What's at issue is whether or not false description can be used to successfully refer. Kripke's account does not seem to be able to provide an acceptable account of these cases when they happen. — creativesoul
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 doctrine doesn't seem capable of properly accounting for false belief. In fact, some cases of false belief are quite problematic for it.
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.
Nevertheless??? — creativesoul
His text and his footnotes both clearly set out his notion of the 'referent of the description' as the object uniquely satisfying the conditions of the description. I'm showing how that notion leads to a reductio when it comes to explaining the referent of false description. — creativesoul
Could you point me to "the case Kripke describes". I'd like to see him put his own notion to use as a means for clearing up the charges I'm levying against his notion of the 'referent of the description'.
The issue was: must this (minimal) description be true in order that the referent of the thought be determined by that thought? What if both you and I saw a woman whom we believed was almost hit by a car, but the car only appeared to us to drive close to her owing to a misleading perspective? In that case, wouldn't you agree that we are still referring to that woman (or to that man whom we falsely thought was a woman!) in spite of the fact that she (or he!) wasn't nearly hit by a car? — Pierre-Normand
Again, it doesn't matter at all if the sorts of contents that are made use of in the deployment, use and transmission or proper name using practices are predominantly consisting of (1) descriptions or (2) de re senses (information insensitive "causal links"). That's an empirical question which Kripke doesn't take any stand on. What he's arguing is that (2) is indispensable and that (2) can't be reduced entirely to (1). (And hence, proper names can't be translated into definite descriptions). Also, it's the essential involvement of (2) in the constitution of naming practices that accounts for proper names behaving as (information insensitive) rigid designators. — Pierre-Normand
OK, I would agree with all of that as well. I have said from the start that I think reference relies either on observation or ostention (which would be the case with those who witnessed the 'baptism' or description (which would be the means by which those who have never met or seen the baptized person, and so must rely upon being told about him or her would fix their reference to the person in question). — Janus
The idea is that here are no individuals as the referent of proper names, and that all there is, is sets of properties instantiated together. An individual is no more than a bunch of properties. — Banno
I see this as one of a number of instances of Kripke making an uncharitable interpretation of the descriptivist position. I'm tempted to say 'straw man' but feel that may be a bit strong for what he intended.Kripke is saying "Nevertheless..." because although we would, in ordinary cases, understand the speaker to be referring (and indeed, to intend to be referring) to the man who unbeknownst to the speaker doesn't have champagne in his glass, the way Kripke intends to use the phrase 'referent of the description' is to refer to the object uniquely satisfying the conditions in the definite description exactly as descriptivists about proper names understand definite descriptions to refer. — Pierre-Normand
A descriptivist position with less straw in it would be one in which the reference (if it makes sense to talk about one - see my earlier comments about the folly of always dissecting speech acts) made by the speaker is to the individual that she believes satisfies her description. That reference will be correctly interpreted by the listener if that description also uniquely picks out the same individual in the context of the listener's beliefs. — andrewk
I couldn't quite follow this. Perhaps you could elaborate on what the difficulty is that you see.It is not enough to say that he is being referred to in virtue of the fact that the speaker believes him to satisfy the description. That's because, by saying that, we haven't explained how it is precisely him (and not someone else) who is being referred to.
It seems to me that, if the DD picks out a unique individual based on the speaker's beliefs, then that explains how it is precisely that person, and not someone else, to whom she is referring.
One simply lists the people she can see and her beliefs about each one, then compares them to the DD and picks out the one for which the beliefs match the DD. — andrewk
In that case, the person who the speaker is looking at does not match the DD (since the DD expresses a false belief about that person), and hence, by your own account, isn't the person who the speaker is talking about. — Pierre-Normand
I totally agree, but I reach the conclusion this is a good argument for Davidson's 'dubbing.' In your example, the person is dubbed with the properties which may or may not be true, resulting in ideas about the person which are unprovable. That does seem to be the normal state of affairs in human interactions. — ernestm
What I wrote was, not that the facts about the person match the DD, but that the speaker's beliefs about the person match the DD.In that case, the person who the speaker is looking at does not match the DD (since the DD expresses a false belief about that person), and hence, by your own account, isn't the person who the speaker is talking about. — Pierre-Normand
What I wrote was, not that the facts about the person match the DD, but that the speaker's beliefs about the person match the DD. — andrewk
One simply lists the people she can see and her beliefs about each one, then compares them to the DD and picks out the one for which the beliefs match the DD. — andrewk
I'd like to know a bit more about Davidson's 'dubbing'. Would you happen to have a reference? — Pierre-Normand
Specifically, kripke initiated the idea of dubbing. The problem with it from Davidson's point of view was that purely referential theories of naming have trouble with defining meaningful knowledge, for which he provided new ideas on meaningfulness that allow for indeterminacy, in case there are mistakes in the act of assigning a label to a reference. — ernestm
However, do you have a source where Davidson explicitly adresses Kripke along such lines? — Pierre-Normand
Unfortunately my tutor at oxford has retired and she was too polite ever to write down the criticism. What she pointed out, which I think was a good observation, is that when people talk about 'the man holding the glass of vodka' they are not talking about a cluster of properties viz, male, with arms, holding a glass containing liquid, etc.' even if that is how the reference breaks down for the purposes of logic. They are saying 'that person', in a Wittgensteinian manner, pointing as it were, to enable an assertion about them without befuddling other detail once the reference is defined. — ernestm
Well, strangely enough, this rough account of demonstrative reference seems to me much closer in spirit with Kripke's causal/externalist account that it is from Davidson't internalist/interpretivist account. — Pierre-Normand
Can you help me to see the circularity? I was imagining something like the following in the speaker's mind:The speaker must be able to pick out in though who it is that she believes the predicative content of DD to be uniquely true of. But she can't do this by means of the very same DD, on pain of circularity. — Pierre-Normand
Can you help me to see the circularity? — andrewk
'Sabrina! Don't look, but did you see how the man over there with champagne in his glass just winked at me?' — andrewk
This account presupposes that your belief about that person indeed is about that person and not about someone else who might actually be, unbeknownst to you, drinking champagne, (or about nobody, if nobody is having champagne). — Pierre-Normand
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