Metalinguistic Descriptions and Kripke's Puzzle

The paper deals with S. Kripke's 'Puzzle About Belief' and starts from comparison of Russellian and Kripkean theories of reference of proper names. Author looks into conditions under which translation and disquotation principles lead to a contradiction within Russellian theory of descriptions and then goes on to propose, as a remedy for these contradictions, adoption of a variant of theory of metalinguistic descriptions. The latter theory merges descriptivism with the 'reference inheritance' picture proposed by Kripke to explain the semantics of proper names. In the final part of the article some possible objections to the proposed theory are considered and ruled out.