Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece,
Naming and Necessity, reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection
Philosophical Troubles.
In this book Kripke’s long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to all of Kripke’s published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke’s influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke’s work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher’s major publications.
Kripke will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy’s greatest living thinkers.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface page vii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1
Background 2
Plan 7
1 Naming 11
Mill vs Frege 11
Error and Ignorance 19
Metalinguistic Theories 24
The Historical Chain Picture 28
Reference vs Attribution 33
2 Identity 37
Modal Logic and its Archenemy 37
Rigidity 45
The Necessity of Identity 50
Resistance 53
The Contingent a Priori 56
3 Necessity 59
Imagination and the Necessary a Posteriori 59
Natural Substances 64
Natural Kinds 69
Natural Phenomena and Natural Law 71
The Mystery of Modality 74
4 Belief 78
Direct Reference 78
Puzzling Pierre 83
Poles Apart 88
Counterfactual Attitudes 91
Empty Names 98
5 Rules 104
Conventionalism 105
Kripkenstein 108
The Analogy with Hume 110
The Skeptical Paradox 116
The Skeptical Solution 120
6 Mind 128
Physicalism 128
Functionalism 131
Against Functionalism 134
Against Physicalism 136
The Mystery of Mentality 140
Appendix A Models 143
The Logic of Modality 143
Kripke Models 147
The Curse of the Barcan Formulas 150
Controversy and Confusion 153
Appendix B Truth 157
Paradox and Pathology 158
Kripke vs Tarski 159
Fixed Points 165
The Intuitive Notion of Truth 170
Notes 175
Bibliography 204
Index 211
Circa l’autore
John Patton Burgess is a John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley’s Group in Logic and Methodology of Science. His interests include logic, philosophy of mathematics and metaethics.
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