Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

Objects of Perception, Objects of Science, and Identity Statements — Pavla Toráčová
cause in us. Kripke can be challenged if we are, for
example, interested in the genetic question of knowledge:
where does the drive for the knowledge of the essential
properties come from if the phenomenal properties are
irrelevant to the reference of phenomenal terms?
I believe we can reconcile these two views if we
bring into play the pragmatic current present in both
Kripke’s and Strawson’s accounts. It seems it must be the
agent (or the speaker) who uses the term as referring to
the properties out there, and who therefore makes the
difference between the perceived thing (independent of
perceiving) and the perceiving of the thing. Strawson
claims there is a difference between the perceived and the
perceiving present in the perception from the very
beginning, and this feature points to the agent. As to
Kripke’s take on reference, we can ask how the term fixes
the referent if it doesn’t do it in virtue of its sense—and we
don’t have to go far to find the answer that it is the agent,
who uses the term, that fixes the referent.
The question of the status of the descriptions of both
the phenomenal and the scientific properties—i.e. the
question if they pick out the necessary properties of the
object, or if they refer to its contingent properties—then
can be understood as a matter of the manner of use of the
term. The identity statements then may be seen as
consisting in the dynamic alteration of those manners of
use. We are acquainted with the objects in the world as
having certain properties that are essential for them; at the
same time we are ready to abandon this belief and take
those properties as mere appearances (or mere tentative
descriptions) if another set of properties that we can take
as the essential one—perhaps it allows better
predictions—is available, where this shift is allowed by the
other manner we use the terms—i. e., that we use them as
fixing the referent independently of the properties
expressed by the term or associated with it.
Literature
Kripke, Saul 1980 Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Strawson, Peter F. 2002 “Perception and Its Objects”, in: Alva Noë
and Evan T. Thompson (eds.) Vision and Mind, Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 91-110 (originally published in: 1979, G. F.
Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A.
J. Ayer with His Replies, London: Macmillan).
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