Researches On Kripke’s Causal(Historical) Theory Of Naming

This paper selects Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1972) as the main subject ofresearch to give an objective and systematic picture of Kripke’s causal (historical)theory, which aims at solving limitations of Kripke’s theory by means of integration oftraditional description theory and Kripke’s causal (historical) theory on the basis ofdiscussing limitations of causal (historical) theory. In the thesis, an initial attempt isgiven to analyze the causal (historical) theory and its limitations by means of a conicalhelix graph.The study and research of proper names can be traced back for a long history andphilosophers’ opinions on proper names vary a great deal. The English philosopher JohnStuart Mill (1843)’s theory on proper names has deep effects on Kripke. He claims thatproper names only have denotations, but have no connotations, while general nameshave both. As contemporary philosophers, Gottlob Frege (1893/1952) and BertrandRussell (1911) studies theories of proper names systematically and the famousdescription theory is advocated by them. According to them, proper names haveconnotations which equal to descriptions. The cluster description theory advocated byLudwig Wittgenstein (1953) and John Searle (1958) confirms that a proper name is notanalogous to one description but a cluster of or a group of descriptions.In Kripke’s notable work Naming and Necessity, he presents his objections for thedescription theory and comes up with his causal (historical) theory based on the possibleworld semantics. The thesis would present an objective picture of Kripke’s causal(historical) theory in terms of his philosophical thoughts, key conceptions and somemain factors. Meanwhile, Kripke’s causal (historical) theory is not perfect, this thesismainly discusses limitations of Kripke’s causal (historical) theory from two aspects:first, the transference, substitution and change of reference during the passing in causalchain caused by the ignorance of specific context factors; moreover, as for Kripke’sessentialism for microstructure of natural terms and for origin of proper names, Kripkeoveremphasizes the function of essential attributes while underestimates the functionsof some non-essential attributes and changing factors. Meanwhile, his essentialism ignores that people’s cognition for essence is sensitive to the development of science.It is Kripke’s theory that initially reveals the relationship between language andsociety. His objections for the description theory deserve approving and considering.However, it is not convincible to embrace nothing from the description theory. Thethesis starts with the significance and limitations of Kripke’s causal (historical) theorytrying to overcome the limitations of Kripke’s theory by means of a tentative integrationof the traditional description theory and Kripke’s causal (historical) theory. At last, aninitial tentative graph of a conical helix is shown, which could suggest a new scheme torethink Kripke’s unique theory of proper names.