Kripke Lecture 1 [EVAN COTTINGHAM]

1. "even if [a name's] reference is in some sense determined by a description, statements containing the name cannot in general be analyzed by replacing the name by a description, though they may be materially equivalent to statements containing a description" (Kripke 2011, 33).
"Surely you must give some criterion of identity here! If you have a criterion of identity, then you just look in the other possible worlds at the man who is Nixon; and the question whether, in that other possible world, Nixon has certain properties, is well defined. It is also supposed to be well defined, in terms of such notions, whether it's true in all possible worlds, or there are some possible worlds in which Nixon didn't win the election" (Kripke 2011, 42).

2. In the first quote, Kripke is stating that although a name refers to a description, generally when analyzing a statement, a name and its description cannot be equivalent or analyzed the same way. Kripke gives the example of Moses being 'the man who did such and such.' If Moses is equivalent, in analysis, to 'the man who did such and such,' then if Moses were to not exist, then there is no 'man who did such and such.' In the second quote, Kripke is saying that for a name to be defined by the description it is referring to, then you must consider all other situations that could have happened in another world. Would the same description we associate with a name be the same if a different situation involving the thing with that name be different? Kripke goes on to say that for this to work, there must be a set of criteria that contains attributes that identify Nixon across all possible worlds.

3. I agree with Kripke that when analyzing a statement, a name cannot be replaced with the description it refers to. It could be the case that the same set of properties we attribute to a name also be true of another name, in which case, statements containing the same description could be referring to two different things. I disagree with the need to consider all possible realities when defining a name. If the purpose of language is to help make sense of and communicate about our own world, then I think it is unnecessary to consider all other worlds and situations to establish the identity associated with a name.