On "The Meaning of Meaning" (1975). So if per Kripke (we're following the thread from #126), meaning is NOT a matter of having a description in your head, then what is it? Hilary Putnam reformulates Kripke's insight in terms of Twin Earths: If Earth-water is H2O, and on Twin Earth, they have something that looks just like water but is a different compound, then we wouldn't Continue Reading …
Episode 126: Saul Kripke on Possibilities, Language & Science
On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Specifically, what makes a name or a class term (like "tiger") pick out the person or things that it does? Saul Kripke wanted to correct the dominant view of his time (which involved speakers having some description in mind, and it's that description that hooks the word to the thing), and Continue Reading …
Episode 126: Saul Kripke on Possibilities, Language & Science (Citizen Edition)
On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Specifically, what makes a name or a class term (like "tiger") pick out the person or things that it does? Saul Kripke wanted to correct the dominant view of his time (which involved speakers having some description in mind, and it's that description that hooks the word to the thing), and Continue Reading …
Topic for #126: Saul Kripke on Possibilities, Language, and Science
On 10/11/15 we were rejoined by Elucidations' Matt Teichman to talk about one of the most readable yet still very weird texts in the canon of analytic philosophy, Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity, which is a series of three lectures from 1972, adapted into a book that was published in 1980. It starts off talking about a topic that seems obscure: Why do words refer to the Continue Reading …
Hattiangadi on Meaning in Language
Oughts and Thoughts: Scepticism and the Normativity of Meaningis a 2007 book by Oxford philosophy professor Anandi Hattiangadi that develops a response to Saul Kripke's skepticism about whether there is a fact of meaning in a person's use of language. In Kripke's 1984 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language,he argued, via a controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein, Continue Reading …