EXAMPLE II: THE NAMING MACHINE

Say we automate astronomy by building telescopes that searched the sky in regular patterns and, upon finding a star or otherwise notable object in space, it assigns that object a name from an officially designated list of names.

On Kripke’s view, a name has a reference in virtue of a causal history of use that can be traced back to an initial ‘baptism’ or imposition of a name. Some person at some time in the past pointed at water and said ‘water’ (or some cognate), and from that point forward the word ‘water’ rigidly designates water in all possible worlds.

Assume for a moment that Kripke is right. Does our automated astronomy bot name the star?

One might think ‘no, the star is named in virtue of the pattern of search employed by the machine, and the list of names, both of which are developed by the scientists and engineers who designed the machine.’

But, as I have been arguing, the designers don’t name anything. It is the machine itself that forms the connection between a name and an object. The designers wouldn’t have known which object the proposed name would attach to, or even if the name would ever in fact be used. We can complicate the story by making the lists more complex (for instance, different lists for different categories of stars), or having the machine pick a random starting point within the list. I don’t think either variation helps the sitution much.

Of course, the scientist’s ignorance about which object the name is attached to doesn’t itself hurt the Kripkean theory, since ‘water’ means H20 in all possible worlds, even those in which no one knows that ‘water’ is H20. But the case here is more severe: the scientists not only lack knowledge about which star is named, but even that a star has been so picked out at all. The scientists lack even the initial ostentation, the pointing at some bright object and saying “that is _____”. It is the machine that makes the connection.

All this shows, of course, is that the machine could be the relevant causal instigator of a normative story of reference. I don’t know if Kripke talks about who or what can be in the business of naming things, but it seems to me that machines certainly can.