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Rigid Designators

Let me introduce you to Alfred Eisenstaedt, the photojournalist who mixed up his cameras while photographing Marilyn Monroe. He’ll be interesting to us in a moment.

‘Common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to say, the thought in the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we replace the proper name by a description.’

\citep[p.~206]{Russell:1910fa}

Russell, 1910 [1963] p. 206

Two things to note : (a) shift from what words are to thoughts in the mind of someone using them; (b) tension between saying that we need to replace proper names by descriptions and saying that they usually really are descriptions.

‘Alfred Eisenstaedt lived in Jackson Heights’.

‘The photojournalist who mixed up his cameras while photographing Marilyn Monroe lived in Jackson Heights.’

A rigid designator is an expression that refers to the same individual in every context of evaluation

\citep[p.~48]{Kripke:1980rw}

(see Kripke 1980: 48).

Counterfactual possibility: Eisenstaedt couldn’t make it so Martha Holmes (who lived in Manhattan) photographed Monroe.

Names are rigid designators.

Descriptions are not rigid designators.

Therefore:

It is false that ‘proper names are usually really descriptions’.

“If ‘Moses’ means ‘the man who did such and such’, then, if no one did such and such, Moses didn’t exist; … But … we can ask, if we speak of a counterfactual case where no one did indeed do such and such, say, lead the Israelites out of Egypt, does it follow that, in such a situation, Moses wouldn’t have existed? It would seem not. For surely Moses might have just decided to spend his days more pleasantly in the Egyptian courts. He might never have gone into politics or religion at all; and in that case maybe no one would have done any of the things that the Bible relates of Moses” \citep[p.~58]{Kripke:1980rw}

But: rigidification

‘The actual photojournalist who mixed up his cameras while photographing Marilyn Monroe lived in Jackson Heights.’

Possible project:

Are proper names usually really descriptions?