Kripke, Soames, and the problem of the standard meter

According to Kripke, someone who fixes the referent of the term "one meter" with the definite description "the length of stick S in Paris at time t" can know a priori that one meter is the length of S in Paris at time t. Scott Soames has reconstructed Kripke's claim as an argument and shown that this argument is based on three principles. He then claimed that the third principle assumes a meaning of the concept of a prior that is inconsistent with the traditional meaning of that concept. So if Kripke's argument is based on the traditional meaning of the concept of a priori, his argument does not work. In this paper, I first provide a detailed formulation of the different interpretations of the meter example and similar ones. This formulation helps us to understand under which interpretation Soames' reconstruction of Kripke's argument should be understood. I then try to show that the main conflict between Soames and Kripke is not about the traditional meaning of the concept of a priori, but about what empirical evidence is. If my claim is true, I conclude that Soames's criticism of Kripke's argument is question-begging at best.Music, Philosophy of Music, Greek Music, alFarabi, Plato