Naming and Necessity

Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: "Naming and necessity" is a collection of three lectures held at Princeton by Saul Kripke in 1970. So much has been written about this book that hardly any comment can be added. Yet, I still feel the "necessity" of writing my own view. The first lecture catches the reader a little unprepaired, jumping directly to the core of the argument, which develops in the second lecture and is expanded in the third. The third lecture is probably the best, with the discussion about natural kinds being my personal favorite. All the important names of analytic philosophy somewhat converge on this book, it is a classic, a revolutionary and inspiring book. It is also very direct: the reader will be put face to face with old philosophical problems in naming, identity, necessity and a priori knowledge and their most ingenious and clear analysis. This book is analytic philosophy at its best, buy it.

Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: "Naming and necessity" is a collection of three lectures held at Princeton by Saul Kripke in 1970. So much has been written about this book that hardly any comment can be added. Yet, I still feel the "necessity" of writing my own view. The first lecture catches the reader a little unprepaired, jumping directly to the core of the argument, which develops in the second lecture and is expanded in the third. The third lecture is probably the best, with the discussion about natural kinds being my personal favorite. All the important names of analytic philosophy somewhat converge on this book, it is a classic, a revolutionary and inspiring book. It is also very direct: the reader will be put face to face with old philosophical problems in naming, identity, necessity and a priori knowledge and their most ingenious and clear analysis. This book is analytic philosophy at its best, buy it.

Rating:
Summary: To Be Read By All Possible Readers
Review: CUNY's Saul Kripke is the premier logical mind of our time, and this book (rightly acclaimed as a classic of analytic philosophy) is a friendly introduction to considering the topic he made *intellectually* tractable: the role of modalities in thought. In three 1970 lectures (originally published in the Synthese volume *Semantics of Natural Language*) Kripke ran through the contribution of "counterfactual" reasoning involving tacit use of modal logic to several philosophical debates. Although his conclusions are none too tentative, if you can stand to countenance the thought of Holy Roman United Nations after reading this book you could also come to appreciate the moral of its reception (aptly put by Oxford's Michael Dummett in an article entitled "Could There Be Unicorns?", but rumored of by Montagovians some time previously).

Kripkean semantics for modal logic created an extremely flexible, pluralistic framework for assessing the role of modalities in reasoning, but is often taken in the form in which it is presented (here) to constitute a return to Aristotelian scholasticism. And although much work inspired by "Naming and Necessity" does allow such a construal perhaps "metaphysical" reasoning fits other conformances as well, and thoughts had by greats going back as far as you like live a life in the present somewhat other than one might think -- and if the reader will go this far with Kripke, today there are ample tools available for going *much* further. A supremely important book, which has in my opinion not been "outlived" by its extremely warm initial reception.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Persuasive
Review: If ever there was a time in history (and there have been many), when reality seems to be doubted and truth seems illusive, that time is now. With the reductio ad absurdum of post-modernism, Kripke restores the viability and stability of naive realism by fixing the referent in linguistic activity. It's a brilliant move, and one that has withstood the antagonists with suave and elegant argument. What Kripke has done is completely undermine the whole post-modernist project, which, at its core, attempts to deconstruct every semblance of reality. By using the very same tools, namely language, Kripke shows how the post-modernists have failed, and why they have.

Intellectual skepticism is a healthy attitude for any critical thinker, but this very-well written argument on the necessity of naming that establishes and stabilizes our world around us is a must for all students of philosophy, and for all disiciplines that believe "differance" makes all the difference. Kripke shows that it does not.

Rating:
Summary: Analytic philosophy at its sexiest
Review: In 1970, Saul Kripke gave a series of three lectures at Princeton University. These lectures, subsequently published under the title _Naming and Necessity_, were quickly recognized as one of those rare events that turns the world of philosophy on its ear. Amazingly, Kripke was a mere 29 years old at the time and he delivered the lectures without any notes. This book reflects both the advantages and shortcomings of the spoken form: it is clear, engaging, and often witty, but it is also repetitive at times and frustratingly incomplete at others.

It is perhaps fitting that Kripke delivered these lectures the same year that Bertrand Russell passed away, since their main target is the descriptivist theory of names associated with Russell. According to Russell - and to the reigning philosophical orthodoxy until 1970 - names are best analyzed as abbreviated definite descriptions, i.e. as unique sets of properties possessed by their bearers. However, Kripke argues that on this analysis, all such properties belong to their possessors necessarily - which is obviously false. For instance, if the name "Billy Strayhorn" just means "The composer of 'Take the "A" Train,'" then there is no possible world in which Billy Strayhorn did not compose the song. But this is false: Even if Billy Strayhorn had never written any songs, he would obviously still be Billy Strayhorn. What a puzzle!

In place of descriptivism, Kripke proposes the theory of direct reference, according to which a name "rigidly designates" its referent in every possible world in which it exists. That is, a name is just a "tag" attached to its referent, with no descriptive content whatsoever. Kripke also proposes an alternative theory for how names are transmitted, the causal theory of names. For Kripke, the name I use for Strayhorn is "his" name in virtue of the fact that it is related, by means of some appropriate causal chain, to Strayhorn himself.

Much of this was anticipated by other philosophers, though this often goes unnoticed. But Kripke developed his theory in a highly interesting way and put it to all sorts of surprising uses. His discussion of necessity and possibility almost single-handedly resurrected essentialism and gave a major impetus to contemporary modal metaphysics. He claims that names for natural kinds, such as "gold" and "tiger," rigidly designate their referents and argues that this establishes the existence of necessary a posteriori truths. He closes the book by offering an essentialist argument against the mind-body identity thesis.

In short, Kripke has given philosophers much to talk about. Indeed, _Naming and Necessity_ has spawned a whole cottage industry of commentary. In my view, Kripke's project is flawed in many (though not all) respects. For instance, his causal theory is too vague to be of much use, and his argument that natural kind terms directly refer seems question-begging. Nonetheless, Kripke's book is extremely provocative, interesting, important, and even fun.

Rating:
Summary: A modern classic.
Review: In this brilliant work Saul Kripke outlines his theory of rigid designation and in doing so reinstitutes a concept pretty much debunked in analytic philosophy since Hume - that of necessity in nature. In this series of lectures Kripke resurrected a branch of philosophy and left a permanent mark on Western thought along with Hilary Putnam's paper 'The meaning of "Meaning"'. Whether or not he was successful in his attempt is questionable. There are powerful arguments against rigid desination, but his attacks on Wittgenstein's work on necessity (notably on the metre bar in Paris and Moses in 'The Philosophical Investigations') and the mind-brain identity theorists (Smart, Lewis and with a proviso Davidson) are unanswerable. A book for any one who wishes to read a living philosopher whose work is already a classic. Also a book that every scientist and technician of the human brain should be forced to read.

Rating:
Summary: Kripke on Proper Names (Still thoroughly confused...)
Review: Intro:

This book is comprised of lectures Kripke gave in Jan 1970 at Princeton. The transcript was taken from the lectures verbatim and "lightly" edited. Kripke happened to be 29 at the time. (A very wise 29 indeed!)

The books grammatically and punctuation construction can make you mad at times, but generally the writing (speaking) flows pretty well.

The book's overall tone is highly specific but never pretentious, as many philosophers are known to be. Kripke also embodies something rare for a philosopher -a sense of humor.
Despite the length of 164 pages, the work is incredibly dense but repetitive enough that if read closey can be readily understood.

Summary:

Kripke starts out by defining the terms he is going to use in the following lectures. A 'referent of the description' is the object uniquely satisfying the conditions of the expression. A 'rigid designator' implies in "every possible" world something that is unchanged or the same object. The "possible worlds" talk is about the theory of probability on a large scale. (Insert: "Any world that was possible to happen had it have been any other way.")

The first big thing he rejects is that a priori statements are not necessary and can be contingent and a posteriori truths can be necessary. Kripke then later on rejects the "cluster of descriptions." The name means the same and it still won't be a rigid designator. Kripke's quandry gets multiplied when he claims that even if in a possible world some of the descriptions didn't fit the object in question it would still be what it is (i.e. socrates would still be socrates even if he wasn't the man from Athens.) In the second lecture he highlights the previous talk as "transworld-identification strain."

Even if the conditions don't satisfy to uniquely identify the speaker, the speaker still recieved the reference through a line of communication that was real. As far as synonyms are concerned we have to find out that something is still that same something (even though it has a different name) only empirically. (i.e. Hesperus is Phosphorus -can't be known a priori! Therefore an example of the a posteriori truth.)

From general terms (i.e. cow) one can't know the properties that would uniquely identify an individual. He then agrees with Mill against Russell and Frege on particular names but not on general naming. He ends the book rather abruptly in my opinion where he leaves the reader with Gold has the specific weight that it has in all possible and a specific name that fixes a referent is a priori true.

Conclusion:

Perplexing...I probably did a bad job with that summary but it was the best I could do. I'll probably read the book again but I recommend if you read this to get the historical work he talking about to follow along (Mill, Frege, Russell). Kripke could have revised this properly to make it a little more clearer. Minus the clarity though this book is a gem that'll make you think about naming in a new way.

Rating:
Summary: Kripke on Proper Names (Still thoroughly confused...)
Review: Intro:

This book is comprised of lectures Kripke gave in Jan 1970 at Princeton. The transcript was taken from the lectures verbatim and "lightly" edited. Kripke happened to be 29 at the time. (A very wise 29 indeed!)

The books grammatically and punctuation construction can make you mad at times, but generally the writing (speaking) flows pretty well.

The book's overall tone is highly specific but never pretentious, as many philosophers are known to be. Kripke also embodies something rare for a philosopher -a sense of humor.
Despite the length of 164 pages, the work is incredibly dense but repetitive enough that if read closey can be readily understood.

Summary:

Kripke starts out by defining the terms he is going to use in the following lectures. A 'referent of the description' is the object uniquely satisfying the conditions of the expression. A 'rigid designator' implies in "every possible" world something that is unchanged or the same object. The "possible worlds" talk is about the theory of probability on a large scale. (Insert: "Any world that was possible to happen had it have been any other way.")

The first big thing he rejects is that a priori statements are not necessary and can be contingent and a posteriori truths can be necessary. Kripke then later on rejects the "cluster of descriptions." The name means the same and it still won't be a rigid designator. Kripke's quandry gets multiplied when he claims that even if in a possible world some of the descriptions didn't fit the object in question it would still be what it is (i.e. socrates would still be socrates even if he wasn't the man from Athens.) In the second lecture he highlights the previous talk as "transworld-identification strain."

Even if the conditions don't satisfy to uniquely identify the speaker, the speaker still recieved the reference through a line of communication that was real. As far as synonyms are concerned we have to find out that something is still that same something (even though it has a different name) only empirically. (i.e. Hesperus is Phosphorus -can't be known a priori! Therefore an example of the a posteriori truth.)

From general terms (i.e. cow) one can't know the properties that would uniquely identify an individual. He then agrees with Mill against Russell and Frege on particular names but not on general naming. He ends the book rather abruptly in my opinion where he leaves the reader with Gold has the specific weight that it has in all possible and a specific name that fixes a referent is a priori true.

Conclusion:

Perplexing...I probably did a bad job with that summary but it was the best I could do. I'll probably read the book again but I recommend if you read this to get the historical work he talking about to follow along (Mill, Frege, Russell). Kripke could have revised this properly to make it a little more clearer. Minus the clarity though this book is a gem that'll make you think about naming in a new way.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and classic but attract many miscomphrehensions
Review: It is outstanding in its clarity. Although there is a debate on Kripke's originality in the new theory of reference, I don't think it could affect its status in the 20th Century Analytic Philosophy. A misery is that many people has written a lot of stuff pertaining to it but based plainly on miscomphrehension. I thus recommend those who want to write on the theory of reference should have a thorough reading of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Logic and other parts of thought
Review: Kripke's much celebrated work should be read by everyone who has a serious interest in philosophy of language. Kripke claims that names are rigid designators, i.e. words that refer to the same in all possible worlds. This is intimately conncted to Kripke's strong thesis, that names do not have meaning. In my opinion this work, although HIGHLY original, is just based on dubious exaples, some of the language-users in Kripke's examples do not master the language they attempt to use at all. Does this provide suffiencient basis for saying something whoch is signifcant about language?

Personally, I believe that meanings are in the head, and if i did not have knowledge in my head when I refer to Kripke, I would not really be refering to Kripke.

Kripke also writes about necessity. This is creative work. But if I remember correctly, he says the "This wooden table is not made of ice" is an a priori particular truth. I think he does a serious mistake here. He does realize that this knowledge is derived from the two premises: (1) This is a wooden table, (2) If a table is made of wood, it is not made of ice. now the first prop, I think anyone should agree that is empirical. (I believe the second is too). So this is not known a priori.

But Kripke is very interesting. His book should be read. But what happened to Wittgenstein's "only death gives life it's meaning". When did this leave philosophy?