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21 results

Page 1 of 2

  • 2 - The Referentialist Revolution

  • Gregory Bochner
  • Book:
    Naming and Indexicality
    Published online:
    02 December 2021
    Print publication:
    09 December 2021, pp 29-64

  • Summary

    This chapter presents the referentialist revolution that occurred in 1970 through the new arguments, notions, and theses it introduced in semantics and philosophy. In particular, it introduces modal, semantic, and epistemic arguments against descriptivism, the central concept of a rigid designator, and the theses of semantic externalism and Direct Reference.

  • Conclusion

  • Gregory Bochner
  • Book:
    Naming and Indexicality
    Published online:
    02 December 2021
    Print publication:
    09 December 2021, pp 254-257

  • Summary

    This chapter summarises the main lessons gathered in the book. It explains that the arguments developed in the referentialist revolution, when properly understood, show that names have a Millian semantics. The main conclusions are that the metasyntactic interpretation of two-dimensionalism introduced in this book is the only form of descriptivism that remains compatible with this result, and that in turn the metasyntactic account will be compatible with an account of indexical thought inspired by David Lewis.

Naming and Indexicality
  • Gregory Bochner
  • Published online:
    02 December 2021
    Print publication:
    09 December 2021
  • How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on plausible theories of word meaning, from analytic philosophy and modern truth-conditional semantics, to the Referentialist and Externalist revolutions in theories of meaning, to the more recent reconciliatory ambition of two-dimensionalists. It clearly introduces technical semantical notions, theses, and arguments, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides. Wide-ranging in its scope, yet offering an accessible route into literature that can seem complex and technical, this will be essential reading for advanced students, and academic researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language.

  • 8 - Kripke on Mind-Body Identity

  • from I - Early Papers
  • Richard Rorty
  • Edited by W. P. Małecki, Chris Voparil
  • Book:
    On Philosophy and Philosophers
    Published online:
    10 October 2020
    Print publication:
    15 October 2020, pp 123-142

  • Summary

    Rorty’s only extensive and systematic treatment of Saul Kripke’s work, “Kripke on Mind-Body Identity” puts Kripke’s arguments back into an often overlooked historical and philosophical context that sheds new light on them and their viability and overall significance. Anyone interested in mind-brain identity theory, in particular, those who think it was shown to be untenable by Kripke’s criticisms and remain puzzled by its still being alive and well, will appreciate Rorty’s explanations why those criticisms, in fact, must “leave the issue about mind-body identity where it stood.” Rorty predicts that in the wake of Kripke’s criticisms, “The old issues will go over into the new vocabulary – with less talk about meaning and more about reference, but without dialectical loss to either side.”

  • Replies to Kirk Ludwig and Alexander Miller

  • CLAUDINE VERHEGGEN
  • Journal:
    Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie / Volume 59 / Issue 2 / June 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 August 2020, pp. 235-253
    • Article
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  • This paper is a reply to Kirk Ludwig's and Alexander Miller's comments on the first part of Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry. It addresses concerns Ludwig expresses about the triangulation argument's success in establishing the social character of language and thought. It answers Miller's invitation to compare Davidson's non-reductionism with that of Crispin Wright, as well as the social aspect of Davidson's view with the social aspect of Saul Kripke's. And it addresses Miller's worries concerning my claims about the normativity of meaning.

  • THE POWER OF NAIVE TRUTH

  • Part of
  • HARTRY FIELD
  • Journal:
    The Review of Symbolic Logic / Volume 15 / Issue 1 / March 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    06 July 2020, pp. 225-258
    Print publication:
    March 2022

  • Nonclassical theories of truth that take truth to be transparent have some obvious advantages over any classical theory of truth (which must take it as nontransparent on pain of inconsistency). But several authors have recently argued that there’s also a big disadvantage of nonclassical theories as compared to their “external” classical counterparts: proof-theoretic strength. While conceding the relevance of this, the paper argues that there is a natural way to beef up extant internal theories so as to remove their proof-theoretic disadvantage. It is suggested that the resulting internal theories are preferable to their external counterparts.

  • Kripke’s sole route to the necessary a posteriori

  • Erin Eaker
  • Journal:
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy / Volume 44 / Issue 3-4 / August 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2020, pp. 388-406

  • In ‘Kripke on epistemic and metaphysical possibility: two routes to the necessary a posteriori’, Scott Soames identifies two arguments for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths in Naming and Necessity (NN). He argues that Kripke’s second argument relies on either of two principles, each of which leads to contradiction. He also claims that it has led to ‘two-dimensionalist’ approaches to the necessary a posteriori which are fundamentally at odds with the insights about meaning and modality expressed in NN. I argue that the alleged second argument is not in NN. I identify the mistakes that lead to Soames’ misinterpretation.

  • The Cyrilian Solution: Cyril of Jerusalem and Saul Kripke on Naming God

  • Adam C. English
  • Journal:
    New Blackfriars / Volume 94 / Issue 1053 / September 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2024, pp. 569-582
    Print publication:
    September 2013
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  • Cyril of Jerusalem's proposed theology of the Trinity has been labeled generic. That is, the term “God” identifies not so much a species of being or an individual being, but a unique, sui generis genus. Within the genus of God there are three species or ways of being God, though not three discrete individual beings. The article will attempt to defend and renew Cyril's theology by an appeal to the contemporary philosopher, Saul Kripke, and his notion of rigid designators. One way to contemporize and perhaps better understand Cyril's position is to interpret the term “God” as a Kripkean natural kind rigid designator with the properties of Fatherhood, Sonship, and Spiration.

  • Chapter 8 - The enduring trouble with tracking

  • from Part II - Criticism
  • Edited by Kelly Becker, University of New Mexico, Tim Black, California State University, Northridge
  • Book:
    The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology
    Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    02 August 2012, pp 122-151

  • Summary

    This chapter shows that explanationist counterfactualism (EC) is not threatened by objections like those leveled by Sosa, Saul Kripke, and Williamson. It is reported that Kripke offers a case like the following: Henry, still out on his drive, believes that there is a red barn before him. Besides handling the cases put forth by Sosa, Kripke, and Williamson, the chapter's proposal has another virtue: it clarifies and helps bring into focus the recent literature on skepticism. One would need to do more in order to determine whether (EC)'s explanatory condition includes demands that concern belief- forming methods and perceptual equivalence. it might very well be that we need to identify and examine other demands of that condition. EC pays real dividends in helping us focus our attention on key elements in the skeptical debate, elements that might help us finally to put an end to that debate.

  • Chapter 12 - Return of the zombies?

  • Edited by Simone Gozzano, Università degli Studi dell'Aquila, Italy, Christopher S. Hill, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    New Perspectives on Type Identity
    Published online:
    05 April 2012
    Print publication:
    08 March 2012, pp 251-263

  • Summary

    This chapter argues that the crucial assumptions of Saul Kripke's argument, an objective principle of identity for mental-state types. This principle is actually compatible with both the type-identity theory of the mind and Kripke's semantics and metaphysics. The chapter presents a version of the type identity theory. The viability of the identity theory focuses on bodily sensations, such as pain and other states characterized by their phenomenal properties. According to Kripke, there is nothing in, for instance, pain which is not in apparently feeling pain. This argument has had a strong impact on the identity theory of the mind, both of the type and of the token versions. The gist of Kripke's argument has often been expressed as the idea that when it comes to pain and other bodily sensations, appearance and reality coincide. Kripke stresses that possible worlds are like stipulated situations.

  • 2 - Fiction, Myth, and Reality

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 49-77

  • Summary

    Saul Kripke's insightful and penetrating work on names from fiction and myth, though unpublished, has generated a great deal of discussion. Kripke's account illuminates and yet exacerbates the chestnut of negative existentials. On Kripke's account, use of the name 'Sherlock Holmes' to refer to the fictional character is in a certain sense parasitic on a prior, more fundamental use not as a name for the fictional character. The use of 'Sherlock Holmes' represented by 'Holmes', as the name for what is in reality an abstract artifact, is the same use it has according to the Holmes stories, except that according to the stories, that use is one on which it designates a man. The alleged thoroughly nondesignating use of 'Sherlock Holmes' by Conan Doyle, as a pretend name for a man, is a myth.

  • 13 - Kripke and Cartesianism

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 327-342

  • Summary

    The metaphysical and semantical ideas Saul Kripke advanced in the early 1970s, in Naming and Necessity and "Identity and Necessity", have found wide acceptance among philosophers. But what is perhaps the most intriguing application he made of these ideas was in his discussion of the mind/body problem, where his arguments and conclusions are widely regarded as Cartesian in spirit. Materialist views about the mind are often expressed in identity statements. At one time, in the 1950s, it was widely held that there are "contingent identities" between mental and physical entities. Many materialists are functionalists, and think that mental states are "multiply realizable" in the physical. This means that pain, for example, might be realized in one way in us - in C-fiber stimulation, for example - and in some quite different way in some other species.

  • 3 - Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 78-99

  • Summary

    This chapter argues that there are, in fact, two Kripkean routes to the necessary a posteriori - one correct and philosophically far-reaching, the other incorrect and philosophically misleading. The two routes to the necessary a posteriori differs in certain ways. The first route applies to a proper subset of cases to which the second is meant to apply; only the first route leads to the recognition of epistemically possible world-states over and above those that are metaphysically possible. The problem with Saul Kripke's second route to the necessary a posteriori is that the principle, strong disquotation and justification (SDJ), on which it depends, requires an unrealistic degree of transparency in the relationship between sentences and the propositions they express. The strong descriptive origin and justification (SDOJ) can be used in Kripke's second route to the necessary a posteriori in essentially the same way that SDJ was.

  • 7 - Kripke on Logicism, Wittgenstein, and De Re Beliefs about Numbers

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 160-176

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the evolution of Saul Kripke's thinking about Wittgenstein. Philosophy is a struggle for clarity, and both Wittgenstein and Kripke have the power to get to the absolute nub of a problem, taking nothing for granted, especially the orthodoxies of academic philosophy. More significantly, the concept of a "buckstopper" takes account of the Wittgensteinian intuition that mathematical notation must be perspicuous to be mathematical. It is internal to the concept of a calculation that the calculation should have the power to persuade us to accept the result. Kripke notes himself that his proposal implies that the identity of the numbers is culturally dependent. Even a culture that recognized decimal numbers, but did not use our system of positional notation for the numbers would be using different numbers, and not just different numerals.

  • 11 - On the Skepticism about Rule-Following in Kripke’s Version of Wittgenstein

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 253-289

  • Summary

    In this chapter, the author outlines the critique of targeted notion of "prior semantic determination" that Saul Kripke's Wittgenstein elaborates. It seems to the author that it is a great achievement of Kripke's book to stress the centrality of the skeptical doubts about semantic determination in Wittgenstein's rule-following reflections and to develop an original and powerful challenge to this fundamental idea. The author explains his interpretation of the Skeptical argument as an argument chiefly directed against an intuitive conception of "semantic determination". He also explains at some length why the apparent nonfactualism about meaning strikes him as so puzzling in the overall context of Kripke's book. Saul Kripke affirms that there is a "skeptical conclusion about meaning" that Wittgenstein himself elaborates and endorses, but Kripke's formulation of the thesis has a confusing tendency to vary from passage to passage.

  • 4 - Possible Worlds Semantics

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 100-116

  • Summary

    Possible worlds semantics have been widely applied both in philosophy and in other fields such as linguistic semantics and pragmatics, theoretical computer science, and game theory. This chapter discusses the general contrast between modal realism and actualism and questions about the kind of explanation that possible worlds provide for modal discourse and modal facts. It looks at Saul Kripke's views about how possible worlds are specified, in particular at the role of individuals in specifying possible worlds. A large part of the attraction of modal realism is that it purports to provide a genuine eliminative reduction of modality. Kripke thinks that the "distant planets" picture of possible worlds contributes to the illusion that there is a problem about the identification of individuals across possible worlds, and that is one of his main reasons for thinking that the modal realist doctrine is a pernicious one.

  • 14 - Not Even Computing Machines Can Follow Rules

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 343-368

  • Summary

    Conceiving of our mental capacities on the model of a computing machine is a natural and sound way both to stave off skepticism about the epistemic reliability of those capacities and to provide a scientific metaphysics for mental states. The computational mechanism underlying the mental actions of a human being could provide a clear account of what those actions consist in and how they work. The core idea of Saul Kripke's refutation of functionalism is that functionalists fail to recognize a deep problem engendered by the distinction central to functionalism: namely, "the distinction between the abstract diagram of an abstract mathematical automaton, and the physical machines themselves that realize the diagram". One functionalist response to Kripke's problem is to invoke counterfactuals to describe what physical computing machines (PCM) would compute if it never malfunctions, and has infinitely many memory cells.

  • 6 - Kripke on Truth

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 141-159

  • Summary

    Saul Kripke's "Outline of a Theory of Truth" has been the most influential publication on truth and paradox since Alfred Tarski's "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages". The liar paradox was introduced by Eubulides and much discussed by Chrysippus and others in ancient times, while it and related paradoxes, under the label insolubilia, were much discussed by Bradwardine and others in the Middle Ages. The kind of formal language Tarski considers has predicates and terms, from which may be formed atomic sentences, from which may be formed other sentences using negation, conjunction, disjunction, and universal and existential quantification. Different schemes of rules have been proposed for evaluating logical compounds some or all of whose logical components may lack truth value, with some schemes looking more plausible for some types of truth-value gap and others for others.

  • 12 - Kripke on Color Words and the Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 290-324

  • Summary

    The Lockean view appears to have been a dominant view on color, sound, and so on among analytical philosophers until about the mid- 1980s. One of the exceptions had been Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity. Kripke qualified the "fixes a reference" view of color by developing new positive views about the semantics and overall functioning of words for colors and other sensible qualities, views that help explain our intuitions about his counterexamples to dispositionalism. This chapter attempts to summarize these Kripkean ideas, based especially on a transcript of a recording of the Michigan talk, on recordings of lectures of the 1987 seminar, and to a lesser extent on seminar notes and personal recollections. It briefly reviews some recent defenses of dispositionalism about color, and sketches some objections that could be made to them from a broadly Kripkean perspective.

  • 1 - Kripke on Proper and General Names

  • Edited by Alan Berger, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Saul Kripke
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 June 2011, pp 17-48

  • Summary

    Saul Kripke's first contributions to philosophy were his papers on modal logic, which quickly made possible worlds semantics a working tool of philosophical logicians and then of philosophers more generally. The received view of the semantics of proper names around 1970 was that the correct account lay somewhere among the theories descended from classic papers of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. One of Kripke's most influential examples of a class of necessary truths which could come to be known in an a posteriori fashion were the very examples of identity sentences that Frege used to introduce the notion of the sense of a name in the first place. In the Naming and Necessity lectures, Kripke made use of the distinction between speaker's reference and semantic reference to explain some of our intuitions about the use of names.

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