Kripke's Belief Puzzle
Igal Kvart1986, Midwest Studies in Philosophy
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Abstract
In this article I offer a resolution af Kripke's belief puzzle.' The puzzle runs as follows, in Kripke's own words: Suppose Pierre is a normal French speaker who lives in France and speaks not a word of English or of any other language except French. Of course he has heard of that famous distant city, London (which he of course calls 'Londres') though he himself has never left France. On the basis of what he has heard of London, he is inclined to think that it is pretty. So he say, in French, "Londres est jolie." On the basis of his sincere French utterance, we will conclude: (4) Pierre believes that London is pretty. I am supposing that Pierre satisfies all criteria for being a normal French speaker, in particular, that he satisfies whatever criteria we usually use to judge that a Frenchman (correctly) uses 'est jolie' to attribute pulchritude and uses 'Londresl-standardly-as a name of London. Later, Pierre, through fortunate or unfortunate vicissitudes, moves to England, in fact to London itself, though to an unattractive part of the city with fairly uneducated inhabitants. He, like most of his neighbors, rarely even leaves this part of the city. None of his neighbors know any French, so he must learn English by 'direct method', without using any translation of English into French: by talking and mixing with the people he eventually begins to pick up English. In particular, everyone speaks of the city 'London', where they all live. Let us suppose for Let us call this version of thz puzzle, in which we seem to be driven to a contradiction in describing a case that seems perfectly possible, the contradiction version of the puzzle. To buttress the reasoning that lies behind his analysis of the case, Kripke provides the following plausible principles: A. The Disquotational Principle: "If a normal English speaker, on reflection, sincerely assents to 'p', then he believes that p" (where ". .. 'p' is to be replaced inside and outside all quotation marks by an appropriate standard English ~entence").~ B. The Biconditional Form of the Disquotational Principle: "A normal English speaker who is not reticent will be disposed to sincere assent to 'p' if and only if he believes that p" (where ". .. any appropriating English sentence may replace 'p' throughout").6 C. The Principle of Translation: "If a sentence of one language expresses a truth in that language, then any translation of it into any other language also expresses a truth (in that other language)."' These three principles are indeed necessary for Kripke's reasoning. He needs the disquotational principle in order to move to (7) from Pierre's assent to (5), and also to move from Pierre's assent to 'Londres est jolie' to (8): (8) Pierre crois que Londres est jolie, and he needs his principle of translation to move from (8) to (4). Thus, in the propositional attitudes). See also my forthcoming "A Theory of Speaker Reference." 23. For more on this subject in the context ofanother type ofconstruction-the counterfactual construction-cf. my book A Theory of Counferfacfuals (Hackett, Ind., 1985), chap. 2, sec. 7, 2, and sec. 8, 1 and 3; chap. 7, sec. 5; chap. 9, sec. 5, 2. 24. See below, section 5. 25. I go beyond this limitation in part I1 of this essay. 26. This limitation too is discussed further in part I1 of this essay. 27. The term '-p ' IS a place-holder for an English sentence that IS the negation of the 28. In particular, the limitation of the uniformity of verbal dispositions. 29. We shall further defend the feasibility of taking this feature as a part of the setup of the example below in this section. 30. In a context in which political matters are quite insignificant, one may use 'Londres' in a perfectly standard way, without realizing it names a capital, for example, when one has no opinion what the capital is. The point is not crucial for our example, however, since the puzzle can be generated with respect to other cities that are not capitals, and therefore there is no need to dwell on it here. Also, one may assume, r is aware that 'Londres' names a capital but is not aware that 'London' does. Since he know 'London' to be the name of the city he lives in, this will clearly not reflect on his normal use of 'London', but only on his ignorance. English sentence 'p'. 31. This point is discussed in greater length in part I1 of this essay. 32. In this case, r would acquire his reference to London via 'Londres' through the sources form whom he acquired his beliefs concerning 'Londres'; cf. also my (unpublished) manuscript
