The Theory Of Name And Identity In Possible Worlds

The possible world is theoretical basis of Naming and Necessity. Leibniz was the first philosopher to debate the notion of possible world. At present, there are three sorts of viewpoints on possible world, namely, extreme realism, moderate realism, and modal structuralism. Kripke is a moderate realist, who considers 'possible worlds' as 'possible state (or history) of the world', or 'counterfactual situation'. The problems of cross-world identity or cross-world identification have something to do with the possible worlds. According to Kripke, name is rigid designator, which is a label to discriminate the cross-world individual. The theory of possible worlds has important theoretical and applied value, which is the premise of Kripke's theory on name and identity, and gives a new analytical method for the study of logic, philosophy, natural sciences and the other social sciences.Essentialism is the principle of the studying and research in Kripke's book called Naming and necessity. Kripke's essentialism derived from Aristotle's theory of Form and Substanz and views of nominal essence of Locke. Aristotle debated the essence of matter by using the viewpoint of ontology and epistemology. However Kripke debated the essence from the viewpoint of epistemology. We think that based on the possible worlds, Kripke's essentialism is reasonable. Furthermore, his essentialism on individual and natural kind has important effect on the study of the essence of man-made matter and social matter kind. However, the essentialism is imperfect, which pursuits accuracy, and thus leads to simplification.Necessity is the core of the theory from Naming and necessity. Kripke gives a semantical analysis to necessity, and establishes semantics of possible world. There is connection between naming and necessity, identity and necessity too.Kripke gives three types of arguments, in order to criticize the theory of descriptions of the proper names. They are modal arguments, epistemological arguments, and semantical arguments. It is wrong to doubt the three types of the arguments. In fact, it is reasonable that the reference of name is determined by it's casual chain. The rigid designator is a kind of natural intuition, and is a kind of meaning postulating in the course of inference. As a result, the theory of causal (or historical) reference of proper name is viewed as a referencing theory from a different and new angle. We can solve problems on the shifting or altering of reference among the causal chains through our conditional deference to the real world, which is Kripke's idea too. I have made some changes to the theory of causal (or historical) reference of proper name, and it will be relatively satisfactory. Nevertheless, there are a few flaws in the theory, for the descriptions of the theory are not exact, andthe frames of the theory are rough too.The theory of the Priori, Contingent and Posteriori, Necessary Propositions thoroughly broke the tradition of empiricism. Based on the possible world, the viewpoints of the Priori, Contingent and Posteriori, Necessary Propositions are reasonable, and Kripke's arguments are ample too. The statement 'Stick S is one meter long at t₀' is considered as the Priori, Contingent proposition .which can not be suspected. The viewpoint that 'water is H₂O' should be viewed as claims of constitution but not identity is not correct. The theory of the Posteriori, Necessary Propositions may give us some inspiration to solve Hume problem, and there are links between the Posteriori, Necessary, Propositions and Kant's Synthetic a Priori Propositions. The theory of the Priori, Contingent and Posteriori, Necessary Propositions is an inheritance to Quine's, who criticized the tradition of empiricism, that is to say, there is a limitation between analytic propositions and synthetical propositions. However, Kripke doesn't fight against there being analytic propositions.