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Rigid Designation and Semantic Structure

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Rigid Designation and Semantic Structure Philosophers’ , . I mprint õ 4HEõ)SSUE ‘Rigid designation’ is Kripke’s name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics: (a token of) a designator is rigid if and only if it designates the same individ- ual in every possible world in which the individual exists. Two semi- nal conclusions for which Kripke (, ) argues are that proper Rigid Designation names are rigid designators, and that there are some deep semantic anities between proper names and various sorts of general terms. However, even though he does, at places, explicitly attribute rigidity to certain general terms, Kripke nowhere gives a definition of rigid- and ity that applies to general terms. This presents a challenge: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be for general terms? There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back Semantic Structure . This token-relative qualification is required because some uses of pronouns are rigid designators, but dierent tokens of them rigidly designate dierent things. (Given that dierent people can have the same name, a similar point holds of proper names.) I will omit this qualification, for brevity, in contexts in which it is not necessary in order to avoid confusion. I say that rigid designation has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics because, in a sense, the notion of rigidity is as old as the notion of a de re modal attribution. The very intelligibility of de re modal claims (such as that Kripke might have been a marine biologist, or that he might have delivered the first Naming and Necessity lecture one day earlier than he actually did) depends on the rigidity of such terms as ‘Kripke’ and ‘he’. (That is, such claims attribute something to a particular individual only if the Arthur Sullivan subject terms track their actual referent throughout counterfactual situations.) And we’d surely need some good arguments to be convinced that such claims are unintelligible, because among other things, () people think and talk in this way all the time, and () it seems reasonably clear what they are think- Department of Philosophy ing and talking about (i. e., how actual objects would have fared in dierent Memorial University circumstances, or would endure alterations to their accidental properties). See, for instance, Kripke (: , , ). He gives a representative list of terms that “have a greater kinship with proper names than is generally real- ized”, which includes “various species names, whether they are count nouns, such as ‘cat’, ‘tiger’, ‘chunk of gold’, or mass nouns, such as ‘gold’, ‘water’, ‘iron pyrites’ … certain terms for natural phenomena, such as ‘heat’, ‘light’, ‘sound’, ‘lightening’, and … corresponding adjectives — ‘hot’, ‘loud’, ‘red’” (: ). It © Arthur Sullivan is not evident how exhaustive of the set of rigid general terms Kripke takes <www.philosophersimprint.org//> this list to be. Rigid Designation and Semantic Structure over years, addressed to this challenge. As the notion of rigidity is across counterfactual situations, if we are to study the modal proper- at the core of the causal-historical theory of reference, and of closely ties of the content of our thought and talk. (As Kripke (: ) puts associated, fundamental criticisms of traditional ideas about language, the point: “One doesn’t say that ‘+=’ is contingent because people these questions have been thought to have relevance to various de- might have spoken a language in which ‘+=’ meant that seven is bates in contemporary philosophy. even.”) Whatever ‘bachelor’ means, it means it in every context of eval- Two immediately evident options for extending the notion of rigid- uation — such conventional word-meaning links are not the sort of ity to general terms are, in rough outline: (a) classify a general term as thing that we imagine to vary across possible worlds, in the course of rigid if it designates the same extension in every possible world, and modal inquiry. (Otherwise all is contingent, in a banal and uninterest- (b) classify a general term as rigid if it designates the same kind (or ing sense, for in no case is it necessary that this sequence of sounds or some such abstract entity — see note ) in every possible world. The symbols express this meaning.) As we will see in §., this triviality ob- problem with (a) is that it classifies almost all general terms (includ- jection is pressed even further: it is alleged that the (b)-type approach ing especially all natural kind terms) as nonrigid. That is, there might is committed to classifying as rigid not only the likes of ‘bachelor’ but have been more (or less, or dierent) tigers than there actually are, even the very paradigm cases of a nonrigid designator, such as ‘the and so ‘tiger’ does not designate the same extension across counter- color of the sky’ — for, the allegation goes, even such descriptions still factual situations. Surely, the same is true of ‘gold’, ‘water’, and ‘pain’, of exhibit the relevant sort of continuity from world to world. virtually any term that designates contingently existing concrete stu So, although views along the lines of (b) have been defended, and things. There is also a quick objection to (b), which many find many take this triviality objection to be at least a serious obstacle that compelling — i. e., that on this approach, rigidity seems to become triv- no one has yet shown the way round, and perhaps even a conclusive ial, as almost all general terms (including the likes of ‘bachelor’, ‘hunt- refutation. Within this sub-literature, a prevalent desideratum is a er’, and ‘pencil’) come out rigid. The reason is that the conventional general definition of rigidity that counts natural kind terms in and vari- link between an expression and its meaning must be held constant ous other sorts of terms out. More generally, the aim is a partitioning . For some important early contributions, see Schwartz (), Salmon (: . Those who have expressed an anity for this sort of view include Donnellan Ch. –), and Donnellan (). (Notes and give a more comprehensive (, ), Kaplan (, ), Mondadori (), Salmon (, ), list of references.) LaPorte (), Schwartz (), and Devitt () make Linsky (, ), Boer (), LaPorte (), and Marti (). In addi- up one strain of the recent debate on this issue. Another strain stems from tion to ‘kind’, the terms ‘property’, ‘attribute’, ‘intension’, and ‘universal’ also Soames’s (: Ch. –) provocative discussion of the issue. Salmon (), occur in this literature. With respect to the question of rigidity, these terms Marti (), Linsky (), and Gomez-Torrente () all include critical are put to (more or less) the same work. discussions of Soames () that deal with this matter in some depth. This camp includes Schwartz (, ), Cook (), MacBeth (), . First and foremost, the notion of rigidity has been thought to have various im- Devitt and Sterenly (), Soames (), and Devitt (). portant implications in the philosophy of language and mind. Further, since rigid designation is associated with Kripke-Putnam views about certain sorts . Putnam is an influential early source of this idea. Consider, for instance, “[W] of kinds and kind terms, the notion has made a splash in several debates e may express Kripke’s theory and mine by saying that the term ‘water’ is rigid” within metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and epistemology. Even more (: ). Schwartz (: ), Soames (: , ), and Gomez- generally, though, the impact of the concept of rigidity quickly spilled over Torrente (: ) provide clear recent examples. It is interesting, in this beyond the bounds of metaphysics and epistemology. To cite two instances: light, that Schwartz () and Soames ()) are ultimately drawn toward Brink (: Ch. ) argues that moral terns such as ‘good’ and ‘just’ are rigid the conclusion that the very idea of a rigid general term is hopelessly ob- designators, and draws out some consequences; and Carney () provides scure, and not terribly useful anyway. One of my aims here is to demonstrate similar arguments concerning aesthetic terms such as ‘art’ and ‘beauty’. that, to a large extent, their problems result from conflations. (At a bit more ’ – – . , . ( ) Rigid Designation and Semantic Structure of the set of general terms into rigid vs. nonrigid, somewhere between The second argument I will present is negative evidence: in § I the too conservative (a) and the too liberal (b), that marks o a prin- argue that many of the things that get brought up in pressing the trivi- cipled proper subset as the rigid designators; invariably, the target set ality objection involve mistakes, such as confusing rigidity with other are terms that are in some ways tied up with other aspects of the argu- notions with which it is historically connected but conceptually quite ments against descriptivism and for the causal-historical theory of ref- distinct. There is a very clear sense in which most ordinary general erence (such as externalism about reference, the division of linguistic terms (including the likes of ‘bachelor’, ‘hunter’, and ‘pencil’) are rigid labor, or Kripke-Putnam realism about natural kinds). designators — i. e., from a modal point of view, their semantics is rele- Against this line of thought, I will defend a version of option (b), vantly similar to ‘Benjamin Franklin’ and relevantly dierent from ‘the according to which unstructured general terms like ‘bachelor’ ought inventor of bifocals’. I will argue that it is a mistake to think that this to be classified as rigid, while structured expressions like ‘the color should render the notion of rigidity suspect or worthless. of the sky’ can come out nonrigid. I will present two arguments for it. The first is positive evidence: in § I argue that the original substance õ &URTHERõ0RELIMINARIES and intent of the concept of rigidity best fits with this particular way I will begin with some general orienting remarks about general terms.
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