Phase 2. Not knowing what the sarkiapone is, Chiari opts for trial and error. For example, having learned from Campanini that his is an American sarkiapone, Chiari says he has only seen Asiatic sarkiapones. This allows him to hazard the enunciation of properties that Campanini’s American sarkiapone does not have, but he soon runs into problems. He hints, using gestures, at the typical “snout” of the sarkiapone, but Campanini stares at him with a quizzical air and asks what he means by saying that the sarkiapone has a snout. Chiari adjusts his sights, declaring that in alluding to the beak, he expressed himself poorly, metaphorically. But no sooner has he said the word beak than he notes an amazed expression on Campanini’s face. Chiari hastens to make amends by referring to the creature’s nose.
Phase 3. From this point on, we have a crescendo of variations that follow one another thick and fast, in the course of which Chiari gets more and more stubborn and agitated. Defeated also on the nose, he turns to the eyes, then immediately after talks about a single eye. Defeated also on the eyes, he attempts to talk about the ears. Faced with the flat denial that the sarkiapone has ears, he immediately talks about its fins, then falls back on the chin, the fur, the wool, the feathers. He makes a tentative attempt to describe the way the animal walks, only to check himself immediately, saying that he meant its typical hopping gait. He guesses at the paws, progressively corrects himself about their number, tries to mention the wings, has a stab at scales, hints without success at the color (yellow? blue? red?), uses more and more half words and interrogative syllables in an attempt to “second guess” Campanini’s (inevitably negative) reaction.8
Phase 4, the climax of the sketch. Exasperated, Chiari bursts into a violent and cathartic tirade against that “disgusting” beast, that impossible animal, which has no snout, no beak, no paws, hooves, claws, fingers, feet, nails, feathers, scales, mane, wattles, eyes, crest, tongue—he has by now given up trying to figure out what on earth it is.
Phase 5. Chiari demands that Campanini show the sarkiapone, the other passengers draw back terrified, and, as Campanini makes to open the basket, even Chiari is frightened. But then Campanini seraphically reveals that the sarkiapone does not exist. He shows Chiari that the basket is empty and confides that he often uses this trick to fend off the importunate and to keep the compartment to himself.
Phase 6. There follows a coda in which Chiari (cocky as ever) tries to have everybody believe that he knew all along it was a joke.
Are there Closed White Boxes?
I think the story of the sarkiapone is exemplary. In phase 1, the first interlocutor posits a term in the discourse, while the other (keeping to the rules of conversation) presumes—until the emergence of proof to the contrary—the existence of the corresponding object.9 Given that at first Chiari does not know what properties a sarkiapone possesses, except for that of being presumably an animal, he negotiates the corresponding term on trust.
Perhaps I ought to clarify what I mean by “on trust.” Although it has little to do with peering into that “black box,” whose contents I have repeatedly stated I do not wish to inspect, we might nonetheless understand trust as a kind of “white box.” A black box is something that by definition one cannot open, while a white box, even if closed, might be subsequently opened. We accept white boxes, especially when they are presented to us adorned with a handsome ribbon at Christmastime or on a birthday: before opening such a box, we already guess that it contains a present, and we begin to thank the donor. We put our faith in this person, presuming that he or she is not an oafish prankster bent on surprising us with an empty box. In the same way, buying something on trust means having faith in the seller, presuming that the box will effectively hold the guaranteed contents.
In day-to-day communicative interaction, we accept a great number of references on trust. If someone tells us he must take urgent leave of absence because Virginia is ill, we accept that somewhere or other there is a Virginia, even if we have never heard of her before. If instead our interlocutor says that we must apply to Virginia if we wish to be reimbursed for our traveling expenses to the Chipping Norton conference, we hasten to ask him if by that name he means the American state or the woman clerk in Chipping Norton, and we want to know right away how to identify or find out which is which. But this is an extreme case. Usually, unless we have some reason to harbor misgivings, if the speaker posits someone or something in the discourse, we accept that the someone or something exists somewhere. We collaborate in the act of reference, even when we know nothing of the referent and even when we do not know the meaning of the term used by the speaker.
In 3.7.1,1 related how even though I too am incapable of telling an elm from a beech, I can easily recognize mangroves (which I was able to identify one day thanks to having read about them in many travel books) and banyan trees, about which I had received plentiful instructions in Emilio Salgari’s adventure books. But I was convinced I knew nothing about the paletuviere (mentioned equally frequently in Salgari’s books), until on reading an encyclopedia one day I discovered that, in Italian, paletuviere is simply another word for mangrovia.
Now I could reread Salgari, imagining mangroves every time he mentioned paletuvieri. But what did I do for years and years, from childhood on, reading about these paletuvieri without knowing what they were? From the context I had deduced that they were plants, something like trees or bushes, but this was the only property I could manage to associate with the name. Nevertheless, I was able to read on by pretending to know what they were. I used my imagination to integrate what little I had been able to glimpse within the half-open box, but in fact I was taking something on trust. I knew that Salgari was referring to something, and I kept the communicative interaction open, to be able to understand the rest of the story, assuming (on trust) that paletuvieri existed somewhere or other and that they were plants.
Acceptance on trust might be understood as a case of rigid designation. According to the theory of rigid designators, in a counterfactual conditional that abstracted every known property from Aristotle we would still have to consider him the man who was baptized Aristotle at a determined moment, and by so doing we would accept on trust that a sort of unbroken bond connected the current utterance of the name to the individual thus baptized. But there is one ambiguity (and perhaps more than one) in the theory of rigid designation. On the one hand, we are supposed to assume—through an unbroken chain that binds the object that receives the name in the moment of its baptism to the name used by whoever refers to it—that the object is what causes the appropriateness of the reference (Kripke 1972: 298–99). On the other hand, Kripke maintains that the receiver of the name must intend to use it with the same reference as the person from whom he has learned it (Kripke 1972: 302). This is not the same thing.
Given that the sarkiapone does not exist, no object exists that could have caused the use of the name. Nonetheless there is no doubt that Chiari agrees to use the name sarkiapone in the same way Campanini presumably uses it: on trust. If there has been a causal chain, it therefore runs not from the object to the use of the name but from (Campanini’s) decision to use the name to (Chiari’s) decision to use it as Campanini uses it. We are faced not with a causality “object → name” but with a causality “use1 of the name → use2 of the name.” I have no intention of solving this problem from the point of view of a causal theory of reference, since I do not agree with such theories. We might say that if the sarkiapone existed and had an essence, we would have “rigid” designation, while if it was imagined by someone who used that name to baptize a figment of the imagination, we would have “soft” designation. But I really do not know what either rigid or soft designation mean, because while this difference perhaps has ontological importance, it does not have semiosic importance: the act of reference set in motion by Campanini and accepted by Chiari would work the same way in both cases.
The problem seems to me to be different. And it is that the metaphor of the white box is imprecise. White boxes (just to spin out the metaphor a little longer) always tell us something about what is inside, because they inevitably have a label. If I use a proper noun such as Gideon, I am automatically stating that the bearer of the name is a human
