Oh, wa. I just realized that this
example from Gareth Evans in 1973 is the
plot of the show Madmen. Oh, okay. Uh,
let me explain that. So far in this
course, we've been talking about proper
names like Napoleon. And at this point,
there are two dominant theories
explaining proper names.
We've got Sorl's cluster of descriptions
theory from 1958.
According to Sorl's theory, you have a
name and associated with that name,
Napoleon Bonapart, is a bunch of
information, a cluster of descriptions.
And this information is stuff about the
object or the person, right? So Napoleon
conquered most of Europe. He was
imprisoned on Elba, which is an island
in the Mediterranean Sea. He crowned
himself emperor. We'll talk about that a
little bit later, but he crowned
himself. like he took the crown away
from the pope because the pope wasn't
good enough to crown him and he just put
the crown on his own head. Anyway,
there's this cluster of descriptions or
this body of information and then the
name refers to the guy. This is
Napoleon. I drew like a little hat
because because I think he mostly wears
a hat. This guy is the reference of the
name because he fits enough of these
descriptions in the cluster. Then in
1970, this young prodigy named Saul
Krypkkey comes along. He attacks Sorl's
theory, shows that it can't be right,
and then gives his own theory or the the
outline of a theory, which is a causal
chain theory. On Krypky's theory, this
whole cluster of information, although
there is that cluster, it doesn't
establish the reference between the name
and the object, right? The fact that
this is the thing that this is the name
of. Instead, the way it works on
Krypky's theory is that when Napoleon or
anyone or anything when Napoleon was a
baby, his parents looked at him or
whatever, somebody and they pointed at
him or something like that and they
dubbed him Napoleon. And then his
parents told other people. They said,
"Oh, uh, we had a baby and we named him
Napoleon." And then these other people,
even if they did not meet the baby yet,
they knew about the name and they
thought to themselves something along
the lines of, "Now I'm going to use the
name Napoleon and I'm going to use it to
refer to whichever baby these people use
their name Napoleon to refer to." And
then there gets established this causal
chain. This is my attempt to draw a
literal chain or whatever. And the chain
is people passing on the name to each
other. And everyone that's linked in the
chain is intending to use the name to
refer to whoever the the last person in
the chain was using that name to refer
to. And so then now when I use the name
Napoleon Bonapart, I never met the guy
or whatever because he died some time
ago. My use of this name refers back to
him because there's a chain linking me
to him. A chain of people passing on the
name. Okay, those are the two theories,
but they both have problems.
These are the problems. I'm going to go
over them in a sec, but what's going to
happen is that Gareth Evans publishes
this paper in 1973. There are very few
photographs of Evans available. The
reason for that is that Evans died of
cancer in 1980 at the age of 34, but
even before that, he had made enormous
contributions to the philosophy of mind
and the philosophy of language. And this
is one of them. This is the one of the
big ones, maybe the the biggest. First
he sort of reiterated these problems
which crypty had pointed out problems
for Sorl's theory. But then he
introduced these problems that no one
had realized for Crypty's theory. So
both of these theories are going to have
problems. And what Evans does is he
figures out what's right about Sorl's
theory and what's right about Crypty's
theory and he just sort of takes those
parts, keeps them, gets rid of all the
extra stuff, builds his own theory. And
that's like in my opinion the correct
theory of proper names. like like we've
been talking about proper names this
whole semester and it just ends here
with Evans. Evans just in my opinion
gets it right. And then next we're going
to move on to definite descriptions.
We're going to read Bert and Russell.
But we're not there yet. We've still got
to just get through these problems and
then introduce Evans's theory. Okay, so
the Girdle Schmidt problem. This was a
problem for Sorl's theory that Kryky
introduced. I'm not going to go over
that because we spent a whole lecture on
it. You can find that video linked in
the description. In the Evans paper that
we read for today, Evans introduces his
own example, this Goliath example, which
is really just the same as the Girdle
Schmidt example. It's just a new version
of it or whatever. Here's how the
example goes. What's the thing that most
people know about Goliath? It was that
he was killed by David. David before he
became king, this is like in the Bible
or whatever. David like had a little
slingshot or whatever, like a slingy
thing, and he threw a rock and hit
Goliath in the head and killed him.
Goliath was like a big strong Philistine
or something, some one of the bad guys
or whatever and and David killed him.
That's the main piece of information in
this cluster of information, this
cluster of descriptions for the name
Goliath. The main piece of information
is that David killed him. But suppose
that David didn't really kill him.
Suppose that David actually killed
someone else and someone else killed
Goliath or whatever. If that was the
case, who would the name Goliath refer
to? If it turned out that David had
actually killed someone else, well,
Sorl's theory would tell us that the
name Goliath just refers to whoever fits
the descriptions. So, the name Goliath
would really be the name of some other
person who David killed. But that's the
wrong result. Right? Sorl's theory gets
the wrong result. The right result is
that the name Goliath still refers to
Goliath, whoever Goliath was, even if it
turns out that David didn't kill him.
What's happening is that Sorl is forced
into this result because of what his
theory is, right? The theory just says
that the reference, the reference of the
name, whatever the name refers to, the
reference is just whatever fits the
cluster of descriptions. And so if some
other, you know, soldier or whatever
fits the description killed by David,
then that other soldier has to be the
reference of the name Goliath. Crypty's
theory avoids this problem because the
theory is that the reference is whatever
is linked by the chain of causation and
the chain of causation of the name
Goliath goes all the way back to like
the little baby Goliath. So Kryky's
theory just gets a totally different
result. But Evans points out and he's
the first one to point this out.
Krypky's theory has these other
problems. The most famous example that
Evans presents involves the island
nation of Madagascar. This is the
example that the paper has become most
famous for, even though it really
appears in just a few sentences. The
explorer Marco Polo was on the African
mainland and he asked some locals what
the name of a piece of land was. Like he
pointed to some land over there and he
said, "What's it called?" And they told
him that it was called Madagascar. But
they were talking about this area of the
African mainland, what is part of
present- day Mosamb beek. But Marco Polo
got confused and didn't understand. He
thought that they were telling him that
Madagascar was the name of this big
island off the coast. So he started
using the name Madagascar to talk about
this island. And because he was very
influential or whatever, everyone else
started calling that island Madagascar.
And now without a doubt, Madagascar is
the name not of some part of the African
mainland, but of this big island. It's
the second largest island nation in the
world after Indonesia. Ah, but here's
the thing. Crypty's theory gets the
wrong result when it comes to the name
Madagascar. The way that this whole
causal chain works is that person A
teaches person B some name and person B
intends to use that name to refer to the
same thing that person A was using that
name to refer to. Well, Marco Polo
wanted to use the name Madagascar to
refer to the same thing as the locals
who were teaching him that name. So that
link in the chain is preserved. And that
link in the chain goes all the way back
to the initial dubbing or baptism
ceremony where someone said, "Okay, this
bit of land, we're going to call it
Madagascar." Except for that bit of land
that was named officially or dubbed
Madagascar at some point in the past. We
don't know how far back. That bit of
land was on the African mainland. The
causal chain of Krypky's theory leads
back to a piece of the African mainland.
So Krypky's theory has to say that
Madagascar the name refers to this area
in Mosamb beek but it doesn't. The name
Madagascar just definitely doesn't. It
definitely refers to this giant island.
And Evans gives another example that
illustrates the same problem with crypts
theory. The example of a baby swap. So,
you got two babies and they get their
names and they've been named and then
sometime after they're named, maybe when
they're like 2 weeks old or something,
they get swapped by accident or
whatever. And then they go on to live
their whole lives. Suppose that one of
these babies practices over and over,
gets really good at basketball, and
becomes the point guard for the New York
Knicks, and everyone calls him Jaylen
Brunson. Krypky's theory gets the result
that in this scenario, the name Jaylen
Brunson doesn't refer to this guy who
plays for the New York Knicks and who
lived his whole life being called Jaylen
Brunson. Instead, according to Crypty's
theory, we just follow the chain all the
way back and the chain actually leads to
this other baby that was swapped with
Jaylen like 2 weeks after they were
born. But that's just the wrong result.
Like, that's bonkers. The name Jaylen
Brunson clearly refers to this guy who's
the point guard for the New York Knicks
and who everyone calls Jaylen Brunson
and he answers to the name Jaylen
Brunson and that's just his name
obviously and you can start to sniff
what's going wrong with Kryky's theory,
right? Jaylen Brunson has built up this
whole portfolio, this whole cluster of
descriptions, all this information about
him, that he plays in the NBA and that
his dad is one of the coaches of the
same team and that he used to play for
the Dallas Mavericks and all this stuff.
And Krypky's theory just ignores that.
It just ignores this whole cluster of
information. And by ignoring that and
just focusing on the causal chain,
Krypky's theory gets the wrong result.
Okay, so both of these theories are
wrong. What Evans realizes is that this
whole bit about the cluster of
descriptions. That's right. There is a
cluster of descriptions or a body of
information that's associated with a
name and that's important. That's
somehow important. But also Evans
realizes that the notion of causation,
that's important, too. The absurdity in
supposing that the denotation of our
contemporary use of the name Aristotle
could be some unknown item whose doings
are causally isolated from our body of
information is strictly parallel to okay
stop right there for a second. Evans is
drawing an analogy on Surl's theory.
There's no need for a causal connection.
And Evans thinks this is absurd. The
absurdity of thinking that all you need
to do is fit some cluster of
descriptions and and you don't need to
be causally related. The absurdity in
that is analogous to something else.
He's going to introduce some other kind
of absurdity. Here we go. The absurdity
in supposing that one might be seeing
something one has no causal contact with
solely upon the ground that there is a
splendid match between object and visual
impression. Okay. So to explain this I
need to draw a diagram.
So there's a person right and they have
an eyeball. This is their eyeball. And
they're looking at a shoe. This is my
drawing of a shoe. And so the light
bounces off the shoe and goes into the
eyeball. That's some causation right
there. And in the mind of this person,
there's a visual image, like a little
picture of the shoe in their head.
Suppose also that there's an additional
shoe. There's some other shoe. This is
it. It's a thousand miles away. This
person has never interacted with it.
They've never been in the same room as
this other shoe or anything like that.
But the image in their mind actually
resembles this shoe a little bit more
than it resembles this shoe. like maybe
there's a cloud in here blocking uh
their sight of this shoe and so they
don't get a perfectly accurate picture
in their head and the picture that they
do end up with actually matches this
other shoe a thousand miles away. Here's
the question. Which shoe are they
seeing? The answer Evans thinks is like
obviously they're seeing this shoe, the
shoe that is causally related to them.
The shoe that the light is bouncing off
of that's going into their eye, hitting
their retina and causing this mental
image. That's the shoe that they're
seeing. They're not seeing this shoe.
This shoe is a thousand miles away. They
don't even know it exists. They have no
interaction with it. Just because this
shoe matches or fits, that doesn't mean
that they're seeing this one. And that's
kind of how absurd Sorl's theory is.
Evans thinks, right? Surl's theory just
says that you've got a match. Whatever
object fits or matches the cluster of
descriptions, the cluster of
descriptions is like an image, like a
little drawing in your head, a little a
little drawing with words. That's what
descriptions are. And since it would be
absurd to leave causation out of the
story here of what this person is
seeing, it would also be absurd to leave
causation out of the story of what names
refer to. Evans thinks that Krykkey is
right about the importance of causation,
but he's wrong about this whole link in
a chain thing. Like, forget about that.
And he thinks that Sirill is right that
there's this body of information
associated with the name. But the
mistake is to think that the reference
has to fit that body of information. No,
no, no. Forget about fitting the
information. That's not it. What Evans
is about to do is he's going to produce
a new theory of proper names that's
going to keep this cluster of
descriptions, but it's going to involve
a different way of relating to that
cluster of descriptions. To illustrate
what's going on here, think about the
description has a thick head of hair.
One way that someone could be related to
this description is that they could fit
it. They have this characteristic. They
have a thick head of hair. I don't
really anymore, but I'm sort of coming
to accept it. However, there's this
other way that someone could be related
to this description. They could be the
source, the causal source of that
description. So, for example, if I was
wearing a wig, you might look at my head
and you might think that it's real hair
and you might say, "Oh, this guy, he's
got a thick head of hair." In that case,
I would not fit the description cuz I
don't have a thick head of hair. But I
would be the source of the description.
Like you had that description pop into
your mind and maybe then you associated
that description with my name. You put
it in the cluster of descriptions. You
thought of that description. It
originated from me. And someone can be
the causal source of some description
without actually fitting the
description. So Evans tosses out this
idea of fitting, combines the causation
with the cluster of descriptions and
produces his own theory that looks like
this.
The reference is the dominant causal
source of the cluster of descriptions.
So he keeps the cluster of descriptions
part from Sorl's theory and he just says
that the reference of a proper name is
not what fits those descriptions but
what causes them which he gets from
Crypty's theory. The real weakness of
the description theory lies not so much
in the idea that the intended reference
is determined in a more or less
complicated way by the associated
information. The problem with Surl's
theory is not that there's some
associated information, some cluster of
descriptions that helps to determine the
reference. That's not the problem with
Sorl's theory. The problem instead is
but the specific form the determination
was supposed to take fit. The problem
was in thinking that it's by fitting
those descriptions that the reference is
selected or whatever. It's not by
fitting, it's by causing. There is
something absurd in supposing that the
intended reference of some perfectly
ordinary use of a name by a speaker
could be some item utterly isolated
causally from the user's community and
culture simply in virtue of the fact
that it fits better than anything else
the cluster of descriptions he
associates with the name. That's the
exact same point that we illustrated
with that visual metaphor. The point is,
it's absurd that the reference would be
something that's causally isolated just
because that this other thing far away
that no one interacts with happens to
fit some descriptions. I would agree
with Krypkkey in thinking that the
absurdity resides in the absence of any
causal relation between the item
concerned and the speaker. But it seems
to me that he, that is Krypkkey, has
mislocated the causal relation. The
important causal relation lies between
that item's states and doings and the
speaker's body of information. Evans
thinks that the relevant causal
connection is between the object in the
world and what it does and the
information or the descriptions, not
between the items being dubbed with a
name and the speaker's contemporary use
of it. The relevant causation is not
that causal chain that Cryptia
identified between this dubbing
ceremony, this naming ceremony, and then
the contemporary use of the name. That's
a mistake. Okay, but what about this
word dominant? We know that the
causation comes from Krypky's theory.
The cluster of descriptions comes from
Sorl's theory. But what does it mean for
something to be the dominant causal
source of some descriptions or some
information? Evans uses this bonkers
like Napoleon diagram to illustrate
this. And so I'm going to explain how to
read this diagram and what's going on.
As background information, you have to
know that at the end of the 1700s, there
was a revolution in France where they
made this machine that could chop
people's heads off and they chopped off
all the heads of all the rich people and
then a bunch of the poor people, too. a
lot of head chopping. During this time,
there was some random, not important
soldier named Napoleon Bonapart. And he
managed to avoid getting his head
chopped off. And then he rose to become
the leader of this nation, France. And
he thought to himself, you know, I'm
good at war. So what if we just declare
war on the entire world and try to
conquer it? And he did. And he got
pretty close. Like he conquered most of
Europe or whatever. And then uh that was
the big thing. The big thing that he did
in his life was he conquered most of
Europe. and he decided he wanted to be
emperor. But then when the pope was
right there and the pope was going to
put the crown on him to make him an
emperor, not just a king, you know, but
like an emperor, Napoleon was like, "No,
you're not important enough, Mr. Pope.
I'm going to crown myself." And so he
takes the crown from the pope, puts it
on his own head, makes himself the
emperor. He's like conquered most of the
world. Good for him. But then, like
every other country in Europe, gangs up
on Napoleon, and finally they like
defeat him and they conquer Paris in
1814. They take Napoleon and they don't
want to kill him, right? Because if you
kill him, he'll become this mythical
figure, this like martyr or whatever. So
instead, they imprison him on this
island in the Mediterranean called Elba.
But some like Mediterranean island can't
contain him. So he escapes and he makes
it back to France and he takes back over
the army or whatever and he's going to
take over the world again for a second
time. But this is like a minor attempt
because he gets defeated at the battle
of Waterlue and this time they take him
and they imprison him on an island all
the way in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean and he can't get away from that
island and so then he just like is stuck
there and he dies at the age of 51 and
that's it for Napoleon. The thing you
need to know is that most of the
important stuff that Napoleon did
happened between 1793
when they beheaded Louis V 16th, right,
the old king of France and 1814 when
Napoleon was captured for the first
time. You're supposed to read this
diagram from the bottom up to the top
because like time is going in that
direction. And most of the important
stuff that Napoleon did, he did it in
this gap here. Evans wants us to imagine
a scenario which is diagram one where
Napoleon represented by Alpha and some
other random guy represented by Beta.
They live uh separate lives. But then in
1814 this impostor you know kidnaps
Napoleon, kills him or whatever, gets
rid of him and then takes his place like
wears his hat and you know pretends he's
Napoleon. And really, let's suppose that
this impostor is the one who escapes
from Elba and fights at Waterlue. He
takes over Napoleon's life for this
little gap here at the end. Because the
impostor only steps into the picture
towards the end of Napoleon's life, the
impostor is not the dominant causal
source of all of this information, all
of these descriptions of Napoleon.
Rather, it's the original Napoleon, the
alpha or whatever. That guy, he's the
dominant causal source. And for that
reason, Evans's theory gets the result
that the name Napoleon refers to the
original guy, the alpha, the one who
conquered most of Europe. But in diagram
2, we see an alternative possibility.
This is a case where the impostor
captures and replaces Napoleon back in
1793, back when he was some unknown, you
know, soldier or whatever before he did
anything. He steals Napoleon's identity,
starts introducing himself as Napoleon.
Then he rises to the top, rules the
country of France, conquers most of
Europe, gets defeated, goes to Elba,
escapes, gets defeated again at Waterlue
now, and then goes to St. Helena. He
does all that stuff. In this case, it's
now the impostor who's the dominant
causal source of this cluster of
descriptions of all this information. He
earned it, you know, like he he
conquered Europe. He he caused all of
this all of these descriptions. So in
the case from diagram 2, Evans's theory
gets the result that the name Napoleon,
as I use it today, talking about French
history or whatever, my use of that name
refers not to the original Napoleon,
Alpha, but to this other guy, Beta, the
impostor. But that seems exactly right,
right? Cuz like when we're talking about
Napoleon, we're talking about this guy
who conquered Europe and did all of this
stuff. If it turns out that Napoleon was
born with some different name and as a
young man stole the identity of someone
else and then did all of these things,
well then he's still Napoleon. A simple
way to put it is that he stole this
other guy's identity early enough. If
you steal an identity early enough, then
that becomes your identity. Oh, whoa. I
just realized that this example from
Gareth Evans in 1973 is the plot of the
show Madmen. Oh, okay. Okay. Uh, let me
explain that. I haven't actually even
seen Mad Men, but I know that there's
this character, Don Draper. He's like
the protagonist or whatever and he's
like really cool and he doesn't get
frazzled and he's mean and and he says
mean stuff or whatever. And there's this
scene where he's been really mean to
this this guy. It's been like cruel. And
the guy in the elevator says to him
like, "I feel bad for you." And Don
Draper is just like, "I don't think
about you at all." And that's like, "Oh,
that's like a good line, but that's
mean." Okay. Anyway, at some point in
this show, it's revealed, sorry, I'm
going to ruin the show. I haven't even
watched it. It's revealed that Don
Draper fought in the Korean War, and
while he was fighting in that war, he
like stole the identity of some other
guy. Like some other soldier died, and I
guess he took his like dog tags off his
neck and and and stole this guy's
identity. Like Don Draper was really
originally named Richard something or
whatever. And he stole the identity and
became Don Draper. But then he went on
to live this whole long life and he
worked at this ad agency in New York
City and blah blah blah. Now to
illustrate Evans's point, I guess with
Don Draper as the example, suppose that
someone walks up to Don Draper's
secretary who's sitting outside his
office and asks, "Is Don in there?" And
she says, "Mr. Draper is in today, but
he doesn't have time to meet with
anyone." Is her sentence false? When she
says that Mr. Draper is in there, is she
wrong? Because really Don Draper died in
Korea or whatever? No, she's not wrong.
She's using the name Don Draper to refer
to this person that she's causally
interacted with, the person who is now
become the dominant source of all of
this information, all this whole cluster
of descriptions that she and everyone
else in this company associates with the
name Don Draper. This is like actually
an excellent illustration of Evans's
point, right? in the hour or two after
he steals the dog tags off the dead body
and starts pretending to be Don Draper
or whatever, he's not yet the dominant
source of information because he's only
been wearing these dog tags. He's only
assumed this identity for like a couple
of hours. But once it's been years and
years and years and years and he's built
up all of this information, these
descriptions that all of these people
associate with the name, well then he's
the dominant source. Now that's just his
name. Okay, that's it. We're done with
proper names. Next, we move on to
definite descriptions. Hi, it's me in my
office. If you have a long enough
attention span to make it this far in
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