1. The Causal-Historical Theory
PHIL 2610
Philosophy of Language
1st Term 2016

2. Classical Descriptivism

3. Representation
Words/ thoughts have meanings. They are about things. Why do words, for example, represent the things that they do, instead of other things or nothing at all?

4. Classical Descriptivism
For every name N, there is a description D that we associate with N such that:
If x satisfies D, then N refers to x.
If N refers to x, then x satisfies the description.

5. Classical Descriptivism
We may say, following Russell: the name “Moses” can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as “the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness”, “the man who lived at that time and place and was then called ‘Moses’”, “the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter” and so on.
Investigations Section 79

6. Classical Descriptivism
Moses:
Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
Parted Red Sea
Given 10 commandments by God

7. Classical Descriptivism
This guy
Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
Parted Red Sea
Given 10 commandments by God

8. Classical Descriptivism
Moses
refers

9. Classical Descriptivism
This guy
Lead the Israelites out of Egypt
Parted Red Sea
Given 10 commandments by God

10. Classical Descriptivism
Moses
refers

11. Kripke against Descriptivism

12. Saul Kripke, 1940-
Published first completeness proof for modal logic at 18.
Highly influential in philosophy of language and mind.
Developed the causal-historical theory of meaning

13. Saul Kripke, 1940-
Kripke’s account is developed in his Naming and Necessity. The background is that he’s arguing against views on which the meanings of names are descriptions or definitions.

14. Against Descriptivism
Kripke argues that for any name N, there is no description D that we associate with N such that:
If x satisfies the description, N refers to x.
If N refers to x, then x must satisfy the description.

15. Ignorance & Error
He argues against each claim as follows: Against #1: Arguments from ignorance. Sometimes lots of things satisfy the descriptions we associate with N, but only one is N. Against #2: Arguments from Error. Sometimes nothing satisfies the descriptions we associate with N (or some non-x does), but N still = x.

16. Ignorance: Feynman What people know: He’s a physicist He’s famous
He’s dead
He worked on quantum mechanics

17. Ignorance: Feynman But Bohr: He’s a physicist He’s famous He’s dead
He worked on quantum mechanics

18. Ignorance: Feynman
it’s not true that ‘Feynman’ means Bohr and it’s not true that it means nothing. How is that possible for the descriptivist?

19. Error: Einstein Who is Albert Einstein? What people believe:
Einstein discovered the speed of light.

20. Error: Einstein

21. Causation & Representation

22. The Mirror Universe

23. Secondary Qualities

24. Possibility of Massive Error

25. Coordination across Theories
A related upshot is that two people with radically different theories can nevertheless be talking about the same thing, and hence be meaningfully disagreeing with one another.

26. The Causal-Historical Account

27. Kripke’s Picture
“Someone, let’s say, a baby, is born; his parents call him by a certain name. They talk about him to their friends, other people meet him. Through various sorts of talk the name is spread from link to link as if by a chain…”

28. Kripke’s Picture
“A speaker who is on the far end of this chain, who has heard about, say Richard Feynman, in the market place or elsewhere, may be referring to Richard Feynman even though he can’t remember from whom he first heard of Feynman or from whom he ever heard of Feynman.”

29. Kripke’s Picture
“A rough statement of a theory might be the following: An initial ‘baptism’ takes place. Here the object may be named by ostension, or the reference of the name may be fixed by a description…”

30. Kripke’s Picture
“When the name is ‘passed from link to link’, the receiver of the name must, I think, intend when he learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it.”

31. The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman

32. The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Historical Chain of Transmission

33. The Causal-Historical Theory
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Feynman
Denotation

34. No Connotations
The causal-historical theory, unlike the other theories, does not use mental facts (idea, experience, criterion) to determine a referent. Denotations are determined by non-mental facts.* *Plus one intention for each link in the chain.

35. Natural Kind Terms

36. Natural Kinds
Kripke and another philosopher Hilary Putnam wanted to generalize what was true of names to “natural kind terms” (a phrase introduced by Quine).

38. The Causal-Historical Theory
Let’s call that thing a “tiger.”
TIGER
TIGER
TIGER
TIGER

39. Ignorance: Water
In Hilary Putnam’s classic “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” he argues that “meaning just ain’t in the head.” In particular, he presents his famous Twin Earth thought experiment, which is intended to show that what the word ‘water’ is true of is not determined by what we know or believe about water.

40. Twin Earth
Twin Earth is a planet on the other side of the galaxy. In most ways, it is just like Earth, down to the smallest detail. You have a twin on Twin Earth who’s just like you, I have a twin who’s just like me, they’re sitting in a twin classroom, and my twin is giving a lecture just like this one to your twin. And so on and so forth.

41. Earth
Twin Earth

42. Twin Earth
There is however one difference between Earth and Twin Earth. On Earth, all the watery stuff is H2O. On Twin Earth, the watery stuff is composed of a complicated chemical compound we can abbreviate XYZ. H2O and XYZ look and behave exactly the same. They taste the same, they boil at the same temperatures at the same distance above sea level, their conductance is the same, etc.

43. Twin Earth
Consider two twins, Arnold on Earth and Twin Arnold on Twin Earth. Neither knows any chemistry. What they know/ believe about the stuff they call ‘water’ is the same. Q: Would it be true for Arnold to call the stuff on Twin Earth ‘water’?

44. Twin Earth
The intuition is supposed to be that, no, Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all an only H2O, whereas Twin Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all and only XYZ

45. The Moral
The conclusion Kripke and Putnam draw from such cases is that we fix the referent of ‘water’ by a description like “the stuff around here in lakes and rivers and streams that falls from the sky and quenches thirst.” But this description only fixes the referent. If you replaced all the H2O on Earth with XYZ, there wouldn’t be any more water here.

46. The Moral
Kripke and Putnam’s idea is that we can latch on to a thing by its contingent (not essential) features, give it a name, and subsequently talk about it. It’s true nature is something we discover, not something we start with.

47. The Paradox of Inquiry

48. Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)
PREMISE 1: If you have a criterion for using a word, then you obviously don’t need to discover it (you already have it).

49. Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)
PREMISE 2: If you don’t have a criterion for using a word (and nobody else does), then you cannot discover it. JUSTIFICATION: Suppose nobody else knows that the ball going through the hoop counts as a basket. How could they discover this?

50. Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)
CONCLUSION: Philosophical inquiry is unnecessary. Either we already know, a criterion for what ‘knowledge’ applies to or we don’t. Either way, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

51. Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)
SOCRATES’ / PLATO’S SOLUTION: We always already know the criteria, but this is knowledge from a previous life that we might not now remember. Philosophy is remembering what we already know.

52. Kripke vs. the Paradox
You don’t need a criterion for talking about (for example) tigers. Tigers are an objective, mind- independent class that don’t need to be grouped together by us. We can identify them by their contingent features and discover their essences subsequently.