Kripke on Names and Possible Worlds

Saul A. Kripke (1940-2022) was an extremely important and one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. As a child he was a prodigy, teaching himself ancient Hebrew by the age of 6, and Shakespeare and Descartes by 9. His only degree was an undergraduate one in mathematics from Harvard and he never even had to do a masters of a PhD. He would teach at Princeton. He practiced in the analytic tradition and his work has made significant contributions to the fields of modal logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of language. One of his most significant works is ‘Naming and Necessity’ which is a criticism of the definite description theory introduced by Gottlob Frege and later expanded upon by Bertrand Russell and is the subject of this essay.

To begin, what are definite descriptions? Well, definite descriptions are intended to be the answer to a fundamental question in names: how can a name specifically recall and refer to one specific person? Well, the idea is that names are abbreviations - the shortened form - of a specific identifier for a specific person. This basic relationship can be related through the function ‘A=the B’. This function is related to real life. An example (which I am fairly sure is one of the examples in the text) would be ‘Aristotle=the best pupil of Plato’. There can only be one ‘best’ of a certain condition, in this case being of ‘Plato’ and so Aristotle functions as specific identifier allowing us to trace a person long gone through a few letters, a few sounds. Definite descriptions is meant to be answer to the question of ‘sense’ raised in Frege’s seminal work ‘On Sense of Reference’. Now, ‘sense’ is a topic for a whole other essay, but the premise is that in identity statements of equality (a=a, Batman=Bruce Wayne) the object that they refer to is the same and so there is no true cognitive value in such statements. And yet such statements exist and something is being derived, so what property allows for this differentiation? Frege proposes the mystical property of sense. Regardless, definite descriptions aimed to be solution to ‘sense’. This philosophical ‘justification’ for names has been accepted for a long time. It is almost a dogma or a doctrine in this area of study. So, when Kripke came along decades later, challenging this heavily accepted explanation of names, thunder roared through the modest, pensive lands of philosophy.

What was Kripke’s argument? The question raised is very interesting, though the search for its answer and justification is where problems arise. If we consider the base identity statement of ‘A=the B’ that itself is a priori. We do not need empirical knowledge, we do need to enter the world to see why ‘A’ is equal to the ‘B’. It is necessarily true by virtue of logical and linguistic functions. However, by itself this a priori knowledge is not useful in justifying how we can refer to a person via a name. ‘Aristotle=the B’ does not mean anything, ‘A=the best pupil of Plato’ does not mean anything. Thus, the definite description of ‘the best pupil of Plato’ is not a priori. It is a posteriori. So, one question that Kripke seems to raise is how can a statement or an explanation rooted and is fundamentally a priori justify something that is a posteriori?Analytic and synthetic statements exist in different epistemic realms. Essentially, how can a priori justify a posteriori?

Kripke goes on to try and justify how definite descriptions are a posteriori and are not necessarily true but may be contingently trye. Here is where my questions arise. Kripke tries to show how definite descriptions are only contingently true. He does through the concept of ‘possible worlds’. Quite frankly, the concept is still a bit unclear for me, and to some extent, this unclearness has pervaded philosophy itself as well. There is debate over what exactly possible worlds signify and over the legitimacy of the concept. Regardless, Kripke uses possible worlds in the sense that though Aristotle was the best pupil of Plato in this world, in this reality, in this present time that is dictated by many many many unique choices, Aristotle may not have been the best pupil of Plato. In another world Aristotle may have passed away as a child, he may have become a sophist, he may have become a soldier. Possible worlds is not an argument that there are infinite universes in the common science-fiction way. Rather, it just says that things could have been something else entirely based on choices, cause and consequence. Possible worlds can be thought of as probability. Kripke says that by virtue of these possible worlds, definite descriptions are non-rigid designators (a Kripkean terminology, though it is pretty self-explanatory) because they are not true in every possible world. They are only contingently true. In one world Aristotle=the best pupil of Plato, in another Aristotle=the greatest soldier of Athens. This is one justification of his which I aim to talk a bit about. He has some other epistemic, historical justifications though.

Now, what I am about to say may be entirely false. Honestly, it is quite intimidating to even be writing about the daunting intellect of Kripke. But what I want to ask is how possible worlds can be used to say that a definite description is false when those other possible worlds did not exist. They are only a probability, a possibility. Nonetheless, they did not happen. This reality is set. As Wittgenstein said, ‘The world is everything that is the case’. Everything around is absolute and is the product of the inviolable laws of nature, time, and choice. So, with that logic can’t we say that definite descriptions are necessarily true? The identity statements of possible worlds are false when compared to our world. Whether there actually is another universe or dimension with an infinite number of mirrored earths does not matter. As of now, and for the foreseeable future, that matter will not be solved and so we can only be selfish in this philosophical considerations because that is all we know. Though this does not discredit Kripke’s fundamental (or at least what I consider to be his fundamental question on names) of how a posteriori knowledge can justify a priori knowledge, my final question is how can one discredit definite descriptions with the possible worlds and their identities and names and descriptions being contingently true despite these possible worlds being false to an extent. Only a theory, an envisioned offshoot of our reality.

That is about all I had to say. There are lot of things I could have covered and may cover in the future, but this right here is the meat I wanted to dissect. Now, I may be wrong. I wrote this essay because his argument of possible worlds, and now I shall speak with candour, frustrated me. Nonetheless, I found Kripke’s take on this extremely interesting and I hope you found some merit in this.