Proper names and the necessity of identity statements

Abstract

An identity statement flanked on both sides with proper names is necessarily true, Saul Kripke thinks, if its true at all. Thus, contrary to the received view - or at least what was, prior to Kripke, the received view - a statement like (A) Hesperus is Phosphorus is necessarily true if, as certainly seems to the the case, its true at all. The received view is that (A) is true but only contingently true, while (B) Hesperus is Hesperus which is also true, of course, is necesarily true. Epistemologically, however, both the tradition and Kripke have it that (A) is a posteriori and (B) a priori. There are tensions in Kripke's views concerning (A), though, and ultimately in the views of anyone who holds that (A) is necessary. In this paper I draw attention to some of them and advance an argument for thinking that (A) is contingent. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.