A couple of things.
In PI§66 Wittgenstein, in considering the nature of games, asks us not to theorise but instead to look at how the word "game" is actually being used. We're in a not dissimilar place here, thinking "there must be something that serves to pick out the individual in question..."
But an individual can be "pick out" even in cases where the description is wrong - consider another example from Donnellan, someone at a party asking "Who is the man with the martini?" and receiving the correct reply, despite the drink not being a martini. The description may be wrong and yet still serve to elicit the correct response.
SEP lists three possible ways of fixing a referent, in addition to descriptions, and points out that they are not mutually exclusive. Some combination might well give the best account.
What is clear is that rejecting the idea that all references are fixed by descriptions does not tie one to the view that no references are fixed by description, nor to causal theories of reference.
In fending off the arguments,
is obliged to take extreme measures. Hence "If the definition of Thales is stipulated to be "the man who fell into the well," then Fred is Thales". His approach cannot envision, let alone articulate, the possibility that Thales did not fall into the well, because for him "Thales" is exactly "He who fell into the well". I hope others will accept that "Thales might not have fallen into the well" is a clear enough English sentence that might even have been true.
Aristotle was a fine philosopher, "conceptually rich" as
says, and well worth reading, especially on topics such as ethics. But his logic has been superseded. Leontiskos has attached himself to the descriptivist view, and thus to the supposed utility of Aristotelian logic he holds dear. He has taken the next, predictable step, when Kripke shows your argument to problematic, attack the character and authority of Kripke (
).
Notice that the Kit Fine article (this is a thread about an article by Kit Fine...) does not reject Kripke's account; Fine is too good a logician to engage in anything so perilous. Instead he accepts the modal approach but tries to defend essences by accounting for them using definitions instead of necessity.
Anyway, given that the discussion has moved away from the Fine article I might leave this topic where it is.