Theories of Semantics on theWeb - Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web - page 100

semantics, although a Tarski-style semantics can merely 'flatten' models of possible
worlds into a singular model. Still, as a response in philosophy of language, it is
accepted as a classical refutation of the descriptivist theory of reference.
In Kripke's Naming and Necessity , an agent fixes a name to a referent by a
process called baptism in which the referent, known through direct acquaintance,
is associated with a name via some local and causally effective action by the
agent (Kripke 1972). Afterwards, a historical and causal chain between a current
user of the name and past users allows the referent of a name to be transmitted
unambiguously through time, even in other possible worlds . For example, a certain
historical personage was given the name 'Gustave Eiffel' via a rather literal baptism,
and the name 'Gustave Eiffel' would still refer to that baptized person, even if he
had not been the architect of the Eiffel Tower, and so failed to satisfy that definite
description. Later, the causal chain of people talking about 'Gustave Eiffel' would
identify that very person, even after Gustave Eiffel was dead and gone. Descriptions
aren't entirely out of the picture on Kripke's account; they are necessary for
disambiguation when the context of use allows more than one interpretation of a
name, and they figure in the process by which things actually get their names, if
the thing cannot be directly identified. However, this use of descriptions is a mere
afterthought with no causal bearing on determining the referent of the name itself,
for as Kripke puts it, “let us suppose that we do fix the reference of a name by a
description. Even if we do so, we do not then make the name synonymous with the
description, but instead we use the name rigidly to refer to the object so named, even
in talking about counterfactual situations where the thing named would not satisfy
the description in question” (Kripke 1972). So what is crucial is not satisfying any
description, but the act of baptism and the causal transmission of the name.

4.4.2 Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds

Kripke's examples of the causal theory of reference used proper names, such as
'Cicero' or 'Aristotle,' and he did not extend his analysis to the whole of language
in a principled manner. However, Hilary Putnam, in his The Meaning of 'Meaning,'
extends Kripke's analysis to all sorts of names outside traditional proper names,
and in particular Putnam uses for his examples the names of natural kinds (Putnam
1975). Putnam was motivated by an attempt to defeat what he believes is the false
distinction between intension and extension. The set of logical descriptions, which
Putnam identifies with a “psychological state,” that something must satisfy to be
given a name is the intension , while those things in a given interpretation that
actually satisfy these descriptions, are the extension (Putnam 1975). Putnam notices
that while a single extension can have multiple intensions it satisfies, such as the
Eiffel Tower both being “in Paris” and “a monument,” a single intension is supposed
to have the same extension in a given interpretation. If two people are looking for
a “monument in Paris,” the Eiffel Tower should satisfy them both, even though the
Eiffel Tower can also have many other possible descriptions.