Abstract

In this essay an attempt is made to clarify and resolve some of the issues concerning proper names that have arisen as a result of Saul Kripke's now famous work, Naming and Necessity. More specifically, the main focus of attention will be the issues that arise in connection with Kripke's thesis that proper names are rigid designators and his thesis that proper names refer to their bearers in virtue of some appropriate causal connection. ;In chapter one I give a formally precise and rigorous account of Kripke's notion of a rigid designator by adopting the following definition. Where is any name or description, to say that is rigid is to say that the following condition holds: ; {E! x) {x= & x=)}} ; is then used to formally express Kripke's claim that proper names, unlike definite descriptions, are rigid designators, that is that proper names designate the same thing in every possible world in which they designate at all. Finally, in light of my account of a rigid designator I attempt to explicate and defend what I take to be Kripke's modal argument against the description theory of proper names. In particular I show that the argument has been misunderstood by various philosophers, and that the attempt to dodge it by viewing names as definite descriptions that have widest possible scope in modal contexts fails. ;Chapter two is devoted to critically examining a recent attempt by Michael Dummett to show that at least some proper names are on a par with definite descriptions in modal contexts, and hence are not rigid designators. ;In chapter three I attempt to show that the thesis that proper names are rigid designators is not coextensive with the thesis that proper names refer to their bearers in virtue of some appropriate causal connection. To accomplish this I construct a fairly clear and intuitive case of reference involving a proper name where there is no causal connection between the referent and the speaker's utterance of the name. Hence, if successful, I show that a causal theory of proper names cannot provide a necessary condition for name reference