[lit-ideas] Geary on the Name/Noun Distinction

In a message dated 4/30/2004 12:57:14 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
torgfje2@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Still, the Europeans who slaughtered each other in the name of
> religion during the Thirty-Years War and, again, in the name of
> nationalist ideologies during WWI and WWII have become a good deal
> less obsessive in these regards. Ditto for most Japanese. 
"in the name of"? 
--- Right. Odd that he would write that, when 'religion' is not even a 
_name_, but a _noun_. ("in the noun of" is the correct latinism, as employed by 
Geary, "Name-Calling and Name-Dropping: The Necessity -- a reply to Kripke."

Cheers,

JL

---
From amazon.com for Kripke, Naming and Necessity

In 1970, Saul Kripke gave a series of three lectures at Princeton University. 
These lectures, subsequently published under the title _Naming and 
Necessity_, were quickly recognized as one of those rare events that turns the 
world of 
philosophy on its ear. Amazingly, Kripke was a mere 29 years old at the time 
and he delivered the lectures without any notes. This book reflects both the 
advantages and shortcomings of the spoken form: it is clear, engaging, and 
often 
witty, but it is also repetitive at times and frustratingly incomplete at 
others. 
It is perhaps fitting that Kripke delivered these lectures the same year that 
Bertrand Russell passed away, since their main target is the descriptivist 
theory of names associated with Russell. According to Russell - and to the 
reigning philosophical orthodoxy until 1970 - names are best analyzed as 
abbreviated definite descriptions, i.e. as unique sets of properties possessed 
by their 
bearers. However, Kripke argues that on this analysis, all such properties 
belong to their possessors necessarily - which is obviously false. For 
instance, 
if the name "Billy Strayhorn" just means "The composer of 'Take the "A" 
Train,'" then there is no possible world in which Billy Strayhorn did not 
compose 
the song. But this is false: Even if Billy Strayhorn had never written any 
songs, he would obviously still be Billy Strayhorn. What a puzzle! 
In place of descriptivism, Kripke proposes the theory of direct reference, 
according to which a name "rigidly designates" its referent in every possible 
world in which it exists. That is, a name is just a "tag" attached to its 
referent, with no descriptive content whatsoever. Kripke also proposes an 
alternative theory for how names are transmitted, the causal theory of names. 
For 
Kripke, the name I use for Strayhorn is "his" name in virtue of the fact that 
it is 
related, by means of some appropriate causal chain, to Strayhorn himself. 
Much of this was anticipated by other philosophers, though this often goes 
unnoticed. But Kripke developed his theory in a highly interesting way and put 
it to all sorts of surprising uses. His discussion of necessity and possibility 
almost single-handedly resurrected essentialism and gave a major impetus to 
contemporary modal metaphysics. He claims that names for natural kinds, such as 
"gold" and "tiger," rigidly designate their referents and argues that this 
establishes the existence of necessary a posteriori truths. He closes the book 
by offering an essentialist argument against the mind-body identity thesis. 
In short, Kripke has given philosophers much to talk about. Indeed, _Naming 
and Necessity_ has spawned a whole cottage industry of commentary. In my view, 
Kripke's project is flawed in many (though not all) respects. For instance, 
his causal theory is too vague to be of much use, and his argument that natural 
kind terms directly refer seems question-begging. Nonetheless, Kripke's book 
is extremely provocative, interesting, important, and even fun. 


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