Saul Kripke's Naming & Necessity

It may be that this is the only possible world and nothing could be otherwise than it is. In that case there is only one, perhaps infinite, true proposition and nothing which can be deduced from it- i.e. logic is useless. Modal logic is its own collapse. 

Even if this is not the case, questions of modality—necessity, possibility, contingency- are vitiated by the 'intensional' or 'masked man' fallacy. We can see a masked man. We can make a good guess as to who the masked man is. But anyone who wears that mask is that masked man. There is no necessary connection between a particular mask and a particular man who may habitually wear it. After all, Alfred the Butler may be wearing Bruce Wayne's costume. Still, it is useful to speak of a particular masked man as having certain qualities. The same can be said of necessity. At one moment, to our current knowledge, x may be seem to be a necessary condition for y. Kant gives the example of a wise- i.e. misogynistic statement- made by a Black man. But, Kant points out, since the fellow was a darkie it must necessarily be the case that he was as stupid as shit. The same is true of possibility and contingency. What we think is possible and what we think is contingent depends on our knowledge base or on our own wishes or preferences or other subjective factors. Thus talk of 'modality' or, indeed, modal logic in its entirety, is nothing but a cascade of intensional fallacies. 'Necessity' is a name for a thing not known to us. It is as foolish to think that it is identical to the thing it names. No doubt, some crazy or superstitious people think that knowing the name of a demon gives you power over that demon. After all, Solomon got to live large because he knew those secret names- right?

Saul Kripke was smart, but not King Solomon level smart and thus didn't get to live large. Why make him the target of a cult? I suppose the answer is that just as some wizards made a little money by claiming to know something of Solomon's magic, even so a few academics make a living pretending that Saul wasn't a silly billy who wrote puerile nonsense. Vide-

The ideas in Naming and Necessity evolved in the early sixties

i.e. before it became clear that there were massive problems of concurrency, complexity and computability. Category theoretical 'naturality' or what Kuhn called neutrality were far to seek. Forget about Godel type 'absolute' proofs, 'natural' proofs too are beyond us. The same hubris displayed by McNamara in Vietnam, or Chomsky in his nonsensical field, fired Kripke. Sadly, academic availability cascades are a Ponzi scheme which don't collapse but rather become more and more adversely selective of imbecility. 

-most of the views were formulated in about 1963-64.

Around the time I was born. Much idiocy came into the world in that year.  

Of course the work grew out of earlier formal work in the model theory of modal logic.

Nothing wrong with either if they stay in their lane- i.e. only make claims about things as artificial as themselves. 

Already when I worked on modal logic it had seemed to me, as Wiggins has said, that the Leibnitzian principle of the indiscernibility of identicals was as self-evident as the law of contradiction.

The problem is that things are treated as identical only for a particular purpose. If things were other than they are, who is to say any given purpose would still pick out the same objects as indiscernibly identical? 

That some philosophers could have doubted it always seemed to me bizarre. The model theoretic study of modal logic (possible worlds' semantics)

in other words a fantasy about a fantasy 

could only confirm this conviction- the alleged counterexamples involving modal properties always turned out to turn on some confusion:

because fantasies about fantasies can get very confused 

the contexts involved did not express genuine properties,

that's the problem with fantasies 

scopes were confused, or coincidence between individual concepts was confused with identity between individuals.

It must be said, that type of confusion is what make fantasies fun.  

The model theory made this completely clear, though it should have been clear enough on the intuitive level. Waiving fussy considerations deriving from the fact that x need not have necessary existence, it was clear from (x) □ (x = x) and Leibnitz's law that identity is an 'internal' relation :

Who is to say what is necessary for a thing to be possible? It might be multiply realizable or else the effect of different concatenations of circumstances.

 (What pairs (x, y) could be counterexamples?

Any thing in ZFC. 

Not pairs of distinct objects, for then the antecedent is false;

In which case the Banach Tarski paradox is bad math. 

nor any pair of an object and itself, for then the consequent is true.) 

 It isn't. There is a difference between Iyer, the carefree bachelor and Iyer the sad fuck who has to marry himself after being his own date at the prom and losing his virginity to himself. 

If 'a' and 'b' are rigid designators, it follows that 'a = b', if true, is a necessary truth.

The President of the Institute of Socioproctology is a rigid designator for me as is my name. But 'Vivek Iyer is the President of the Institute of Socioproctology' is not a necessary theory. It is a joke displayed on my visiting cards. 

If 'a' and 'b' are not rigid designators, no such conclusion follows about the statement 'a = b' (though the objects designated by 'a' and 'b' will be necessarily identical).

They may be. They may not.  We may think that some things are necessary for a particular purpose of ours. We may be wrong.                                                                                                                         

Logically, we as yet are committed to no thesis about the status of what we ordinarily call 'names' in natural language.

Logic does not entail any commitments. Claims about logic aren't themselves logic.  

We must distinguish three distinct theses: (i) that identical objects are necessarily identical;

They aren't. Necessarily identical objects which fart melodiously are necessarily identical objects which fart melodiously. That's as far as logic can get us. Why commit to any such shite?  

(ii) that true identity statements between rigid designators are necessary;

They aren't either necessary or even necessarily true, even if they are true. It is not necessary to say Vivek Iyer is the President of the Socioproctology Institute and though it is true, it isn't necessarily true because, arguably, I have been suspended from that post on the basis of allegations of sexual self-abuse.  

(iii) that identity statements between what we call 'names' in actual language are necessary.

or what this guy calls 'necessary' but which we are welcome to call a melodious fart from an imaginary cat.  

(i) and (ii) are (self-evident) theses of philosophical logic independent of natural language.

They are nonsense of a type which serves no natural, that is useful, purpose. That's why they are 'independent' of language and reason and not being a complete fucking waste of time. 

They are related to each other, though (i) is about objects

No. It is about things referred to as objects but which may have no objective features whatsoever. They are like the invisible cat to whose melodious farts all meta-linguistics makes silent mention.  

and (ii) is metalinguistic.

like farting. Anything at all can be metalinguistic in the view of anyone at all.  

((ii) roughly 'follows' from (i), using substitution of rigid designators for universal quantifiers-I say 'roughly' because delicate distinctions about rigidity are relevant, see page 21 n. 21; the analogous deduction for nonrigid designators is fallacious.)

It is also fallacious if a designator is doing the designation. In that case, the 'rigidity' is an akribeia which, sadly, might be fallible when it is not foolish. But this means that 'rigid designation' doesn't necessarily mean what it may claim to mean just as a very funny joke I decide to tell may not actually be funny at all. 

From (ii) all that strictly follows about so-called 'names' in natural language is that either they are not rigid or true identities between them are necessary.

Nothing 'strictly' follows. We are welcome to make claims about our logic just as we are welcome to make claims about our jokes or our farts. But why should we believe such self-serving claims?  

Our intuitive idea of naming suggests that names are rigid,

No. Our intuitive idea is that names are Schelling focal solutions to coordination or discoordination problems. They change as circumstances or fashions change. There may be a way of keeping track of such changes. There may not.  

but I suppose that at one time I vaguely supposed, influenced by prevailing presuppositions, that since obviously there are contingent identities between ordinary so-called names, such ordinary names must not be rigid.

One could say that there are 'essential' names which have a magic property just a one could say there is joke everybody finds funny or a fart which can fulminate the universe. But these are mere arbitrary claims. There is no rhyme or reason to them. 

However, it was already clear from (i)-without any investigation of natural language-that the supposition, common to philosophical discussions of materialism at that time, that objects can be 'contingently identical', is false.

Anything can be identical to anything else under some contingency of for some purpose.  

Identity would be an internal relation

if a Joke's capacity to provoke laughter were internal to it and did not depend on other circumstances. Of course, one might say 'the joke was intrinsically funny'. The reason nobody laughed was because they were distracted by the fire in which they were burning to death.  

even if natural language had contained no rigid designators.

If it did then all languages would have some words in common. Also, Saussure was wrong. If the word 'water' means the stuff that flows in rivers, then there must be some intrinsic quality to the phonemes composing the word which relate it to water. 

The confused reference to objects as 'contingently identical' served illegitimately as a philosophical crutch:

Why bother with a crutch when you can strap on a rocket-pack to your back and go explore possible worlds? This is more particularly the case if you have just shat the Chair in Philosophy from which you haven't stirred for decades.  

It enabled philosophers simultaneously to think of certain designators as if they were non-rigid (and hence found in 'contingent identities') and as if they were rigid, the conflict being muddled over by thinking of the corresponding objects as 'contingently identical'. Even before I clearly realized the true situation regarding proper namcs, I fclt little sympathy for the dark doctrine of a relation of 'contingcnt identity'. Uniquely udentifying properties can coincide contingently, but objects cannot be 'contingently identical'.

from one perspective, or under one contingency. But this doesn't mean this is the case from different perspective or under a diffferent contingency. 

Eventually I came to realize-this realization inaugurated the aforementioned work of I963-64- that the received presuppositions against the necessity of identities between ordinary names were incorrect, that the natural intuition that the names of ordinary language are rigid designators can in fact be upheld.

Because anything at all can be upheld for some particular purpose or the other. 

Part of the effort to make this clear involved the distinction between using a description to give a meaning

meanings are necessary for a description, but a description may have no meaning in itself. Thus I may be described well enough in the language used by Police detectives but I would be wrong to say that the fact that such a description could exist has any meaning in particular. True, if someone wants to suggest that I am a dangerous criminal, they may use terms used by Law Enforcement to describe me. I would easily understand the hidden meaning behind this supposedly neutral description of me.  

and using it to fix a reference. Thus at this stage I rejected the conventional description theory as an account of meaning, though its validity as an account of the fixing of a reference was left untouched. Probably I let myself be content with this position momentarily, but the natural next step was to question whether the description theory gave a correct account even of how the references of names were fixed.

Descriptions aren't meanings. The references of names aren't fixed though anybody at all is welcome to arbitrarily make such associations. But they can change them just as arbitrarily.  

The result appears in the second of these lectures. It was a short step to realize that similar remarks applied to terms for natural kinds.

Which are arbitrary but useful enough for a particular purpose- or prejudice.  

The other leading ideas came naturally as things 'fit into place'. Let me not pay inadequate tribute to the power of the then prevailing complex of ideas, emanating from Frege and from Russell, that I then abandoned.

They had to be adopted because of impredicativity which is itself a reason for the intensional fallacy. At that stage, the smart thing would have been to just embrace pragmatism and go work on cybernetics or operations research or other such useful stuff.  

When smart peeps fail to do useful things, they babble greater nonsense than even a Socioproctologist would be capable of. 

 It also became clear that a symbol of any actual or hypothetical language that is not a rigid designator is so unlike the names of ordinary language that it ought not to be called a 'name'.

Saul Kripke is a name in ordinary and actual language as well as the hypothetical language spoken by pan-dimensional pussycats who appear in our Solar System as the rings of Uranus. But it isn't a rigid designator. Many have had and will have that name. It isn't necessary at all that any of them study, teach and write worthless shite. 

Kripke's intensional fallacy

Beliefs are things which Believers have. What they are and whether they have any rhyme or reason to them, or whether can be given a propositional form, is an ideographic matter dependent on the Believer in question.  No 'puzzles', logical or philosophical, can arise in connection with beliefs unless we believe they can- which is our problem, not a problem for Logic or Metaphysics.

Kripke, famously took a different view-  

Suppose Pierre is a normal French speaker who lives in France

in which case I believe he leaps around on the banks of the Seine attempting to bite the hindlegs of frogs. This is actually a more reasonable belief to have than that Pierre, or any one else, has beliefs which can be stated as propositions- i.e. statements which are either true or false. If a Belief has this quality then it is always 'informative' because we know that if that Belief exists there are exactly two possible states of the world. One in which the belief is true and one in which it isn't. The problem is that beliefs, like preferences, are 'epistemic'- i.e. they change as the knowledge base changes. Leibniz's law (identity of indiscernibles) does not apply to them. Thus even if everything true about one belief is true about another belief, they are not the same belief. Thus, even if two followers of Mahatma Gandhi- one Hindu, the other Christian- have exactly the same beliefs, they belong to different Faiths. In Sanskrit we would say, their 'Vigyan' is the same but their 'Matam' (dogma) is different. Modus tollens can't be applied in this case. I can't say 'Kumarappa has the same beliefs as Gandhi. Gandhi is Hindu. Kumarappa must be Hindu.' Why? It is a fact that Kumarappa was Christian. I have committed the 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy.

This is what Kripke proceeds to do in his notorious 'puzzle about belief'.  

(Pierre) speaks not a word of English or of any other language except French. Of course he has heard of that famous distant city, London (which he of course calls 'Londres') though he himself has never left France. On the basis of what he has heard of London, he is inclined to think that it is pretty. So he says, in French, "Londres est jolie." On the basis of his sincere French utterance, we will conclude:

that he bites the legs off frogs. After all, sincere French utterances only emanate from the mouths of people who are masticating the legs of amphibians. Such at any rate is my firm and settled belief.  

(4) Pierre believes that London is pretty.

Nonsense! French people are incapable of believing anything because they are too busy devouring the legs of frogs. Even if this were not the case, no belief has a propositional form. Believing London is pretty does not preclude believing it is ugly or fat or has a quality of fugitive umami like unto the more nimble type of frog. 

I am supposing that Pierre satisfies all criteria for being a normal French speaker, in particular, that he satisfies whatever criteria we usually use to judge that a Frenchman (correctly) uses 'est jolie' to attribute pulchritude and uses 'Londres'-standardly-as a name of London.

Rubbish! Everyone knows- or should know- that 'normal French speakers' have no thoughts or beliefs though they may make French type noises from time to time in between biting off the legs of frogs.  

Later, Pierre, through fortunate or unfortunate vicissitudes, moves to England, in fact to London itself, though to an unattractive part of the city with fairly uneducated inhabitants. He, like most of his neighbors, rarely ever leaves this part of the city. None of his neighbors know any French, so he must learn English by 'direct method', without using any translation of English into French: by talking and mixing with the people he eventually begins to pick up English.

Impossible! No self-respecting Londoner would have anything to do with a dirty furriner who devours snails when no frogs are available. 'Wogs begin at Calais' is a sound English principle.  

In particular, everyone speaks of the city, 'London', where they all live. Let us suppose for the moment- though we will see below that this is not crucial- that the local population are so uneducated that they know few of the facts that Pierre heard about London in France. Pierre learns from them everything they know about London, but there is little overlap with what he heard before. He learns, of course speaking English

in which case he must have given up his disgusting foreign diet. He is becoming almost human.  

- to call the city he lives in 'London'. Pierre's surroundings are, as I said, unattractive, and he is unimpressed with most of the rest of what he happens to see. So he is inclined to assent to the English sentence: (5) London is not pretty. He has no inclination to assent to: (6) London is pretty. Of course he does not for a moment withdraw his assent from the French sentence, "Londres est jolie";

Only in the sense that nobody withdraws their assent from the sentence 'I am five years old' even after they turn six. It is simply the case that what was said then is no longer true. 

he merely takes it for granted that the ugly city in which he is now stuck is distinct from the enchanting city he heard about in France.

Which is like what happened when the enchanting frog whose legs he tried to devour turned out to be Toulouse-Lautrec

But he has no inclination to change his mind for a moment about the city he stills calls 'Londres'. This, then, is the puzzle. If we consider Pierre's past background as a French speaker, his entire linguistic behavior, on the same basis as we would draw such a conclusion about many of his countrymen, supports the conclusion (4) above that he believes that London is pretty. On the other hand, after Pierre lived in London for some time, he did not differ from his neighbors-his French background aside-either in his knowledge of English or in his command of the relevant facts of local geography. His English vocabulary differs little from that of his neighbors. He, like them, rarely ventures from the dismal quarter of the city in which they all live. He, like them, knows that the city he lives in is called 'London' and knows a few other facts. Now Pierre's neighbors would surely be said to use 'London' as a name for London and to speak English. Since, as an English speaker,  he does not differ at all from them, we should , say the same of him. But then, on the basis of his sincere assent to (5), we should conclude: (7) Pierre believes that London is not pretty. How can we describe this situation?

Easily. At one time he leapt about biting the legs off frogs by the banks of the Seine. At that time he thought London was pretty and had lots of lovely frogs. One day he accidentally bit the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec and was chased across the Channel by furious can-can dancers from the Moulin Rouge. Living in London, he gradually became almost human and stopped thinking London was pretty. Indeed, beauty of every sort had dimmed from his eyes. He became a Methodist and got a job with the Gas Board.  

It seems undeniable that Pierre once believed that London is pretty-at least before he learned English. For at that time, he differed not at all from countless numbers of his countrymen, and we would have exactly the same grounds to say of him as of any of them that he believes that London is pretty: if any Frenchman who was both ignorant of English and never visited London believed that London is pretty, Pierre did. Nor does it have any plausibility to suppose, because of his later situation after he learns English, that Pierre should retroactively be judged never to have believed that London is pretty. To allow such ex post facto legislation would, as long as the future is uncertain, endanger our attributions of belief to all monolingual Frenchmen.

There is no 'ex post facto legislation' or 'withdrawing of assent'. As for our 'attributions of belief', they are dictated by our own stupidity or prejudice or inability to reason. Who gives a fuck if they are 'endangered'? Must the Secretary General of the United Nations intervene if my own fond beliefs about French people who accidentally bit the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec are threatened in some way? 

We would be forced to say that Marie, a monolingual who firmly and sincerely asserts, "Londres est jolie," may or may not believe that London is pretty depending on the later vicissitudes of her career (if later she learns English and . . . , . . .).

No we wouldn't. What we would be forced to say is- 'Marie bit off the legs of Toulouse-Lautrec and then meanly shifted the blame onto Pierre.' Moreover, the person who would be doing the forcing would bear an uncanny resemblance to Asterix the Gaul. 

No: Pierre, like Marie, believed that London is pretty when he was monolingual.

Kripke may believe so. I don't. This is because I firmly and sincerely believe French people leap around their beautiful land, biting the legs off frogs. True, sometimes they end up biting the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec, but that's probably the fault of Joan of Arc. 

Should we say that Pierre, now that he lives in London and speaks English, no longer believes that London is pretty? Well, unquestionably Pierre once believed that London is pretty. So we would be forced to say that Pierre has changed his mind, has given up his previous belief. But has he really done so? Pierre is very set in his ways. He reiterates, with vigor, every assertion he has ever made in French. He says he has not changed his mind about anything, has not given up any belief. Can we say he is wrong about this?

We can say anything we like.  

If we did not have the story of his living in London and his English utterances, on the basis of his normal command of French we would be forced to conclude that he still believes that London is pretty.

No. We would say 'Pierre had heard London was pretty. Then he moved to London and found it wasn't pretty at all. He got it into his head that 'Londres' wasn't London and that it must be pretty because people he knew had said so. Still, if we beat him sufficiently, he might come to acknowledge that Londres is just the French word for London in the same way that 'Sodom-on-the-Seine' is the English term for Paris.  

And it does seem that this is correct. Pierre has neither changed his mind nor given up any belief he had in France. Similar difficulties beset any attempt to deny him his new belief.

On the basis of our beliefs. But we can change our beliefs so they are less stupid.  

His French past aside, he is just like his friends in London. Anyone else, growing up in London with the same knowledge and beliefs that he expresses in England, we would undoubtedly judge to believe that London is not pretty. Can Pierre's French past nullify such a judgment? Can we say that Pierre, because of his French past, does not believe that (S)? Suppose an electric shock wiped out all his memories of the French language, what he learned in France, and his French past. He would then be exactly like his neighbors in London. He would have the same knowledge, beliefs, and linguistic capacities. We then presumably would be forced to say that Pierre believes that London is ugly if we say it of his neighbors. But surely no shock that destroys part of Pierre's memories and knowledge can give him a new belief.

That depends on the Believer. As a matter of fact, if I suffer amnesia as a result of a brain injury, I am likely to 'confabulate' new beliefs. What they are might be of interest to a depth psychologist or a neurologist. I imagine myself waking up in a hospital bed. The Doctor asks me my name. I can't remember it. I instinctively clutch at my genitals and discover I have a tiny todger. Who could I be? The answer is obvious. I am Donald Trump. Then I look in the mirror. Clearly Vivek Ramaswamy has dyed my skin to match his own complexion. Fuck you Vivek! Fuck you very much!

If Pierre believes (5) after the shock, he believed it before, despite his French language and background. If we would deny Pierre, in his bilingual stage, his belief that London is pretty and his belief that London is not pretty, we combine the difficulties of both previous options.

But by changing our beliefs we can overcome such difficulties. The fact is French isn't really a language. All human beings can speak English if you shout at them loudly enough. True, some sadistic school teachers try to pretend there is a language called French which has a grammar and a vocabulary all of its own. This is clearly a conspiracy funded by George Soros. 

We still would be forced to judge that Pierre once believed that London is pretty but does no longer, in spite of Pierre's own sincere denial that he has lost any belief.

We are meant to believe that Pierre is as thick as shit. Why? Because Kripke makes an absurd stipulation. Two can play at that game. I can equally arbitrarily claim that the moment Toulouse-Lautrec's legs were bitten off by sweet little Jean-Marie La Pen, all Belief became dialethic because it was dyslexic and that was the closest it could come to being diabetic.  

We also must worry whether Pierre would gain the belief that London is not pretty if he totally forgot his French past. The option does not seem very satisfactory. So now it seems that we must respect both Pierre's French utterances and their English counterparts.

Because Kripke says so? But it is my firm belief that Kripke could never say anything because he was the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus in 1984.  

So we must say that Pierre has contradictory beliefs, that he believes that London is pretty and he believes that London is not pretty. But there seem to be insuperable difficulties with this alternative as well. We may suppose that Pierre, in spite of the unfortunate situation in which he now finds himself, is a leading philosopher and logician.

He is certainly stupid enough. 

He would never let contradictory beliefs pass. And surely anyone, leading logician or no, is in principle in a position to notice and correct contradictory beliefs if he has them.

Kripke believes he knows his own beliefs. We don't. The shadow of a cat can't know its own beliefs.  

Precisely for this reason, we regard individuals who contradict themselves as subject to greater censure than those who merely have false beliefs.

No we don't. I don't care if you contradict yourself. I care if you fart in my face. 

But it is clear that Pierre, as long as he is unaware that the cities he calls 'London' and 'Londres' are one and the same, is in no position to see, by logic alone, that at least one of his beliefs must be false.

Logic tells him that his beliefs about a place he has never seen may be wrong. Indeed, he has no compelling reason to give a toss about the beauty or ugliness of a distant city. 

He lacks information, not logical acumen.

He lacks a motive to gain information. But logical acumen can yield no information whatsoever.  

He cannot be convicted of inconsistency: to do so is incorrect.

He can be convicted of rape or murder. He would do well to avoid both. Inconsistency, however, is no big deal.  

We can shed more light on this if we change the case. Suppose that, in France, Pierre, instead of affirming "Londres est jolie," had affirmed, more cautiously, "Si New York est jolie, Londres est jolie aussi," so that he believed that if New York is pretty, so is London.

Kripke has an absurd belief about Pierre's beliefs. We are welcome to believe this is because Kripke is the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus.  

Later Pierre moves to London, learns English as before, and says (in English) "London is not pretty." So he now believes, further, that London is not pretty.

He may do. He may not do. I am welcome to believe that by moving to London, the fellow has become partially human and thus affirms that 'London is not pretty (it's fucking gorgeous, mate!)' with the latter interjection being left unstated as is best practice amongst us chirpy Cockney sparrows. 

Now from the two premises, both of which appear to

but may not be 

be among his beliefs (a) If New York is pretty, London is, and (b) London is not pretty, Pierre should be able to deduce by modus tollens

he can't because what Kripke calls beliefs aren't necessarily 'propositions'. This is just begging the question.  

that New York is not pretty.

I suppose, if a person can find beauty in New York, they might learn to find beauty in London. The reverse may not be the case. There is always going to be a problem where a proposition- or something taken as a proposition- contains an epistemic or impredicative term. What we find pretty changes as our knowledge base changes. Intensions have no well defined extensions. Leibniz's law of identity has no purchase. What we have here is a cascade of intensional fallacies masquerading as a puzzle about names and beliefs. 

But no matter how great Pierre's logical acumen may be, he cannot in fact make any such deduction, as long as he supposes that 'Londres' and 'London' may name two different cities.

Who is to say they don't? A Parisian may find a beauty in London to which us Cockneys are blind. A rose may smell sweeter under some other name. 

If he did draw such a conclusion, he would be guilty of a fallacy.

No. The intensional fallacy arises when it is wrongly assumed that there is an immediate identity between a subject's knowledge of an object with the object itself. This is still the case if we substitute the word 'belief' for knowledge or 'sincerely assert' for 'belief' or indulge in any other such linguistic sleight of hand. 

 Consider the following. Mum walks into the room as we are watching Batman on TV. She asks 'who is that masked man?' We reply 'he is millionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne, who fights crime in Gotham by night costumed as the Batman.' Unfortunately, this is the episode where Alfred the Butler has put on the Batman costume so as to throw the Joker off the scent. Anyway, what Mum really wants to know whether the masked man is George Clooney- for whom she has the hots- or Michael Keaton whom she finds a boner killer. In this case, the proper 'extension' for 'masked man' is the name of the film star appearing in the title role. But in other cases, a different extension is called for.

Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?

We don't know. We may have beliefs about Pierre or beliefs about Pierre's beliefs. But beliefs may not be propositions- i.e. they may not be either true or false. One might say 'I only want to talk about beliefs which are also propositions.' The trouble here is that there is no way of being sure that any given proposition corresponds to a belief or vice versa. Why? Because Beliefs don't present themselves nakedly to us. Things spoken or written may do so. But there is no way to be sure they represent a belief. True we can say we have beliefs about other people's beliefs which we believe meet some criteria of our own. But, in that case, we are already halfway to affirming that French people spend their time hopping about trying to bite the legs of frogs.

I know of no answer to this question that seems satisfactory.

I have supplied it. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic but not propositional. They don't obey Leibniz's law. Modus tollens has no purchase on them. No information can be extracted from them such that we can be sure there are only two states of the world. It's like 'Chinatown', where Faye Dunaway's sister is also her daughter and may become her mother-in-law.  

It is no answer to protest that, in some other terminology, one can state 'all the relevant facts'.

Because facts which are inaccessible, perhaps incompossible, aren't facts.  

To reiterate, this is the puzzle: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?

He may at some moment or for some consideration but not at other times. In either case, we can never be sure. Still, one may look at his 'revealed preference'. If he is an artist and relocated to London and spends a lot of time painting pretty pictures of its more scenic spots, we might say 'his behaviour reveals that he thinks London is beautiful.'  

It is clear that our normal criteria for the attribution of belief lead, when applied to this question, to paradoxes and contradictions.

It is clear that if you commit the intensional fallacy, you have an algorithmic way of generating nonsense. Ex falso quodlibet.  

 As in the case of the logical paradoxes, the present puzzle presents us with a problem for customarily accepted principles and a challenge to formulate an acceptable set of principles that does not lead to paradox, is intuitively sound, and supports the inferences we usually make. Such a challenge cannot be met simply by a description of Pierre's situation that evades the question whether he believes that London is pretty. One aspect of the presentation may misleadingly suggest the applicability of FregeRussellian ideas that each speaker associates his own description or properties to each name. For as I just set up the case Pierre learned one set of facts about the so-called 'Londres' when he was in France, and another set of facts about 'London' in England. Thus it may appear that 'what's really going on' is that Pierre believes that the city satisfying one set of properties is pretty, while he believes that the city satisfying another set of properties is not pretty.

It is likely that 'Londres' is an evocation of an imaginary, highly picturesque, city depicted in French literature which does not coincide with the London accessible to its poorer immigrants.  

As we just emphasized, the phrase 'what's really going on' is a danger signal in discussions of the present paradox. The conditions stated may-let us concede for the moment- describe 'what's really going on'. But they do not resolve the problem with which we began, that of the behavior of names in belief contexts: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London (not the city satisfying such-and-such description, but London) is pretty?

By Kripke's stipulation- no. Pierre finds the place ugly.  

No answer has yet been given. Nevertheless, these considerations may appear to indicate that descriptions, or associated properties, are highly relevant somehow to an ultimate solution, since at this stage it appears that the entire puzzle arises from the fact that Pierre originally associated different identifying properties with 'London' and 'Londres'.

Pierre is welcome to wax poetical about the difference between the Londres of which he had heard and an English city with a similar name. In Londres, Queen Guinevere rides naked through the streets while Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist look on appreciatively. In London, the porcine Boris Johnson bicycles around the place sweating profusely.   

Such a reaction may have some force even in the face of the now fairly well known arguments against 'identifying descriptions' as in any way 'defining', or even 'fixing the reference' of names.

They may do so well enough for some practical purpose. But that purpose is to reduce confusion rather than gas on about 'puzzles' which arise out of a simple, deeply silly, logical fallacy.  

But in fact the special features of the case, as I set it out, are misleading. The puzzle can arise even if Pierre associates exactly the same identifying properties with both names.

No puzzle arises if I associate anything and everything which has a French sounding name with the practice of leaping into the air seeking to bite the hindlegs off frogs.  Anyone can make absurd stipulations or hold crazy beliefs. 

First, the considerations mentioned above in connection with 'Cicero' and 'Tully' establish this fact. For example, Pierre may well learn, in France, 'Platon' as the name of a major Greek philosopher, and later, in England, learns 'Plato' with the same identification. Then the same puzzle can arise: Pierre may have believed, when he was in France and was monolingual in French, that Plato was bald (he would have said, "Platon ttait chauve"), and later conjecture, in English, "Plato was not bald," thus indicating that he believes or suspects that Plato was not bald.

We are welcome to believe in incompossible entities. Indeed, that is what Kripke does when he believes beliefs are propositional or, less absurdly, it is what I do when I fondly picture the banks of the Seine populated entirely by leaping Pierres and Macrons who eagerly bite off the hindlegs of frogs though, tragically, sometimes it is Toulouse-Lautrec who is their victim. Much of recent French history can only be understood in this context. 

He need only suppose that, in spite of the similarity of their names, the man he calls 'Platon' and the man he calls 'Plato' were two distinct major Greek philosophers.

He is welcome to say that English Platonism is different from French Platonism. Plato is a different Meinongian object from Platon who, in turn, is different from Aflatoon- who is something of a zany in Islamic literature. 

The point is not, of course, that codesignative proper names are interchangeable in belief contexts salva veritate,

Nothing is interchangeable, save for some rough and ready purpose, in the context of beliefs or preferences or anything which is epistemic, impredicative (which is the case if consistency is a desiderata) or otherwise subjective. Where there is no truth, truth can't be saved. 

or that they are interchangeable in simple contexts even salvas ignificatione.

They may be for some particular purpose in rough and ready fashion. 

The point is that the absurdities that disquotation

The disquotational principle is a philosophical principle which holds that a rational speaker will accept "p" (a statement, not a proposition)  if and only if they believe p. It is similar to a protocol bound juristic process where evidence you give must accord with what you sincerely believe is the case. The problem here is impredicativity. If there is such a principle or protocol in operation, it is in the speaker's interests to apply strategic considerations to what he or she will claim to believe.  In other words, Leibniz's law and modus pollens are defeated in advance. The safer course would be to say you only believe in the official ideology and any other information you may possess is stuff you are agnostic about. 

plus substitutivity would generate are exactly paralleled by absurdities generated by disquotation plus translation, or even 'disquotation alone' (or: disquotation plus homophonic translation).

No. There is the added problem of 'managing the news' such that you only have 'safe' beliefs and are agnostic about everything else. This is like 'taking the Fifth' or saying 'no comment' when interviewed by the police about an offense you may have committed. 

Still, for some rough and ready purpose, we are welcome to do a bit of 'disquotation' and 'substitutivity'. But there may be a miscarriage of justice or scope for the ex falso quodlibet explosion of nonsense which arises from cascading intensional fallacies.  

Names are used to solve coordination and discoordination games. That is a matter of pragmatics, or economia- not logic or akreibia. Kripke's conclusion is foolish.

There is even less warrant at the present time, in the absence of a better understanding of the paradoxes of this paper,

there are none. A logical fallacy can't give rise to a paradox once the fallacy is named and shamed.  

for the use of alleged failures of substitutivity in belief contexts

they may be useful for some specific, rough and ready, purpose.  

to draw any significant theoretical conclusion about proper names.

Because such names solve coordination/discoordination problems. The relevant theory has to do with what may or may not be Schelling focal solutions at different times or for different people. This is a matter for Sociolinguistics.  

Hard cases make bad 1aw.

That which is not justiciable can't be a 'hard case' nor can it contribute to 'bad law'. True, a particular Bench may draw the borders of justiciability in a foolish manner. But that is bad jurisprudence just as what Kripke et al. have been doing is bad logic. Names are sociolinguistic. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic and don't obey Leibniz's law. True, you can seize upon an intensional fallacy and use it to algorithmically write a nonsensical paper but why bother? Why not say that the French proclivity for leaping around devouring the hindlegs of frogs has seriously endangered the survival of rare breeds of Toulouse-Lautrecs? The true puzzle is why anyone might believe otherwise.