The Frege-Russell Picture of Names
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Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not The
PUTNAM’S THEORY OF NATURAL KINDS AND THEIR NAMES IS NOT THE SAME AS KRIPKE’S IAN HACKING Collège de France Abstract Philosophers have been referring to the “Kripke–Putnam” theory of natural- kind terms for over 30 years. Although there is one common starting point, the two philosophers began with different motivations and presuppositions, and developed in different ways. Putnam’s publications on the topic evolved over the decades, certainly clarifying and probably modifying his analysis, while Kripke published nothing after 1980. The result is two very different theories about natural kinds and their names. Both accept that the meaning of a natural- kind term is not given by a description or defining properties, but is specified by its referents. From then on, Putnam rejected even the label, causal theory of reference, preferring to say historical, or collective. He called his own approach indexical. His account of substance identity stops short a number of objections that were later raised, such as what is called the qua problem. He came to reject the thought that water is necessarily H2O, and to denounce the idea of metaphysical necessity that goes beyond physical necessity. Essences never had a role in his analysis; there is no sense in which he was an essentialist. He thought of hidden structures as the usual determinant of natural kinds, but always insisted that what counts as a natural kind is relative to interests. “Natural kind” itself is itself an importantly theoretical concept, he argued. The paper also notes that Putnam says a great deal about what natural kinds are, while Kripke did not. -
Naming and Necessity
NAMING AND NECESSITY Saul A. Kripke Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright C 1972, 1980 by Saul A. Kripke All rights reserved Twelfth prll1ting, 2001 Library of CODp'etI Catalogiag in PublicatioD Data Kripke, Saul A. 1940- Nammg and necessity. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Necessity (PhIlosophy) -Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Reference (Philosophy) - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Identity-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title BD417.K74 160 79-26088 ISBN 0-674-59845-8 (doth) ISBN 0-674-59846-6 (paper) Printed in the United States of America for MARGARET CONTENTS Preface 1 Lecture I 22 Lecture II 71 Lecture III 106 Addenda 156 Index 165 PREFACE Originally I had intended to revise or augment Naming and Necessity extensively. Considerable time has elapsed, and I have come to realize that any extensive revision or expansion would delay the appearance of a separate, less expensive edition of Naming and Necessity indefmitely. Further, as fa r as revision is concerned, there is something to be said fo r preserving a work in its original fo rm, warts and all. I have thus fo llowed a very conservative policy of correction fo r the present printing. Obvious printing errors have been corrected, and slight changes have been made to make various sentences or fo rmulations clearer.1 A good indication of my conservative policy is in fo otnote 56. In that fo otnote the letter-nomenclature fo r the various objects involved, inexplicably garbled in the original printing, has been corrected; but I make no mention of the fact that the argument of the fo otnote now seems to me to have problems which I did not know when I wrote it and which at least require further discussion. -
Kripke's Naming and Necessity: Lecture II
Kripke’s Naming and Necessity: Lecture II PHIL 83104 October 12, 2011 1. Varieties of descriptivism (end of Lecture I) ....................................................................1 2. Kripke’s arguments against descriptivism (71-90) ...........................................................2 2.1. The modal argument (48-49, 71-77) 2.1.1. Rigidified descriptions 2.1.2. Wide-scoping descriptions 2.2. The semantic argument (78-85) 2.3. The epistemic argument (86-87) 3. Kripke’s alternative picture of reference (91-97) ..............................................................5 4. Identity sentences and the necessary a posteriori (97-105) ..............................................7 4.1. The necessity of identity 4.2. A prioricity and qualitatively identical situations 4.3. Some sources of skepticism about Kripke’s claim 4.3.1. Contingent identities? 4.3.2. The illusion of contingency 4.3.3. Millianism about names 1. VARIETIES OF DESCRIPTIVISM (END OF LECTURE I) We’ve already seen two distinctions Kripke makes between different versions of descriptivism: • The distinction between descriptivist views which let a single description do the work, and those which rely on a cluster of descriptions • The distinctiopn between views according to which a description gives the meaning of a name, and those according to which it merely fixes the reference of the name Here Kripke introduces a third distinction: between circular and non-circular descriptivist views. This distinction is not like the others; it is less a distinction between varieties of descriptivism than a constraint on descriptivist views. What exactly is this constraint? Suppose we identified the meaning of the name “Aristotle” with the meaning of the description “the person called ‘Aristotle’” or “the referent of ‘Aristotle.’” These would be examples of descriptivist views which fail to meet the non-circularity condition, since to determine what object satisfies the description, we must first know which object is the referent of the name in question. -
PROPER NAMES: ONE CENTURY of DISCUSSION Uxía RIVAS
Logica Trianguli, 3, 1999, 119-138 PROPER NAMES: ONE CENTURY OF DISCUSSION Uxía RIVAS MONROY Abstract The main objective of this paper is to offer an overview of some of the most relevant and at the same time controversial aspects of proper names over this last century. Therefore, the intention is not to go deeply into all the issues re- lated to proper names, though special attention will be paid to one of them for its importance, namely, the discussion as to whether proper names have sense or meaning associated to them or whether they are directly referential expressions. In the same way, only a few of all the authors who have made theories, comments or analyses about proper names will be mentioned in this article. The subject of proper names is complex enough in spite of its apparent simplicity, so as to leave many lines of analysis open, which are not deeply dealt with in this pres- entation. 1. Introduction Proper names form part of the most general category of singular terms, that is, of expressions characterised for referring or denoting only one object or individual; therefore, and taking this consideration into account, definite descriptions and the wide range of indexicals will also be singular terms. Following Strawson’s terminology we could say that singular terms, and in particular proper names, are the types of expressions generally used to make singularizing references, i.e. they are the expressions which tend to have a “uniquely referring use”. What we generally have in mind as speakers of a language when talking about proper names is the most paradigmatic examples of them, such as Galicia, Paris, Socrates, Atenea, Ulises, Mary, John; however, we may also consider “The Holy Roman Empire”, “The United States of America”, “The Hercules Tower”, “The Second World War” as proper names; and surely we would not consider “The dean of the Faculty of Philosophy”, “The present king of France”, “The director of the gen- eral library of Santiago” as proper names. -
David Lewis's Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames by The
David Lewis’s Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames By the early 1970s, and continuing through 2001, David Lewis and Saul Kripke had taken over W.V.O. Quine’s leadership in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic in the English-speaking world. Quine, in turn, had inherited his position in the early 1950s from Rudolf Carnap, who had been the leading logical positivist -- first in Europe, and, after 1935, in America. A renegade positivist himself, Quine eschewed apriority, necessity, and analyticity, while (for a time) adopting a holistic version of verificationism. Like Carnap, he placed philosophical logic and the philosophy of science at the center of philosophy. While not entirely avoiding metaphysics and epistemology, he tried to “naturalize” both. By contrast, Lewis and Kripke embraced the modalities Quine rejected.1 They also had no sympathy for his early verificationism, or his twin flights from intension and intention. As for philosophy of science, it was transforming itself into specialized philosophies of the several sciences, and did not lend itself to unified treatment. Although Lewis had deep interests in scientific issues, and was commendably realist about science in general, science itself was not the center of own distinctive approach to philosophy. Despite similarities in their opposition to Quine, the differences between Lewis and Kripke were large – especially in the semantics and metaphysics of modality. They also had different philosophical styles. Whereas Lewis was a wide-ranging thinker who pieced together a systematic philosophical world view, Kripke gave little thought to system, focusing instead on a few central topics. There is, therefore, no conflict between the two on many of the issues on which Kripke was silent. -
A Defense of Denotative Theory from Kripke's Criticism
Tomoya Imaizumi 57 A Defense of Denotative Theory from Kripke’s Criticism Tomoya Imaizumi n Naming and Necessity, Kripke criticizes the denotative theory of reference and proposes a version of the causal theory of ref- erence. The outline of the discussion between these two theo- I ries is the following: the denotative theory is advocated by Rus- sell, who thinks that the reference of a name is determined by the definite description the name gives. Kripke, however, opposes this idea; he thinks that names can designate objects without description, and proposes his version of the causal theory. In this paper, I attempt to examine the criticism given by Kripke and defend the denotative theory from it. I then challenge the causal theory. Finally, I will show the ad- vantages and disadvantages of the denotative theory and the causal theory, along with a comparison between the two. To achieve this goal, it is first necessary to explain the denotative theory, the foundation of which is the notion of definite descriptions, before moving to an expla- nation of Kripke's version of the causal theory, the foundation of which is the notion of rigid designators. I. Description Theory and Denotative Theory In this section, I will explain what the description theory is, Tomoya Imaizumi is a senior studying philosophy at Kyoto University in Japan. His philosophical interests lie in philosophy of mathematics, philosophical logic and philosophy of physics. He is particularly inter- ested in Dummettian generalization from intuitionism to anti-realism, on which he is writing his senior thesis. He would like to continue studying philosophy at a graduate school in the U.S. -
Kripke on Modality
KRIPKE ON MODALITY Saul Kripke’s published contributions to the theory of modality include both mathematical material (1959a, 1963a, 1963b, and more) and philosophical material (1971, henceforth N&I; 1980, henceforth N&N). Here the latter must be given primary emphasis, but the former will not be entirely neglected. APOSTERIORI NECESSITY Kripke’s overarching philosophical point is that the necessary is not to be confused with the apriori, but preliminary explanations are needed before his contribution can be specified more precisely. To begin with, the linguistics literature (Palmer 1986) distinguishes three flavors of modality: deontic, epistemic/evidential, and dynamic. The pertinent notions of necessity are the obligatory or what must be if obligations are fulfilled, the known or what must be given what is known, and the inevitable in the sense of what cannot fail and could not have failed to be, no matter what. This last is the only notion of necessity of interest in our present context. As Kripke emphasizes, this notion of the necessary and its correlative notion of the contingent are metaphysical concepts. They are as such at least conceptually distinct from the epistemological notions of the apriori and aposteriori and the semantical notions of the analytic and synthetic. Before Kripke this was never completely forgotten, but its importance was arguably grossly underestimated. Prior to Kripke’s work it was the near-unanimous opinion that the analytic is included in the apriori, which in turn is included in the necessary (Quine 1960: 59). It was the majority opinion that these inclusions reverse, making the three classifications coextensive; but there were dissenters, conscious of being in the minority (Kneale and Kneale 1962: 637-639). -
Frege: the Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference UNIT 2: FREGE: the SEMANTIC DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSE and REFERENCE UNIT STRUCTURE
Unit 2 Frege: The Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference UNIT 2: FREGE: THE SEMANTIC DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSE AND REFERENCE UNIT STRUCTURE 2.1 Learning objectives 2.2 Introduction 2.3 Frege’s view on meaning 2.4 Semantic distinction between sense and reference 2.5 Frege on Proper names 2.6 Sense and reference of a proper name 2.7 Evaluation 2.8 Let us sum up 2.9 Further readings 2.10 Answers to check your progress 2.11 Model questions 2.1. LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this unit, you will be able to: l explain Frege’s view regarding the concept of meaning. l explain Frege’s distinction between sense and reference. l discuss Frege’s view regarding proper names. l discuss the concepts of Sense and reference of proper names. 2.2 INTRODUCTION Whenever we go to discuss the problem of meaning in philosophy, the problem of referring seems to proceed hand in hand with it. The problem of reference has occupied a central place in philosophical discussion from the very beginning of the twentieth century. Frege’s theory of sense and reference has a strong place in the entire philosophical thought of the twentieth century western world. It is based on the problem of reference. The philosophers have offered a number of toughly competing hypotheses about the nature of meaning. The 20 Contemporary Western Philosophy (Block 1) Frege: The Semantic Distinction Between Sense and Reference Unit 2 referential view is that words mean by standing for things and a sentence means what it does because its parts correspond referentially to the elements of an actual or possible state of affairs in the world. -
{TEXTBOOK} Naming and Necessity Pdf Free Download
NAMING AND NECESSITY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Saul A. Kripke | 184 pages | 01 Mar 2003 | John Wiley and Sons Ltd | 9780631128014 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom Naming and Necessity - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader There are five categories of basic human needs, including biological needs, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization. The importance of each category forms a pyramid. Biological needs form the base as they are of the greatest importance in maintaining life. These needs include food, water, air, shelter, sex and sleep. Once a person has met his or her biological needs, the next concern is for safety. This category includes some type of law and order, freedom from fear, and protection from hostile situations, weather and people. After a person feels secure, love becomes important. The need for love is not just romantic love but a feeling of community and belonging. After achieving the first three needs, people need a sense of accomplishment and independence. Similar arguments have been proposed by David Chalmers. Kripke delivered the John Locke lectures in philosophy at Oxford in Titled Reference and Existence , they are in many respects a continuation of Naming and Necessity , and deal with the subjects of fictional names and perceptual error. They have recently been published by Oxford University Press. Quentin Smith has claimed that some of the ideas in Naming and Necessity were first presented at least in part by Ruth Barcan Marcus. Marcus, however, has refused to publish the verbatim transcript of the lecture. Smith's view is controversial, and several well-known scholars for example, Stephen Neale and Scott Soames have subsequently offered detailed responses arguing that his account is mistaken. -
A Pragmatic View of Proper Name Reference
A Pragmatic View of Proper Name Reference Peter J. Ridley King’s College London Submitted for the degree of PhD in Philosophy June 2016 1 To my friends in the King’s Philosophy Department, 2006–2016 They have inspired and influenced my thinking more than anything else 2 Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. —W.H. Auden And we must at all costs avoid over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation. —J.L. Austin 3 Abstract I argue, in this thesis, that proper name reference is a wholly pragmatic phenomenon. The reference of a proper name is neither constitutive of, nor determined by, the semantic content of that name, but is determined, on an occasion of use, by pragmatic factors. The majority of views in the literature on proper name reference claim that reference is in some way determined by the semantics of the name, either because their reference simply constitutes their semantics (which generally requires a very fine-grained individuation of names), or because names have an indexical-like semantics that returns a referent given certain specific contextual parameters. I discuss and criticize these views in detail, arguing, essentially, in both cases, that there can be no determinate criteria for reference determination—a claim required by both types of semantic view. I also consider a less common view on proper name reference: that it is determined wholly by speakers’ intentions. I argue that the most plausible version of this view—a strong neo-Gricean position whereby all utterance content is determined by the communicative intentions of the speaker—is implausible in light of psychological data. -
Proper Names As Descriptions David Goss-Grubbs University of Washington [email protected]
Proper Names as Descriptions David Goss-Grubbs University of Washington [email protected] 0. Introduction In this paper I will describe and defend a particular version of the description theory of proper names. This theory simply states that the meaning of a proper name is more or less equivalent to the meaning of the description the individual who bears the name ‘’ . Section one describes the basics of the theory. Section two defends the theory against the objection that it is what Frege (1892) called a (mere) meta-linguistic solution. Section three is devoted to defending the theory against the objections that Kripke (1972) leveled against the theses he numbered (2) through (5) that define the description theory of names in general. Section four defends the theory against Kripke’s claim that this theory (which he attributes to W. Kneale) is circular. Section five is devoted to defending the theory against Kripke’s objection to thesis (6). Section seven describes a particular strength of this theory – its ability to account for non-rigid uses of proper names. Several different kinds of examples are given where proper names are used non-rigidly. 1. Theory Basics In a nutshell, my proposal is that the meaning of a proper name is equivalent to that of a definite description, where the descriptive content is simply that the subject bears that proper name. So using a theory such as that of Russell (1905), the meaning of sentence (1) could be described with the expression (2): 1 (1) Socrates is wise. (2) ∃x (bear( x, ‘Socrates’) ∧ wise( x) ∧ ∀y (bear( y, ‘Socrates’) → y = x)) This says that there is an individual which uniquely stands in the bears relation to the expression ‘Socrates’, and is wise. -
Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference
THEORIA, 2008, 74, 181–218 doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.2008.00018.x Frege’s Theory of Sense and Reference: Some Exegetical Notes1 by SAUL A. KRIPKE The City University of New York, Graduate Center Abstract: Frege’s theory of indirect contexts and the shift of sense and reference in these contexts has puzzled many. What can the hierarchy of indirect senses, doubly indirect senses, and so on, be? Donald Davidson gave a well-known ‘unlearnability’ argument against Frege’s theory. The present paper argues that the key to Frege’s theory lies in the fact that whenever a reference is specified (even though many senses determine a single reference), it is specified in a particular way, so that giving a reference implies giving a sense; and that one must be ‘acquainted’ with the sense. It is argued that an indirect sense must be ‘immediately revelatory’ of its reference. General principles for Frege’s doctrine of sense and reference are sated, for both direct and indirect quotation, to be understood iteratively. I also discuss Frege’s doctrine of tensed and first person statements in the light of my analysis. The views of various other authors are examined. The conclusion is to ascribe to Frege an implicit doctrine of acquaintance similar to that of Russell. Keywords: Frege, sense and reference, indirect senses, immediately revelatory senses, tensed and first person statements, doctrine of acquaintance, backward road IN TRANSLATING Frege’s terms “Sinn” and “Bedeutung”, I follow Max Black’s translation as “sense” and “reference”, or “referent”. For a long time this was standard, although other translations have been proposed, and later some have thought that standard German usage should be followed in the translation of “Bedeutung”.