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. See kripkes later discussions in lecture iii about the incoherence of a mindstate being only contingently. This book, one of the most important in philosophy in the last century, consists of a series of 3 lectures, and as a result is very accessible. Kripkes naming and necessity lecture three 10ptagainst. Naming and necessity by saul kripke was first published in book form in 1980 and consists mainly of three lectures given at princeton university, an overview, an essay on the problem of names. Lectures given to the princeton university philosophy colloquium. A critique of descriptivism recall that descriptivism about proper names is the view that there is a descriptive component to the meaning of proper names, which determines denotationreference. The novel thing that kripke does in lecture 3 is to offer a succinct presentation of a common objection to the conceivabilitypossibility link of 2 and then go on to respond to that objection. Considerable time has elapsed, and i have come to realize that any extensive revision orex. Find a summary of this and each chapter of naming and necessity.
According to descriptivist theories, proper names either are synonymous with descriptions, or. Osamu kiritani 20 croatian journal of philosophy 1. 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. One of the properties, or some conjointly, are believed by a to pick out some individual uniquely. In a series of lectures, published as the book naming and necessity, kripke makes a corresponding philosophical case for rejecting several central tenets of the antimetaphysical, linguistically inclined philosophy of the twentieth century. Ever since the publication of its original version, naming and necessity has had great and increasing influence. In these lectures, i will argue, intuitively, that proper names are rigid. Naming and necessity is a 1980 book with the transcript of three lectures, given by the philosopher saul kripke, at princeton university in 1970, in which he dealt with the debates of proper names in the philosophy of language. The standard meter stick is one meter long naming and necessity, p. From kripkes naming and necessity michigan state university. Naming and necessity 3 the preface first, but that they return to it for clarification if necessary after they have read the main text. January 20, 19701 i hope that some people see some connection between the two topics in the title. In lecture i, kripke introduced the notion of rigid designation.
And his thesis is that ordinary proper names are rigid, whereas the. The preface of 21 pages describes the genesis and background of the leading ideas of the monograph, and discusses a few common misunderstandings. We shall continue to focus on the objections to the descriptivist theory. In his famous work naming and necessity, saul kripke presents an argument against the materialists identity theory of mind. A term t is a rigid designator just in case in every possible world it designates the same object quoting from kripke, naming and necessity. Saul kripke project gutenberg selfpublishing ebooks. In this lecture, professor saul kripke takes the opportunity to revisit some of the more controversial points in his seminal work naming and necessity. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. There we saw that we could give the following test for the rigidity of a term. Kripke starts with a criticism of searles cluster theory. Chapter summary for saul kripkes naming and necessity, lecture 2 summary. I dont think its the last word on the topics it deals with far from it.
Rigid designation kripkes view about essential properties has implications for his views about language. The unfinished semantic agenda of naming and necessity, by scott soames. Saul kripke begins the third lecture by summarizing the highlights of the first two lectures. Kripke on naming and necessity university of toronto. Russell, is that a name is a disguised definite description identifying a particular object by means of properties it possesses or, in the case of a nonexistent object, would possess if it was actual. Read online naming and necessity via our pdf reader. A statement is epistemically possible iff there is a world in which, as far as our experiences go. Volume ill, number 3, march 1974 kripke on naming and necessity r. The third lecture is sadly poorly written and argued someone else already commented on it in this stream below, i agree with that reader. Kripkes main argument is that there are some matters which are a posteriori and necessary when we fix a.
But there is a slight of hand here, the initial baptism cannot use the antecedent causal chain to account for why the name has its chosen object as its semantic value. Naming and necessity lecture 3 summary course hero. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. But in this comment ill just stick to my understanding of the work, without trying to go beyond it although it should be kept in mind that we ought to go beyond it, and people are doing that. Kripke lecture 3 if w is a world where aristotle never went into philosophy, d is true, e is false and f is true.
In doing so, he develops a framework that he applies to the. A sense is supposed to be that which is grasped by the mind, a meaning in some nontechnical sense. Are theoretical identities really identity statements. In both cases, ithas usually been taken for granted in fife one case by kant that synthetic a priori judgements were possible, and in the other case in contemporary,d. To every name or designating expression x, there corresponds a cluster of properties, namely the family of those properties. To these, kripke will add, in lecture iii not reprinted in martinich, the. It is a point, made by donnellan,3 that under certain circumstances a particular. In january of 1970 saul kripke delivered a series of lectures at princeton university that were transcribed into a book, naming and necessity, published in 1972. Kripke attributes variants of descriptivist theories to frege, russell, ludwig wittgenstein and john searle, among others. Lecture notes introduction to philosophy of language. Kripke if there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. Read download naming and necessity pdf pdf download. The preface is not written in such a way as to be completely selfcontained.
Naming and necessity, lecture ii kripkes critique of the. If not, anyway, such connections will be developed in the course of these talks. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in. They were actually written by another author, of the same name. Naming and necessity lecture 2 summary course hero. Naming, necessity, and apriority part i consists of the first four chapters.
And i really liked it, at least the first two lectures as well as parts of the addenda and the intro. Synthese library monographs on epistemology, logic, methodology, philosophy of science, sociology of science and of knowledge, and on the mathematical methods of social and behavioral sciences, vol 40. A good intuitive test for rigidity is to ask yourself whether you can truly substitute the expression for x. In the case of identity sentences like hesperus is phosphorus we have a claim that the. The transcript was brought out originally in 1972 in semantics of natural language, edited by donald davidson and gilbert harman. Scholars have recently established that the iliad and the odyssey were not, after all, written by homer. The ideas in naming and necessity evolved in the early sixties most of the views were formulated in about 196364. On the other hand it does seem to support surprising conclusions about the modal status of identity statements. In the lectures kripke is responding to previous attempts to solve certain problems in the philosophy of language. Giving the semantic content this is one facet of a fregean sense. Naming and necessity was mentioned as one of the eminent texts for this practice.
In naming and necessity saul kripke criticized descriptivist theories of proper names and suggested a. The three lectures that form naming and necessity constitute an attack on descriptivist theory of names. Thus the phenomenon of rigidity casts no real doubt on the description theory of names. Chapter summary for saul kripkes naming and necessity, lecture 3 summary. Naming and necessity from a functional point of view. If we want a common term to cover names and descriptions, we may use the term designator. Naming and necessity an audience of onethe purpose and necessity of prophetic movement.