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

[DAB Mathers]

Quoting Duncan Crowe <dac43 at cam.ac.uk>:

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>
> 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.
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I'm failing to see a deep question here, though perhaps it just me.  
Surely if your interested in the argument(s) of a work philosophically  
you just talk about all the different ways that it can be interpreted  
asses the merits of each as a philosophical line of argument-maybe  
mention any interpretation as being given the blessing of the author  
or as seeming to fit more plausibly with the text, but the main thing  
is assessing the argument itself. On the other hand if your writing an  
introduction to Hume's treatise your interested mainly on getting the  
most plausible reading of what the text actually says, but i still  
don't really see why you can't say 'well the text most fits  
interpretation x, but on the other hand Hume endorsed interpretation y  
in his letter to so-and-so.' So basically i see no question to be  
resolved here, that has a real answer. You just talk about the text  
and how it can be interpreted, what merits the arguments have and  
what's been said about it. There's no need to decide what has priority  
between how it reads to you and what its author said about it-you just  
state and discuss both...
David.






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