On Lecture II [Hui Yang]

I agree with Kripke that by mentioning a name, we are sometimes not referring to the person (entity) this name commonly refers to, as in the case Hitler is not the Hitler, who played an evil role in World War II. However, I think in real life situation, if someone does start to talking about some “Hitler" that is not in fact the person first comes across the most people/the people he/she talks to’s mind, then he/she will usually note something like “So, when Hitler, not that “Hitler”, called me yesterday”. I believe it is a common sense, although errors do occur, in this case, the error is not the name itself but the person who speaks, who does not correctly predict the thing his/her audience should know (he/she thinks he/she knows his/her audience well enough while he/she really does not).

I don’t agree on Kripke when it comes to the relationship between the “name” and its properties. I usually think a name, as itself, is associated with properties, instead of “having" properties, since I feel a “name," by itself, is a property of an entity/idea as well. I hope the illustration here can be any more helpful:

I agree with Kripke on that when understanding what a name refers, we need to consider not only the “real world” but also the possible worlds, however, I believe he is yet being too general on all kinds of possible worlds, as if besides 0 and 100%, everything else in-between are the same/can be treated as the same. For example, there are possible worlds where everything else is exactly like "the real one" besides the fact that one more fruit fly exists in Seattle on April 25th, 2016; while there are other possible worlds where we are all six eyes pigs who never eat or sleep and can live no longer than 2 years.