Resumen de Identidad y necesidad

In 1972 Kripke published an article “Names and the identity” where he exposed a theory against Mill´s descriptivism, is the theory of the direct reference. In his article Kripke develop the term of the rigid designator which differences the logic behavior of names and descriptions. And will be, in one hand, the critic against the notion of “Sticker” which Mill use to identify the behavior of proper names and to the theory of descriptivism.

He explains that a statement is normally assigned with a truth-value in relation of the real world and the statement will be true or false in dependence of the external world. But as Kripke says the real world is one of the possible worlds. He admits that this possible worlds are not worlds in the way we see them through heavy telescopes, is something we stipulate because the description we associate with that world. A possible world consist in specify the way that the world could be. So now with the notion of the possible world he admits that there are different propositions, propositions of necessity when a proposition es true in every possible world and propositions of possibility when a proposition is real in relation with the real world but not with every possible world.

With this distinction Kripke evaluate singular terms as names and descriptions in relation with the possible worlds. So descriptions have a logical different behavior for Kripke; a description like “is the master of Alexander” design in the real world to Aristotle but this description could design another person because in other world Aristotle could not be the master of Alexander. As a result description are accidental designators. However for names Kripke says that them design the same individual in every possible world, so a name is for Kripke a rigid designator. This for Kripke points the different importance of names and descriptions. As we have said Kripke is against the theory of descriptivism so a description cannot be the meaning of a name, instead for Kripke a description, like a definite description, is use to fix the reference in a name. Using a definite description I can design a name in the actual world but this description is an accidental designator so can that this description will not be the meaning of Aristotle in another world.

When we fix the reference the name is use to designate in every possible world the man that in the actual world was the master of Alexander, independently of what he have done in the other possible worlds. So for Kripke to fix the reference of a proper name is not the same as giving the name its meaning.

The Philosophy of Language since de nineteenth century has been fighting around different views about the notion of proper names; Kripke apportation is about the semantic of the proper names, when he published his article his theory of the direct reference is the result of the critics to the Frege-Russelian theory, is the descriptivist conception, where the meaning of a name is a description. Kripke is going to introduce its notion of rigid and accidental designators for applying to a different use in how a description is not the meaning, instead the description fix the meaning, so Kripke here will contribute to a new branch in the dispute of the proper names.

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