Download pdf - Putnam on Kripke's puzzle

RICHARD GARRETT

P U T N A M O N K R I P K E ' S P U Z Z L E

In a now classical paper, 'A Puzzle About Belief' , Saul Kripke presents a puzzle which, according to Kripke, arises from our common practices of belief ascription - practices which entail our standard practices of translation and disquotation. Roughly, the puzzle is posed as follows: First of all we are told that a certain Frenchman, Pierre, has assented to and also asserted the sentence "Londres est jolie" (which translates into English as "London is pretty"). On these grounds, according to our standard practices of translation and disquotation, we are justified in concluding that Pierre believes that London is pretty. However, we are then told that Pierre (who spoke no English) later moved to London where he learned English by the direct method (without-translation) and that he also learned about London all that the local English speak- ers know about London. Yet, he (like the local inhabitants) still does not realize that London = Londres. Furthermore, the section of Lon- don to which Pierre has moved is rather ugly and he (like the locals around him) never ventures into other (beautiful) areas of London. As a result, Pierre, as an English speaker, both assents to and asserts the English sentence "London is not pretty". According to our standard practices, we are now justified in concluding that Pierre believes that London is not pretty. Putting the two results together, we have been led to say both that Pierre believes that London is pretty and that Pierre believes that London is not pretty, and this certainly seems to be a puzzle - assuming that Pierre is a logical person. Kripke argues at great length to convince us that there is a puzzle here. Indeed, at the end of the paper, he tells us, "The primary moral (of the pap- e r ) . . , is that the puzzle is a puzzle", t

In saying that the puzzle is a puzzle, Kripke means it is a paradox of the same order as the Liar Paradox. Kripke in fact says, "As any theory of truth must deal with the Liar Paradox, so any theory of belief and names must deal with this puzzle". 2 Being content to offer us the puzzle, Kripke makes no attempt to offer us any solution. 3 Hilary Putnam, in his commentary to Kripke's paper, however, does offer us - if not a solution - some suggestions that point in the direction of a

Erkennmis 34: 271-286, 1991. �9 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

272 R I C H A R D G A R R E T T

solution. 4 In this paper, I propose to take up some of those suggestions and to develop them in some detail.

In what follows, I will first state Kripke's puzzle in a more complete form. After that, I will state and discuss the relevant comments by Putnam. I shall then turn to provide a framework for utilizing Putnam's insights. In a fourth section, I shall return to Kripke's puzzle and offer what seems to be something of a solution to his puzzle. Finally, I shall consider some objections that have been raised against the solution proposed.

1. KRIPKE'S PARADOX

As we have seen above, following our standard practices of belief ascription, we were led to say that Pierre believes both that London is pretty and that London is not pretty. Kripke then raises the question: How are we to react to this situation? Kripke considers four possible reactions: (a) We can refuse to respect Pierre's utterances in French. (b) We can refuse to respect Pierre's utterances in English. (c) We can refuse to respect both sets of utterances (in French and in English). (d) We can respect both sets of utterances. Let us consider why Kripke says each of these reactions has serious problems. 5

(a) Pierre has both assented to and asserted the French sentence, "Londres est jolie" and initially there is nothing to distinguish him from any other competent French speaker saying the same thing. Initially, therefore, there is no good reason to single out Pierre's case as excep- tional or therefore to refuse to say that he believes London is pretty. Our grounds for our refusal, therefore, could only be Pierre's later English utterances. But these do not, in the first place, offer us reasons to say Pierre changed his mind, for indeed we may assume Pierre continues to say "Londres est jolie" in spite of his newly acquired English utterances. Nor should we legislate away our original ascription of belief based upon his French utterances simply because of his current English utterances - to do so would have the following absurd conse- quence: We would always have to say that someone's believing something now entails he or she will never in the future say anything contrary to what he or she is now supposed to believe. We can see then that all attempts to refuse to respect Pierre's French utterances seem to lead us to say things that are false, if not absurd.

(b) Similar problems beset our attempts to disrespect Pierre's English

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utterances. Pierre has emphatically asserted the sentence "London is not pret ty" on many occasions and, moreover, he has no inclination to say "London is pret ty". In fact, you may assume if you wish that whenever Pierre hears someone say such a thing, he passionately denies that this is the case. Moreover, we have said that Pierre has learned his English in the same way the natives have (by the direct method) and that he knows as much about London as they do. Our reason for refusing to say that he believes London is not beautiful, therefore, can only be his utterances in French. But this ought not impress us, for suppose a shock were to destroy Pierre's capacity to speak or under- stand French entirely; in that event, there would be nothing to distinguish him from any normal Londoner who sincerely says, "London is not pret ty". Our only way out then would seem to be to say that the shock, in destroying Pierre's memory of French, enables us to say that Pierre now believes that London is not pretty. And this, Kripke argues, is plainly false.

(c) If we disrespect Pierre's utterances in both French and English, we only double the troubles mentioned in (a) and (b) above, since we have then to deal with the combined objections raised above.

(d) Respecting both Pierre's French and English utterances, on the other hand, just seems to land us back in the soup, for then we are led to say that Pierre believes that London (without qualification) both is and is not pretty. In other words, we are stuck with saying of Pierre (who is a logician and who is very logical) that he believes two things which are logically incompatible and that so long as he fails to realize London = Londres, he will go right on believing these two things, no matter how long or how carefully he reflects on the matter. His problem is not one of a lack of understanding or logical clarity, but one of a lack of knowledge.

If we respect both Pierre's English and his French utterances, moreover, matters get even worse than just imagined. We will not only have to ascribe incompatible beliefs to Pierre; we ourselves will have to embrace contradictory beliefs. Kripke changes the story a bit: Suppose that instead of saying "London is not pretty", Pierre is more modest since he is aware that he has only seen a small part of London. Accord- ingly, Pierre refuses to say or to assent to either the English sentence "London is not pret ty" or to the English sentence "London is pret ty" and he simply says he has no belief on the matter. In that case, on the basis of his English utterances, we would conclude that Pierre does not


believe that London is pretty, while on the basis of his French utterances we would still conclude that Pierre believes that London is pretty. Now we are not simply uttering falsehoods, but contradictions. Or so it seems.

Kripke sums up his findings as follows: "Each possibility seems to lead us to say something either plainly false or even downright contradictory. Yet the possibilities appear to be logically exhaustive. This, then, is the paradox". 6

2. P U T N A M ' S COMMENTS

Putnam offers two kinds of remarks on Kripke's puzzle, those concerned with the philosophy of language and those concerned with the philosophy of mind. The former remarks have to do with the scope of Kripke's puzzle and in particular with the contention that the puzzle arises with respect to general terms as well as with proper names. 7 I shall have nothing to say about these observations here, but will instead focus upon Putnam's remarks concerning the philosophy of mind. It is certain of these remarks which I believe suggest how Kripke's puzzle might be dealt with. Putnam offers us two distinct approaches to the problem and I will consider each in turn.

Putnam's first suggestion is derived from a notion of a very general sort that Putnam has with respect to systems of descriptions. According to Putnam, " . . . whole ways of talking which are formally incompat- i b l e . . , may be equivalent descriptions". 8 An example of this (outside of the philosophy of mind) may be found in mathematical theory. Thus, one theory might say that mathematical heaven is made up of sets only some of which are functions, while a competing theory might say that mathematical heaven is made up of functions only some of which are sets. Each theory may account for all of the same facts and they can, even be formally equivalent and still be incompatible with one another. 9 Kripke's paradox, Putnam suggests, may be looked upon in a similar way, as an example of equivalent, incompatible ways of talking about beliefs. ~0

Although I am quite sympathetic to Putnam's general point that there are such equivalent, incompatible ways of talking, I am not sure this is the best way to look at Kripke's paradox. For one thing, the alternatives Putnam suggests do not seem to deal with the same facts. One alternative way of talking about Pierre that Putnam suggests is to describe


Pierre's situation by saying " . . . that Pierre believes that London is ugly and that he does not know that Pierre believes that London is Londres" . n But this seems to entail denying or least ignoring that Pierre believes that London is pretty. Hence, this first alternative ap- pears to respect Pierre's English utterances, but not his French utterances. The other alternative Putnam offers is to say, " . . . he (Pierre) believes that London is pretty and he does not know that he is living in London" . 12 But this seems to entail denying or at least ignoring that Pierre believes that London is not pretty. This second alternative seems to respect Pierre's French utterances, but not his English utterances. Since these two alternatives respect different facts (about Pierre), it is hard to see how they could he said to account for the same facts or to be equivalent. Moreover, since each alternative disrespects some of Pierre's utterances (either in English or in French), each proposal has to deal with the problems discussed by Kripke just noted above. Finally, Putnam himself does not seem to consider this the very best way to deal with the paradox. This leads us to a second, distinct suggestion Putnam makes, the suggestion I have found quite useful.

Professor Putnam alternatively states " . . . I think probably the best thing is to abandon the notion of having beliefs about London in the case of Pierre and to say that Pierre believes that London is pretty under the description 'Londres' and believes that it is ugly under the description 'London' ".13 Properly qualified, a view of this sort strikes me as the right sort of response to make to Kripke's paradox.

Some of the qualifications that need to be made have to do with some remarks Kripke makes, which seem to anticipate part of what Putnam is saying. In particular, Kripke makes some remarks with respect to Frege-Russellian ideas (hereafter, descriptivist ideas) about proper names which left unattended could appear to block Putnam's sort of move. In anticipation of descriptivist type moves such as Put- nam's, Kripke argues as follows:

� 9 it may appear (to the descriptivist) 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 . . . . But they (meaning such descriptions of 'what is really going on') 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 descriptions, but London) is pretty? No answer has yet been given. M

Kripke also raises a second sort of consideration against descriptivist


type attempts to circumvent his puzzle. Kripke argues that the same puzzle can arise even when the identifying properties associated with 'London' and 'Londres' are exactly the same. Suppose, for example, Pierre identifies the referent of 'London' as 'The largest city in England' and 'Londres' as 'La plus grande ville d'Angleterre'. In that case both descriptions describe the very same property - the property of being the largest city in England. Nonetheless, if Pierre does not know that England = Angleterre, he will not realize that both descriptions specify the very same property. But this means that he will also fail to realize that London = Londres and will, therefore, still assert both 'London is not pretty' as well as 'Londres est jolie'; so we get the same old problem all over again.~5

Nor, says Kripke, will it do to propose to define 'England' or 'Angle- terre', for the problem can reappear at any level. Kripke sees no convincing reason for believing that an 'ultimate' level might be reached where the defining properties are 'pure' properties not involving proper names (nor natural kind terms or related terms).~6

These points all appear to militate against our saying (as Putnam does) that Pierre believes that London is pretty under the description 'Londres' and believes that is it ugly under the description 'London.' Kripke's first point was that this sort of answer still leaves open the question concerning what Pierre believes about London i tself- which Kripke says was the original question. His second point was that 'Lon- don' and 'Londres' may be taken to be associated with the exact same property (and so equivalent descriptions) and the problem can still arise. His final point would be that this sort of thing can happen at any level, that there is no ultimate level to be reached.

These points notwithstanding, Putnam is, I believe, closer to getting it right here than is Kripke. In order to say why I think this is the case, I will first have to digress a bit in order to make some rather general observations concerning the nature of identifying a referent in speech or in thought.

3. O U R I D E N T I F Y I N G K N O W L E D G E O F R E F E R E N T S

A first point worth noting is the difference between having an identifying knowledge of a referent vs. having a knowledge of the thing's essence or defining properties. An example will serve to clarify this distinction: Suppose it turned out that President Reagan was really a


robot, planted on Earth by extraterrestrials. Were this the case (as it could be), we would all of us have been quite mistaken about Reagan's defining properties or essence, since we have all along thought he was a living human being from earth such as ourselves. Nonetheless, we still can be said to have been referring to Reagan all along and, moreover, to have known what particular thing it is we have been referring to. Hence, we may be said to have had an identifying knowledge of him (or it) inspite of being quite mistaken about his (or its) essence or defining properties. Our concern in this paper is with our identifying knowledge of referents, not with our knowledge of their essences or defining properties.

A second point I would like to make concerns the relativity of a person's identifying knowledge of a referent. Thus, Smith may identify Wilson as the person Smith met at a party two nights ago, while Jones may identify Wilson as the person who helped her change a tire two weeks ago. And again, Evans may. identify Wilson in a third way, as the new person who she heard is moving into her neighborhood. All three (Smith, Jones and Evans) may discuss Wilson with perfect ease, without ever mentioning their respective identifying information. They may realize they are all speaking of the same Wilson simply in virtue of some property that prompts their recognition of Wilson (e.g., the fact that Wilson is seven feet tall) even though that property is not unique to this particular Wilson (because there are other Wilsons who are seven feet tall) and so not a property that identifies or uniquely singles out Wilson. (It is a common error among philosophers to confuse properties that merely prompt recognition of a referent with those that uniquely single out or identify a referent.)

Identifying information may also vary, not only from person to person, but from designator to designator for the same person. Suppose Mary meets a friendly old man on a bus who calls himself 'Jack'. She may never realize that this delightful old man is John Hillford - an eccentric millionaire she has heard of (and who unknown to her happens to like to take bus rides every now and then). Mary's identifying knowledge of the old man, therefore, varies according to the designator used. The identifying knowledge she associates with the name 'Jack' is simply her recollection of the delightful old man she once met on a bus, while the identifying knowledge she associates with the name ~John Hillford' is the description 'Robesonia's wealthiest man' (someone she mis- takenly believes she has never met in person).


Identifying information can even vary from context to context for the same designator. Suppose a woman is asked to point out a thief who robbed her, but that she is unable to do so because (unknown to her) the thief was wearing a fake mustache and wig at the time of the robbery. Let us further suppose that she had discovered the man's name at the time of the robbery because while he was robbing her, a handkerchief bearing his name fell unnoticed by him to the ground). What the woman knows then is the following: She knows that the man who robbed her is named 'Mike Lessing' and she also knows the man she is now looking at is named 'Mike Lessing'. What she does not know is that she is dealing with the same Mike Lessing in both cases. In the first instance, the identifying information associated with the name 'Mike Lessing' is her memory of the man who robbed her. In the second instance, the identifying information associated with the name 'Mike Lessing' is her current perception of Mike Lessing. Her problem is that she can't connect these two distinct bits of identifying information (in this case because the earlier perception and the current perception are too dissimilar). There are numerous ways we succeed in making connections where the identifying knowledge is distinct in this way. That is, there are many ways of linking such isolated bits of identifying knowledge. The crucial point here is that our identifying knowledge of a referent often does vary in this way even when the same name or designator is used.

This last point leads us to another point: It is one thing to identify an object. It is quite another to re-identify it. In the case in point, the woman has an identifying knowledge of Mike Lessing. Indeed what she has is two distinct bits of such identifying knowledge. What she is lacking is not an identifying knowledge of the referent, but a re-identifying knowledge of him. She needs some further piece of information that will enable her to see she is dealing with a single man. It is worth noting that the completely successful use of a proper name presupposes, not simply our ability to identify the named object, but to re-identify that object again and again in each new context as well.

We are now ready to consider the minimum sort of knowledge that may count as an identifying knowledge of a referent. I believe it is simply this: Anything I know about an object which is uniquely true of that object will suffice to enable me to single it out and so to refer to it in thought or in speech. If this is right, then there are many instances

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of identifying knowledge that have gone unnoticed. One example of this is what might be described as story relative identification of a referent. This sort of identification can best be explained by telling a story about a story: Suppose a certain Mrs. Aires loses her diamond necklace and, assuming it stolen, blames it on a certain stranger (with 'Lucky Roger' written on his sweatshirt) because he was seen by her in the vicinity of her house around the time she lost her necklace. Let us further assume that although Roger was only seen on that one occasion and only by Mrs. Aires and nothing else is known about him, all kinds of wild stories start circulating about him and how he stole the diamond necklace etc. But let us assume that the wildest of these stories is the one that Gabby (the town Gossip) tells Gullible (Gabby's best friend). Let us further assume Gabby never mentions the fact that Mrs. Aires saw Roger: In a word everything Gabby tells Gullible about Roger (except that his name is Roger) is pure fiction. It would seem that Gullible can not possibly have any identifying knowledge about Roger. But this is not so. For Gullible may he said to know one true thing about Roger (beyond the fact that his name is 'Roger'). Gullible correctly, and with due warrant, can surmise that Roger is the one that everyone is talking about and who is accused of stealing Mrs. Aires' necklace. Since what Gullible knows about Roger is something that is uniquely true of Roger, we may say, that Gullible has an identifying knowledge of Roger. I call such identifying knowledge 'story relative identification' since the only identifying thing known about the named referent is that they are the unique thing everyone (in a given community) is telling certain stories about. It is possible that our identifying knowledge of some historical characters (e.g., Robin Hood) is entirely of this sort.

Now there is a point to realizing just how minimal our identifying knowledge of a referent can be: It can help us to find such knowledge in places not previously suspected and so to see that such identifying knowledge really is always present whenever we refer to anything in thought or in speech. I can think of no exception to this rule, nor has anyone with whom I have discussed this point. I propose to say, therefore, that we cannot refer to anything in speech or in thought and so cannot have a belief about anything unless we have an identifying knowledge of that thing. A contrasting example may help to bring this point home.

Suppose a child happened upon the sentence 'Plato was here' written


on a fence and, fancying the idea, proceeded to write that same sentence all over town even though the child had no prior notion of whom Plato was, no notion of who wrote the original sentence and even no notion whether or not the original author was referring to anyone or anything at all in using the name 'Plato'. The child (under such circumstances) could not be said to be referring to Plato nor to anyone, for they would lack even Gullible's story relative identifying knowledge of the referent. The author of the original sentence may of course have been an eccentric philosopher, humorously referring to the Ancient Greek, Plato. The point, however, is that the child does not know (and has no warrant to assume) who wrote that original sentence, why they wrote it or whether or not they were referring to anyone or anything at all in using the name 'Plato' in the original sentence. Hence, the child lacks the kind of knowledge that Gullible possesses and, for that reason alone, cannot be said to be referring to anyone when they reproduce the original sentence all over town. This shows, I believe, that an identifying knowledge is presupposed by any object we refer to in thought or in speech and so about which we have any sort of belief.

There is one final point I need to make about our identifying knowledge of referents: The identifying knowledge we associate with a designator is, as a rule, a very different thing from the sense or meaning of that designator. This is most easily seen by considering definite descriptions. Now there are, no doubt, instances where the sense of a definite description does provide us with the identifying knowledge we have of an object. An example of this would be the definite description 'the center of the Earth' . Here is an instance where the sense of a designator is the basis of our identifying knowledge of the object desig- nated. But there are cases where the definite description used, although it prompts our recognition of the object, does not serve as the basis of our identifying knowledge of that object. Take the case of Roger who is believed to have stolen Mrs. Aire's necklace. Since Roger is generally believed to have stolen the necklace, everyone can refer to him as ' the thief ' and no one will have any difficulty in knowing it is Roger who is being referred to. So the description 'the thief ' will prompt recognition of the referent, but it can't possibly constitute either the speaker's or the listener's identifying knowledge of Roger, for Roger is, in fact, not a thief at all. It is wrong, therefore, to confuse the identifying knowledge we associate with a designator, on the one hand, with the sense or meaning of a designator itself, on the other.


4. K R I P K E ' S P U Z Z L E R E S O L V E D

We are now in a position to take advantage of Putnam's remarks and to see how they can, if carefully interpreted and slightly modified, provide us with a possible solution to Kripke's puzzle. Let us consider Putnam's second suggestion in two parts.

The first part of the suggestion, recall, is " . . . to abandon the notion of having beliefs about London in the case of P i e r r e . . . ". This is the part of the suggestion I would like to modify. But first we need to be clear about what it is we are to abandon according to this first part of the suggestion. I take it we are to abandon the notion of having beliefs about London itself i.e., about the bare object London as opposed to London in some way qualified (e.g., London qualified by a certain identifying knowledge of it). Now the modification I wish to propose is simply that we abandon the notion of anyone's having a belief about any object itself and not just in Pierre's special sort of case. That is, I want to propose (what follows directly from what I argued in Section 3 above) that we entirely abandon the notion of having a belief about a bare object without any qualification whatever, for I hold that all of our beliefs about any obiect always presuppose and so must be qualified by the identifying knowledge we have of that object. If this proposal is correct, then Kripke's question concerning whether Pierre does or does not believe that London itself (London unqualified in anyway) is Pretty is the wrong question to ask, since neither Pierre nor anyone else could ever have that sort of belief about anything at all. This leads us to the second part of Putnam's second suggestion.

The first part of Putnam's suggestion was (as we have just seen) that we "abandon the notion of having (unqualified) beliefs about London ( i t s e l f ) . . . : The second part of his suggestion was that (in place of talking about Pierre's beliefs about London itself) we say " . . . that Pierre believes that London is pretty under the description 'Londres' and believes that it is ugly under the description 'London' ". It depends how you want to read this, whether it works or not. If you take Putnam to literally be talking of the names 'London' and 'Londres ' as descriptions, this would be a surprising thing for Professor Putnam to say. For I do not believe that Professor Putnam really thinks of names such as 'London' or 'Londres' as being descriptions at all. Read this way, I don't think much can be done with the suggestion and in any case I do not think that this is how Putnam means it to be taken. I


read him to mean something roughly like the following: Pierre believes that London identified in the way associated with the name 'Londres' is pretty and believes that London identified in the way associated with the name 'London' is ugly (or not pretty). Unders tood this way, Putnam's suggestion frees us from Kripke's paradox.

First of all, this way of looking at matters allows us to respect all of Pierre's utterances (in both French and in English) and so to be fair to all of the facts. Secondly, it permits us to see clearly just what is going on with Pierre. Pierre has a certain bit of identifying knowledge of London associated with the name 'Londres ' and a different bit of identifying knowledge associated with the name 'London' . His problem is that he can't re-identify London i.e., he has found no linking information that enables him to see that the city identified in the two cases is one and the same city.

Kripke is of course correct that the same identifying property would be involved in the case where Pierre associates the description "La plus Grande ville d 'Angleterre ' with the name 'Londres' and the description 'the largest city in England' with the name 'London ' " . However, although the exact sameproperty is involved in such a case, the identifying knowledge is not the same at all. In the first case, the knowledge entailed involves a knowledge of French and a certain additional identifying knowledge of the country England which is associated with the name 'Angleterre'. In the second case the knowledge involved entails a knowledge of English and a certain additional identifying knowledge of the country England which is associated with the name 'England'. Now if the identifying knowledge associated with 'Angleterre ' and 'England' were exactly the same, then it would be impossible for the puzzle to arise, for in that case Pierre would also know that London = Londres. So in the case imagined, since Kripke stipulates that the problem does arise, we must also assume that Pierre does associate a different identifying knowledge with 'England' and 'Angleterre ' respectively. As a result, Pierre also fails to see that the descriptions 'La plus grande ville d 'Angleterre ' and 'The largest city in England' describe the exact same property. This in turn prevents him from seeing that London = Londres and so also that the beliefs he holds really are incompatible and need to be revised in some way. Hence, the problem has to do with distinct bits of identifying knowledge, not with distinct sets of properties.

We are now also in a position to explain how we can say both that Pierre believes that London is pretty and that Pierre does not believe


that London is pretty without contradicting ourselves: Pierre believes that London identified in the way associated with the name 'Londres' is pretty, however Pierre does not believe that London identified in the way associated with the name 'London' is pretty. That is: It is true that Pierre believes that London identified in the way associated with the name 'Londres' is pretty. Yet, it is not true that Pierre believes that London identified in the way associated with the name 'London' is pretty. Since the statement claimed to be true and the statement said to not be true are different statements and since neither entails the denial of the other, there is nothing contradictory in our saying this. Indeed we are, I think, correctly describing the situation Kripke has imagined for us.

5 . O B J E C T I O N S TO T H E S O L U T I O N P R O P O S E D

Objections have been raised against the above proposal and it will be useful to consider some of these, especially those that may rather naturally occur to readers in general.

(1) A first objection is that Kripke has already anticipated the kind of solution proposed above (on page 259 of his 'A Puzzle About Be- lief'). What is suggested is that Kripke has already raised a serious if not lethal obstacle to solutions such as I have posed. For Kripke argues there that such solutions (although possibly straight forward descriptions of matters) never really answer his original question: "Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?" What Kripke's question asks about is Pierre's belief about London itself, without any qualification of any sort. And accounts such as mine side step the issue by talking about Pierre's beliefs about London as qualified by Pierre's identifying knowledge of London (or by descriptions or properties or by something else).

If such an objection has occurred to the reader, then I admit that I am guilty as charged. However, following Putnam's fruitful suggestion, I have cleared the way (in my case) for such a move by arguing (on pages 11-15 above) that Kripke's original question is out of order, because there simply is no such thing as having a belief about anything without also having some sort of identifying knowledge of that thing. If this is right, then Kripke's objection that accounts such as mine have failed to answer his original question utterly fails to be damaging.

(2) Another objection that has been raised is that I have not con-


sidered Kripke's Paderewski case. My answer to this sort of an objection is that I don't think that the variations in the details of the examples dreamed up can in any way revitalize Kripke's puzzle. I could of course be quite wrong in saying this. However, I am inclined to think this way for a reason: I am inclined to think this way because as I see it the spell cast by Kripke's puzzle is entirely dependent upon taking his originalquestion seriously and this in turn I have argued is something we ought not do. For in fact people don't have bare, unqualified beliefs about anything, only beliefs about things via this or that bit of identifying knowledge they have of that thing. I believe that all of Kripke's examples depend upon ignoring this fact. If I am right in saying this, then the multiplication of examples (however ingeniously contrived) is not going to change things and should not trouble us so long as we attend to the role the person's identifying knowledge is playing in the example cited.

Thus consider Kripke's Paderewski case. Peter has heard the name 'Paderewski' used referring in two distinct story-contexts, one a story- context concerning Paderewski the musician and another concerning Paderewski the politician. As a result of the first, Peter believes that Paderewski had musical talent, while as a result of the second he believes that Paderewski had no musical talent. If we attend carefully to Peter 's identifying knowledge in these two cases, there is nothing puzzling about this.

Let us assume that in both cases, Peter has the minimum identifying knowledge of Paderewski possible, namely story-relative identifying knowledge of Paderewski. This means that, on the one hand, he has identified the referent of the name 'Paderewski' as the person of whom various musical stories have been told and also, on the other hand, as the person of whom various political stories have been told. Peter 's different (logically incompatible) beliefs arise only because he fails to realize that the two sets of stories (the musical ones and the political ones) are about one and the same man. That is, Peter fails to re-identify his referent as the same referent across different story-contexts. What he lacks is information that will enable him to link the two together, since in this case the sameness of the name used does not suffice (as it sometimes does). Once we see that this is what is going on, the mystery is dispelled.

(3) A final objection that I would like to consider is that the proposed solution is, at best, only partial. It has been argued that I have not


addressed any particular issues having to do with the problems Kripke raises over the role of the disquotation principle in belief ascription or about a recursive semantics for belief sentences which fits into a recursive semantics for a considerable fragment of English. It similarly may have occurred to the reader that I ought to have said something about these or perhaps other questions discussed in the literature.

In response to this sort of an objection, I can only re-emphasize that if the above arguments are correct, then there just is nothing left to be puzzled about at all as far as Kripke's puzzle is concerned. I am inclined to think, therefore, that unless the above analysis is off, Kripke's puzzle calls nothing into question, since it is not - any longer - a puzzle at all. I am not sure I have in fact accomplished what I have set out to accomplish, but I am reasonably confident that if I have, then in that case the puzzle should cease to be a puzzle at all.

6. C O N C L U S I O N

Following Putnam's highly suggestive remarks, it has been argued, on the one hand, that no answer need be given to Kripke's question about London itself, since our belief about any object always entails some sort of identifying knowledge of it. On the other hand, it has been argued tha t once you assume such identifying knowledge, all of the paradoxical features of Kripke's puzzle can be adequately accounted for. If there is something to all of this, then Kripke's puzzle should not puzzle us any more.

N O T E S

1 For details see, Saw Kripke: 1979, 'A Puzzle About Belief', pp. 254-258. 2 I b i d , p. 267.

3 On page 267 of 'A Puzzle About Belief', Kripke says, "'The primary m o r a l . . , is that the puzzle is a puzzle". And earlier on page 239, he says, " . .. my main thesis is a simple one: that the puzzle is a puzzle. And as a corollary, that any account of belief must ultimately come to grips with it. Any speculation as to solutions can be differed". 4 See Hilary Putnam's 'Comments ' (1979). s Kripke states these four alternatives and says that they are exhaustive. See pp. 256- 259 for Kripke's discussion of these alternatives. 6 'A Puzzle About Belief', pp. 258. 7 'Comments ' , pp. 284. a Ibid. pp. 286.

286 RICHARD GARRETT

This example is not my own. If memory serves be right, this was an example given by Putnam during one of the sessions of the NEH seminar. ~o 'Comments', pp. 286-287. i1 Ibid. pp. 287. 12 Ibid. pp. 287. 13 Ibid. pp. 287. 14 'A Puzzle About Belief', pp. 259-260. is Ibid. pp. 261-262. 16 Ibid. pp. 262-263.

REFERENCES

Kripke, S.: 1979, 'A Puzzle About Belief', in A. Margolis (ed.), Meaning and Use, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 239-83.

Putnam, H.: 1979, ~Comments', in A. Margolis (ed.), Meaning and Use, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 284-288.

Manuscript submitted May 4, 1988 Final version received July 21, 1990

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