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

  • From: "J D" <ubersicht@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:00:02 -0000

SW,

"... it seems to me the issue is never whether bearers are real or not."

...except when it is.

(An exercise: when does "the issue is" serve as a useful clarification and when 
is it a pretentious way of saying, "I'm really not interested in discussing 
that"?  There's nothing wrong with saying the latter of course, but putting it 
the former way perhaps gives an impression of being "objective".  Without 
specifying the context in which a particular point is not really "the issue", 
it becomes a dogmatic dismissal.  "Telephone conversation format", though you 
loathe it, has the advantage of preserving some context.  But even then to say 
"never"...?)

Your choice of a fictional place, "Mordor", as an example of a "bearer-call" is 
highly relevant to my attempts to understand what you're saying.  Unless you 
want to say that it was just a very bad example.  If Mordor is not real, then a 
fortiori, the use of the name "Mordor" cannot be made be people present in 
Mordor (except in the fictional context).

Now, I've asked for clarification on the idea of "presence" and you have not 
obliged.  Allow me to offer some suggestions on further ways that your way of 
putting matters may be problematic.

You've emphasized a contrast between cases "where bearer and name are assumed 
to be together" ("bearer-calls") and contrasted these with those "where names 
and bearers become separated"  ("bearer-assignments" or 
"predicate-calculation").  If I understand the distinction you wish to make, 
then this is the wrong way to go about it.  Or the wrong way to put it.  What 
matters here would seem to be the connection between the user of the name and 
the bearer of that name on the occasion of its usage.  (And here, you need to 
distinguish various sorts of "connection", various sorts of "presence".  You 
also need to distinguish between the presence of the bearer when the name is 
bestowed or assigned, when the usage of the name is taught, and on other 
occasions of usage.)

If you talk about the name and the bearer being together or separated, here's 
one problem.  Suppose that someplace, the remains of Moses are buried and with 
them an inscription identifying them as "Moses".  The name and the bearer are 
not separated!  But to a user of the name "Moses" who is unaware of and unable 
to find these remains, that is little help.  Likewise, if Sally is attending a 
luncheon someplace and wearing a "Hello, My Name is..." sticker.  Again, the 
name and the bearer and not separated.  But if you aren't at that luncheon and 
you use the name "Sally", her wearing that name tag is quite irrelevant to your 
own usage.  And if you'll pardon a fictional reference, with all the applicable 
caveats, if Keyser Söze is sitting in an office in Istanbul with his name on 
the door, he and his name are together.  But that by itself will not help 
detectives in the US trying to identify and locate a man they know only through 
rumors.

A separate point about the remains of Moses.  Were archaeologists to find such 
a thing, then we would actually be adding another putative description to those 
descriptions we have under consideration in using "Moses", viz. "the individual 
whose remains were found..."  And linking this description with the other 
descriptions would be a significant problem.  Perhaps the inscription reads, 
"Here is Moses, the Giver of The Law" (or some similar description-cum-title) 
and the carbon-dating checked out.  Then we'd have some reason to suppose that 
the "Moses" of these remains is the "Moses" with which the Biblical stories 
were concerned.  Still, I want to emphasize that even in the presence of the 
bearer, we may still be concerned with matching descriptions with other 
descriptions.

Further points on existence and presence:

Many of the planets were first observed by the ancients, without the aid of 
telescopes.  Others were discovered only with that invention.  In either case 
(or so I suppose), their names could be bestowed by what you've called 
"bearer-calls".  (And you can see from this example how tricky the various 
accounts of "presence", "together", "separated", and so forth can be.  They are 
of course all quite distant from us!)  Now, one could point out Mars and say, 
"That's Mars."  But in teaching astronomy, one would also teach descriptions, 
permitting the student to reidentify Mars on later occasions.

Then there is Neptune.  Neptune's existence was predicted mathematically, based 
on deviations of Uranus from its expected motion.  Then it was observed, not 
far from its predicted location.  But consider Vulcan.  Not the fictional 
homeworld of Mr. Spock, but the planet that was similarly predicted to explain 
deviations of Mercury's orbit from the predictions of Newtonian mechanics.  Of 
course, there is no such planet.  But astronomers searched.  (General 
Relativity later explained Mercury's movement without such recourse.)

With Mars, we've gone from being able to pick it out in the night sky (a 
"bearer-call"?) to having various descriptions at our disposal based on all 
sorts of further observations.  With Neptune, we've gone from an identifying 
description based on calculations (a "bearer-assignment"? "predicate 
calculation"?) to being able to aim a telescope and say, "that's Neptune" (a 
"bearer-call"?).  But with Vulcan, no such transition is possible.  We have 
only the description and nothing satisfies it.  Vulcan does not exist.

("Vulcan" in Star Trek is fictional, of course.  And it is in a different star 
system.  Saying "Vulcan does not exist" means something quite different when 
discussing science-fiction and when discussing the history of science.  They 
are distinctly different descriptions, though neither description is satisfied 
by an actual planet.)

In none of these cases should we say that the name and the bearer of that name 
are "together".

(Actually, I believe some of the missions to Mars did leave plaques, but I 
doubt you'll regard that as indicating an essential difference!)

Honestly, I don't see what clarity is gained by jargon like 
"predicate-calculation" (Isn't this just going by a description?  Why not say 
that?) and the pseudo-formal way of putting some of these matters.  And my 
desire to be charitable makes me wonder if I have missed the point.  If I have, 
I hope perhaps these examples and questions will assist you in making matters 
clearer to me.


"A name can separate from its bearer whenever the bearer does something to 
distinguish his or her identity in language."

You seem to be focused on the paradign of heroic deeds and such.  But nothing 
need be "done" by the bearer.  "The eldest daughter of...", "the person 
assigned SSN...", "the newborn in bed number..."

"The game of bearer-call and bearer-assignment is the fundamental issue in why 
there is confusion in philosophy over proper names. If you ask yourself a 
simple question before any name-game is played, you will clear up the 
confusion: what is your objective, to play bearer-call or bearer-assignment?"

These claims for your distinction strike me as wildly inflated.  And the idea 
that ordinary language users ("before any name-game is played") are confused 
and need to ask themselves any such question seems presumptuous.  Philosophers 
should ask how the name is being used and I am quite sure they'll find that it 
various quite often during the course of some games and among the game's 
participants.  And it is not the philosopher's job to tell them that they 
should be more orderly and adhere to her distinctions and jargon in the matter!


"For certain kinds of historical or fictional proper names, answering this 
question is very difficult. Because if you say you want to play bearer-call for 
Moses, we might never know of which the X's called 'Moses' is the right X, if 
stories are mythical."

If the stories are entirely mythical, then there is no "right X".  And apart 
from the case above where I described the possibility of finding the remains of 
Moses, what would count as "playing bearer-call" with the name "Moses".  (Of 
course, many contemporary people are also named "Moses", but surely that's not 
the point!)

"And note that you cannot say 'there is no Moses' because that is 
bearer-assignment logic. You are precluded from that."

Saying, "There is no Vulcan," indicates (among other things) the futility to 
trying to make a transition from a description ("bearer-assignment logic"?) to 
being able to point out Vulcan using a telescope ("bearer-call"?).  Why anyone 
should be precluded from making that point eludes me.

And likewise, why should anyone should be precluded from saying, "there is no 
Moses."  It is obvious enough that such a claim could only be that one is using 
some description or other and that one has reason to believe that no actual 
person satisfies such descriptions.  Now, people may consider different 
descriptions relevant and the boundary is not predetermined for how many of the 
descriptions must be satisfied for an individual to count as "Moses", but the 
fact that this is all "bearer-assignment logic" shouldn't preclude anyone from 
raising the point.  Why should anyone be straitjacketed by your jargon?

And note that, barring something like finding remains such as I described, we 
aren't going to play "bearer-call" with the name "Moses" anyway!  Whether or 
not such a man once existed, he does not exist today, except perhaps in a sense 
(or senses) that some believers would accept.

"But let's say certain stories are NOT mythical. If they are used to identify 
the X who accomplished them, it would be utterly pointless to then say: 'if X 
does not bear N, he cannot be N,' because at this point your game has, by 
definition, switched to bearer-assignment."

First, if the game has changed (at least as you are inclined to distinguish 
games) that wouldn't make the remark pointless.  Pointing out that a shift has 
taken place is one thing and it may be very important that we take note of such 
a shift.  But to call the remark "utterly pointless", to stigmatize it in that 
way, would be to insist that games should never bleed into one another.  You 
don't honestly suppose that Wittgenstein advocated any such regimentation of 
language games, do you?

Second, it's not at all clear to me what, "if X does not bear N, he cannot be 
N," is even supposed to mean.  What are the criteria for determining whether X 
bears N?  Apart from situations like the luncheon where everyone is wearing a 
"Hello, My Name is..." sticker, when do we ever make an argument anything like 
that?  We ask people their names, we ask someone else, we recognize them by 
their description, we take fingerprints, we test DNA, we ask for ID, and so 
forth.  And it's not clear to me that all of these are cases of 
"bearer-assignment".  And the sticker case likely isn't either.  It's not at 
all clear what you're saying here.

"Here's what I want to say: I don't think the game of bearer-call can be played 
with 'Moses'..."

I don't either, unless we're talking about his remains.

"...unless we mean something like this: 'the man born of such-and-such people 
who lived at such-and-such.'"

How is that a "bearer-call"?  That's another description.  A 
"predicate-calculation"?

"And so if we identify the X of N here, it would be immaterial what 'Moses' did 
in life. We would have our X of N."

I'm not sure I see the reason for treating descriptions of the deeds someone 
has performed differently from other descriptions but that seems to be what 
you're doing.  How does that distinction match up with the distinction between 
whether or not the bearer is present on the occasion of the use of the name?  
And how would this distinction apply to the names of places and artifacts?  
Maybe I am not getting your distinction at all.  It seems to be all over the 
place.

If "born of such-and-such people" refers to, e.g. the Israelites, then the 
description doesn't pick out Moses from among numerous others.  But if it 
refers to his biological parents, aren't they just as much a problem?  You've 
just moved the problem back a step.

JPDeMouy

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