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Naming and Necessity

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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.

No, really. Kripke maintains a vigorously-argued and important thesis here: the surprising conclusion that statements involving identity (e.g., when calling something or someone out by name) involve a posteriori necessity. This is quite striking because many have assumed that necessity was somehow substantially correlative with the a priori: but that involves a confusion of metaphysical necessity with epistemological necessity. With that idea in place, Kripke goes on to apply (all too briefly, unfortunately) it in some extremely thought-provoking--nay, well-nigh mind-blowing--ideas about things like natural kinds and the mind-body problem. I just wish he had gone into way more detail on these fascinating issues than the three oral lectures transcribed on these 180 or so pages.

If you're reading this review, you've either a) already read this and I don't have to tell you how unique and important it is, or b) maybe have just taken an undergraduate philosophy course that had some lectures on Kripke, and are thinking about checking out the primary literature yourself. If the latter, do so. You'll be enriched, and you might just be taken on a journey from which you'll never return. Philosophers are still, and undoubtedly will continue for some time, discussing the thesis of _Naming and Necessity_ and its implications for at least philosophy of language and metaphysics, and probably philosophy of mind and philosophy of science as well.

The Millian semantics of proper names; the separation of semantics from the theory of how the semantics gets generated; the staunch insistence on the necessity of identity; the rehabilitation of "non-linguisitic" necessity"; the generation of the class of the necessary a posteriori from the semantics; the extension of the approach to proper names to the semantics of general terms; the consequences for metaphysics and the interpretation of science; the extension of _this_ to the mind-body problem; the tantalizing hints about fictional names; the skepticism about the possibility of conceptual analysis and the cosequent support for rationalist metaphysics; the huge quantity of material to be mined from footnotes -- all of these features and many more are radical and absolutely essential contributions of this book.

I would happily have hiven this book 4 stars if it hadn't been for the third lecture - it very nearly provoked a 1 star review. Why?

Let's start from the beginning: Kripke makes a very persuasive argument to the effect that we know named objects simply by their names, rather than via a definite description. Thus, the example that one can know of 'Feynman' without knowing anything about him other than that he is a famous physicist, a description so far from being definite that it could apply to any number of people. So, a name is a 'rigid designator', something we use to point out a particular item, but not itself simply shorthand for a description.

This is all good stuff, though it has the mild flaw that such rigid designators cannot achieve any meaning beyond one individual's mind unless they have some association to a description. For example, if you hear me talking about 'Cicero' without giving any description, then you have heard the rigid designator, but you have nothing to attach it to. You need a description, even if it may change over time, and it may be inadequate, to get some idea of what the rigid designator refers to.

Unfortunately, in the third lecture everything falls apart. First Kripke attempts to argue that 'heat' and 'molecular motion' are necessarily identical. This may be so if you're prepared to attach a description to the rigid designator 'heat', something along the lines of 'the sensation which I feel under certain kinds of sensory stimulation, which can be shown by experiment to correspond with the action of causing mercury to expand and contract'. If you don't have that description, you have two entirely separate concepts: the intuitive sense of 'temperature' derived from sensation, and 'calorific heat', a scientific concept based around mean kinetic energy in ensembles of molecules. The description is what links the two, and so without that description, Kripke's argument collapses. But the description is precisely the thing he refuses to accept. In fact the argument collapses anyway, because in no way is it necessary that calorific heat and the sensation of temperature should be identical.

Now things get worse. In this argument Kripke acknowledges quite happily that 'heat' = 'stimulation of certain nerve fibres'. But then he attempts to argue that while that equation is necessary, the equation of pain with stimulation of other nerve fibres isn't! He commits such open lunacy as the following: '...it would seem that God need only create beings with C-fibers capable of the appropriate type of physical stimulation . . . it would seem, though, that to make the C-fiber stimulation correspond to pain, or tbe felt as pain, God must do something in addition to the mere creation of the C-fiber stimulation; He must let the creatures feel the C-fiber stimulation as pain, and not as a tickle, or as warmth, or as nothing.' But this applies equally well to heat, so why was Kripke happy with that equation?

The problem appears to be a very elementary mistake in modal logic, which I would not have expected of Kripke. Viz, he assumes that any conceivable counter-factual counts as a possible world accessible from this one (e.g. a counter-factual in which I feel pain but my C-fibres are not stimulated). But this is only the case in the strong S5 modal logic. In more realistic modal logics, possible worlds are joined by a complex accessibility relation, such that necessity in a world depends on truth in all worlds accessible from that one, not in all possible worlds. Just because Kripke can imagine such a counter-factual, it does not make it a world accessible from this one.

So, in conclusion: buy it, read it, but don't treat it as holy writ. Personally, I'd stick to Quine.

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.

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.

"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.

"It's all just about language, not about the truly deep issues in metaphysics."

You've got to be kidding! This book is not "just about language" -- this is the book that lifted 20th century philosophy OUT OF being just about language, and returned it to the perennial questions of metaphysics. (Incidentally, the book argues that the mind is not reducible to the brain. Deep and metaphysical enough for you?)

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.

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.