Abstract
Kripke’s examples of allegedly contingent a priori sentences include ‘Stick S is exactly one meter long’, where the reference of ‘meter’ is fixed by the description ‘the length of stick S’. In response to skepticism concerning apriority Kripke replaced the meter sentence with a more sophisticated variant, arguing that the modified example is more immune to such skepticism. The case for apriority is examined. A distinction is drawn between apriority and a broader notion, “qua-priority,” of a truth whose epistemic justification is dependent on no experience other than that required to justify belief of the deliverances of pure semantics. It is argued that Kripke’s examples are neither a priori nor qua-priori.
I am grateful to the participants in my seminars over the years on the topics of the present essay. I owe thanks also to Teresa Robertson for her comments.
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Notes
- 1.
Here by ‘intuitive’ I mean knowledge that comes from a non-sensory cognitive faculty, like the mathematical faculty (assuming there is one) through which mathematicians gain knowledge of the Peano axioms for arithmetic.
- 2.
To make this as pure a case as possible we suppose that Le Verrier uttered French words to the following effect: Let ‘Neptune’ be a name for the planet causing such-and-such perturbations in the orbit of Uranus, if exactly one planet is causing those perturbations; and let ‘Neptune’ name nothing otherwise. Similar expansions should be supplied for the other examples.
- 3.
More accurately still, we suppose that the designation of the measurement term ‘meter’ is fixed by means of the description ‘the function that assigns to any real number n, the length that is exactly n times the length of S at t0’. This simultaneously fixes the reference of ‘one meter’, ‘two meters’, ‘0.5 meters’, ‘17 meters’, etc.
- 4.
Kripke does not discuss the analogs of (1) and (2) for any of (iii)–(vi). One might assume that he would deem the analogs also contingent a priori , but one does so at the risk of misinterpretation. The cases of (iii) and (vi) are highly analogous to (i), all three of which invoke verbs of causation (‘cause’, ‘murder’, ‘invent’). By contrast, (iv) and (v) invoke grammatical superlatives (‘shortest’, ‘first’) while (ii) stands apart from all the rest. In work published subsequent to N&N, Kripke raises considerations that count heavily against extending the mechanism to superlative cases to generate purported contingent a priori truths through stipulating the designatum of a name by description. See Kripke 2011.
- 5.
There is another kind of sentence for which the thesis is vulnerable, e.g., ‘If Kripke is actually a philosopher, then Kripke is a philosopher’ and ‘If Kripke is a plumber, then Kripke is actually a plumber’. Each of these conditionals, although evidently (semantically) a priori, is false with respect to possible worlds in which Kripke is a plumber instead of a philosopher. To the best of my knowledge, examples like these were first noted by Kaplan in 1971 or 1973 (see Kaplan 1979: 95); and later in his 1977 masterpiece (see Kaplan 1989: 539 n. 65). Cf. Salmon 1981: 77–78; 1986: 141–142, 180 n. 19; and 1987a. The a-priority of the examples depends on our being de re connected to the actual world in conceiving it metaphysically as this possible world [the only world that is realized], or this possible world [the only world that obtains]. Notice that conceiving a world in this manner is a way of knowing what world is in question.
A case can be made that ‘Saul Kripke is actually a philosopher’ is itself (semantically) a priori, provided that it is possible to be de re connected to the actual world by conceiving of it compositionally, rather than metaphysically, as the only possible world in which: p, p′, p″, …, including sufficiently many propositions to pin down the actual world. Notice, however, that this is arguably not a way of knowing what world is in question (viz., the one that is realized/obtains). Furthermore, a compositional conception of the actual world is not a possibility for knowers with finite or otherwise reasonably limited comprehension (including all humans). Given that the first example mentioned in the preceding paragraph is also a priori, it appears to follow that their consequence ‘Kripke is a philosopher’ is a priori as well, provided it is possible to be de re connected to the actual world in conceiving it compositionally. It does not actually follow, however, since if there are such different ways of being de re connected to the actual world, a-priority need not be closed under logical consequence. Cf. Soames 2007: 261–263. Soames uses the label ‘indexical’ for the conception of the actual world that accompanies ‘actually’, and labels the potential alternative, compositional conception ‘non-indexical’. I believe that the relevant distinction is not correctly drawn in these terms. While the modal adverb ‘actually’ (in the relevant sense) is indeed indexical, the metaphysical conception of the actual world that accompanies it is no less descriptive than is a compositional conception. (To suppose that the actual world can be demonstrated seems to presuppose a David-Lewis-like misconception of possible worlds as universes, as opposed to abstract maximal scenarios or states of the universe. Perhaps one can gesture toward, or otherwise demonstrate, the universe, but how would one demonstrate the maximal scenario that obtains or the total way that things are, in order to single it out from all the other maximal scenarios or total ways for things to be?)
- 6.
With the exception of Michael Devitt. See Devitt 2015: 136–137.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
The taxonomy, inspired by Rudolf Carnap, comes from Salmon 1993. In the terminology proposed there, (1)–(3) and their analogs with regard to (iv)–(vi) should be regarded as contingent analytic rather than contingent a priori .
- 10.
Cf. Kripke, “Rigid Designation and the Contingent A Priori: The Meter Stick Revisited,” unpublished transcription of the 1986 Exxon Distinguished Lectures at the University of Notre Dame, at pp. 35–40 (the close of lecture 2). Kripke there admits that the case of stick S and ‘meter’, as envisaged in N&N, is not a “pure case” of fixing the reference of a de jure rigid designator by description (lecture 1, p. 3). He says that the definite description ‘the length of S at t0’ is not a reference-fixing description, and is instead an “acquaintance-guiding description”.
Although I did not know the content of Kripke’s Notre Dame lecture series when I wrote “How to Measure the Standard Metre” (Salmon 1987b), to some extent the latter can serve as a sort of reply. (I explicitly mentioned the lecture series, at p. 204 n. 11.)
- 11.
In terms of Kaplan’s indexical operator ‘dthat’, the reference fixer can think of the length in question by means of the semantic character of the indexical expression ‘dthat[the length of S′]’. See Kaplan 1989, especially pp. 518–522.
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Salmon, N. (2020). Naming and Non-necessity. 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_11
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