[Bups-dis] Who says Kripke gets to be the bottom line on Kripke?

[Duncan Crowe]

Dear all,

I'm afraid this is metaphilosophical again: an itch I cannot stop 
scratching.

In Fitch's /Saul Kripke/ he makes the following remark:

"For a long time, for example, I understood Kripke to mean that a term 
/a /is a rigid designator provided that /a /designates the same object 
at each possible world, whether or not that object exists in that world. 
This was the view that David Kaplan (Kaplan 1989) thought to be Kripke's 
as well. /But Kaplan reports that Kripke has written to him to say that 
his view is neutral /with respect to whether or names designate objects 
at a world in which the object in question does not exist. Hence we were 
wrong in our initial interpretation of what Kripke meant."

The question isn't one about rigid designators (though that's 
interesting enough of itself), but rather whether Kripke is in some 
privileged position to say sans additional argument what his 
philosophical commitments are or aren't. I want to divorce this from the 
example used, to an extent, because in this case it seems Kripke's view 
is entirely reasonable and it turns out there /is /textual support for 
it in 'Identity and Necessity', the question is one of whether when we 
deal with a philosopher's work we should be concerned with (1) what they 
intended to say or (2) what they actually did say.

Obviously, when questions of hermeneutics become involved the line 
between (1) and (2) becomes a little vague, in so far as in order to 
understand (2), if a particular philosopher happens to be rather 
obscure, the interpretation we give of their work to arrive at (2) may 
be contentious and one of the options up for grabs will be a (1)ish (2): 
'what the philosopher says they said', which it seems reasonable to give 
some priority to.

But questions of obscurity aside; it seems broadly correct to say there 
is such a thing as 'the plainest, most conservative interpretation of a 
work' which seems the correct baseline for (2) and which may well differ 
from what the philosopher intended to say. As a basic (I don't want to 
give this too much weight) example we could give Wittgenstein's: 'what 
we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence'. Now, what Wittgenstein 
intended to fit under the heading of 'what we cannot speak of' is 
largely a personal fact about Wittgenstein (which, postmortem, might be 
gained from biographical sources), whereas what would fit under it as 
regards (2) would be 'whatever cannot be made to fit into the category 
of 'what we can speak of' given the argument in the /Tractatus/', which 
I hope it's obvious is at least theoretically distinct from 'what 
Wittgenstein intended... etc'.

There seems to be an orthodox analytical position on the subject, which 
is to say that we should only be concerned with what actually /is /said 
in the sources, and not what a particular philosopher may have liked to 
have said, or may have intended to have said, or should like it to be 
understood as that to which they are committed. This links with (what I 
see as being) the eschewing of biographical and historical-contextual 
considerations of historical philosophers, except in so far as such 
sources can help to disambiguate 'what is said'. Now, obvious this is 
not very ingrained if people like Fitch practice the opposite, the 
question is: which attitude is correct?

Should we (1) concern ourselves with what a particular philosopher's 
/weltanshaunng /may have been and try to determine what they /intended 
/to argue, even if this goes beyond what can be gleaned from the texts? 
(there is a subdivision: 1b) we should be concerned with this only for 
contemporary philosophers who, still living, are in a position to 
authoritatively report what their intentions are, as in the Kripke 
example as opposed to the more pure 1a) we should do this for historical 
figures as well. Or (2) we should only concern ourselves with what is 
said - which is to say the simplest unambigious interpretation of what 
has actually been written by a philosopher, and what appear to be the 
commitments of it. Or a little of both.

I can see merit in both views, but to return to what was recently a 
theme of discussion of BUPS Dis: what is more likely to be beneficial to 
us as philosophers (or, as philosophy students): should we be concerned 
'just with the arguments' or do we have something to gain from the 
attempt of becoming deeply engaged with a historical figure within the 
discipline, even if such engagement necessarily goes beyond what is 
written down on the page?

Duncan Crowe.