1.
I agreed with Kripke's story about chains of reference originating from the first use (baptism) of the name and linking all the way to any particular use of that name. As strange as it may sound at first, this theory of reference seems to accurately describe how we learn and use words, and it remains consistent with the non-necessity of descriptions that he explains. Particularly convincing is how we can successfully refer to someone without knowing their anything about them, like when I refer to the venerable Bede.
2.
Kripke presents the problem of George Smith, that is, when a teacher picks the first name off the top of his head, it doesn't seem to that he has passed the reference to his students, so Kripke's theory of reference seems shaky here. However, I don't see this as a problem because the teacher really isn't referring to his neighbor, and he doesn't expect the students to pick up the reference to his neighbor. In this case, you can pretend that the teacher never used the name in the first place and just said 'a man' because he wasn't trying to make a reference and just used the name 'George Smith' incidentally.
3.
Kripke says that identity statements are not contingently true; they are necessarily true. Is it a problem if identity statements are completely mistaken? For example, Tom Cruise is Ryan Gosling is a false identity statement, contingent on the referent of both names.
--Sean Wammer
I think what would be going on in your example is a necessarily false identity if we're going from what Kripke is saying. It is not the case that Tom Cruse is Ryan Gosling and this would not be true in any world. Since 'Tom Cruise' rigidly designates Tom Cruse and the same with 'Ryan Gosling', the referents Tom Cruise and Ryan Gosling in any world, whatever they may in fact be named in those worlds, would not be identical in any of those worlds. So, it is the case I think Kripke would asses that we simply have a necessarily false statement
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