The Analysis Of Kripke's Theory Of Names

Kripke is a famous contemporary American philosopher and logician.His most influential contributions are the creation of the possible world semantics and historical-causal theory of names.Kripke's theory of names is different from description theory of names,which is represented by Frege and Russell.On the basis of possible world theory and essentialism,he distinguished names from descriptions and put forward theory of rigid designators.He believed that a name was a rigid designator,and in all possible worlds it refered to the same object.He also believed that a description was an accidental designator which refered to different objects in different possible worlds.Kripke put forward historical-causal theory of names,he believed that the reference of a name was not defined by its sense,but determined by the chain of cause and effect,which was closely related to the name.When naming an object,the initial baptism mainly consists of two ways: the first is ostension,and the second is the description.In both cases,When a name is passed from link to link,the person who heares the name often uses the same reference as the person transmit the name.On the basis of his theory of names,he proposed and demonstrated the rationality of transcendental accidental propositions and posterior necessary propositions.Kripke's theory of names challenged the traditional description theory of name and provided a new perspective for studying the problem of name,which greatly promoted the development of contemporary philosophy of language.