False description unaccompanied by proper name will not pick out the individual, will it - regardless of the speaker's belief?
— creativesoul
Beth works in an office and occasionally sees a person that works on a different floor of the same company, That person has a disability that causes him to slur his words and need a walking stick to get about. Beth doesn't know about the speech disability and thinks the person is always drunk.
One day she sees him trip over in the lobby and goes to help him up. Later, talking to a workmate she says "You know that guy that walks with a stick and is always drunk? He fell over in the lobby today".
She has picked him out, despite the belief about him being drunk being false.
In practice, we have false items in our DDs of just about everybody. Usually they don't matter, because the item is redundant. — andrewk
What do you mean by 'successfully refer'? It's not a term used by Kripke in N&N, as I recall.The example you've provided above is not a case of false description(false belief) being able to successfully refer. — creativesoul
...people often don't know who others are talking about, even when they are both familiar with the referent... — andrewk
Yes! Of course I can guess at meanings, but there are more than one possible meaning, and I want to know which one you mean.Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means? — creativesoul
Have you never failed to catch the gist of something said to you, misheard a name, or heard the name but thought the reference was to somebody else with the same name? — andrewk
Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means?
— creativesoul
Yes! Of course I can guess at meanings, but there are more than one possible meaning, and I want to know which one you mean.
What do you mean by 'successfully refer'? — andrewk
If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that the first reference by A in a conversation between A and B is successful if B interprets it as referring to the same individual that A intended to refer to. There are a number of interesting 'what ifs' that arise here but let's ignore them for now in order to concentrate on the biggest question I see coming out of this, which is: "what difference is made to this meaning by whether one follows a descriptivist or Kripkean analysis?" It seems to me that for both, unsuccessful references, in the sense you have described, can be accommodated within the theory. Would you not agree?Rather, at that time, one successfully refers by virtue of appropriate name usage and/or adequate description. The listener need not understand... — creativesoul
What you appear to be saying in what was above what I quoted is that, when a speaker makes a reference using a description that consists only of false statements about the intended referent, the listener will not pick up the correct referent unless they share most of the same false beliefs about the referent as the speaker.To be clear here... I mean neither - individually - can take proper account of what I've put forth. — creativesoul
[...] the first reference by A in a conversation between A and B is successful if B interprets it as referring to the same individual that A intended to refer to. — andrewk
“A meter is one hundred centimeters” is a contingent truth knowable a priori. It is contingent because the standard meter stick can vary in length due to the temperature of the physical stick. It is knowable a priori because of the meaning of the terms used. ‘Meter’ means ‘one hundred centimeters’. Hope this clears up some confusion. — Noah Te Stroete
What does this have to do with Kripke's theory? — andrewk
So you may say,
'The man over there with the champagne in his glass is happy',
though he actually only has water in his glass. Now, even
though there is no champagne in his glass, and there may be
another man in the room who does have champagne in his
glass, the speaker intended to refer, or maybe, in some sense of
'refer', did refer, to the man he thought had the champagne in
his glass. Nevertheless, I'm just going to use the term 'referent
of the description' to mean the object uniquely satisfying the
conditions in the definite description.
Kripke's got a bit of bullshit mixed in there. — creativesoul
From pages 25 and 26...
I'm just going to use the term 'referent of the description' to mean the object uniquely satisfying the conditions in the definite description.This is the sense in which it's been used in the logical tradition.
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