After reading Kripke's "Naming and Necessity" I had issues with his metaphysical argument. Now, after reading "A Puzzle About Belief" I think the man is insane.
His "great" puzzle is as follows:
A French man named Pierre is shown a post-card of London, or as he calls it, "Londres." Pierre knows absolutely nothing about Londres except what he's seen in this post-card. After seeing the post-card, Pierre asserts 'Londres is pretty.' Then, through the magic of philosophical thought-experiments, Pierre is teleported to a shabby neighborhood in London. He has no idea that he now resides in Londres. Nobody there speaks French, so he has to eventually pick up on some English from them. Eventually, he knows enough English to assert that, looking at his run-down neighborhood, 'London is not pretty.' Keep in mind that he has no idea that Londres is London. Again, suspension of disbelief is a necessary part of philosophical thought-experiments.
So, since Londres is London, this means that Pierre simultaneously holds the view that 'London is pretty' and 'London is not pretty.' These are logically contradictory, hence the puzzle.
The problem I have with it is that it assumes that there is some static and monolithic 'London' that Pierre is speaking of in both instances. I do not agree with him. Despite using two words, 'London' and 'Londres', that translate to the same exact word, there is a hidden meaning to both assertions that are quite different. Each statement is induced by sense experience that Pierre undergoes, and those sense experiences are quite different. What Pierre is really saying when he asserts that 'Londres is pretty' after seeing the post-card is, 'The thing which I am looking at is pretty, and I am told that the thing I am looking at is called 'Londres.'' When Pierre is living in the shabby neighborhood, he is really asserting, 'The place in which I reside is not pretty, and I am told that it goes by the name of 'London.'' Not the same assertion at all. In neither instance can Pierre say something about the whole of London. He can only speak to what he knows of London, and since both instances have very different perspectives on London, his two assertions simply cannot be only affirmation and negation of the same thing. He is not seeing the thing as a whole thing, nor can he ever know the absolute whole of London.
To use an analogous example, on my campus of University of Cincinnati, there is a men's bathroom in Swift Hall that is very ugly. It has numerous penises drawn on it, foul hateful messages written on the wall, and (I think) is embarrassing for a place of higher learning. If I were teleported into that bathroom, knowing nothing else about the campus, I would likely assert, 'The UC campus is not pretty.' Now, that is not the case. In reality, I have walked all over the campus and seen the many (I think) beautiful buildings and aesthetically pleasing interiors, and the incredibly attractive student body. So, if somebody would ask me what the campus looks like, I would easily assert 'The UC campus is pretty.' However, that statement is unqualified and thus implies that it speaks to the whole without exception. I know that the men's bathroom in Swift Hall is not pretty, and is in fact disgusting. So, how can I assert that the whole of the campus is pretty when I know that there is at least one part that is the exception to that statement? Because, when I say, 'The UC campus is pretty.' I am not actually asserting the strict meaning of those words. I am using short-hand, because perhaps I am pressed for time, or I simply do not want to explain. If a person overheard my assertion and decided to correct me by mentioning the bathroom in Swift Hall, I would be able to unpack my assertion with something like, 'Yes, that bathroom is foul, but what I meant is that the campus is for the most part pretty.' I cannot actually ever really say with veracity that 'The UC campus is pretty.' without qualification because I will never see every part of it. I won't see the vast majority of professor's offices, women's bathrooms, employee-only areas, maintenance tunnels, dorm rooms, etc. But, for sanity's sake, we allow each other to speak of the whole despite not knowing the whole. I'm not even capable of fully articulating my belief on the UC campus. I mean, if I were a robot, as I suspect many analytic philosophers are, I would have to say something like, 'Of the areas of The UC campus that I have witnessed, 63% of it was beautiful, 24% of it was unremarkable, and 23% was unpleasant to look at.' That is absurd and impossible for a human (non-analytic robot) mind to produce.
So, when Pierre asserts that 'Londres is pretty' he is not actually asserting that, unqualified. And when he asserts that 'London is pretty' he is not actually asserting that. He cannot assert either of those. He can only really assert what he knows at this given time, of this object, from this vantage point. He is not speaking as some logic robot, so his two statements are not about identical objects and are thus not contradictory to each other.
