Abstract
The difficulties with extending Kripke’s notion of rigidity from singular terms to general terms are well-known. The most serious are overgeneralization and the related problem of trivialization. Proposed solutions fall into two camps. One proposes restricting rigidity to terms that apply essentially. The most detailed version of this is rigid application as elaborated and defended by Michael Devitt. The other solution is to happily accept that all common nouns and unstructured general terms as well as some structured ones are rigid, thus embracing the overgeneralization charge. This approach has been defended by Genoveva Martí and José Martínez-Fernández, Joseph LaPorte, Nathan Salmon, Arthur Sullivan, and Michael Johnson, among others. Neither of the proposed solutions is satisfactory. The one view offers no systematic way of classifying general terms as rigid, the other includes too many terms as rigid. Overgeneralization remains a significant problem. The notion of rigidity cannot be satisfactorily extended to general terms, and there is no reason why we should regret this.
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Notes
- 1.
Mill also mentions abstract names of attributes. “But when only one attribute, neither variable in degree nor in kind, is designated by the name; as visibleness; tangibleness; equality; squareness; milkwhiteness; then the name can hardly be considered general; for though it denotes an attribute of many different objects, the attribute itself is always conceived as one, not many. To avoid needless logomachies, the best course would probably be to consider these names as neither general nor individual, and to place them in a class apart” (Mill 1974: 30).
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- 3.
I use “rigid expression” instead of “rigid designation.” The distinction may be purely terminological. Both Salmon 2005 and Johnson 2011 use the phrase “rigid expression of a property” but other proponents are happy to stick with “designation.” Orlando in her paper on the topic calls rigid essentialism “the essentialist conception” and rigid expressionism “the identity of designation conception” (Orlando 2014: 51). She favors a version of the latter.
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Kripke thought otherwise: “if the very block of wood from which the table was made had instead been made into a vase, the table never would have existed. So (roughly) being a table seems to be an essential property of the table” (Kripke 1980: 115 n. 57).
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Mill calls them “real Kinds” with capital “K.”
- 8.
Sometimes kind terms are used as singular terms in subject position and then something is predicated of the kind. E.g. “Gold is a metal.” This is a statement about the kind gold. I am mostly concerned with kind terms in predicate position where a property is being predicated of an object. E.g. “My wedding ring is gold.” If the proponents of rigid expressionism do not mean their view to apply to kind terms used in predicate position, then there is nothing much to their view, although I share Mill’s concern that names of kinds and properties are not straightforward singular terms in any case.
- 9.
Although recently leading philosophers and linguists (Fara 2015, Bach 2015) have argued that proper names are predicates, which would probably do more harm than good to rigid expressionism. In any case, we have the confusing situation of semanticists arguing that (unstructured) predicates are proper names while others are prominently claiming that proper names are predicates.
- 10.
This is a problem that I discussed in previous publications (see in particular Schwartz 2002).
- 11.
I think I can count Devitt as an ally at least this far. Recall that he claims that “predator,” “unemployed,” and “nation” are descriptive and non-rigid in contrast to e.g. “tiger” and “gold” which would be rigid according to him.
- 12.
Actually I should say “very few.” Orlando (2014) argues that it can be. I think she’s on the right track except for holding that natural kind terms are rigid. Also of course Devitt seeks to maintain the distinction along these lines.
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And of course there are intermediate, ambiguous, and hybrid cases. E.g. “vixen” means “female fox” and “screwdriver” is also the name of a mixed drink made with vodka.
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I believe that the general view was that “All tigers are animals” and “Gold is a metal” were analytic.
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I am using “may” and “might” in the epistemic sense which is relevant to analyticity. If a claim is epistemically falsifiable, it isn’t analytic.
- 16.
As though we could wake up one day and read on the Google Newsfeed “Amazing new discovery! Pediatricians aren’t doctors after all, they’re actually plumbers.” I suppose we can imagine arcane stories where we would be inclined to say “Pediatricians aren’t doctors as we thought all along” but likewise we can imagine arcane stories, and maybe ones that aren’t so arcane, where we would be inclined to say “Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare.” This hardly refutes Kripke’s theory of proper names or the standard logic of identity, nor do arcane stories refute the analyticity or a prioricity of “All pediatricians are doctors.”
- 17.
In his book Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities LaPorte argues that even if “bachelor” and “soda pop” are respectively abbreviations for “eligible unmarried male” and “sweet, carbonated beverage” they would still be rigid and non-descriptional. I find his argument for this claim to be compressed and obscure. He writes: “But here again, it is not at all clear that the apparent descriptive status of the relevant expressions is genuine” (LaPorte 2013: 54). The problem according to LaPorte is that the terms used in the description are not descriptive. “Sweet,” “carbonated,” and “beverage” he states “simply refer … to their respective properties” (LaPorte 2013: 54). I of course question just this and especially the use of “simply” here. “Sweet” may well be a natural kind term, but “carbonated” and “beverage” strike me as artifact terms. In any case, suppose all the definitions ultimately reduce to undefinable natural kind terms like “sweet.” This does not mean that common nouns defined by those terms are not descriptional. I do not see how the ultimate status of the terms in the definiens makes any difference as long as the definiens supplies a necessary and sufficient condition (or cluster condition). We should follow Donnellan and recognize that certainly we can introduce terms that fit the classical description theory. It would be astonishing if the classical description theory was an impossibility – incoherent. So I would hold that if e.g. “bachelor” is an abbreviation for “eligible unmarried male” and “soda pop” for “sweet, carbonated beverage” then the apparent descriptive status of the relevant expressions is genuine.
- 18.
See Devitt and Sterelny 1999: 101–104 for a helpful discussion of the logical underpinnings of analytic truths.
- 19.
And of course ordinary natural kind terms are not introduced by a formal baptism, but rather by an informal impicit convention or stipulation “adopted through behavior” as Quine puts it.
- 20.
I think some of the motivation for and the infatuation with semantic uniformity and the extension of rigidity to nominal kind terms comes from confusing rigidity with consistency of meaning. As I pointed out elsewhere (Schwartz 2002) words do not change their meanings when we talk about other possible worlds. Meanings are consistent when we talk about counterfactual situations. When we say “If Hillary had not used a personal email system when she was secretary of state, she would not have lost the election” “Hillary” means Hillary, “had” means had, “personal” means personal, “email” means email, “system” means system and so on. LaPorte explicitly acknowledges this (LaPorte 2013: 36–37) and claims to distinguish rigidity from consistency of meaning. Johnson on the other hand exaggerating only slightly claims that everything is rigid (Johnson 2011). I do not see how this can be anything other than mere meaning consistency.
- 21.
Recall that “All emeralds are green” is true, whereas “All emeralds are grue” is false.
- 22.
I would like to thank Michael Devitt, Andrea Bianchi, Michael Gardner, Joseph LaPorte, and Christian Nimtz for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Schwartz, S.P. (2020). Against Rigidity for General Terms. In: Bianchi, A. (eds) Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 142. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47641-0_12
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