نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی

نویسندگان

• مهدی حافظی ¹
• فرشته نباتی ²

¹ کارشناسی ارشد فلسفه، دانشگاه علامه طباطبایی، تهران، ایران

² دانشیار گروه فلسفه دانشگاه علامه طباطبایی، تهران، ایران

چکیده

در این مقاله به شرح و بررسی آرای ساول کریپکی دربارۀ مسئله نام‌های تهی پرداخته‌شده و از‌این‌جهت بیشتر تمرکز ما بر کتابِ ارجاع و وجود ایشان بوده است. در بخش اولِ مفصل‌ترِ مقاله، به تشریحِ همراه با جزئیاتِ دیدگاه کریپکی پرداختیم. او ابتدا مسائل نام‌های تهی مطرح کرده است و سپس به بیان و نقد پاسخ‌های موجود در زمانۀ خودش می‌پردازد. در گام بعدی با تمایز میان دو ساحتِ زبان تلاش می‌کند برای هر ساحتْ راه‌حلی در جهت معقولیت کاربرد نام‌های تهی ارائه کند. در ساحت توسعه‌یافتۀ زبان، برای کاربردهای به‌اصطلاح درون-داستانی از عملگرِ جمله‌ای «در داستان» استفاده می‌کند و برای کاربردهای به‌اصطلاح برون-داستانی، نخستْ نوعی وجودشناسی برای هویت‌های خیالی معرفی می‌کند و سپس قائل به ارجاع این نام‌ها به آن هویت‌های انتزاعیِ موجود می‌شود. در ساحت توسعه‌نیافته، در مرحله معرفی این نام‌ها به زبانِ طبیعی، از نظریه‌ای تحت عنوان نظریه وانمودی زبان سخن می‌گوید و در آخرین گام و در مواجه با مسئله ارزشِ گزاره‌های واجد نام‌های تهی با پیشنهاد توسعه کاربردِ لفظ «کذب» مواجه می‌شویم. در بخش دوم مقاله به بررسی نظرات کریپکی و برخی بازخوردهایی پرداختیم که در مباحث فلسفی داشته است.

کلیدواژه‌ها

• کریپکی
• ارجاع و وجود
• نام‌های تهی
• نام‌های خیالی
• گزارۀ سالبه وجودی

موضوعات

• فلسفه

عنوان مقاله [English]

The Examination of Kripke's View on the Problem of Empty Names

نویسندگان [English]

• Mahdi Hafezi ¹
• Fereshteh Nabati ²

¹ Master's Student in Philosophy, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

² Associate Professor of Philosophy, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

چکیده [English]

Introduction

Kripke’s Naming and Necessity needs no introduction. In these lectures, he advanced significant critiques of the descriptive theory of names and semantic externalism. However, he deferred addressing the problem of empty names to a later work. This promise was fulfilled in his subsequent lectures, Reference and Existence, where he examined the semantics of empty names and explored the relation between naming and ontology. In this paper, we analyze Kripke’s views on empty names, drawing primarily on these lectures and his article “Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities.” We are confronted with these facts:

Natural language contains names that lack referents.
This referential absence does not impede communication among speakers.
Sentences containing such names are intuitively judged as having truth-value

If we uphold the principle of compositionality and assume that a name’s sole semantic content is its referent, empty names present a profound theoretical challenge.
Kripke, after critically evaluating the two dominant approaches to name semantics—direct and indirect reference theories—establishes the foundation for his own original and comprehensive account.

Literature Review

Although the official printed version of Reference and Existence was published in 2013, an unofficial version had long been available, read, and critiqued. In this section, we will discuss works we have reviewed on this subject. Numerous post-Kripkean philosophers—despite their disagreements on details—have advanced theories about language development and fictional entities. Notable contributions include those by Van Inwagen (1977), Thomasson (2003), Braun (2005), and Salmon (2012).
However, beyond language development, Kripke's proposal regarding true-negative existentials has not been well-received by prominent scholars like Evans, Braun, Burgess, and Salmon. Evans views Kripke's suggestion as resembling a metalinguistic or descriptive analysis (Evans, 1982, pp. 349-350). Salmon similarly considers it to be either descriptivist or caught in an infinite regress of empty sentences (Salmon, 2012, pp. 63-65). Burgess thinks Kripke faces an inevitable dilemma: either accept the gappy proposition theory or adopt a metalinguistic analysis (Burgess, 2013, p. 100). Braun argues that such proposals ultimately resort to a meta-propositional view that falls prey to the same problems as descriptive theories (Braun, 1993, pp. 455-456).

Methodology

This study undertakes a detailed examination and critical analysis of Saul Kripke’s works and those of his critics on the subject of empty names semantics. Through a combination of descriptive exposition and analytical engagement with these texts, the authors have adopted a descriptive-analytical methodology.

Discussion

For Kripke, who considers the referent of a name to be its sole semantic content, the presence of empty names in language presents a significant problem. He engages in a detailed critique of prevailing trends in his era in the semantics of names—especially Millian, Russellian, and descriptivist theories—focusing on how they address the issue of empty names. Contrary to the dominant approach, which treats fictional names as pretended names, Kripke proposes a more ingenious and nuanced strategy.
Understanding Kripke’s approach requires attention to the stratification of language—a move that implies a certain acceptance of ambiguity. He distinguishes between two levels of language: developed and undeveloped. The undeveloped level is where empty names are used in independence of their associations with fictional works (such as stories, myths, or erroneous scientific theories). At this level, speakers intend to refer to a real entity—for instance, they use “Hamlet” as if referring to an actual person. According to Kripke, at the undeveloped level, empty names lack referents, and sentences containing them fail to express any proposition at all.
The proposal that language has a form of pretense, applies only at that stage when empty names are introduced into natural language. If for clarity, we narrow the scope of discussion to fiction alone, then, given the presence of an appropriate fictional work, we can say that the language has developed, and there are two distinct usages for fictional names in it: in-the-story and outside-the-story usage.
In in-the-story usage, the truth or falsity of sentences containing empty names is evaluated according to the internal logic of the story, and is interpreted under the sentence operator “in the story”. In outside-the-story usage, however, the referents of empty names are understood as abstract, fictional entities that have entered the actual world through specific creative acts by an author.
Before addressing the problem of empty names at the undeveloped level of language, Kripke argues that if a name is truly empty, then its referent not only does not exist but also cannot exist; in fact, the name's referent has no chance to exist! This is because in order to speak of the possible existence of an object, there must be a conceivable distinction between its ontological conditions of existence (its essential properties) and its epistemic conditions (its accidental properties). For fictional names, such a distinction is not possible. This explains why, when Kripke returned to the undeveloped level of language to examine the uses of empty names, he insists that sentences containing such names express no propositions.
Nonetheless, Kripke takes a two-step approach to resolving the problems of empty names at the undeveloped level of language. First, he asserts that sentences containing empty names express no propositions. Second, by describing the use of empty names as quasi-intensional, he analyzes such sentences as follows: There is no true proposition about m that p. Then, looking at natural language and how speakers actually use such sentences, he observes a strong tendency to call them false. Accordingly, by extending the concept of falsity, he proposes that besides its conventional meaning—namely, the existence of a proposition that is not true —falsity can also mean the absence of any proposition.

Conclusion

It appears that the issue is as complex as Kripke thinks it is. One of the major problems with the development of language—aside from the principle of parsimony—is the ambiguity between in-the-story and outside-the-story uses of names, as well as the ambiguity between developed and the undeveloped language. Moreover, as Salmon has noted (Salmon, 2012, p. 68), even within in-the-story usage, merely positing an “in the story” operator is insufficient, since it remains unclear what entities empty names are supposed to refer to.
The situation becomes even more difficult when we turn to the analysis of sentences involving empty names at the undeveloped level of language. Nevertheless, Kripke’s proposal, unlike the accounts given by Burgess (2013, p. 100) or Evans (1982, p. 349), does not constitute a metalinguistic analysis. Not only does Kripke devote several pages to criticizing such analyses, but the metalinguistic approach also does not require an expanded notion of falsity, since the resulting sentence still expresses a proposition. Similarly, as Salmon (2012, p. 65) and Evans (1982, p. 350) point out, Kripke’s account is not a variant of the descriptivist theory either, for under that theory, the analyzed sentence expresses a proposition and is false in the ordinary semantic sense of falsity.
Undoubtedly, Kripke’s appeal to “quasi-intensional use” (rather than fully intensional) is ambiguous. Yet it seems to represent a somewhat hesitant effort to emphasize the speaker’s role without committing to a descriptivist theory. Here, Kripke appears to be simultaneously attentive to language use and willing to accept a certain ambiguity in the meaning of the term “false.”
At the end of the fifth lecture in Reference and Existence, when Kripke became frustrated with the failure to identify a “third” kind of use for empty terms—following his discussion of Donnellan’s critique of Russell—he concluded that what he pursues is not a pragmatic account, but a semantic one. The proposal, shaped by Donnellan’s objections to Russell and Kripke’s own modifications, centers on the “divergence between speaker reference and semantic reference” as a way to account for Donnellanian counterexamples. In that framework, once ambiguity is resolved, divergence collapses into unity. But in our case, the case of empty names, such disambiguation is impossible—since there is, in fact, no semantic referent at all. For this reason, Kripke seems to acknowledge the speaker’s intended reference when using empty names. Observing the actual practices of language users, he concedes that the concept of “falsity,” beyond its standard semantic meaning—i.e., an incorrespondence between an existing proposition and reality—also carries a pragmatic meaning: the absence of any proposition whatsoever.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

• Kripke
• Reference and Existence
• Empty Names
• Fictional Names
• Negative Existential Proposition