Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Names 215
that he himself might have been a twin. Therefore, I would bracket (20b)
with (20a) and (20c) with (20d); but I don't expect that these judgments will
remain uncontested. This is as it may be, however, because the relevant
observation is that our intuitions about the relation between John and his
counterparts vary at all. Needless to say, this variation causes problems for a
Kripkean analysis of names. In the present framework, by contrast, it is only
to be expected.
The examples in (20) will all be interpreted along the following lines:
(21) a. [: [x: x is named 'John', 'John'.... ] => ~ [x's father is happier]]
b. [: x is named 'John', [:... ] =$ ~ [x's father is happier]]
Let us assume for the nonce that the arrow symbolizes the counterfactual
conditional; the antecedent of the conditional is filled in depending on which
of (20a) through (20d) is under consideration. In (21a) the presupposition is
triggered that there is an individual named fohn, John, and our presupposition
theory predicts that this will project to the main DRS. The resulting
interpretation is (21b), which says that there must a counterpart relation
between John and the counterfactual individual satisfying the antecedent of
the conditional. (21b) does not specify what kind of counterpart relation this
should be, which is precisely what we want, because this relation varies from
case to case, as we have seen in § 5.4. In other words, the variation we
observed in (20) reflects the context dependence of the counterpart relation.
This analysis has two considerable merits. It gives a plausible explanation
for the scale of readings exemplified by (20), and it explains how these
interpretations come about without resorting to any special assumptions.
The rigid-designator analysis, on the other hand, is just contradicted by these
data.
7.4 The intuition of rigidity
In imitation of Bach (1987), I would have entitled this section 'The illusion of
rigidity'. But on second thoughts I don't believe that rigidity is an illusion: it
is a genuine empirical phenomenon. What is illusory is the notion that it calls
for an explanation in semantic terms.
I have tried to explain why it is that names appear to have such a strong
preference for taking wide scope. But Kripke's most forceful argument in
favour of the thesis that names are rigid designators is based on the intuitive
truth conditions of simple sentences, i.e. sentences without any relevant
scope-bearing expressions (such as modals). The argument, which is only
seemingly straightforward, as we will presently see, goes as follows. Consider
a simple sentence containing a name, such as: