Kripke argues that the kind of desc

Kripke argues that the kind of description that we can use to define about whom we are speaking is not a permanent part of most names. If a friend points out his mother across the room to me by describing her as wearing the “blue wool sweater” and then I discover later that the sweater is in largely composed of a synthetic material, I will not then begin to wonder who his real mother is. This definition need only enable me to pick this woman out of a room. Kripke suggests that any description used to explain who we are talking about has some kind of incomplete, contingent quality. When we try to explain the meaning of “Einstein” we might well answer “the man who discovered relativity theory” (82).