Kripke's modal argument establishes that the name-referent link is grounded in the causal-historical chain of dubbing, which is an objective metaphysical fact, not a brute linguistic stipulation.

?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.

No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.

Brute linguistic stipulation(what Kripke argues the name-referent link is NOT): A rule about language that we just decided on arbitrarily, without any deeper reason—basically, 'we agreed to call it this and that's the only reason why.'
Dubbing(the original naming event in the causal-historical chain): The act of giving something a name for the first time. Imagine the first person to call a newly discovered element 'xenon'—that's a dubbing event.
Kripke: Kripke refers to Saul Kripke, an influential American philosopher and logician known for revolutionizing how we think about names, meaning, and possibility. He argued that names like "Albert Einstein" refer directly to the actual person rather than through descriptions of their properties, which changed philosophy fundamentally. His work also introduced "possible worlds" as a way to understand concepts like necessity and possibility, making him one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.
Name-referent link(what the argument is trying to explain)

Based on where you are in your exploration