From Mill to Kripke

So far we have presented the argument as an attack on the Orthodox View defined in Chapter 5 ii. The Orthodox View, which at any rate until quite recently deserved the name, was there defined as a compendium of three doctrines: (1) the doctrine that the meaning, or Bedeutung, of a proper name is the individual it picks out; (2) the doctrine that a speaker can attach no assertoric content to an indicative sentence employing a proper name N unless he or she knows which individual N does, in fact, pick out; (3) the doctrine that what places a speaker in a position to meet the condition spelled out by (2) is the possession of an identifying description of the individual in question. That collection of doctrines would, no doubt, fairly adequately capture the content of philosophical orthodoxy between 1930 and 1970. It does not, however, at least in its entirety, capture the views of a majority of philosophers at present. Doctrines (1) and (2) are still widely held. What has changed is that there is now widespread scepticism concerning doctrine (3).

In order to simplify the exposition of our argument in its early stages, our account has so far ignored the inherent tension between doctrine (1) and doctrine (3). Doctrine (1) contends that the meaning of a proper name “N” is its bearer, N. But if that is so, how can knowing the meaning of a proper name amount to knowing some predicate P which N appens to satisfy, as doctrine (3) contends?