Saul Aaron Kripke (born in November 13, 1940 in Bay Shore, New York) is an American philosopher and logician now emeritus from Princeton and teaches as distinguished professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. He has been immensely influential in a number of fields related to logic and philosophy of language. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape-recordings and privately circulated manuscripts. Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. is the 317th day of the year (318th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full 1940 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Bay Shore is a hamlet (and census-designated place), located in the town of Islip, County of Suffolk, New York. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Emeritus (IPA pronunciation: or ) is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York (known more commonly as the CUNY Graduate Center or the GC) is the sole doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York. ... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... The Schock Prizes were instituted by the will of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock (1933-1986). ...

Biography

Saul Kripke is the eldest of three children born to Dorothy and Rabbi Myer Kripke. His father was the leader of Beth El Synagogue, the only Conservative congregation in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother wrote Jewish educational children's books. Saul and his two sisters, Madeline and Netta, attended Dundee Grade School in Omaha and Omaha Central High School. He wrote his first essay at the age of sixteen on the semantics of modal logics. Reportedly, he was invited to come work at Princeton University based on this essay. He replied: 'I'm honored by your proposal, but my mom says I have to finish high-school first.' After graduating from high school in 1958, Kripke attended Harvard University, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics. During his sophomore year at Harvard, Kripke taught a graduate-level logic course at nearby MIT. For some years he taught at Harvard, moved to Rockefeller University in New York City in 1967, then to Princeton University full-time in 1977. In 2002 Kripke started teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan, and was appointed a distinguished professor of philosophy there in 2003. Kripke married (and subsequently divorced) the philosopher Margaret Gilbert. They have no children. He is a religious Jew. For the town in Italy, see Rabbi, Italy. ... Omaha is the name of some places in the United States: *Omaha, Nebraska (the most familiar one) Omaha, Georgia Omaha, Illinois Omaha, Texas It is also the name of a Native American tribe, after which the city in Nebraska is named; see Omaha (tribe). ... Official language(s) English Capital Lincoln Largest city Omaha Largest metro area Omaha Area  Ranked 16th  - Total 77,421 sq mi (200,520 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 430 miles (690 km)  - % water 0. ... Omaha Central High School, originally known as Omaha High School, is located at 124 North 20th Street in downtown Omaha, Nebraska. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... In formal logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, existence, and necessity. ... Harvard redirects here. ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... Mapúa Institute of Technology (MIT, MapúaTech or simply Mapúa) is a private, non-sectarian, Filipino tertiary institute located in Intramuros, Manila. ... Founders Hall Rockefeller University is a private university focusing primarily on graduate and postgraduate education research in the biomedical fields, located between 63rd and 68th Streets along York Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan island in New York City, New York. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York (known more commonly as the CUNY Graduate Center or the GC) is the sole doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York. ... Margaret Gilbert is a philosopher best known for her 1989 book On Social Facts. ...

Work

Kripke is best known for four contributions to philosophy:

1. Kripke semantics for modal and related logics, published in several essays beginning while he was still in his teens.
2. His 1970 Princeton lectures Naming and Necessity (published in 1972 and 1980), that significantly restructured the philosophy of language and, as some have put it, "made metaphysics respectable again"[1].
3. His interpretation of the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
4. His theory of truth.

Kripke semantics (also known as possible world semantics, relational semantics, or frame semantics) is a formal semantics for modal logic systems, created in late 1950s and early 1960s by Saul Kripke. ... In formal logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, existence, and necessity. ... Naming and Necessity is a series of lectures given by the philosopher Saul Kripke. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ... Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, François Lemoyne, 1737 For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ...

Modal logic

Two of Kripke's earlier works ("A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic" - written while he was still a teenager - and "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic") were on the subject of modal logic. The most familiar logics in the modal family are constructed from a weak logic called K, named after Kripke for his contributions to modal logic. In formal logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, existence, and necessity. ...

In "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic", published in 1963, Kripke responded to a difficulty with classical quantification theory. The motivation for the world-relative approach was to represent the possibility that objects in one world may fail to exist in another. If standard quantifier rules are used, however, every term must refer to something that exists in all the possible worlds. This seems incompatible with our ordinary practice of using terms to refer to things that exist contingently. For other uses, see 1963 (disambiguation). ... First-order predicate calculus or first-order logic (FOL) permits the formulation of quantified statements such as there exists an x such that. ...

Kripke's response to this difficulty was to eliminate terms. He gave an example of a system that uses the world-relative interpretation and preserves the classical rules. However, the costs are severe. First, his language is artificially impoverished, and second, the rules for the propositional modal logic must be weakened.

Naming and necessity

Kripke's three lectures constitute an attack on the descriptivist (Fregean, Russellian) theory of reference with respect to proper names, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of the name's being associated with a description that the object in turn satisfies. He gave several examples purporting to render descriptivism implausible (e.g., surely Aristotle could have died at age two and so not satisfied any of the descriptions we associate with his name, and yet it would seem wrong to deny that he was Aristotle). As an alternative, Kripke adumbrated a causal theory of reference, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of a causal connection with the object as mediated through communities of speakers. In this way, a name is a rigid designator: it refers to the named object in every possible world in which the object exists. Causal theories of reference have also been elaborated and developed by Michael Devitt, Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Hilary Putnam, Nathan Salmon, Scott Soames, Gareth Evans, and others, and are perhaps more widely held than descriptivist theories now. Notable holdouts include John Searle, Richard Rorty, and Alonzo Church; also notable is the fact that Hilary Putnam has drawn back from such a completely causal account. Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848, Wismar – 26 July 1925, IPA: ) was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. ... A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1. ... Descriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. ... For other uses, see Aristotle (disambiguation). ... A causal theory of proper names is any of a family of views about what kind of meaning a proper name (or proper noun) has, what object it refers to, and how it acquires these features. ... In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator when it picks out the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists (and picks out nothing in those possible worlds in which it does not exist). ... Possible Worlds is: Possible Worlds (play) a play by John Mighton Possible Worlds (poetry book) a book of poems by Peter Porter (poet) Possible Worlds (book) a book by J. B. S. Haldane This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... Michael Devitt is an Australian philosopher currently teaching at the City University of New York in New York City. ... Keith Donnellan (born 1931) is a contemporary philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. ... There are many people named David Kaplan. ... Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ... Nathan U. Salmon (né Nathan Salmon Ucuzoglu, 1951-) is an American philosopher in the analytic tradition, specializing in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of logic. ... Scott Soames (born 1946) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. ... Gareth Evans may refer to: Gareth Evans, a philosopher and linguist. ... John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ... Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 in New York City – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. ... ‹ The template below (Expand) is being considered for deletion. ... Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ...

Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities—facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation. Examples include “Hesperus is Phosphorus”, “Cicero is Tully”, “Water is H₂O” and other identity claims where two names refer to the same object. A Posteriori is the title of the musical project Enigmas sixth studio album, released in September 2006. ... In music, modality is the subject concerning certain diatonic scales known as modes (e. ... For other uses, see Hesperus (disambiguation). ... General Name, symbol, number phosphorus, P, 15 Chemical series nonmetals Group, period, block 15, 3, p Appearance waxy white/ red/ black/ colorless Standard atomic weight 30. ... For other uses, see Cicero (disambiguation). ... Tully is a surname, and may refer to R. Brent Tully, an astronomer Charlie Tully James Tully, Irish politician Jim Tully Kivas Tully Mark Tully, author and reporter Mike Tully Montgomery Tully Rush Tully Sean Tully, fictional character Steve Tully Susan Tully Tom Tully Tom Tully (comic writer) Also: Tully...

Finally, Kripke gave an argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind, the view that every mental fact is identical with some physical fact (See talk). Kripke argued that the only way to defend this identity is as an a posteriori necessary identity, but that such an identity—e.g., pain is C-fibers firing—could not be necessary, given the possibility of pain that has nothing to do with C-fibers firing. Similar arguments have been proposed by David Chalmers. The term physicalism was coined by Otto Neurath, in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical... A phrenological mapping of the brain. ... C-fibers are unmyeliniated and as a result, have a slower conduction velocity, lower than 2 m/s. ... David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a philosopher in the area of philosophy of mind. ...

Kripke delivered the John Locke lectures in philosophy at Oxford in 1973. 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 never been published and the transcript is officially available only in a reading copy in the university philosophy library, which cannot be copied or cited without Kripke's permission. In fact many copies are informally circulated among philosophers. Its influence, though considerable, is thus difficult to trace. However, it has been extensively referred to by some philosophers, particularly Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon. The John Locke lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. ... This article is about the city of Oxford in England. ... For the song by James Blunt, see 1973 (song). ... Gareth Evans (12 May 1946 – 10 August 1980) was a British philosopher at Oxford University during the 1970s. ... Nathan U. Salmon (né Nathan Salmon Ucuzoglu, 1951-) is an American philosopher in the analytic tradition, specializing in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of logic. ...

Accusations of plagiarism

In a 1995 paper, philosopher Quentin Smith argued that key concepts in Kripke's New Theory of Reference had originated from the work of Ruth Barcan Marcus more than a decade earlier.^[1] Smith identified six significant ideas to the New Theory which he claimed that Marcus had developed: To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Ruth Barcan Marcus (born 1921) is the philosopher and logician after whom the Barcan formula is named. ...

• The idea that proper names are direct references, which don't consist of contained definitions.
• While one can single out a single thing by a description, this description is not equivalent with a proper name of this thing.
• The modal argument that proper names are directly referential, and not disguised descriptions.
• A formal modal logic proof of the necessity of identity.
• The concept of a rigid designator, although the actual name of the concept was coined by Kripke.
• The idea of a posteriori identity.

Smith proceeded to argue that Kripke failed to understand Marcus' theory at the time, yet later adopted many of its key conceptual themes in his New Theory of Reference. In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator when it picks out the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists (and picks out nothing in those possible worlds in which it does not exist). ...

Several scholars have subsequently offered detailed responses showing that no plagiarism occurred.^[2].

Wittgenstein

Kripke also contributed to the study of the later Wittgenstein in lectures published as Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, although his work here has been faulted for misrepresenting the historical Wittgenstein. Indeed, many philosophers refer to the subject of Kripke's book as "Kripkenstein," on the grounds that the argument it presents would not have been endorsed by Wittgenstein. (For alternative readings of Wittgenstein, see Colin McGinn's Wittgenstein on Meaning.) The real significance of "Kripkenstein" was to put forward a clear statement of a new kind of scepticism, dubbed "meaning scepticism", which is the idea that for an isolated individual there is no fact in virtue of which a word has its meaning. Kripke's "sceptical solution" to meaning scepticism is to ground meaning in the behaviour of a community. Kripke's book generated a large secondary literature, divided between those who find his sceptical problem interesting and perceptive, and others (such as Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker) who argue that his meaning scepticism is a pseudo-problem that stems from a confused, selective reading of Wittgenstein. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria – April 29, 1951 in Cambridge, England) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking ideas to philosophy, primarily in the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ... In analytic philosophy, Kripkenstein is a half-satirical nickname casually applied by philosophers for Saul Kripkes reading of Ludwig Wittgensteins later work, as presented in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. ... Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. ... Gordon Park Baker (born at Englewood, New Jersey, 20 April 1938; died at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 25 June 2002) was an American-English philosopher. ... Peter M.S. Hacker (born 15 July 1939 in London) is a British philosopher. ...

Truth

In his 1975 article "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Kripke showed that a language can consistently contain its own truth predicate, which was deemed impossible by Alfred Tarski, a pioneer in the area of formal theories of truth. The trick involves letting truth be a partially defined property over the set of grammatically well-formed sentences in the language. Kripke showed how to do this recursively by starting from the set of expressions in a language which do not contain the truth predicate, defining a truth predicate over just that segment: this adds new sentences to the language, and truth is in turn defined for all of them. Unlike Tarski's approach, however, Kripke's lets "truth" be the union of all of these definition-stages; after a denumerable infinity of steps the language reaches a "fixed point" such that using Kripke's method to expand the truth-predicate does not change the language any further. Such a fixed point can then be taken as the basic form of a natural language containing its own truth predicate. But this predicate is undefined for any sentences that do not, so to speak, "bottom out" in simpler sentences not containing a truth predicate. That is, "'Snow is white' is true" is well-defined, as is "'"Snow is white" is true' is true," and so forth, but neither "This sentence is true" nor "This sentence is not true" receive truth-conditions; they are, in Kripke's terms, "ungrounded." Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, François Lemoyne, 1737 For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ... // Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1902, Warsaw, Russian-ruled Poland – October 26, 1983, Berkeley, California) was a logician and mathematician who spent four decades as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

Meaning of "I"

In late January 2006, Kripke attended a conference celebrating his 65th birthday and work at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and delivered a 70-minute talk on "The First Person", discussing the meaning and reference of the pronoun "I". (New York Times, January 28, 2006). See external links. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

Notable publications by Kripke

• 1959. "A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic", Journal of Symbolic Logic 24(1):1–14.
• 1962. "The Undecidability of Monadic Modal Quantification Theory", Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 8:113–116
• 1963. "Semantical Considerations in Modal Logic", Acta Philosophica Fennica 16:83–94
• 1963. "Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic I: Normal Modal Propositional Calculi", Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 9:67–96
• 1965. "Semantical Analysis of Intuitionistic Logic I", In Formal Systems and Recursive Functions, edited by M. Dummett and J. N. Crossley. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
• 1965. "Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic II: Non-Normal Modal Propositional Calculi", In The Theory of Models, edited by J. W. Addison, L. Henkin and A. Tarski. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
• 1971. "Identity and Necessity", In Identity and Individuation, edited by M. K. Munitz. New York: New York University Press.
• 1972 (1980). "Naming and Necessity", In Semantics of Natural Language, edited by D. Davidson and G. Harman. Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel. Sets out the causal theory of reference.
• 1975. "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy 72:690–716. Sets his theory of truth (against Alfred Tarski), where an object language can contain its own truth predicate.
• 1977. "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference", Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2:255–276
• 1979. "A Puzzle about Belief", In Meaning and Use, edited by A. Margalit. Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel.
• 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-59845-8 and reprints 1972.
• 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: an Elementary Exposition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-95401-7. Sets out his interpretation of Wittgenstein aka Kripkenstein.
• 2005. "Russell's Notion of Scope", Mind 114:1005–1037

// Overview A causal theory of reference is any of a family of views about how terms acquire specific referents. ... Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ... In analytic philosophy, Kripkenstein is a half-satirical nickname casually applied by philosophers for Saul Kripkes reading of Ludwig Wittgensteins later work, as presented in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. ...

Literature about Kripke

• G.W. Fitch (2005), Saul Kripke. ISBN 0-7735-2885-7.
• Scott Soames (2002), Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity. ISBN 0-19-514529-1.
• Christopher Hughes (2004), Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity. ISBN 0-19-824107-0.

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

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Saul Kripke

Philosophy Portal

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• CUNY faculty page
• a profile story from The New York Times, January 28, 2006
• information from 'Philosophy Professor' website
• Saul Kripke, Genius Logician A short, non-technical interview by Andreas Saugstad, February 25, 2001.
• A lot of Kripke's pictures. UNILOG '05: First World Congress and School on Universal Logic
• The conference in honor of Kripke's sixty-fifth birthday. One can also download a video of Kripke's speech "The First Person."