Position
Causal-Historical Reference
A term refers to what it does because of a causal chain running back to an initial naming, not because speakers associate a description that the referent satisfies.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Philosophy of Language
Overview
Kripke's argument is that speakers succeed in referring even when what they believe about the referent is wrong or nearly empty: someone who knows only that Gödel proved something about arithmetic still refers to Gödel, and would still do so if the theorem had been stolen.
Reference is therefore secured by history rather than by the content in a speaker's head. What makes an expression have the meaning it has is a chain of use passed from speaker to speaker, each borrowing reference from the last.
Position on
References
- Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (1980), Lecture II
- Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (1980), Lecture II, which replaces description-based accounts with an initial baptism and a causal chain of reference-preserving transmission