Kripke's modal arguments in 'Naming and Necessity' show that proper names are rigid designators across possible worlds, a conclusion that generalizes the scope of direct reference beyond isolated cases.

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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.
Naming and Necessity(history of philosophy): A famous 1980 book by Saul Kripke that argues names refer directly to things in the world, and that some facts about how the world is are necessarily true—they couldn't be any other way.
direct reference(Distinguished from thought by description; scope is disputed across views): A mode of thought or language in which an agent refers to an individual without the mediation of a descriptive condition; the individual itself is a constituent of the singular proposition.
modal arguments(the type of reasoning Kripke used to support his thesis)

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