Rigidity and Content

Abstract

Abstract According to the description theory of names, the content of a proper name such as ‘Aristotle’ can be given by a definite description such as ‘the last great philosopher of antiquity’. However, as Saul Kripke conclusively demonstrated in his seminal work, Naming and Necessity, proper names such as ‘Aristotle’ are modally rigid. That is, in every metaphysically possible world in which the actual referent of the proper name exists, the reference of that proper name, when evaluated with respect to that world, is the same as its actual one, and in every metaphysically possible world in which the actual referent does not exist, the proper name does not designate anything else. However, the most plausible candidates for content-yielding descriptions are typically not modally rigid. Following Kripke, philosophers of language have generally concluded that, since there are metaphysical possibilities in which the most plausible content-yielding descriptions differ in extension from the proper names whose contents they allegedly provide, the description theory of names must be false.