The second lecture of the text is structured around a systematic methodological dismantling of the description theory of naming. Kripke begins by formalizing the prevailing Frege-Russell view into six distinct theses, covering the various steps required in identifying a reference through a collection of descriptions, and including a strict requirement that the theory must not be circular. By articulating these tenets explicitly, Kripke isolates the specific vulnerabilities of the established philosophical framework. He then attacks the foundations of these theses. Beginning with the non-circularity condition, Kripke critiques Kneale’s assertion that the name “Socrates” merely means “the individual called ‘Socrates’” (72). This deconstruction demonstrates that the description theory relies on tautological reasoning or empirical assumptions that fail under logical scrutiny. Kripke notes that the reference could be deferred to another speaker, so long as that other speaker does not create a circular reasoning by deferring to the original speaker. By dissecting the theory piece by piece rather than dismissing it outright, Kripke clears the conceptual ground necessary for his alternative framework. This structural choice highlights the text’s broader purpose of upending entrenched linguistic theories, demonstrating that the dominant models of reference cannot adequately explain how language connects to reality without eventually collapsing into logical circularity and establishing Rigid Designation as an Alternative to Descriptivism.

To replace the shattered description theory, Kripke introduces the device of a communication chain to illustrate his causal-historical picture of reference. Instead of relying on an individual speaker’s descriptive knowledge to secure a referent, Kripke sketches a process where a name is introduced in an initial baptism, either by direct ostension or by fixing the reference through a description, and then transmitted through a community. The crucial requirement for this transmission is that the receiver of the name must “intend when he learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it” (96). This model shifts the burden of linguistic reference from internal cognitive states, or what a speaker independently knows or believes about a referent, to an external, communal history. Reference succeeds because the speaker is part of a continuous historical linkage reaching back to the object itself. This conceptual pivot redefines naming as a social and historical phenomenon, pushing back against the traditional assumption that linguistic meaning exists solely within the subjective mind of the individual speaker. Critically, this framework allows speakers to refer to objects without knowing all the descriptions of the clusters proposed by Wittgenstein and Searle.

Kripke bolsters his argument against the cluster concept of naming through the deployment of intuition-driven thought experiments, most notably the Gödel-Schmidt scenario. He targets the thesis that a referent is the unique object satisfying the majority of the properties associated with a particular name. To destabilize this claim, Kripke posits a hypothetical situation where an unknown mathematician named Schmidt actually proved the incompleteness theorem, while Gödel merely stole the manuscript and fraudulently claimed the credit. Under the strict application of the description theory, a speaker whose only knowledge of Gödel is that he is the man who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic would technically be referring to Schmidt. Kripke asserts that this consequence is intuitively incorrect; speakers using the name “Gödel” intend to refer to Gödel the historical figure, regardless of his actual achievements or any underlying misconceptions. This scenario emphasizes that reference tracks the specific individual assigned to the name at baptism and following a causal chain, not the person who happens to satisfy the descriptive criteria currently associated with that name. The reliance on such counterexamples reflects Kripke’s methodological trust in ordinary linguistic intuition as a rigorous test for philosophical models.

The lecture culminates in a rigorous separation of epistemology from metaphysics through the analysis of astronomical identity statements. Kripke addresses the debate between Quine and Barcan Marcus regarding whether identities between names are necessary or contingent. Using the historical discovery that Hesperus (the evening star) and Phosphorus (the morning star) are actually the same celestial body, Venus, Kripke argues that because both names function as rigid designators, the statement “Hesperus is Phosphorus” must be a necessary truth (98). He explains that the apparent contingency of this identity is purely epistemic: Early astronomers could have been in a “qualitatively identical epistemic situation” where the bodies seen in the evening and morning were distinctly different planets (104). However, this epistemic uncertainty about the physical world does not alter the metaphysical reality that Venus is necessarily identical to itself. By disentangling what speakers can know prior to empirical investigation from what must be true across all possible worlds, Kripke resolves the paradox of informative identity statements, furthering the theme of Identity Truths as Necessary A Posteriori. This separation of a posteriori knowledge from contingent truth serves as the text’s most profound philosophical intervention, dismantling the long-standing conflation of epistemology and metaphysics while laying the groundwork for modern essentialism.