Criticism Of Kripke’s Theory Of Names

Saul Kripke is a famous logician and philosopher in contemporary times.Based on the western cultural context and on the basis of criticizing the traditional descriptive theory of names,Kripke creatively put forward the causal historical theory of names,which has become a new classic theory in this field and triggered continuous debate.Kripke’s philosophy of names,based on the theory of possible world semantics and essentialism,inherits and develops Mill’s view that proper names have reference but no connotation,extends it to generic names,and makes a systematic criticism of the traditional descriptive theory of names.He strictly distinguished names（including proper name and generic name）and descriptions,and regarded them as rigid and non-rigid indicators respectively.He determined the reference of proper name through naming ceremony,and maintained the consistency of name reference according to the causal-historical chains in the process of language communication.There is no doubt that Kripke’s theory of names is very creative and has made an important contribution to the development of contemporary theory of names.But at the same time,we should also deeply realize that there are many problems in the Kripke’s theory of names.For example,he confused the indicative function and the cognitive function of names,ignored the diversity of naming methods and the absolutization of the causal-historical chains.In other words,Kripke’s theory of names is still too simplistic and idealistic,which limits its application value.In view of this,this paper,taking Kripke’s theory of names as the research object,not only analyzes its ideological origin,philosophical basis and core claims,but also reveals its theoretical defects in depth.Taking Chinese traditional theory of names and the structural characteristics of Chinese characters as the ideological resources and reasoning grounds,we tries to make further supplement,revision and improvement to Kripke’s theory of names.This is not only because the history of Chinese society and its usage of Chinese are significantly different from the history of Western society and its usage of western languages,but also because as early as in the pre-Qin period of China,many important theories of names have been put forward,such as “the convention of common names”,“the theory of matching name with reality”,“the theory of making name by image” and so on.These theories contribute to the enrichment and development of Kripke’s theory of names,which makes it more reasonable and more explanatory power.