PHILOSOPHY 74                                                                                                                                                         W. Lycan
Fall, 2003
 


SOME FLAWS IN SEARLE’S THEORY OF PROPER NAMES

Searle’s theory

(1) The descriptive force of “This is N” is to assert that a sufficient but vague and unspecified number (SBVAUN) of “standard identifying statements” (SIS’s) associated with (the name) “N” are true of the object demonstrated by “This.”  Therefore,

(2) The referring use of “N” presupposes the existence of an object of which a SBVAUN of these SIS’s are true.  Therefore [sic],

(3) To be (the person) N is to have a SBVAUN of the properties alluded to by the SIS’s.

    How precise are we able to make the notion of “SBVAUN”?  Not terribly.  It’s essential, Searle says, that “SBVAUN” be left somewhat vague (see pp. 276-277; read this carefully), because (a) that is what distinguishes names from descriptions, and (b) more importantly, that is what allows names to act as “pegs on which to hang descriptions,” enables us to get a linguistic handle on the world in the first place, and avoids the problems Searle has raised for Russell’s theory.  We may, however, want to make some refinements.  E.g., if one is a Searlean it seems natural to require that a “sufficient number” be at least over half--otherwise two obviously distinct individuals could both be Aristotle (see claim (3)).  Also, we would surely want to say that some of a person’s identifying properties are more important than others in determining his identity; some way of weighting SIS’s is involved.
    Searle believes he has found a way of adjudicating between the Frege-Russell view and the Millian view. (p. 277).  In his concluding paragraph, he also claims to have addressed Frege’s puzzle about identity, though he is astonishingly brief there.

Difficulties for Searle’s view

    1. Let us begin with (3).  As we saw, (3) is an extraordinarily strong claim, and shows rather clearly that something has gone wrong somewhere.  To see this, imagine going back in a time machine to interview Aristotle.  (In this version, your visit will be to the adult rather than the 8-year-old Aristotle.)  What do we now know about Aristotle?  Mostly only philosophical stuff, at least if you are like me.  He was the student of Plato, who wrote the Nicomachean Ethics and the other things.  Our SIS’s that back “Aristotle” are pretty much all of this sort.  From this and (3) it follows that if Aristotle had never gone into philosophy, he would not have been Aristotle, which is tantamount to saying that he wouldn’t have existed at all.  During your ride in the time machine you figure this out.  At the beginning of your interview, Aristotle muses that it was just pure chance that he became a philosopher; he had originally intended to go into sandal-making, but just as he was beginning his apprenticeship, Athens ran into a severe ocelot-skin shortage--so he went into philosophy as a second choice.  You, accepting (3), point out to him that no choice was involved here at all, that he was deluding himself even by considering sandal-making as a career, since had he never become a philosopher he would not exist: on Searle’s view, Aristotle could not have existed without going into philosophy!  His apparent free will in the matter was an illusion.
    But notice that this conclusion, besides being implausible in itself, depends entirely on our present-day knowledge about Aristotle.  If what we knew of Aristotle today were historic facts about his sex life or about his poetry, and not any of his philosophical traits, his free will as to going into philosophy would be restored.  This, surely, is ridiculous.  The survival of certain sorts of knowledge about Aristotle, rather than certain other sorts, after over 2000 years, certainly does not have any actual effect upon the options that were available to him at the time, in a zany sort of backwards causation.  Yet that is precisely what (3) entails.
    To sharpen this objection still further, take as our example someone of whom we know next to nothing--just one or two “famous” facts.  Most of us, I think, are this way about Homer: we know that he was the author of the Iliad and the author of the Odyssey, and that’s all.  On Searle’s view (assuming the “over half” interpretation suggested above) it follows that Homer had no choice about writing the Iliad and the Odyssey; not to have done so would have meant ineluctable extinction.
    The problem with (3), then, is that it is too much like the Frege-Russell view for comfort--e.g., on that view Wilfrid Sellars couldn’t have failed to be a famous philosopher at Pittsburgh.
    This problem may or may not really disturb Searle.  Notice that (3) does not strictly follow from (1) and/or (2):  (1) and (2) talk only of names, while (3) is about people.  It may be that we couldn’t now be using “Aristotle” to refer to Aristotle unless he had gone into philosophy; but Aristotle needn’t have been named “Aristotle” at all, and it wouldn’t follow that he wouldn’t have existed.  On the other hand, Searle does accept (3) and explicitly defends it.

    2. What about (1), then?  As it stands it is clouded by use/mention confusion, but there is a more perspicuous and natural paraphrase:

(1’) Where n is a proper name, the result of concatenating “This is” with n means that (is standardly used to assert that) the denotatum of “This” has a SBVAUN of the properties P1, P2,...Pm, mentioned by the respective SIS’s associated with n.
    Even (1’) is highly dubious.  First of all, it seems unlikely that “This is Aristotle” means anything about “SBVAUN”’s of “properties,” or about “standard identifying descriptions,” etc. Second, even if we waive this objection as being unduly picky, there still will be counterexamples to (1’) of the same type as those which refute (3).  Take “Homer” as a value of n.  You could go back in your time machine, point out a certain person, and say, truly, “This is Homer,” without thereby asserting that the person demonstrated wrote the Iliad and/or the Odyssey.
    But how can that be??--I hear Searle cry.  If Homer hadn’t done those things, we wouldn’t have heard of him at all, and so wouldn’t be able to refer to him at all.  But this is not quite right.  Suppose (to parody an example of Kripke’s that we shall read next week) that Homer never wrote anything, but that his friends spread the false rumor at the time that he was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The rumor became at the time a widely accepted false belief, and was transmitted to us as fact, down the years, while everyone’s original true beliefs about Homer were forgotten.  Because of the causal chain of words and beliefs connecting Homer’s friends to us over thousands of years, we can still use the name “Homer” to refer to Homer--even though by hypothesis Homer never actually did any writing.
    Kripke gives a fuller account of these causal chains and their relevance.  David Kaplan once mentioned (in a lecture) that at least one actual counterexample of this type to Searle’s view is provided by Robin Hood: Some historians had recently discovered that there really was a person who (causally) gave rise to the Robin Hood legend.  It turns out, though, that he wasn’t poor, he lived nowhere near Sherwood Forest, he wasn’t an outlaw (in fact, he and the Sheriff of Nottingham were fairly close), and his name wasn’t even “Robin Hood”!  Kripke will be offering the similar case of Jonah.

    3.  (1’) actually amounts to (3), save for the reference to properties and linguistic items; so it’s not surprising that it should fall to the same sort of counterexample.  But what about (2), which is neither about persons nor about meaning?
    (2) clearly suggests that the “object” in question is the referent of the name “N”.  But never mind that.  Suppose that no one wrote either the Iliad or the Odyssey--that they appeared miraculously by random scattering of ink molecules.  From this hypothesis and (2) it follows either that “Homer” cannot be used referringly, or (at least) that what one says by uttering, say, “Homer was a man” is neither true nor false.  (Searle cites Strawson on “presupposition,” but his use of Strawson’s term is not at all clear.)  Yet those consequences may not ensue, even if the Iliad and the Odyssey are authorless--so (2) seems to be false.

     4. If all this is right, it seems we can use a name to refer to someone whom we know absolutely nothing about, paradoxical as that may sound.  And this supports the Millian theory of proper names.

    5. Searle more than hints in his last paragraph that his claims (if true) solve Frege’s identity puzzle.  I wonder how that is supposed to work.  I think (3) might solve Frege’s puzzle if true.  But I will let you work this out for yourselves--it’ll be one of the paper topics.

    6. The upshot of these criticisms is that Searle’s theory is too much like Russell’s to be an effective compromise.  Enough “descriptive content” is attributed to proper names to give rise to weaker forms of the problems that refute Russell’s Name Claim.  Kripke will make some further objections to "description" theories generally.

    But this leaves us still mired in our original, mildly paradoxical situation:  If names don’t even have descriptive content in the weak way that Searle says they do, we seem forced to conclude that the Millian view is correct.  And yet the Millian view seems entirely wrong, for the two reasons Searle gives ((a) the Millian view seems to leave the four puzzles unsolvable; (b) see Searle’s argument on p. 274).