[Wittrs] [C] Re: Proper Names --Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke

  • From: "J D" <ubersicht@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:27:10 -0000

SW,

I appreciate your clarifications regarding your distinction between 
"bearer-calls" and "bearer-assignments", although I have some misgivings 
because the expressions don't suggest to me the distinctions you seem to want 
to make.  But perhaps this is merely a stylistic disagreement.  Also, I have 
some vague sense of the connection you're making between "bearer-calls" and 
archaeological and historical investigations, but it's still not that clear.  
Having (in your follow-up) rejected the language of "search", are the 
comparisons with archaeology and history also rejected?  That would make sense 
as far as I can tell but I'm not sure.

The idea of a language game in which the bearer is always present when the name 
is used did contradict talk of "searching" but stripped of that, the idea seems 
innocuous enough.  I just wonder how useful this concept is.  What examples you 
could give?  The one example you offer is of a fictional place.  But how could 
a fictional something be present (or people be present in a fictional place) 
when the name is used, except that it is present to those characters within the 
fiction?  If that's what you mean, you'd better make it clear.  (And even 
within the fiction, people outside of Morder still spoke of Morder when they 
were not there, did they not?)

I want to clarify the point I was making before about names being identical 
with their bearers.  This is simply nonsense.  And it's not even nonsense that 
any philosopher has seriously uttered.  "Primitive" cultures have been accused 
of believing such nonsense and its been called a form of "magical thinking" 
(but see Wittgenstein on Frazer) but every philosopher who has undertaken a 
serious study of language has recognized a difference between words and their 
referents.

The name "Sally" has two syllables, five letters (actually, four letter types 
and five letter tokens), and so forth.  To ascribe these characteristics to 
Sally the person would be nonsense.  And a denial of nonsense is also nonsense.

There are words that do apply to themselves.  The word "noun" is itself a noun. 
 The word "short" is a short word.  The word "sensuous" is a sensuous word.  
The word "unhyphenated" is unhyphenated.  And of course, there's the word 
"autological", which may be autological.  But I am at a loss to think of a word 
that is a proper name for itself and I am quite sure you aren't thinking of 
words like this.

The most plausible interpretation I can give is that you are attempting to 
address the confusion of equating the meaning of a word (specifically a name) 
with its bearer.  And I do agree that that equation is confused.  And such a 
confusion can be reasonably ascribed to many philosophers (including Kripke, 
though I don't want to get into that.  There's enough to disentangle already.)

I actually get the feeling that I would go farther than you in calling this 
idea confused.  But in any event, I would emphasize the importance of 
distinguishing between the nonsense of saying that a name is its bearer and the 
confusion of saying that the meaning of a name is its bearer.

Now, you seem to want to put great emphasis on the role of "presence".  But 
what sort of presence?  Must the bearer of the name be in my field of vision?  
Within reach?  In my grasp?  Within earshot?  Continuously so?

Taken to extremes, the requirement of presence leads to such confusions as 
Wittgenstein sets out to dispel with his remarks on the confused idea of 
"private ostensive definition", the so-called "private language argument".

When I try to think of words that require presence, I don't think of proper 
names but of indexicals such as "I", "you", "this", "that", and so forth.  And 
as Wittgenstein reminds us, these aren't names at all.  (They also don't always 
require the presence of whatever they are meant to pick out.)

I want to suggest that you more carefully disguish between the circumstances 
surrounding the bestowal or assignment of a name, the instruction in the use of 
a name, the precisification of a name's usage in a particular context for a 
particular purpose, the correct application of a name in various situations, 
the various uses to which names are put...  I leave this as an exercise for you 
but I strongly suspect that by considering such matters you will be less 
inclined to propose any simple divisions.

I also want to warn against any temptation to insist on differences of meaning 
whenever different criteria are being applied.  Certainly, it makes perfect 
sense in some cases to say, "Ah, you mean something different here.  When I say 
'Moses', I mean..."  But if we generalize too far from such cases, then 
wherever two people learned to use a word under slightly different 
circumstances or gave somewhat different (but still compatible under the 
circumstances) accounts of their usage, they would be unable to agree or 
disagree at all, because they would never mean the same.

Finally, I want to emphasize again that teaching the use of a name by pointing 
to its bearer is not simple.  There is a lot of grammar, a lot of stage setting 
involved in learnning to use various sorts of names.  If I introduce someone 
and say, "This is N," that seems as simple as can be.  But is N a proper name?  
Her profession?  Her sex?  Species?  Race or ethnicity?  Hair color?  What?  
Such misunderstanding rarely arise because of our shared background.  But we 
should not then ignore the shared background and assume that the naming was 
just a matter of pointing, that the use of a name is simply the bearer of the 
name, even in this circumstance.

JPDeMouy

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