115 ideas
| 16395 | Kripke separated semantics from metaphysics, rather than linking them, making the latter independent [Kripke, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's contribution was not to connect metaphysical and semantic issues, but to separate them: to provide a context in which questions about essences of things could be posed independently of assumptions about semantic rules of reference. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: In other words, Kripke set metaphysics free from the tyranny of Quine, and facilitated its modern rebirth. Bravo. |
| 17034 | Analyses of concepts using entirely different terms are very inclined to fail [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical analyses of some concept like reference, in completely different terms which make no mention of reference, are very apt to fail. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke consistently criticises analysic, and philosophical 'theories'. It is why he wanted a 'direct' theory of reference, with just you and the object. |
| 6267 | A culture needs to admit that knowledge is more extensive than just 'science' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The acknowledgement that the sphere of knowledge is wider than the sphere of 'science' seems to me to be a cultural necessity if we are to arrive at a sane and human view of ourselves or of science. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A very nice remark, with which I intuitively agree, but then you are left with the problem of explaining how something can qualify as knowledge when it can't pass the stringent tests of science. How wide to we spread, and why? |
| 6272 | 'True' and 'refers' cannot be made scientically precise, but are fundamental to science [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Some non-scientific knowledge is presupposed by science; for example, I have been arguing that 'refers' and 'true' cannot be made scientifically precise; yet truth is a fundamental term in logic - a precise science. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI) | |
| A reaction: We might ask whether we 'know' what 'true' and 'refers' mean, as opposed to being able to use them. If their usage doesn't count as knowledge, then we could still end up with all actual knowledge being somehow 'scientific'. |
| 4955 | Some definitions aim to fix a reference rather than give a meaning [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some things called definitions really intend to fix a reference rather than to give the meaning of a phrase, to give a synonym. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His example is pi. Some definitions relate to reality (e.g. ostensive definition), and others are part of a language game. But then some concepts are dictated to us by reality, and others are arbitrarily invented by us for convenience. |
| 6276 | 'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: 'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three) | |
| A reaction: The word 'warranted' seems to be ambiguous in modern philosophy. See Idea 6150. There seem to be internalist and externalist versions. It seems clear to say that a belief could be well-justified and yet false. |
| 6266 | We need the correspondence theory of truth to understand language and science [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: A correspondence theory of truth is needed to understand how language works, and how science works. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Putnam retreated from this position to a more pragmatic one later on, but all my sympathies are with the present view, despite being repeatedly told by modern philosophers that I am wrong. See McGinn (Idea 6085) and Searle (Idea 3508). |
| 6277 | Correspondence between concepts and unconceptualised reality is impossible [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The great nineteenth century argument against the correspondence theory of truth was that one cannot think of truth as correspondence to facts (or 'reality') because one would need to compare concepts directly with unconceptualised reality. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the criticism was offered by idealists, who preferred a coherence theory. The defence is to say that there is a confusion here between a concept and the contents of a concept. The contents of a concept are designed to be facts. |
| 6269 | Only Tarski has found a way to define 'true' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: There is only one way anyone knows how to define 'true' and that is Tarski's way. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec II.5) | |
| A reaction: However, Davidson wrote a paper called 'On the Folly of Trying to Define Truth', which seems to reject even Tarski. Also bear in mind Putnam's earlier remark (Idea 6265) that there is more to truth than Tarski's definition. Just take 'true' as primitive. |
| 6264 | In Tarski's definition, you understand 'true' if you accept the notions of the object language [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who accepts the notions of whatever object language is in question - and this can be chosen arbitrarily - can also understand 'true' as defined by Tarski for that object language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Thus if we say "'snow is white' is true iff snow is white", then if you 'accept the notion' that snow is white in English, you understand what 'true' means. This seems to leave you with the meaning of 'snow is white' being its truth conditions. |
| 6265 | Tarski has given a correct account of the formal logic of 'true', but there is more to the concept [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What Tarski has done is to give us a perfectly correct account of the formal logic of the concept 'true', but the formal logic of the concept is not all there is to the notion of truth. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this refreshing. A lot of modern philosophers seem to think that truth is no longer an interesting philosophical topic, because deflationary accounts have sidelined it, but I take the concept to be at the heart of metaphysics. |
| 10559 | Kripke's modal semantics presupposes certain facts about possible worlds [Kripke, by Zalta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's modal semantics presupposes that worlds are maximal and consistent, that there is a unique actual world, and that worlds are coherent (e.g. lack contradiction, obey conjunction). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Edward N. Zalta - Deriving Kripkean Claims with Abstract Objects |
| 21677 | How can the not-true fail to be false, or the not-false fail to be true? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How can something that is not true not be false, or how can something that is not false not be true? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 16.38) | |
| A reaction: We must at least distinguish between whether the contrary thing is not actually true, or whether we are prepared to assert that it is not true. The disjunction may seem to be a false dichotomy. 'He isn't good' may not entail 'he is evil'. |
| 10437 | Names are rigid, making them unlike definite descriptions [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: It was important to Kripke to contrast the rigidity of names with the non-rigidity of many or most definite descriptions. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: Philosophers always want sharp distinctions, but there are tricky names like 'Homer' and 'Jack the Ripper' where the name is stable, but its referent wobbles. |
| 4949 | Names are rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I will call something a 'rigid designator' if in every possible world it designates the same object, ..and I will maintain the intuitive thesis that names are rigid designators. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate problem seems to be objects that change across possible worlds. Did nature rigidly designate Aristotle (e.g. by his DNA)? Could Aristotle have been shorter, female, cleverer, his own twin? Is the River Thames rigid? |
| 4951 | A bundle of qualities is a collection of abstractions, so it can't be a particular [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I deny that a particular is nothing but a 'bundle of qualities', whatever that may mean. If a quality is an abstract object, a bundle of qualities is an object of an even higher degree of abstraction, not a particular. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Supports the 'baptism' view of reference, rather than Searle's bundle of descriptions. It shows that theories of reference must tie in with theories of universals, and that Searle is a nominalist. Is Kripke trying to duck metaphysical responsibility? |
| 17031 | A name can still refer even if it satisfies none of its well-known descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the vote yields no object, that nothing satisfies most, or even any, substantial number, of the φ's. Does that mean the name doesn't refer? No. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: As example he gives the case of 'Gödel' referring to the famous man, even if none of the descriptions of him are true. In Note 42 he blames the descriptivists for relying too much on famous people. |
| 8957 | Some references, such as 'Neptune', have to be fixed by description rather than baptism [Kripke, by Szabó] |
| Full Idea: Kripke explicitly allows for the introduction of names through initial reference-fixing via descriptions. Versions of the causal theory of reference that disallow this would have a difficult time explaining how the name 'Neptune' came to refer. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Zoltán Gendler Szabó - Nominalism 4.2 n35 | |
| A reaction: The initial reference to Neptune has to be by description, but you could still give a baptismal account once it is discovered. The direct contact now takes precedence. Suppose another similar planet was found nearby... |
| 10428 | Proper names must have referents, because they are not descriptive [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: A common source of the view that proper names must have referents is that they are not descriptive (as expressed by Kripke). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Sainsbury observes that there might be some other way for a name to be intelligible, with describing or referring. |
| 4959 | A name's reference is not fixed by any marks or properties of the referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is in general not the case that the reference of a name is determined by some uniquely identifying marks, some unique properties satisfied by the referent and known or believed to be true of that referent by the speaker. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing, instead, his historical/causal theory. There does seem to be a problem with objects which have a historical 'baptism', and then entirely change their properties. Kripke us desperate for a simple account of reference. |
| 14896 | Kripke's metaphysics (essences, kinds, rigidity) blocks the slide into sociology [Kripke, by Ladyman/Ross] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's metaphysics of essences, natural kinds, and rigid designation gave philosophers a means of avoiding the relativist path that was bound to end in the tears of sociology. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 1.2 | |
| A reaction: They are contemptuous of Kripke's project, but this is the core of it. He was making a stand against Kuhn, and trying to build a metaphysics for realism. Good for Kripke. |
| 6280 | Realism is a theory, which explains the convergence of science and the success of language [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Realism is an empirical theory; it explains the convergence of scientific theories, where earlier theories are often limiting cases of later theories (which is why theoretical terms preserve their reference); and it explains the success of language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four) | |
| A reaction: I agree. Personally, I think of Plato's Theory of Forms and all religions as empirical theories. The response from anti-realists is generally to undermine confidence in the evidence which these 'empirical theories' are said to explain. |
| 17647 | Kripke individuates objects by essential modal properties (and presupposes essentialism) [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The difficulty is that Kripke individuates objects by their modal properties, by what they (essentially) could and could not be. Kripke's ontology presupposes essentialism; it can not be used to ground it. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Essences' |
| 16995 | Given that a table is made of molecules, could it not be molecular and still be this table? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: This table is composed of molecules. …Could anything be this very object and not be composed of molecules? …It's hard to imagine under what circumstances you would have this very object and find that it is not composed of molecules. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the thesis of essentiality of constitution. Given that it is square, might it have been round? Yes. Given that it is wood, might it have been metal? No? Given that it is molecular, might it have been plasma? No. ….Maybe. |
| 17047 | If we imagine this table made of ice or different wood, we are imagining a different table [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Though we can imagine a table identical to this one in this room, but made of ice (or different wood), it seems to me that this is not to imagine this table as made of ice, but to imagine another table, resembling this one, made of ice. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the Necessity of Constitution thesis, which I doubt. Might this table have had one leg different? Why not? Then you have a Ship of Theseus question. How much could be different? How much of the constitution is necessary? |
| 5450 | For Kripke, essence is origin; for Putnam, essence is properties; for Wiggins, essence is membership of a kind [Kripke, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Kripke makes the origin of an organism essential to it, according to Putnam the fundamental physical properties of a thing are essential, Wiggins sees an organism's essence in belonging to a particular kind, etc. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179 | |
| A reaction: This is helpful for seeing where the problems remain, if you embrace essentialism (as I feel inclined to do). It is vital to remember Putnam's point, that we could suddenly discover that cats are alien robots. This seems to undermine Kripke and Wiggins. |
| 17055 | Atomic number 79 is part of the nature of the gold we know [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is part of the nature of gold as we have it to be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'nature' directly invokes Aristotle's concept of an essence. Scientific essentialism arises from the idea that by discovering the atomic number, we have somehow 'arrived' at the essence, and enquiry is reaching its terminus. |
| 16997 | An essential property is true of an object in any case where it would have existed [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to equate essence with necessary properties, which is the view attacked nicely be Fine in 1994. I take essence (in Aristotle's sense) to be quite different from necessary properties (in being non-trivial, for example). |
| 17045 | De re modality is an object having essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: De re modality is an object having essential properties. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked out of context] It is because Kripke says there are necessities about things, and not just about statements about things, that he has caused a revival of essentialism. Fine has famously said modality depends on essence. |
| 17030 | Important properties of an object need not be essential to it [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Important properties of an object need not be essential, unless 'importance' is used as a synonym for essence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke's examples are the writings of Aristotle and the actions of Hitler, but these don't strike me as being 'properties' of those people. They are not intrinsic. Kripke, of course, is concerned with how we identify them, not who they actually are. |
| 16955 | Kripke says internal structure fixes species; I say it is genetic affinity and a common descent [Kripke, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Kripke stresses that membership of a single animal species requires identity or similarity of internal structure. In my view, what matters is genetic affinity - a common descent. Internal structure is merely a clue. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Michael Dummett - Could There Be Unicorns? 2 | |
| A reaction: The crucial test question would be whether we can make a tiger artificially (even constructing the DNA). I would say that if you make a tiger, that's a tiger, so Kripke is right and Dummett is wrong. The species is what it is, not where it came from. |
| 16996 | Given that Nixon is indeed a human being, that he might not have been does not concern knowledge [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose Nixon actually turned out to be an automaton. That might happen. But that is a question about our knowledge. The question of whether he might not have been a human being, given that he is one, is not a question about knowledge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Given that you are sitting, might you be standing? Yes. Given that you are human, might you be non-human? No. Maybe! |
| 13971 | Kripke claims that some properties, only knowable posteriori, are known a priori to be essential [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (good) route to the necessary a posteriori is based on the idea that certain properties of objects that they can be known to have only a posteriori, may be known a priori to be essential properties of anything that has them. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.180 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and a key issue. I think this is precisely where I disagree with the Kripkean view of necessities. Logicians want to know a priori what is essential for identity, but scientists want to know what makes things tick. See Kripke on pain. |
| 12100 | An essence is the necessary properties, derived from an intuitive identity, in origin, type and material [Kripke, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Kripke an object's essence simply consists of its necessary properties. ...His essential properties of individual objects follow from our intuitions about their identity. ...They are of three sorts: of origin, of sortals, and of material. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6 n3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Kripke is only interested in identity, whereas Aristotle is interested in explanation. The sorts are efficient, formal, material. Big Q: could Aristotle's account of essence do all the work that is required of essences by Kripke? |
| 16991 | No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Adequate necessary and sufficient conditions for identity which do not beg the question are very rare. …I don't know of such conditions for identity of material objects over time, or for people. Everyone knows what a problem this is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Typical of Kripke, who only seems to commit to conclusions suggested to him by his modal logic, and is baffled by almost everything else. I think one can at least attempt an essentialist approach to this problem. |
| 11867 | If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps Kripke's argument for the necessity to a thing of its actual origin is that the speculator has to be able to rebut the charge that he has lost his grasp of his subject of discourse if he conceives of this subject with changed parents or origin. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.10 | |
| A reaction: On the whole Wiggins opposes necessity of origin (cf. Forbes, who defends it). If this idea is right, then any means of ensuring reference will do the job, and it clearly wouldn't be an argument that guaranteed necessity of origin. |
| 12018 | Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: If we generalise what Kripke says about the Queen, then he is arguing that the parents of any organism are essentially the parents of that organism. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that we have to be extremely careful in specifying what it is that Kripke is saying. I take it that either Kripke is saying something rather uninteresting, or he is saying what Forbes suggests. Parenthood is essential, not just necessary. |
| 17046 | Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Could the Queen - could this woman herself - have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Tricky! No, because the past is fixed? Could the Queen have visited Russia when she was 20? I suppose so. Might she not have had parents, given who she is? I don't see why not. Could this desk have been made by someone else? Why not? |
| 8274 | Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Against Kripke's thesis of 'necessity of origin' I will just point out the intuitive force of the claim that Socrates - that very person - could, logically, have had no beginning to his existence at all, or have come into existence ex nihilo. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.110-) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 6.5 | |
| A reaction: It also strikes me that one base-pair difference in his DNA (by a mutation, or a fractionally different parent) would still leave him as Socrates. People are not good candidates for 'rigid' designation. Counterparts seems a better account here. |
| 17036 | Identity statements can be contingent if they rely on descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If the man who invented bifocals was the first Postmaster General of the United States - that they were one and the same - it's contingently true. …So when you make identity statements using descriptions, that can be a contingent fact. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) |
| 17038 | If Hesperus and Phosophorus are the same, they can't possibly be different [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If Hesperus and Phosphorus are one and the same, then in no other possible world can they be different. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: If we ask whether one object could possibly be two objects, and deny that possibility, then Kripke's novel thought seems just right and obvious. |
| 11880 | Kripke says his necessary a posteriori examples are known a priori to be necessary [Kripke, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Kripke claims that all of his examples of the necessary a posteriori have the characteristic that we can know a priori that if they are true, they are necessarily true. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], 159) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.4 | |
| A reaction: That is, it seems, that they are not really necessary a posteriori! The necessity seems to only arrive with the addition of a priori judgements, thus endorsing the traditional view that necessity is only derivable a priori. Hm. |
| 4797 | Instead of being regularities, maybe natural laws are the weak a posteriori necessities of Kripke [Kripke, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: By defending a posteriori necessary statements, Kripke introduced the concept of a necessity in nature that was weaker than logical necessity; ..as a result, the dominant view of laws as mere regularities started to be seriously challenged. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §6.1 | |
| A reaction: Most of Kripke's examples of discovered necessities seem to be identities, which seem to be as strong as any logical necessity. I'm not sure I can make sense of a 'less strong necessity'. Necessity sounds all-or-nothing to me. |
| 17037 | Physical necessity may be necessity in the highest degree [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Physical necessity might turn out to be necessity in the highest degree. But that's a question which I don't wish to prejudge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably necessity 'in the highest degree' is 'metaphysical' necessity, but Kripke is a bit coy about that. This is the germ of modern scientific essentialism. |
| 4728 | Kripke separates necessary and a priori, proposing necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori examples [Kripke, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: It is now recognised that the apriori and the necessary don't always have to go together, ..and Kripke has suggested examples of necessary-aposteriori and contingent-apriori beliefs. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The simple point is that whether something is necessary or contingent is a quite separate question from how we come to know that they are. There isn't a new mode of reality called 'necessary a posteriori'. |
| 16990 | A priori = Necessary because we imagine all worlds, and we know without looking at actuality? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: People think 'necessary' and 'a priori' mean the same for two reasons: we can assess what is feasible in all possible world by running them through our heads, and something known a priori avoids looking at the world, so it must be necessary. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Kripke denies this doctrine, and pulls the concepts apart. Kant seems to be the chief representative of the view he is attacking. Hossack defends the older view. |
| 9386 | The meter is defined necessarily, but the stick being one meter long is contingent a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In 'one meter is the length of stick S at t', one designator (one meter) is rigid and the other (length of S at t) is not. 'S is one meter long at t' is contingent, as it could have a different length. In this sense, there are contingent a priori truths. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] Not convincing. He is proposing that a truth is knowable a priori, though knowledge of it is utterly dependent on a ceremony having taken place. It would not be true if that event hadn't taken place, so how can be it be known a priori? |
| 2408 | Kripke has demonstrated that some necessary truths are only knowable a posteriori [Kripke, by Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has demonstrated the existence of necessary truths such as "water is H2O" whose necessity is only knowable a posteriori. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 2.4.2 |
| 4960 | "'Hesperus' is 'Phosphorus'" is necessarily true, if it is true, but not known a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: An identity statement between names (such as 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus'), when true at all, is necessarily true, even though one may not know it a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, but one should not read too much into it. What should we say if Venus fissions into two, one for the morning, one for the evening? That identity implies x=x doesn't prove the existence of unchanging essences. |
| 4966 | Theoretical identities are between rigid designators, and so are necessary a posteriori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Theoretical identities, according to the conception I advocate, are generally identities involving rigid designators and therefore are examples of the necessary a posteriori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't open up a huge new realm of a posteriori necessity. We just cured some of our ignorance. I remain unconvinced that the Morning Star is necessarily the Evening Star, except in the boring way that if it is, it is. Venus could fission. |
| 13967 | Kripke's essentialist necessary a posteriori opened the gap between conceivable and really possible [Soames on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: With Kripke's essentialist route to the necessary a posteriori came a sharp distinction between conceivability and genuine possibility - ways things could conceivably be versus ways things could really be (or have been). | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.167 | |
| A reaction: A key idea, for me. I love 'could there be a bonfire on the moon?' Imagining it is easy-peasy. 'Could wood combine with oxygen when there is no oxygen present?' We imagined it all right, but did we 'conceive' it? |
| 13970 | Kripke gets to the necessary a posteriori by only allowing conceivability when combined with actuality [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (superior) route to necessary a posteriori has a sharp distinction between how the universe could conceivably and really be. ..On this picture conceivability is a fallible but useful guide, when combined with knowledge of actuality. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.168 | |
| A reaction: [compressed from p.168 and 170] To dismiss conceivability is ridiculous (see Williamson on that), and this formula of Soames sound right. To understand possibility, you have to study actuality (across time and space). Study history! |
| 16992 | Possible worlds aren't puzzling places to learn about, but places we ourselves describe [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A possible world isn't a distant country that we are coming across, or viewing through a telescope. …A possible world is given by the descriptive conditions we associate with it. …Possible worlds are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that it is absurd to be puzzling over the identity of what exists in some possible world, because the world is specified by us. If I say 'Nixon might have been a frog', I must be referring to Nixon. The problem is whether it is true. |
| 16993 | If we discuss what might have happened to Nixon, we stipulate that it is about Nixon [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why we cannot stipulate that, in talking about what would have happened to Nixon in a certain counterfactual situation, we are talking about what would have happened to HIM. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: For many people (including me now, I think) this lays to rest the supposed problem of 'transworld identity' wrestled with by Kaplan and Lewis. |
| 16998 | Transworld identification is unproblematic, because we stipulate that we rigidly refer to something [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is because we refer (rigidly) to Nixon, and stipulate that we are speaking of what might have happened to him (under certain circumstances), that 'transworld identifications' are unproblematic in such cases. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This responds to those who say you need transworld identification before you can rigidly designate something, which has 'reversed the cart and horse' says Kripke. Nice. |
| 17001 | A table in some possible world should not even be identified by its essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A table should not be identified with the set or 'bundle' of its properties, nor with the subset of its essential properties. Don't ask: how can I identify this table in another possible world, except by its properties? I have the table in my hands. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You identify the table by what's in front of you, but the essence might be relevant to deciding how far this table could change and remain this table. |
| 4952 | Identification across possible worlds does not need properties, even essential ones [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some properties of an object may be essential to it, in that it could not have failed to have them. But these properties are not used to identify the object in another possible world, for such an identification is not needed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: So how DO you identify objects in other possible worlds, or in this one? You may say he was baptised 'Aristotle' so that's rigid, but if Athens is full of pseudo-Aristotles I want to pick out the real one. I say Kripke muddles epistemology and ontology. |
| 7761 | Test for rigidity by inserting into the sentence 'N might not have been N' [Kripke, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Kripke offers an intuitive test for telling whether a term is rigid: try the term in the sentence-frame "N might not have been N". (For example, try the terms 'Nixon' and 'President of the USA'). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Helpful, but if you try it, the results do not seem to be conclusive. You are left saying 'Well, it depends what you mean by...' Think of possible worlds with a crippled Nixon, twin Nixons, an honest Nixon, a robot Nixon, a dark skinned Nixon... |
| 7693 | Kripke avoids difficulties of transworld identity by saying it is a decision, not a discovery [Kripke, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Objects we find in the actual world might have been so different than they actually are that it appears impossible to identify the same objects from world to world. Kripke sidesteps the problem by saying transworld identity is a decision, not a discovery. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the strategy that opposes Lewis's proposal of 'counterpart' objects that have properties in common. It is also the source of Kripke's causal theory of reference, and hence a key to massive modern debates. |
| 5821 | Saying that natural kinds are 'rigid designators' is the same as saying they are 'indexical' [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's doctrine that natural kind words are rigid designators and our doctrine that they are indexical are two ways of making the same point. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.161 | |
| A reaction: I think I prefer Putnam's terminology, because it is more modest in its claims Kripke gets into trouble when a natural kind in some other possible world is only subtly different from the original. How 'rigid'? Putnam sticks to how the word gets started. |
| 14068 | If Kripke names must still denote a thing in a non-actual situation, the statue isn't its clay [Gibbard on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke gives an account of proper names from which it follows that Goliath (the statue) cannot be identical the lumpl (the clay), ..because if a proper name denotes a thing in the actual world, then it denotes that same thing in non-actual situations. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity III | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a powerful criticism of Kripke's claim - and has led to extensive discussion which I will now have to pursue. Watch this space. |
| 10436 | A rigid expression may refer at a world to an object not existing in that world [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: In the Kripkean perspective, rigidity is understood in such a way that an expression may have as referent at a world an object which does not exist at that world. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: This means that 'the present King of France' is a rigid designator. |
| 4953 | We do not begin with possible worlds and place objects in them; we begin with objects in the real world [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We do not begin with worlds (which are supposed somehow to be real), and then ask about criteria of transworld identification; on the contrary, we begin with objects, which we have, and can identify, in the real world. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This gives us clearly Kripke's underlying empiricist metaphysics, I take it. I find the realism of it appealing, but am uneasy about the idea of an object as basic, when Heraclitus said that they tend to fluctuate. Platonism waits in the wings. |
| 4961 | It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: How could a person originating from different parents, from a totally different sperm and egg, be this very woman (Elizabeth II)? ..It seems to me that anything coming from a different origin would not be this very object. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Since baby Elizabeth could have been smuggled into the palace in a bedpan, it seems to me that her properties now are rather more obvious than her origin. I fear the only necessity here is that you can't change the past. An intriguing puzzle. |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think it is not the case that there might have been unicorns. I wouldn't say it is necessary that there are no unicorns, but that we just can't say under what circumstances there would have been unicorns. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point seems to be that unicorns are insufficiently individuated by the legends, whereas a typical sample of an actual creature contains everything that will individuate the species. |
| 8259 | Kripke has breathed new life into the a priori/a posteriori distinction [Kripke, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The a priori/a posteriori is still taken seriously, and has had new life breathed into it by the work of Saul Kripke. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 1.1 | |
| A reaction: The distinction may be a good one, despite a blurred borderline. Did Egyptian quantity surveyors begin to suspect that Pythagoras's Theorem was a necessary truth, though they couldn't prove it? A priori understanding creeps into experience. |
| 16989 | Rather than 'a priori truth', it is best to stick to whether some person knows it on a priori evidence [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A priori is supposed to mean something which can be known independently of experience, …but possible for whom? God, or the Martians? …Instead of 'a priori truth' it is best to stick to whether some person knows it based on a priori evidence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Kripke's famous attempt to establish that 'a priori' is strictly an epistemological term, and should not be taken as a term of metaphysics (or modal semantics?). I definitely prefer the Kripke view, though it downgrades the a priori. |
| 4947 | A priori truths can be known independently of experience - but they don't have to be [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The traditional characterisation (since Kant) goes: a priori truths are those which can be known independently of any experience - ..but that doesn't mean they MUST be known a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You may discover through experience that nine matches can't be divided into two equal piles, but Leibniz (and others) say you will only see the necessity of this a priori. No necessity is visible in the matches. |
| 6284 | If a tautology is immune from revision, why would that make it true? [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: If we held, say, 'All unmarried men are unmarried' as absolutely immune from revision, why would this make it true? | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question. Like most American philosophers, Putnam accepts Quine's attack on the unrevisability of analytic truths. His point here is that defenders of analytic truths are probably desperate to preserve basic truths, but it won't work. |
| 13975 | Kripke was more successful in illuminating necessity than a priority (and their relations to analyticity) [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke was far more successful in illuminating the nature of necessity, and distinguishing it from both apriority and analyticity, than he was in illuminating the nature of apriority, and distinguishing that from analyticity. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.187 |
| 17048 | Analytic judgements are a priori, even when their content is empirical [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: All analytic judgements are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, 'Gold is a yellow metal'; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: So I relate a priori to 'turquoise is a shade of red', even though my concepts are confused? It is my concept, perhaps, but it is false. I thought a priori had something to do with knowing, not with reporting the confused nonsense in my mind? |
| 4948 | Intuition is the strongest possible evidence one can have about anything [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think something's having intuitive content is very heavy evidence in favour of it. I really don't know what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very appealing remark, especially coming from a great logician. It seems to me, though, that some intuitions are more rational than others, and we must occasionally give up intuitions that are proved wrong. |
| 6273 | Knowledge depends on believing others, which must be innate, as inferences are not strong enough [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Our ability to picture how people are likely to respond may well be innate; indeed, our disposition to believe what other people tell us (which is fundamental to knowledge) could hardly be an inference, as that isn’t good enough for knowledge. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI) | |
| A reaction: An interesting claim. There could be an intermediate situation, which is a hard-wired non-conscious inference. When dismantled, the 'innate' brain circuits for assessing testimony could turn out to work on logic and evidence. |
| 6274 | Empathy may not give knowledge, but it can give plausibility or right opinion [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Empathy with others may give less than 'Knowledge', but it gives more than mere logical or physical possibility; it gives plausibility, or (to revive Platonic terminology) it provides 'right opinion'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI) | |
| A reaction: See Ideas 174 and 2140 for Plato. Putnam is exploring areas of knowledge outside the limits of strict science. Behind this claim seems to lie the Principle of Charity (3971), but a gang of systematic liars (e.g. evil students) would be a problem case. |
| 4958 | Identities like 'heat is molecule motion' are necessary (in the highest degree), not contingent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I hold that characteristic theoretical identifications like 'heat is the motion of molecules', are not contingent truths but necessary truths, and I don't just mean physically necessary, but necessary in the highest degree. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This helps to keep epistemology and ontology separate. The contingency was in the epistemology. That the identity is 'physically necessary' seems obvious; that it is necessary 'in the highest degrees' implies an essentialist view of nature. |
| 17084 | You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Explanation is an interest-relative notion …explanation has to be partly a pragmatic concept. To regard the 'pragmatics' of explanation as no part of the concept is to abdicate the job of figuring out what makes an explanation good. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], p. 41-2), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1 | |
| A reaction: I suppose this is just obvious, depending on how far you want to take the 'interest-relative' bit. If a fool is fobbed off with a trivial explanation, there must be some non-relative criterion for assessing that. |
| 4967 | It seems logically possible to have the pain brain state without the actual pain [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Prima facie, it would seem that it is a least logically possible the brain state corresponding to pain should have existed (Jones's brain could have been in exactly that state at the time in question) without Jones feeling any pain at all. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is Kripke's commitment to the possibility of zombies, which are only possible if the mind-body connection is a contingent one, and he shows that there are no contingent 'identities'. The answer is necessary identity, and no zombies. |
| 7430 | Kripke assumes that mind-brain identity designates rigidly, which it doesn't [Armstrong on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In his attempted disproof of materialism about the mind, Kripke assumes that the physical description is a rigid designator, but this seems to be begging the question against the causal theory, which says the description is non-rigid. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David M. Armstrong - Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' p.xiv | |
| A reaction: A crucial part of this is that Armstrong believes that the laws of nature are contingent, and hence mind-brain identity has to be. Personally I incline to say that the identity is rigid, but that Kripke is still wrong. |
| 7867 | If consciousness could separate from brain, then it cannot be identical with brain [Kripke, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument is that the possibility of conscious properties coming apart from material properties shows that they cannot be identical with material properties. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 3.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice clear and simple summary. How can the possibility of coming apart be demonstrated? Only, it seems, by using our imaginations. But that is quite a good guide in areas we know well, but not in recondite areas like the brain. |
| 3228 | Kripke says pain is necessarily pain, but a brain state isn't necessarily painful [Kripke, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument against mind-brain identity is that a pain is necessarily pain (just as a stone is necessarily matter), but a brain state is not necessarily painful (just as a stone is not necessarily a doorstep). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 11.6.2 | |
| A reaction: As with Descartes' argument from necessity for dualism, this seems to me to beg the question. It seems to me fairly self-evident that certain brain states have to be painful, just as stones always have to be hard or massive. |
| 5832 | Identity must be necessary, but pain isn't necessarily a brain state, so they aren't identical [Kripke, by Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist, it appears, can admit that the identity is necessary if true without substantially altering his position, but Kripke argues that the identity between pain and some brain states is not necessary. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) by Stephen P. Schwartz - Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds §IV | |
| A reaction: This appears to depend on being able to imagine the pain occurring with a different brain state, or no brain state. Bad argument. See Idea 5819. |
| 4968 | Identity theorists seem committed to no-brain-event-no-pain, and vice versa, which seems wrong [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist is committed to the view that there could not be a C-fibre stimulation which was not a pain, nor a pain which was not a C-fibre stimulation; these consequences are certainly surprising and counterintuitive. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: If Kripke saw a glow in an area of his brain every time he felt a pain, he would cease to find it 'counterintuitive'. Far from this conclusion being 'surprising', its opposite is absurd. Pain with no brain event? C-fibres blaze away, and I feel nothing? |
| 6282 | Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four) | |
| A reaction: How can you have a theory of understanding without a meaning that requires to be understood? Personally I think about the minds of small animals when pondering this, and that seems to put reference and truth at the front of the queue. |
| 6281 | Truth conditions can't explain understanding a sentence, because that in turn needs explanation [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: You can't treat understanding a sentence as knowing its truth conditions, because it then becomes unintelligible what that knowledge in turn consists in. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four) | |
| A reaction: The implication, I take it, is circularity; how can you specify truth conditions if you don't understand sentences? Putnam here agrees with Dummett that verification must be involved. Something has to be taken as axiomatic in all this. |
| 6278 | We should reject the view that truth is prior to meaning [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: I am suggesting that we reject the view that truth (based on the semantic theory) is prior to meaning. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three) | |
| A reaction: It is a nice question which of truth or meaning has logical priority. One might start by speculating about how and why animals think. A moth attracted to flame is probably working on truth without much that could be called 'meaning'. |
| 6271 | How reference is specified is not what reference is [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: A theory of how reference is specified isn't a theory of what reference is. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec V) | |
| A reaction: A simple and important point. We may achieve reference by naming, describing, grunting or pointing, but the question is, what have we achieved when we get there? |
| 17874 | Kripke has a definitional account of kinds, but not of naming [Almog on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an incongruity between Kripke's definitionalist account of the essence of kinds (and the induced necessities), and his definition-free account of naming. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence X | |
| A reaction: Putnam places more emphasis on baptising a prototypical example, just as we baptise named things. |
| 16394 | Kripke derives accounts of reference and proper names from assumptions about worlds and essences [Stalnaker on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: One might think that the direction of Kripke's arguments goes the other way - that conclusions about reference and proper names were derived in part from controversial metaphysical assumptions about possible worlds and essential properties. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: Nathan Salmon is famous for charging Kripke with trying to get a metaphysics from a semantics, but this remark of Stalnaker's seems much more accurate. Kripke certainly assumes realism, and robust identity. |
| 5822 | The important cause is not between dubbing and current use, but between the item and the speaker's information [Evans on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has mislocated the important causal relation, which lies between the item's states and doings and the speaker's body of information - not between the item's being dubbed with a name and the speaker's contemporary use of it. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Gareth Evans - The Causal Theory of Names §I | |
| A reaction: This feels sort of right. I sympathise with the much more social view of matters like reference, which grows out of Wittgenstein's anti-private language claims. I'm not sure where 'causation' come into Evans's picture. |
| 17033 | We may refer through a causal chain, but still change what is referred to [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There may be a causal chain from our use of the term 'Santa Claus' to a certain historical saint, but still children, when they use this, by this time probably do not refer to that saint. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a significant concession to critics of the causal theory. I take it that community agreement is much more significant for reference than the actual causal chain, which may be riddled with errors from beginning to end, and so isn't causal. |
| 4689 | Kripke makes reference a largely social matter, external to the mind of the speaker [Kripke, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's theory brought a social element into the function of language: a speaker is socially connected to others who may know far more than she does about the reference of her terms, and the mechanism of reference is now not in her mind, but is external. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Colin McGinn - The Making of a Philosopher Ch. 3 | |
| A reaction: Hence this theory of reference leads on to Putnam's 'wide content' and Twin Earth. I remain unconvinced. See ideas under 'Thought'. |
| 17504 | Kripke's theory is important because it gives a collective account of reference [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What is important about Kripke's theory is not that the use of proper names is 'causal' - what is not? - but that the use of proper names is collective. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Explanation and Reference II B | |
| A reaction: This is the best response to Kripke. Reference is achieved by thinkers and speakers, but it is also a team activity, as in the case of the elm, or of Amenhotep II. |
| 17035 | We refer through the community, going back to the original referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It's in virtue of our connection with other speakers in the community, going back to the referent himself, that we refer to a certain man. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: There may be two theories of reference getting tangled up here. Going back to the origin is one thing, and relying on the community is another. Do I always know who I am referring to? 'The funniest man in London'. |
| 6268 | The claim that scientific terms are incommensurable can be blocked if scientific terms are not descriptions [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The line of reasoning of Kuhn and Feyerabend can be blocked by arguing (as I have in various places, and as Saul Kripke has) that scientific terms are not synonymous with descriptions. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec II.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the motivation for creating the causal theory of reference. See Idea 6162. We could still go back and ask whether we could block scientific relativism by rethinking how descriptions work, instead of abandoning them. |
| 16988 | Descriptive reference shows how to refer, how to identify two things, and how to challenge existence [Kripke, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Summary: in favour of the descriptive theory of names are it gives you a mechanism for doing the referring (and Mill doesn't), we can identify two descriptions if there is one referent, and it allows us to question the existence of a referent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: If this problem is seen in terms of mental files (with labels and contents) this whole problem becomes a lot clearer. I take reference to be the action of a thinker, not a function of language. |
| 17029 | It can't be necessary that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is just not, in any intuitive sense of necessity, a necessary truth that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This replies to Searle's claim that to be Aristotle he must have a fair number of the properties. Even if Searle is right, you can hardly pick the properties out individually and claim they are necessary. Kripke pulls epistemology away from metaphysics. |
| 14893 | Rigid designation creates a puzzle - why do some necessary truths appear to be contingent? [Kripke, by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's proposal that referential expressions like indexicals, demonstratives, proper names and natural kind terms are de jure rigid designators created a puzzle - it entails 'modal illusions', truths that are in fact necessary appear to be contingent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.143-4) by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 1 | |
| A reaction: They are identifying this puzzle as the source of the need for two-dimensional semantics. Kripke notes that rigid designators may have their reference fixed by non-rigid descriptions. |
| 21667 | Oratory and philosophy are closely allied; orators borrow from philosophy, and ornament it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There is a close alliance between the orator and the philosophical system of which I am a follower, since the orator borrows subtlely from the Academy, and repays the loan by giving to it a copious and flowing style and rhetorical ornament. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 02.03) | |
| A reaction: It is a misundertanding to think that rhetoric and philosophy are seen as in necessary opposition. Philosophers just seemed to think that oratory works a lot better if it is truthful. |
| 6279 | A private language could work with reference and beliefs, and wouldn't need meaning [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: A language made up and used by a being who belonged to no community would have no need for such a concept as the 'meaning' of a term. To state the reference of each term and what the language speaker believes is to tell the whole story. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three) | |
| A reaction: A subtle response to Wittgenstein's claim (e.g. Ideas 4152,4158), but I am not sure what Putnam means. I would have thought that beliefs had to be embodied in propositions. They may not need 'meaning' quite as urgently as sentences, but still… |
| 6270 | The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What it is to be a correct translation is to be the translation that best explains the behaviour of the speaker. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec III) | |
| A reaction: This seems fairly close to Quine, but rather puzzlingly uses the word 'correct'. If our criteria of translation are purely behavioural, there is no way we can be correct after one word ('gavagai'), so at what point does it become 'correct'? |
| 6283 | Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: We could say that the language has more than one correct way of being mapped onto the world (it must, since it has more than one way of being correctly mapped onto a language which is itself correctly mapped onto the world). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four) | |
| A reaction: This spells out nicely the significance of Quine's 'indeterminacy of translation'. Others have pointed out that the fact that language maps onto world in many ways need not be anti-realist; the world is endless, and language is limited. |
| 6275 | You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The maxim that 'most of a speaker's beliefs are true' as an a priori principle governing radical translation seems to me to go too far; first, I don't know how to count beliefs; second, most people's beliefs on some topics (philosophy) are probably false. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three) | |
| A reaction: Putnam prefers a pragmatic view, where charity is applicable if behaviour is involved. Philosophy is too purely theoretical. The extent to which Charity should apply in philosophy seminars is a nice question, which all students should test in practice. |
| 21678 | If desire is not in our power then neither are choices, so we should not be praised or punished [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the cause of desire is not situated within us, even desire itself is also not in our power. ...It follows that neither assent nor action is in our power. Hence there is no justice in either praise or blame, either honours or punishments. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 17.40) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of 'old philosophers', but I'm unsure which ones. Cicero spurns this view. It is obvious that the causes of our desires are largely out of our control. Responsibility seems to concern what we do about our desires. |
| 17056 | Terms for natural kinds are very close to proper names [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: According to the view I advocate, terms for natural kinds are much closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposed. …'Common name' is appropriate for species …and also for certain mass terms such as 'gold' and 'water'. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) |
| 4963 | The properties that fix reference are contingent, the properties involving meaning are necessary [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Bear in mind the contrast between the a priori but perhaps contingent properties carried with a natural kind term, given by the way its reference was fixed, and the analytic (and hence necessary) properties a term may carry, given by its meaning. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The second half of this is the 'new essentialism'. Complex. We need to distinguish 'reference' from 'definition'. The 'analytic properties' seem to be the definition, but we sometimes change our definitions (e.g. of units of time). |
| 17053 | Gold's atomic number might not be 79, but if it is, could non-79 stuff be gold? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Gold could turn out not to have atomic number 79. …But given that gold does have the atomic number 79, could something be gold without having the atomic number 79? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The question seems to be 'is atomic number 79 essential to gold?', and on p.124 Kripke seems to say 'yes'. I agree. But how do we decide which features are essential to gold? Why do we think molten gold does count as gold? |
| 4964 | 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: False! As Putnam has pointed out, we could yet discover that cats are subtly designed alien robots. This is a revealing error by Kripke, showing his desire to move from a useful logical clarification to an excessively amibitious metaphysics. |
| 6765 | Nominal essence may well be neither necessary nor sufficient for a natural kind [Kripke, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's tiger example shows that a nominal essence is not necessary for the existence of a natural kind; examples from Putnam show that a nominal essence is not sufficient either. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: None of the characteristics of a tiger is essential to it. The appearance of water doesn't fix its reference. The move is towards an external view, that what matters for natural kinds is the real essence, not human conventions about it. I agree. |
| 9387 | The scientific discovery (if correct) that gold has atomic number 79 is a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Scientific discoveries about what gold is are not contingent truths, but are necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. ..If scientists are right, then it will be necessary and not contingent that gold be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: I think this glorious and controversial claim is correct. It is hard to find supporting arguments, but the picture of nature that emerges (where the essences of the stuffs precede the laws of their behaviour) seems to me far more coherent. |
| 17054 | Scientific discoveries about gold are necessary truths [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Statement representing scientific discoveries about what this stuff (gold) is are not contingent truths but necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: People take him to mean 'metaphysically necessary' here. How do we distinguish the 'scientific' discoveries, which are necessary, from the more casual discoveries, which may not be? Presumably being yellow is also necessary? |
| 17057 | Once we've found that heat is molecular motion, then that's what it is, in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We have discovered a phenomenon (heat) which in all possible worlds will be molecular motion - which could not have failed to be molecular motion, because that's what the phenomenon is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He refers to the identification as an 'essential property' of the phenomenon (and not merely a necessity). For my taste, Kripke uses the word 'property' too widely. |
| 4965 | Science searches basic structures in search of essences [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Science attempts, by investigating basic structural traits, to find the nature, and thus the essence (in the philosophical sense) of the kind. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The 'necessity' of essences should be treated with caution, but this account of science strikes me as right, with the inbuilt assumption that the 'laws' are the consequence of the essences. A regularity becomes a law when it is explained by an essence. |
| 17050 | Tigers may lack all the properties we originally used to identify them [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We might find out that tigers had none of the properties by which we originally identified them. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a can of worms. If I baptise someone 'the tallest man in the room', and it turns out he isn't, I withdraw my baptism. Why would I never withdraw 'tiger'? I suppose Kripke is right. |
| 17051 | The original concept of 'cat' comes from paradigmatic instances [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The original concept of cat is: that kind of thing, where the kind can be identified by paradigmatic instances. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Kripke evokes Putnam at this point, since he is famous for this proposal. Note that Kripke uses the plural, invoking more than one instance. Presumably we must abstract the fur colours from the instances? |
| 17049 | 'Tiger' designates a species, and merely looking like the species is not enough [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We can say in advance that we use the term 'tiger' to designate a species, and that anything not of this species, even though it looks like a tiger, is not in fact a tiger. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'baptismal' direct reference theory applied to species as well as to particular names. It seem to hinge on an internal structure being baptised, despite ignorance of what that structure is. Cf nominal essence? 'Tiger' denotes their essence? |