Saul Kripke, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The case: Pierre, a French monoglot, learns the name "Londres" associated with descriptions making London sound beautiful (the descriptions one might find in a French tourist guide). He sincerely assents to "Londres est jolie" — Londres is pretty. Later, by force of circumstance, Pierre moves to London and lives in an ugly part of it. He learns English by the direct method, picks up the local name for his ugly city — "London" — and sincerely assents in English to "London is not pretty." Does Pierre believe London is pretty?12
If we apply standard principles of disquotation and translation, we are led to attribute both the belief that London is pretty and the belief that London is not pretty — a contradiction.3 But Pierre is not contradictory; he is simply ignorant of an empirical fact, that Londres and London are the same city. The puzzle is a problem for any theory of belief and reference, not an argument for a particular theory. I offer no positive solution of my own.45
Pierre learns from them everything they know about London, but there is little overlap with what he heard before. He learns, of course—speaking English—to call the city he lives in 'London.' Pierre's surroundings are, as I said, unattractive, and he is unimpressed with most of the rest of what he happens to see. So he is inclined to assent to the English sentence: (5) London is not pretty.6. A Puzzle about Belief, p. 144
For as I just set up the case Pierre learned one set of facts about the so-called 'Londres' when he was in France, and another set of facts about 'London' in England. Thus it may appear that 'what's really going on' is that Pierre believes that the city satisfying one set of properties is pretty, while he believes that the city satisfying another set of properties is not pretty.6. A Puzzle about Belief, pp. 147–148
It is clear that our normal criteria for the attribution of belief lead, when applied to this question, to paradoxes and contradictions. One set of principles adequate to many ordinary attributions of belief, but which leads to paradox in the present case, was stated in Section 2; and other formulations are possible.6. A Puzzle about Belief, p. 147
As long as Pierre is unaware that 'London' and 'Londres' are codesignative, he need not lack appropriate linguistic knowledge, nor need he be subject to any linguistic or conceptual confusion, when he affirms 'Londres est jolie' but denies 'London is pretty.' A Puzzle about Belief We have examined four possibilities for characterizing Pierre while he is in London: (a) that at that time we no longer respect his…6. A Puzzle about Belief, pp. 146–147
It will be clear that the particular principles stated in the present section are sufficient, but in the next section the problem will be presented informally in terms of our inferences from foreign or domestic assertion to belief. III. THE PUZZLE Here, finally(!), is the puzzle. Suppose Pierre is a normal French speaker who lives in France and speaks not a word of English or of any other language except French.6. A Puzzle about Belief, pp. 143–144
Presented as a puzzle in the 1979 paper, with the explicit disclaimer that I am not proposing a positive theory. The puzzle has occasioned a substantial literature: strict Millians like Salmon argue that Pierre does believe London is pretty and does believe London is not pretty, and that the apparent contradiction is removed by recognizing that belief-relations are mediated by ways of grasping the proposition that the canonical Millian framework leaves under-described; Fregeans hold that the puzzle reveals the need for senses that distinguish "Londres" from "London"; hidden-indexical theorists (Schiffer, Richard) posit unarticulated parameters; Soames develops a Millian-plus- pseudo-Fregean handling in Beyond Rigidity. I remain genuinely undecided. The puzzle is a real difficulty for every theory and I have not seen a resolution that does not pay a serious cost somewhere.