Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity explores a more metaphysical side of ordinary language. He uses ordinary language and a touch of metaphysics to show us what his big picture is: that names are not descriptions but tags, and throughout history, the names are used in ways that creates a chain from the speaker to the original person. With everything Kripke has to say and everything that I’ve learned thus, I’d like to try my hand at what this means for fictional names and characters, as well as briefly explain how descriptions are important in tagging.

First, we should look at what Kripke has to say about statements. He begins with making a distinction between analytic, necessary, and a priori statements. He takes issue with the idea of a priori being necessary because necessary statements are those he finds to be true in all possible worlds; however, this is based on experience, which a priori does not take into consideration. To know something a priori is to know without experience, while statements that are necessary are true no matter what because the experience is the same. If something is not true in all possible worlds then it is said to be contingent. For example, if we describe a man named Nixon as the 37th President of the United States, then it is necessarily true, across all possible worlds, because it is a requirement for the man to be called Nixon, he must be the 37th President of the United States. However, if we describe a man named Nixon as someone who might have been the 37th President of the United States, then it is a contingent truth. There are possible worlds in which he is the 37th president and those where he is not the 37th president. As Kripke says, “Sometimes [necessity] is used in an epistemological way and might then just mean a priori… But what I am concerned with here is a not a notion of epistemology but of metaphysics.” (35)  Now, let’s briefly talk about what he means by “possible worlds.” While Kripke offers a pleasant metaphysical approach to ordinary language and utilizes intuition in ways other philosophers don’t, he doesn’t mean “possible worlds” in a physical sense. These are hypothetical worlds. They can be seen almost in the same way as the butterfly effect, in that every decision causes a reaction and different reactions spawn from different decisions; therefore, hypothetically, there can be imagined a world in which you made a different decision than you did and received a different reaction than you got. I very much like this notion, but there seems to be a small problem with it. Kripke still attempts to decide what you can imagine and cannot imagine. Like in class, when asked if we could imagine a world in which Nixon is a robot. Kripke’s answer is no, because for him, the crucial aspect of transworld identity is that you are the same genetically. For me, I can imagine a world in which Nixon is a robot. I can imagine practically anything -- which would make everything a contingent statement. Whether this is based on levels of metaphysicality or pure imagination, it doesn’t matter. For now, let’s assume Kripke’s version and that the most basic, imperative component of identity is our genetics. As long as Nixon comes from the same parents then it is conceivable that he could do anything in these possible worlds -- except be a robot. The point is this: names are not descriptions, like previously thought, but they’re tags linked together from ‘thing’ to speaker by a historical chain of usage. Ergo, Nixon, born from Mr. and Mrs. Nixon, is a tag used by people throughout time so that I can use the name Nixon in this paper and you can know who I am referring to, even though neither of us have ever met Nixon, who was born of Mr. and Mrs. Nixon and just so happens to be the 37th president of this world.

Next, let’s look at an example Kripke gives us to formulate what I think this means for fictional names and characters. Kripke gives us an example about a neighbor named George Smith. He says, “If, on the other hand, the teacher uses the name ‘George Smith’ -- a man by that name is actually his next door neighbor -- and says that George Smith first squared the circle, does it follow from this that the students have a false belief about the teacher’s neighbor?” (95) In this example, the teacher just so happens to use the name of his neighbor, he is not intending to create a belief among the students that his neighbor is who squared the circle -- they don’t even know that George Smith is his neighbor. However, I find this example to be a good one for fictional characters. The students don’t know who George Smith is -- presuming no one else that they know or have heard of is called George Smith -- and they have no reason to question the authority and knowledge of their educator, so they are going to be creating a belief that a man named George Smith squared the circle. Who is George Smith? No one, but now, those students will have an idea of someone like George Smith (who squared the circle). This is very similar to how folklore comes about. Folklore is simply oral stories, legends, poems, told from one person to another. These typically occur within certain communities or cultures, but we can generalize it as well. For example, the folklore of The Slenderman started as an online story and was told so much that a couple of young girls murdered their friend, claiming they had to in order to appease this character. They have heard the name and stories and created a belief surrounding this character, which made him real in a possible world for those girls-- whether or not mental illness is a factor, they can imagine a world in which this character is real. I would even go as far as to argue that descriptions of the ‘thing’ are just as important as the tag. I think there is some merit to the cluster of descriptions idea. Names can only get you so far when tagging things or people; there needs to be something that allows for specificity. Furthermore, fictional characters might not exist in a way that we can properly tag them, maybe they exist only in the confines of our imagination, but how do we go about portraying them, or accurately tagging them? With descriptions. We don’t understand slenderman as “some man named slenderman.” We understand Slenderman by his descriptions, because he comes from stories where descriptions lead to understanding. He’s tall, very tall, with long, lanky limbs. His face is pale white and featureless, and he wears a tuxedo and lives in the forest -- sometimes he’s envisioned with tentacles but nonetheless, he’s still Slenderman.

All of this to say, I think fictional names and folklore go hand in hand with Kripke’s historical link picture. I think as far as ordinary language goes, a general understanding is all that is needed for ‘tagging’ to occur. The seven of us in this class have a general understanding that my name is Adele, but what if I told you there are people who tag me as ‘Addie’? Both tag the same ‘thing’ which is described in the same ways. One might even be considered fictional as ‘Adele’ was my tag at birth (initial baptism) while ‘Addie’ is a fabricated tag used only by some -- like the tag for Slenderman. My grandparents don’t know who Slenderman is, but I do, and now so do you.