Referent-fixing

Kripke is concerned to eliminate one version of the theory, and it is something which is clearly present in Searle's paper. On this account, the cluster of descriptions is used to fix the referent of a name: it's a ``description'' that functions in Donnellan's referential sense. Kripke says that such an interpretation `detracts from the theory's appeal and that it would prevent the theory's being able to answer any of the problems we looked at last week.

What does the referent-fixing view amount to?

When I tell you that Walter Scott was the author of Waverly what I'm doing is not defining `Walter Scott' but giving you a mechanism for identifying him so that you can find the referent of the name. Now, once you have SIR WALTER, you can drop all mention of his authoring Waverly and simply call him `Walter Scott' with no implication that he wrote anything, let alone Waverly, or that he has any other particular feature or set of features.

In short, while we use language to get us to the world, there are many ways in which it accomplishes this feat. Descriptions give us access to the world in one way, a way that carries with it specific features and properties of the elements of that world we are talking about; names do it in another way, a way that allows us to ignore specific features, to drop the descriptions that we may have used to effect the transition to the world. Just as the airplane you take to get to Grandma's house isn't part of the festivities, descriptions IN THE CONTEXT OF PROPER NAMES merely play the role of getting you to the festivities--in this case the world and its objects.

What about the problems; how does the referent-fixing account stack up on this score?

1. How can we determine the referent of a given name on a given occasion without access to some description, some set of features, which the referent has?

   It seems to handle this with no difficulty.

2. If I use a name and you don't know the referent, in answer to your question''To whom are you referring?,'' my likely answer will be ``something like `Napoleon was the emperor of the French in the early part of the 19th century ...'' (28).

   It seems to handle this with no difficulty

3. We sometimes discover that two names have the same referent and express this by an identity statement: `Hesperus =/is Phosphorus.' This statement marks a discovery and stands in sharp contrast with `Hesperus =/is Hesperus.' How can we account for this difference?

   The problem here is odd. On the one hand it seems to work to account for this. I fix the referent with $\phi$ and you know the object as a result of having the referent fixed with $\psi$, we find out that either works well. We now interpret `a = a' as follows: The expression `the $\phi$' fixes the same object as its referent as the expression `the $\phi$'; and `a = b' as: The expression `the $\phi$' fixes the same object as its referent as the expression `the $\psi$.' Now even if we think that the first isn't quite the tautology as `a = a' there is something trivial and obvious about it.

   Of course, Kripke would say that it is neither trivial nor obvious, but let's ignore this for a moment. There certainly is something odd about it as an analysis of the identity statements, even if we think that identity statements are NOT ``internal'' but are only to be understood de dicto.

   There is, however, another problem. Once we move to the cluster theory, treating the descriptions as inclusive disjunctions, it seems that `a = a' and `a = b' must be on a par, that there is NO distinction between them. The advantage of Frege-Russell Description Theory was that it really did give different and distinct modes of presentation, and that these were keyed to the names themselves. On the Cluster Version no matter what the name, it has the same disjunction attached to it; all that can distinguish one from the other is the attitude of the speaker/audience. This isn't the happiest of positions in which to find oneself: for me `a = b' is trivial and obvious; for you it's new and exciting.

4. It's perfectly sensible to ask `Did Aristotle exist?' But, if a name were exhausted by its referent, how could we do this? It would be like holding up a pen and saying `Does this pen (pointing to it) exist?

   Kripke discusses this on page 33. IF I fix the referent of `Moses' via `the man who parted the Red Sea' (or whatever), then to say that Moses doesn't exist seems to mean that this description doesn't apply to anything in the world. But this can't be right. Someone may have parted the Red Sea, just not Moses. So I try to accommodate for this by moving to the cluster/disjunctive notion: parted the Red Sea or led the Israelites out of Egypt. The problem still remains. No matter how many disjuncts I add, it's still possible that someone did these things but that he just isn't Moses. And it's worse yet. Suppose that I do succeed in fixing a referent: well, that just has to be Moses.

   So it seems here that there is a problem for the referent fixing account.