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.
Customer Reviews:
Essential.......2007-10-03
Naming and Necessity is one of the classics of 20th century philosophy. If you haven't read this book, I suggest you drop your current reading and pick this up. Simply put, metaphysics isn't dead (although Kripke is broadly speaking in the tradition of analytic philosophy).
If you have read it, you might want to follow up with some of the work of Scott Soames.
the porter plummed plums and porridge from portals.......2007-01-13
I would like to think that the main thesis of this book that reshaped so-called alethic modality was based on Kripke's familiarity with modal logic. It is evident, under a quite intuitive semantics of quantified modal logic, that the denotation of two variables under a given assignment will turn out to be necessarily identical if identical at all. One may notice that this follows immediately from a substitution instance of the indiscernibility of identicals (Leibniz's law) and the validity of 'necessarily y=y'. Noting that Leibniz's law, which may involve modal operators in the consequent, is valid in quantified modal logic has purportedly shed light, under the possible-worlds idea of metaphysical necessity under an S5-like accessibility relation, on the pretheoretic notion of alethic modality. I think not, but here's not the place to go into why.
If you're reasonably familiar with various systems of quantified modal logic and their semantics (depending on how you define 'system', it might include a semantics), the ideas expressed in this book should be little surprising. The stuff about the various theories of meanings of proper names and kind terms (e.g. descriptivist, cluster-concept ones, etc.) are attacked convincingly, and there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in the background. This book has built an industry around it, and if you're anyone interested in this kind of philosophy (i.e. "analytic") then either you've already read it, or you soon should.
A Modern Analytic Classic.......2006-09-15
Originally published in 1972, Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity is a compilation of three lectures given by the author in January 1970 at Princeton University. Aside from transcripts of the lectures (with minor editing), the text includes a brief preface and postscript (or agenda as Kripke calls it) with some helpful points of clarification. Kripke is regarded by many as the pre-eminent philosopher of recent times- while Naming and Necessity is widely viewed as the most significant piece of post-Wittgenstein analytic philosophy.
In the book Kripke discussion of a range of issues and questions that has altered the trajectory of modern philosophy including:
* Accidental and essential properties,
* Theories of reference (direct reference v. descriptivist)
* Epistemic and metaphysical necessity (he poses the possibility of necessary a posteriori truth and contingent a priori truth)
Readers unfamiliar (or rusty) with Kripke may find the pertinent chapters in Scott Soames' excellent Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: The Age of Meaning helpful in preparing to engage Naming and Necessity. The small text `On Kripke' in the Wadsworth series is also useful and even more introductory.
Overall, this is an important work in analytic philosophy that would make a valuable addition to any collection. As with much modern philosophy in the analytic tradition familiarity with the genre and subject matter is a perquisite to fully understanding and appreciating the discussion (that said this book has a nice flow). My comments pertain to the 2005 reprint by Harvard.
Revolutionary.......2006-08-06
Saul Kripke's "Naming and Necessity" is one of the greatest pieces of analytic philosophy of the twentieth century. It has reshaped philosophy of language and metaphysics, and has significantly influenced philosophy of mind and epistemology, among other areas of philosophy.
"Naming and Necessity" is largely a transcription of three lectures that Kripke delivered when he was 29 years old - without lecture notes. The book reflects the informal style of these lectures; it is friendly and engaging, albeit sometimes unclear.
Among other things, Kripke refutes descriptivist theories about the meaning and reference of proper names and natural kind terms, and develops a new account in their place; defends the modal concepts of necessity and possibility, and distinguished between necessity and a prioricity; and argues that there are necessary truths knowable only a posteriori and contingent truths knowable a priori.
Of course, the book has some critics. However, in my opinion, Kripke does not commit some of the errors of which he has been accused in other reviews here.
I think that the book will be very difficult for those unfamiliar with analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of language. I recommend "Naming and Necessity" for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy. I also recommend Soames's two-volume "Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century", which culminates with an excellent exposition of "Naming and Necessity" but which is also difficult for beginners.
Pied Piper of Meaning.......2006-06-26
I really love this book and ought to give it five stars, but I can't make myself do so, because it's just all wrong. Even so, it's a great, great book--there simply is no more engaging book of analytic philosophy.
Kripke's error is basically one that is symptomatic of all modern analytic philosophy...overattachment to modal considerations, trying get them to do the work that only Bayesian analysis can do properly. Bertrand Russell said it best--"There is only one world, the 'real' world." Philosophers should have listened. The meaning of (even non-literal) utterances reduces to the transmission of information, and everything you ever wanted to know about transmission of information can be found in conditional probabilities. The space you're forced to deal with is the space of ways the world might *be* (for all I or you know), not ways the world "might have been."
A misreading of Wittgenstein (Kripke later based an entire book on a misreading of Wittgenstein) is representative: Kripke says that Wittgenstein was wrong to say that you can't say (just W's way of saying that it's non-informative to say) the standard meter stick in Paris is a meter long. According to Kripke, it's not only informative, but "contingent." (There are contingent a priori statements, according to Kripke, which everyone knew to be obvious nonsense before he came along and messed with their heads with a few carefully disguised modal equivocations.) It's *not* informative, obviously. If we accept the romantic story about the standard meter stick, and Kripke does, then all it means to be a meter long is to be the same length as the standard meter stick. There aren't any "other worlds" where the stick's a different length. Anyway even if there were other worlds, the stick wouldn't be there. It's here. (Well, it's in Paris.)
Modal considerations can paint some awfully pretty pictures, and I think Kripke got lost in the abstraction. Anyway you have to read this book one way or the other...hopefully you won't get lost, too. Unfortunately I'm not betting on it; Kripke is dangerously persuasive.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting.......2006-09-13
Originally published in 1982, Saul Kripke's Rules and Private Language has become a classic in contemporary analytic philosophy and probably the most notable (if contentious) analysis of Wittgenstein's later work.
As noted by Kripke himself, the work is more an elaboration of Kripke thoughts in reaction to the Philosophical Investigations, than a truly dedicated attempt to uncover Wittgenstein's perspective. In large part as a result of this bold approach, Kripke comments have become both extremely well known and controversial. Readers unfamiliar (or rusty) with Kripke may find the pertinent chapters in Scott Soames' excellent Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: The Age of Meaning helpful in preparing for this text.
Overall, I recommend this book to readers of analytic philosophy - it is a relatively quick and enjoyable read. Familiarity with the Philosophical Investigations, however, is likely a perquisite to understanding and appreciating this text.
Masterpiece that never ceases to be inventive and thoughtful.......2004-07-08
Intro/Background:
Kripke opens up this work with something important to say: This book is the culmination of his first reading of Wittgenstein's P.I. and how "it struck to me". Therefore, Kripke doesn't hold any of these views anymore.
Summary:
In this book he acts like an attorney in a court room defending a possible interpretation of the "Wittgensteinian paradox". The paradox, briefly summed up, is the question of whether a past rule determines future usage in a new (set of) problem(s). Another sub-problem is whether the result of a function was the intention of the person who commands/uses the function.
The first essay deals with answering the constant questioning by a sceptic that Kripke thinks up. The essay goes down all sorts of various and different pathways. (Kripke takes and examines the "dispositional theory" of intention for example.)
Kripke ends somewhere in the second essay with claiming something like: A private language or privately followed rule (in a new way) cannot be followed individually because it has to be agreed upon in the community. Some of Kripke's argument against private language resides in ressurectioning David Hume's argument against a private causation.
The argument against individual intention contra another's intention rest on the resonance with the community again. If one person follows one rule, and another person follows some other rule, and if the answers differ, then the correct answer to problem will be the one that is agreed upon. (Kripke doesn't take up the argument against people that are following different rules but arrive at the same answer.)
That completes the first two essays. The postscript is interesting but tackles a different issue: The certainty of other minds being like ours. Again, Kripke examines the 'other minds' problem from Kripke's perceived view of Wittgenstein. The postscript is very short and doesn't come to any earth-shattering conclusions but is nevertheless a great thought exercise.
Conclusion/Personal Reaction:
Loved the book. It is a very unfavorable reading of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", but in some ways it is the best book on that work. It is incredibly thoughtful and raises important concerns for epistemology and the philosophy of mind.
I advise you to have the Wittgenstein's "P.I." next to you because often Kripke cites propositions that he doesn't quote.
Simply put, a must for any fan of Kripke's meager alotment of written work and a must for any fan of Wittgenstein.
Kripkean insight at its sharpest.......2000-11-19
Saul Kripke is legendary for his contributions to modal logic, philosophy of language and semantic conceptions of truth. He is, as someone once remarked, the Bobby Fisher of contemporary philosophy.
This is evident in this book. Kripke argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein's 'private language argument' in his "Philosophical Investigations" is found in Wittgenstein's discussion of rule following which comes near the beginning of PI. Though this thesis has been critiqued for its apparent dissimilarity to some other views of Wittgenstein's, it is striking, original and intriguing nonetheless.
The radical skepticism inherent in (Kripke's understanding of) the Wittgensteinian paradox is astounding and will lead you to question the very basis of your belief system. Read this book if you're into Hume, Wittgenstein, Berkeley or Kripke--it is, unlike many philosophical works, very easy to understand.
An elegant and lucid look at Wittgenstein.......1999-12-14
Like all of Kripke's work, this book makes a wildly original contribution to the subject, and like all of his work, it is pure pleasure to read. Kripke's writing is the perfect mixture of lucidity and profundity. In the book, Kripke interprets the central theme of Wittgenstein's work as an examination of what it means to follow a rule, and Kripke explores this train of thought and examines the consequences. This leads to a new form of skepticism, of which Wittgenstein's private language argument is a consequence.
Although Kripke's interpretation seems to have fallen out of favor in many circles, this book is still a classic. Regardless of whether you agree with Kripke's conclusions, this book will make you think deeply.
Book Description
Twenty-three years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father, John, set out to teach his boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America . . . and how to kill it.
Fans of the blockbuster television phenomenon can rejoice! A one-of-a-kind compilation of all of Sam and Dean's demon-busting knowledge, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls contains illustrations and detailed descriptions that catalogue the more than two dozen otherworldly enemies that most people believe exist only in folklore, superstition, and nightmares:vampires, ghosts, revenants, reapers, and even bloody clowns. You'll find within these pages Sam and Dean's notes, observations, and memories interwoven with sections of John Winchester's invaluable journal, making this book the perfect companion to every thrilling episode—and an essential weapon in the secret war against the hidden creatures of the darkness!
Customer Reviews:
Wonderfully put together.......2007-10-13
I simply love this book. It from the boys POV and its just wonderful. The information is very accurate ( I looked up some of it online and it was right on).
Awesome.......2007-10-09
I love this book and it is really cool the way it is written. I have so enjoyed reading it.
Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls.......2007-10-06
I love the show "Supernatural" and anything to do with it. This book was semi-interesting, mainly because it was written from the point of view of Dean and Sam Winchester and because it touched on the entities the boys have faced on the show.
Great for fan.......2007-10-06
SOme of the stuff in there is real folklore, it is a bible for the supernatural fan... the show or the real thing!
Perfectly written.......2007-10-06
Definately a must have book for all Supernatural fans. It explains all the myths that were the bases of the episodes in season one. Also, it is written in the Brothers point of view making it interesting to read. Highly Recommended
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The New Theory of Reference - Kripke, Marcus, and Its Origins (Synthese Library)
Manufacturer: Springer
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Book Description
This collection of essays is the definitive version of a widely discussed debate over the origins of the New Theory of Reference. In new articles written especially for this volume, Quentin Smith and Scott Soames, the original participants in the debate, elaborate their positions on who was responsible for the ideas that Saul Kripke presented in his
Naming and Necessity. They are joined by John Burgess, who weighs in on the side of Soames, while Smith adds a further dimension in discussing the contributions of philosophers such as Føllesdal, Geach, Hintikka, and Plantinga. Also included are lengthy excerpts from Føllesdal's 1961 Harvard dissertation and a careful examination by Sten Lindström of the respective contributions of Kripke and Stig Kanger to the development of modal semantics. The collection will be essential reading for anyone acquainted with these influential ideas.
Book Description
Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language has attracted much criticism and few friends. Yet it is one of the books that most students of philosophy have to read at some point in their education. Enormously influential, it has given rise to debates that strike at the very heart of contemporary philosophy of mind and language.
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.
Book Description
In this fascinating work, Scott Soames offers 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. He also demonstrates the irrelevance of rigid designation in understanding why theoretical identities containing such predicates are necessary, if true.
Customer Reviews:
The Forefront of the Theory of Meaning.......2006-01-13
Anyone, and I mean that quite literally, who is interested in the theory of meaning---the process by which we can take a sentence and return a logical proposition that represents its information content---must read this book. Here's why.
After Frege's descriptivist program was shot to bits by a handful of arguments, most notably those in Kripke's Naming and Necessity, theorists in the philosophy of language have returned to a theory of meaning powered by direct reference. While one featured reviewer maligns this program as "mere neo-Millianism," this book manages to strengthen direct reference theory significantly, patching it against the arguments that initially powered Frege's proposal, as well as those that have been levelled against it in the intervening century.
While many here have written disapprovingly of Soames' logical writing style, I believe that, at least for technical theorists looking to make advances in the field, this is perhaps the most clearly and straightforwardly written book I've ever picked up. With many authors in the philosophy of language, you read an entire paper (or worse, an entire book), and are left at the end wondering "So, how does your theory determine the information content of a sentence? What does it all mean?" With Soames, one isn't left guessing---simply flip to the clear, concise statement of precisely how information content is determined in a sentence (hint: try (13) on page 209), and you have Soames' answer. You can see precisely his assumptions and arguments, and debate whichever of them you wish. As someone who has done work in the field, I wholeheartedly wish debating others' theories of meaning was so simple.
At any rate, if you have some experience with formal logic and the philosophy of language, the technical parts of this work are, in my opinion, far more useful than dry, and permit readers to engage Soames' work in serious, critical, analytic philosophy without having to first digest mountains of florid prose. This book is, without hesitation, recommended.
Really just neo-Millianism.......2004-10-28
On the face of it, it would appear that, since Kripke never got around to it, Scott Soames has taken on the project of further articulating and developing the rigid designation thesis in a rigorous and thorough way (the book's subtitle would seem to suggest that). However, what struck me like a bag of bricks partway through reading this book is that it really has little to do at all with Kripke's program.
The first couple of chapters do explicitly talk about rigid designation, as do the last three chapters, which take on the task of exploring what it would mean for a general term to be a rigid designator. The middle chapters go through pages and pages of (to me, mind-numbingly tedious) "speaker A asserts proposition p by uttering sentence s in context C with name n with semantic content x iff A believes that p..."-type schemata, with hardly a mention of rigid designation anywhere. It was while ploughing through this sort of material that it became clearly apparent that what Soames is on about here is simply Millianism: the thesis that the semantic content of a proper name is just its referent. The purpose of all this thick and dry exposition is to explore ways in which some common puzzles about direct reference could be solved (in such roundabout and technical ways that they are, to me, of very little interest--and I'm not overly intimidated by technical formalisms if they arrive at an important point; I just don't know that a conclusion that can't be summarized in a few plain sentences is worthwhile) while maintaining that the semantic content of a name is just its referent. Soames does this by appeal to background beliefs, etc., which does not seem so earth-shattering. All this is well and good, of course, for a thorough theoretical treatment of the direct-reference program. Soames is obviously a very careful philosopher, and insofar as the framework in which he investigates the questions goes, his conclusions are plausible enough. However, someone interested in a further development and generalization of the rigid designation thesis, as such, could well do entirely without this book. Except, maybe, as an object lesson for "How Not to Think About Rigid Designation."
Unfortunately, even when explicitly treating of rigid designation (and this goes for the early and later chapters too), Soames seems to have no feel for the notion of metaphysical necessity and identity that underlies the notion of rigidity; he is simply a direct-reference theorist through and through (for this reason, after three chapters on the possibility of rigid designation of general terms, he comes to find no real use for or promise in the idea, which is no surprise as one of his starting points is that it should be a "natural extension of rigid designation for what has been given for singular terms"--it's not hard to see why this would not work, but again, Soames misses the point, which is metaphysical necessity of identity, not mere reference). The title _Beyond Rigidity_ is actually the inverse of what it should be, not only does it not go "beyond rigidity"--in fact, it doesn't even get as far as rigidity.
So, beware, as the title turns out to be awfully misleading. And, as others have pointed out, Soames' dry-as-dust logic-chopping is a stark contrast from Kripke's lively, engaging prose. It's pretty funny that it was Kripke, in three lectures and hardly any recourse to formal symbolism, who made the far deeper and more enduring point.
Never met a singular proposition I didn't like........2003-06-27
I would merely say the book is intriguing and beautifully clear, particularly in two respects: (1) Kripke's own seeming ambivalence about propositional attitudes in "Puzzle about Belief" can be interestingly taken in one direction rather than another. Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of Bruce Wayne's claim that "I am Batman" (and felt informed, unlike Alfred the butler) will pay serious attention to Soames' distinctions between assertion and linguistic meaning. (2) The treatment of theoretical identities as necessary if true without reference to rigid designation is quite important. Thus, this book represents a major event.
Not up to Kripke's level.......2003-04-16
This book is very obviously a follow-on to Saul Kripke's Naming and Neccesity, and should only be read after a careful reading of N&N. In addition, the rather dry academic prose of Soames contrasts with the much more free-flowing work by Kripke, which is a transcription of 3 lectures he delivered (without notes) at Princeton, where he was a professor until he retired (incidentally, Soames is a current professor at that university).
With that out of the way, Beyond Rigidity is nothing short of a repuidiation of Kripke. Soames (and many more modern philosophers) seem to be returning to the same holes Mill dug when he wrote those handful of paragraphs which forever tied his name to a fatally flawed theory of reference. It is impossible, while reading this book, to not notice the way in which the work accomplished by eg., Frege, Russell, and even Kripke, is seemingly ignored in Soame's anti-descriptivist theories. Soames's theories, for example, of extra-semantic content, are certainly not conclusive, nor are they the only possible answers to the questions he poses.
That said, this is certainly a worthwhile book. Although I think that the content is dubious and incorrect philosophically, this is still a valuable work to read, if, at the least, only as a cautionary tale.
Not up to Kripke's level.......2003-04-16
This book is very obviously a follow-on to Saul Kripke's Naming and Neccesity, and should only be read after a careful reading of N&N. In addition, the rather dry academic prose of Soames contrasts with the much more free-flowing work by Kripke, which is a transcription of 3 lectures he delivered (without notes) at Princeton, where he was a professor until he retired (incidentally, Soames is a current professor at that university).
With that out of the way, Beyond Rigidity is nothing short of a repuidiation of Kripke. Soames (and many more modern philosophers) seem to be returning to the same holes Mill dug when he wrote those handful of paragraphs which forever tied his name to a fatally flawed theory of reference. It is impossible, while reading this book, to not notice the way in which the work accomplished by eg., Frege, Russell, and even Kripke, is seemingly ignored in Soame's anti-descriptivist theories. Soames's theories, for example, of extra-semantic content, are certainly not conclusive, nor are they the only possible answers to the questions he poses.
That said, this is certainly a worthwhile book. Although I think that the content is dubious and incorrect philosophically, this is still a valuable work to read, if, at the least, only as a cautionary tale.
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Let's Talk About God
Dorothy K. Kripke
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Teaching Your Children About God: Modern Jewish Approach, A
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ASIN: 1881283348 |
Book Description
When Let's Talk About God was first published, it invited readers to enter powerful conversations about the meaning of their lives. Torah Aura is proud to put it back into publication in an updated edition. Let's Talk About God is perfect for bedtime and read aloud.
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