Keelefilosoofia raamat
that has passed the name on from person to person, which chain goes back
to Feynman himself.
Of course, when a new user first learns a name from a predecessor in the
historical chain, it can only be by the newbie's and the predecessor's sharing
a psychologically salient backing of identifying descriptions. But, as before,
there is no reason to assume that that particular backing of descriptions fixes
the name's sense. It is needed only to fix reference. So long as the newbie has
a correct identificatory fix on the predecessor's referent, the newbie can then
freely use the name to refer to that person.
Taken at face value, this causalhistorical view makes the right predictions
about examples such as Donnellan's Tom. In each example, referring succeeds
because the speaker is causally connected to the referent in an appropriate
historical way.
Kripke (1972/1980: 667) offers the further case of the biblical character
Jonah. It is similar to the "Nixon" example (objection 3 in chapter 3)