

[127] Kripke 1980, pp. 93, 97.

[128] I accept this statement by Kripke for the benefit of the example, given that in fact most scholars believe that this biblical person is entirely fictional.

[129] 1980 Kripke, p. 67-68.

[130] Kripke 1980, pp. 81-82.

[131] Kripke 1980, p. 85.

[132] Kripke 1980, pp. 81-82.

[133] Kripke, 1980, pp. 84-5, 88-9. The example was developed by Scott Soames, 2003, vol. 2, p. 361.

 

[134] Donnellan 1972, p. 374.

[135] 1972, p. 377.

[136] Searle 1983, pp. 252-253.

[137] Searle 1983, p. 253. Due to passages like this, Searle was once interpreted as being a causal descriptivist, which is not quite accurate.

[138] Donellan 1972, p. 364.

[139] 1972, pp. 368-370.

[140] 1972, p. 364.

[141] 1999, pp. 46-7; W. G. Lycan 1976, p. 376.

[142] 1976, p. 367.

[143] Devitt 1990, 83.

[144] Devitt 1990, p. 91.

[145] It is very difficult to deny that internal sense impressions are at least indispensable vehicles of all perception. Consider, for instance, the moving visual images computationally reconstructed by means of fMRI. (Nishimoto et al., 2011) Cf. Costa 2017.

[146] I tried to justify this view more clearly in Costa 2014, chap 6, and in Costa 2018, chap VI.

[147] This line of thought was developed in Costa 2018, Ch. IV, sec. 25-27.

[148] In a two-dimensional semantics, a statement of identity such as “Hesperus is Phosphorus” ambiguously expresses two propositions. The first is the proposition of primary intention, whose terms refer cognitively, varying their reference in possible worlds, which makes the proposition contingent a posteriori. This is the meaning captured here by Hesperus-(Venus) ≠ Phosphorus-(Venus). (In the case of conceptual identity, for instance, “Water is H₂O”, it would relate to what I could call the popular core of its meaning.) The second meaning of the proposition is given by the secondary intention, whose terms are rigid designators, invariably referring to the same thing in many different possible worlds, which makes it necessary and a priori. This is the meaning captured by (Hesperus)-Venus = (Phosphorus)-Venus. See M. Garcia-Carpintero & J. Macia (2006). See also Costa 2018, Ch. IV.