Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity

Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity PDF Author: Christopher Hughes
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 9780191544002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Saul Kripke, in a series of classic writings of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the face of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Christopher Hughes offers a careful exposition and critical analysis of Kripke's central ideas about names, necessity, and identity. He clears up some common misunderstandings of Kripke's views on rigid designation, causality and reference, the necessary and the contingent, the a posteriori and the a priori. Through his engagement with Kripke's ideas Hughes makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates on, inter alia, the semantics of natural kind terms, the nature of natural kinds, the essentiality of origin and constitution, the relative merits of 'identitarian' and counterpart-theoretic accounts of modality, and the identity or otherwise of mental types and tokens with physical types and tokens. No specialist knowledge in either the philosophy of language or metaphysics is presupposed; Hughes's book will be valuable for anyone working on the ideas which Kripke made famous in the philosophy world.

Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity

Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity PDF Author: Christopher Hughes
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 9780191544002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
Saul Kripke, in a series of classic writings of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the face of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Christopher Hughes offers a careful exposition and critical analysis of Kripke's central ideas about names, necessity, and identity. He clears up some common misunderstandings of Kripke's views on rigid designation, causality and reference, the necessary and the contingent, the a posteriori and the a priori. Through his engagement with Kripke's ideas Hughes makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates on, inter alia, the semantics of natural kind terms, the nature of natural kinds, the essentiality of origin and constitution, the relative merits of 'identitarian' and counterpart-theoretic accounts of modality, and the identity or otherwise of mental types and tokens with physical types and tokens. No specialist knowledge in either the philosophy of language or metaphysics is presupposed; Hughes's book will be valuable for anyone working on the ideas which Kripke made famous in the philosophy world.

Naming and Necessity

Naming and Necessity PDF Author: Saul A. Kripke
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674598461
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. Ever since the publication of its original version, Naming and Necessity has had great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kripke and Naming and Necessity

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kripke and Naming and Necessity PDF Author: Harold Noonan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135105154
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Saul Kripke is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His most celebrated work, Naming and Necessity, makes arguably the most important contribution to the philosophy of language and metaphysics in recent years. Asking fundamental questions – how do names refer to things in the world? Do objects have essential properties? What are natural kind terms and to what do they refer? – he challenges prevailing theories of language and conceptions of metaphysics, especially the descriptivist account of reference, which Kripke argues is found in Frege, Wittgenstein and Russell, and the anti-essentialist metaphysics of Quine. In this invaluable guidebook to Kripke's classic work, Harold Noonan introduces and assesses: Kripke's life and the background to his philosophy the ideas and text of Naming and Necessity the continuing importance of Kripke's work to the philosophy of language and metaphysics. The Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kripke and Naming and Necessity is an ideal starting point for anyone coming Kripke's work for the first time. It is essential reading for philosophy students studying philosophy of language, metaphysics, logic, or the history of analytic philosophy.

Beyond Rigidity

Beyond Rigidity PDF Author: Scott Soames
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195145283
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Soames introduces a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural-kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions.

Naming and Necessity

Naming and Necessity PDF Author: Saul A. Kripke
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631128014
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Naming and Necessity has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is it.

Philosophical Troubles

Philosophical Troubles PDF Author: Saul A. Kripke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199875618
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This important new book is the first of a series of volumes collecting the essential articles by the eminent and highly influential philosopher Saul A. Kripke. It presents a mixture of published and unpublished articles from various stages of Kripke's storied career. Included here are seminal and much discussed pieces such as "Identity and Necessity", "Outline of a Theory of Truth", "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference", and "A Puzzle About Belief." More recent published articles include "Russell's Notion of Scope" and "Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference" among others. Several articles are published here for the first time, including both older works ("Two Paradoxes of Knowledge", "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities", "Nozick on Knowledge") as well as newer ("The First Person" and "Unrestricted Exportation"). "A Puzzle on Time and Thought" was written expressly for this volume. Publication of this volume -- which ranges over epistemology, linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, theory of truth, and metaphysics -- represents a major event in contemporary analytic philosophy. It will be of great interest to the many who are interested in the work of one its greatest living figures.

Reference and Existence

Reference and Existence PDF Author: Saul A. Kripke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019992838X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This volume collects Saul Kripke's Locke Lectures, which were delivered in Oxford in 1973.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language PDF Author: Michael Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139459805
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description
In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning. The book will be invaluable to students and to all readers who are interested in the nature of linguistic meaning.

The Metaphysics of Science and Aim-Oriented Empiricism

The Metaphysics of Science and Aim-Oriented Empiricism PDF Author: Nicholas Maxwell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030041433
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This book gives an account of work that I have done over a period of decades that sets out to solve two fundamental problems of philosophy: the mind-body problem and the problem of induction. Remarkably, these revolutionary contributions to philosophy turn out to have dramatic implications for a wide range of issues outside philosophy itself, most notably for the capacity of humanity to resolve current grave global problems and make progress towards a better, wiser world. A key element of the proposed solution to the first problem is that physics is about only a highly specialized aspect of all that there is – the causally efficacious aspect. Once this is understood, it ceases to be a mystery that natural science says nothing about the experiential aspect of reality, the colours we perceive, the inner experiences we are aware of. That natural science is silent about the experiential aspect of reality is no reason whatsoever to hold that the experiential does not objectively exist. A key element of the proposed solution to the second problem is that physics, in persistently accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a substantial metaphysical assumption about the universe: it is such that a unified pattern of physical law runs through all phenomena. We need a new conception, and kind, of physics that acknowledges, and actively seeks to improve, metaphysical presuppositions inherent in the methods of physics. The problematic aims and methods of physics need to be improved as physics proceeds. These are the ideas that have fruitful implications, I set out to show, for a wide range of issues: for philosophy itself, for physics, for natural science more generally, for the social sciences, for education, for the academic enterprise as a whole and, most important of all, for the capacity of humanity to learn how to solve the grave global problems that menace our future, and thus make progress to a better, wiser world. It is not just science that has problematic aims; in life too our aims, whether personal, social or institutional, are all too often profoundly problematic, and in urgent need of improvement. We need a new kind of academic enterprise which helps humanity put aims-and-methods improving meta-methods into practice in personal and social life, so that we may come to do better at achieving what is of value in life, and make progress towards a saner, wiser world. This body of work of mine has met with critical acclaim. Despite that, astonishingly, it has been ignored by mainstream philosophy. In the book I discuss the recent work of over 100 philosophers on the mind-body problem and the metaphysics of science, and show that my earlier, highly relevant work on these issues is universally ignored, the quality of subsequent work suffering as a result. My hope, in publishing this book, is that my fellow philosophers will come to appreciate the intellectual value of my proposed solutions to the mind-body problem and the problem of induction, and will, as a result, join with me in attempting to convince our fellow academics that we need to bring about an intellectual/institutional revolution in academic inquiry so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to solve problems of living, including global problems, and make progress towards as good, as wise and enlightened a world as possible.

Semantics of Natural Language

Semantics of Natural Language PDF Author: D. Davidson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401025576
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 781

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Book Description
"The idea that prompted the conferenee for which many of these papers were written, and that inspired this book, is stated in the Editorial Introduction reprinted below from Volume 21 of Synthese. The present volume contains the artieles in Synthese 21, Numbers 3-4 and Synthese 22, Numbers 1-2. In addition, it ineludes new papers by Saul Kripke, James McCawley, John R. Ross, and Paul Ziff, and reprints 'Grammar and Philosophy' by P. F. Strawson. Strawson's artiele first appeared in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author and the Aristotelian Society. We also repeat our thanks to the Olivetti Companyand Edizione di Comunita of Milan for permission to inelude the paper by Dana Scott; it also appeared in Synthese 21. DONALO DAVIDSON GILBERT HARMAN EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION The success of linguistics in treating naturallanguages as formal syntactic systems has aroused the interest of a number of linguists in a paralleI or related development of semantics. For the most part quite independ ently, many philosophers and logicians have reeently been applying formai semantic methods to structures increasingly like naturallanguages. While differenees in training, method and vocabulary tend to veil the fact, philosophers and linguists are converging, it seerns, on a common set of interrelated probiems. Sinee philosophers and linguists are working on the same, or very similar, probiems, it would obviously be instructive to compare notes." --