Talk:Saul Kripke
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[edit] Puzzle about belief
Why is there nothing here on Kripke's "A Puzzle About Belief" paper? It's listed in the list of his publications, but I figure it should have a little paragraph summarizing it a bit. There's pretty much nothing else on Wikipedia about the puzzle. Any objections to having something here? -- Jaymay 18:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC) (Also, why are so many people not signing their names after their posts here?)
I have now written a suggestion. Someone who speaks English natively should take a look at it, though.
[edit] Pronunciation
Is it "krip-ka" or "krip-kee"? -- FP <talk><edits> 14:15, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
krip-kee (sounds like "key") -- User: Astragal
Is this correct? I've heard both ways, but the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd edn 2005) has the pronunciation down as "krɪpkə", using the IPA, i.e. more like "krip-ka". Alibangbang (talk) 17:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Minor clarifications
Minor clarification/question: were not the "1972 lectures at Princeton" actually delivered in 1970 at Princeton (and first published <in part?> in 1972)?
[edit] Edits by User:69.86.61.207
I'm in good faith with the two edits by User:69.86.61.207, but I can't find any info on the internet to back up the claims. I'm just assuming the user is probably a student of Kripke's (the ip is a location in New York, where Kripke teaches). Here are the two edits (italicized):
- Sep 20: (Kripke was roomates) (for a short time) with Theodore Kaczynski (The Unabomber)
- Sep 1: Kripke married (and recently divorced) Margaret Gilbert
Probably no big deal, but I just want to make sure.
--FranksValli 01:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
It is not true that Saul Kripke was a roommate at Harvard of Ted Kazinski, the Unabomber. While they attended Harvard at the same time, they only met briefly one time. I have spoken to Saul about this, and he has verified this.
Ned Kripke cousin of Saul Kripke
[edit] Plagiarism issue
We mention the existence of the controversy of the origins of Kripke's ideas in N&N, but don't say anything substantial about it, and we don't even mention the similar Kripgenstein controversy. I'd like to expand on this, but I'd like to give a chance to attract comments beforehand, since the issue cuts deep into the issue of Kripke's prestige. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 14:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
- Frankly, I think (I think) the point is overblown. Kripke's apparent debt to Barcan is no bigger than any number of unmentioned debts philosophers have to each other. It's very common for philosophers to defend the same idea, in as different ways as Kripke and Barcan, without this counting as plagiarism.
- The paper that is linked to actually illustrates this over-blown-ness fairly well. Most of the sources who (it notes) attribute the new theory of reference to Kripke in fact credit him in a way that would be consistent with this: Kripke is responsible for the prevalence of this new idea: that is, he was the one who convinced everyone that it's true. And to his clear credit here, he convinced people in a way Barcan didn't. (Publishing first is important; so is publiching better.)
- What it lacks is serious evidence that Kripke got both the claim and his arguments for it from Barcan; or any evidence that it was Kripke, rather than people writing about Kripke, who claimed that he was the first to say it. If I am not mistaken, this theft-of-ideas point has been pushed entirely by people other than Ruth Barcan Marcus herself--for that matter by people other than major philosophers. Barcan has continued to engage in normal scholarly exchanges with Kripke in her work, with no evidence of animosity--again, so far as I recall. I'm not looking now.
- Do you mean by the Kripkenstein controversy the view that Kripke's position in his book misreads Wittgenstein?This does not seem like the same kind of controversy at all, and is a perfectly normal and expectable kind of academic controversy: the claim that someone got something wrong.
- Or do you mean the occasional claims that Kripke's views there were significantly anticipated by earlier writers on Wittgenstein, such as Fogelin? My impression was that those claims of theft are thought to have relatively little merit.
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- Wrt. Kripgenstein, I mean the Fogelin issue: Fogelin has himself claimed Kripke' conduct was unethical (or at least Quentin Smith said so of his correspondence with Fogelin). It's been a big story, and if not many people agree that Kripke is guilty of straightforward plagiarism, many people do think he has acted unethically. I certainly think it needs more substantial coverage. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 15:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pictures of Kripke
A picture would be nice. I've found an uploaded picture, but for some reason, it isn't here on WP anymore. 70.111.251.203 19:31, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
- Probably copyrighted. There are several galleries of public-domain philosopher photos on the Web. I'll take a look.--Lacatosias 08:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pics link
does somebody see any value in the recerntly returned link described "a lot of kripke's pictures"? all i could find there is an uncomfortable site, containing one page with a jpg of 129 photos of the conference participants, which i guess at some point shows some kripke.trespassers william 20:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Saul Kripke Fan Club
Now that 21 year-old user Thesilverbail has reverted my edits, we can all go back to reading that Kripke's influence was substantial and considerable. Even though most of Kripke's work is said to exist only in transcripts and on tapes, we can be sure that there is justification for using adjectives like immensely, significantly, and influential. We will take Thesilverbail's word that Kripke is extensively referred to and has made interesting contributions. We don't have to curb our enthusiasm because we now realize that hyperbole is permitted in a Wikipedia article. Maybe Saul Kripke is the greatest philosopher of our time, if not all time.Lestrade 12:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
- I'm 24 years old now, and part of my research is in modal logics. I can testify that Kripke (along with Jaakko Hintikka) was immensely influential in this area. "Naming and necessity" introduced the concept of a rigid designator and really did turn the field on its head; I agree with the quote about "making metaphysics respectable again" but couldn't find the source. Hence the cite-needed tag. About the other stuff (like wittgenstein) I have only hearsay to go on that he had considerable influence. Lestrade, if you genuinely know that his work in these areas is of minor significance, you can revert my reverts. Otherwise, I dont think it's POV to say that a scholar has been "influential" and made "interesting contributions", these are statements of fact verifiable by citations, the evidence of terms and ideas he introduced being used or built upon, and the quoted opinions of authorities in the field. Unfortunately this article has none of that yet, which is why i added the general cite tag, but I'll work on it. Cheers, Deepak 18:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
- I am writing my dissertation in Modal Logic as well; I concur with Deepak. Kripke has been (in my view) the single most important figure in the history of Modal Logic - only R. Marcus would be of comparable depth and impact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.124.238 (talk) 13:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I think you are being confused by grammar or something. There are two separate facts: (1) Kripke is the most influential analytic philosopher since Quine. (2) Much of his work is unpublished. Kripke's influence is due to his PUBLISHED works, which makes the fact that he has so much unpublished work all the more tantalizing. Of course, it is unlikely that the unpublished work is consistently of the same standard as Naming and Necessity, but the tantalization remains. If someone wants to give a citation for this, one can cite Soames' history of analytic philosophy, or the introduction to the collection of essays Conceivability and Possibility. Both give good explanations of Kripke's main cause for celebrity, his contribution to the study of the logic and metaphysics of modality. If I recall correctly, even the current edition of 'Naming and Necessity' has a quote on the back by a famous philosopher to the effect that it is one of the most influential yada yada yada. Of coure, one could wonder whether THESE sources are themselves credible, but at that point we'd have to move to an area which Kripke has never worked on, epistemology.
[edit] Hidden Treasure
In the "Wittgenstein" section it is written: "Kripke's influence has been substantial, but much of his work, unfortunately, exists only in tape-recorded or transcript forms." This is reminiscent of the device used by Georg Hegel two centuries ago. His wisdom existed mostly in notes that were taken by industrious students who attended his crowded lectures. The world relied on books by other writers who were able to explain the meaning of his substantially influential thoughts.Lestrade 15:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
- Curious that you call this a "device used by Hegel" (is Kripke also "using" this device?) Is the implication that Hegel deliberately wrote obscurely to disguise that it was nonsense, and his students convinced everyone otherwise? Because a more neutral expression would have been that this is reminiscent something that also happened with Hegel--happened with him, that is, if you discount the thousands of pages he did publish in his lifetime. Are you trying to be subtle, and clever, in your insinuations? The same facts in varous forms are true of Socrates and Wittgenstein. If not writing enough for User:Lestrade is a criterion of philisophical dishonesty, is there any important branch of philosophy that doesn't include crooks among its revered figures?
[edit] No mention of Kripke Model
Hello,
Should not there be any mention of what is known as a Kripke Model? To those of you who do not know, a Kripke Model is a finite state machine where the states are labelled by a set of atomic propositions and the edges are not usually labelled. Kripke Models are used in Model Checking, perhaps someone could edit this page and mention it. I would but I do not know much.
[edit] Lesson in Wikipedia Dangers
Here's a good example of the problems that Wikipedia encounters. Anonymous User 82.73.143.146 added the following: "Reportedly, he was invited to come work at Princeton University based on this essay. He replied 'I'm honoured by your proposal, but my mum says I have to finish high-school first.' " What the editor doesn't realize is that Kripke, as a resident of the U.S., would never refer to his mother as "mum." This is a British term. Therefore, it can be safely assumed that the anonymous user is a resident of a British country. This is also evident by the spelling of "honoured." The whole quote was entirely and obviously fabricated.Lestrade 14:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
- No--it's been a running urban legend in philosophy departments for decades; my teachers have told me they heard it when they were students. The anonymous British editor simply wrote it down, unthinking, in his or her natural idiom. Quit being such a prig.
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- So it's not unreliable, but a running urban legend? I suppose that settles the matter. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 222.144.94.69 (talk) 14:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC).
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- It might be an Urban legend for people who are very gullible. It seems more likely to be a simple-minded way of emphasizing the fact that Kripke wrote an academic essay while he was a high-school student. Would his mother have told him not to go to Princeton merely because he had not officially graduated from high-school? Lestrade 16:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Lestrade
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- In defence of your name-calling you've now descended to psychologizing about Kripke's parents? The original text said "reportedly", and should indeed have been amended to weaken the appearance that it was being aserted as true. But it's not as dumb as you're trying to make out. If someone offered him a job--not university admission, as you seem to think--on the mistaken assumption that he was already a working academic, saying what he's quoted as saying would be a reasonable and clever way for him to correct that misapprehension.
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- For the record, Kripke has denied this story repeatedly, though I'm not now going to hunt about on the Internet for a citation. It shouldbe mentioned as evidence of the regard in which philosophers hold him--he was, after all, teaching graduate math at MIT, what, three years later?
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[edit] Locke lectures: Reference and Existence
Searches on amazon.com show this as an out-of-print book that is obviously the same as what is being referred to here. Is it really "unpublished"? Ken Arromdee 02:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, it is unpublished. Amazon has a history of jumping the gun whenever they hear rumours of a book they don't have listed yet.
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- I have a copy and yooou don't! :) - KSchutte 01:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
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- Well, I do. But I'm actually missing a couple of pages: careless photocopying at some point in its dark history, I suppose. How complete is yours? Does anyone know of a good blackmarket Kripke-transcript exchange program?
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[edit] Copyright violation
This may seem minor but there are two sentences lifted verbatim from the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Modal Logic. The two sentences in question are the last two of the Modal Logic section of this wikipedia article. They come from section 11 of that article and occur about a page up from where the bibliography starts. The text right before those two sentences is different and the first sentence lifted is a short one that wouldn't be much of an issue except that it is continuous with a much longer more complicated sentence which has also been lifted without alteration or citation. I haven't checked if there are any other possible violations.
[edit] Goldstein's Mind Body Problem?
The article lacks a reference to Rebecca Goldstein's book, the Mind Body Problem, often thought to be about Kripke. Would that be an appropriate addition, given that this is a speculative claim?
[edit] Philosophy of mind
The bit on the identity thesis. Does Kripke talk about the identity of mental and physical facts? which seems a confusing appruach. Doesn't he talk about entities or events? My copy is in another country, so I can't check.
[edit] Theory of truth
In Kripke it is mandatory to mention his work on the theory of truth: "Outline of a Theory of Truth" The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975) pp690-716. It opens new ways (non tarskian) for treating truth. O. Trelles (otrelle@pucp.edu.pe)
- Then do so.
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- It's probably mandatory to mention, but it should be better presented than it is now:
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- "Kripke showed that a language can consistently contain its own truth predicate, which was deemed impossible by Alfred Tarski"
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- It wasn't as much 'deemed impossible' as PROVED impossible, but under the assumption that every sentence has a truth value.
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- "Kripke showed how to do this recursively" is also seriously misleeding, Kripke's approach cannot magically produce recursive truth predicates for undecidable theories, the definition of the truth predicate and the proof of the existence of fix points is highly nonconstructive.
[edit] Rants
Want to be an analytic philosopher? Just have a daft obsession with the use of words. As to the 'private language argument' which has generated so much academic literature, I can come up with at least 100 more important questions to be considered if I spent time on it. Hundreds of years from now, people will look at the discussion on whether we can have private languages as we look upon medieval debates as to how many angels can stand on the head of a pin.
- Having a fun ego trip? What does this have to do with the article here, anyway?
I actually think this raises a point. Maybe the article could have more about why this argument is important. What effect's do the conclusions you reach in this argument do to other debates and philisophical questions. Maybe the article could be just a smidgen more aimed for the layman over all as well. It seems to assume a little to much previous knowledge on the readers part.--Case 20:51, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Should it instead be written for people who don't even know where to use apostrophes? Perhaps there should be an article on the private language argument (I haven't looked to see whether there is), and perhaps that should or should not be dumbed down for people too lazy to put a little effort into what they want to learn. (Should the math articles not use numbers and symbols, either?) But neither point touches the fact that information on the broader social relevance of the private language argument has no place in an article devoted to giving the facts about Kripke, (whatever his broader social relevance, either); nor the fact that the post referred to was mean-spirited, jealous, and irrelevant. For your further edification: X's don't "do effects to" Y's; they "have effects on" them. Articles are aimed at, not for, laymen. "Overall" is one word. "Too", not "to", is an adverb. Are you sure you're competent to be judging this question?
Well, that's amusing. You don't have a good answer for a fundamental question about the value of your idol's work, so of course, you go on the attack. If Douglas Hofstadter can take the time to explain why we should care about Kurt Godel, surely it is worth a few lines in Wikipedia to do the same for Kripke. "Why give a rat's ass" is not beyond the scope of an encyclopedia--it's essential context for those just coming to a field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.251.15.42 (talk) 03:32, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] A Wittgensteinian Philosopher?
This article places Kripke in Category:Wittgensteinian_philosophers. However, I would question the idea Kripke is a Wittgensteinian philosopher. He has cited W. a few times in his work, but this is not unusual as many, many philosophers who aren't Wittgensteinians do so. His only sustained treatment of Wittgenstein is in his book 'W. on Rules and Private Language', and this is widely considered to be a very bad interpretation of W.'s remarks in the Philosophical Investigations, and hardly Wittgensteinian. His work is certainly of high import in analytic philosophy, but I would argue (and I think I have the force of Wittgenstein scholars behind me) that he is not a Wittgensteinian philosopher in the least.
That said, I'm going to remove Kripke from this category. If anyone really has a problem with this, let me know here and we'll discuss it here. Enigma00 (talk) 22:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
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- For a philosopher to be Wittgensteinian, he would have to philosophize in Wittgenstein's manner. Wittgenstein had different ways, however, of philosophizing at different times of his life. A Wittgensteinian might also be one who agreed with Wittgenstein on the topics that interested Wittgenstein. In either case, Kripke is not a Wittgensteinian philosopher.Lestrade (talk) 02:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC)Lestrade
[edit] Blury distinciton between theory of meaning and causal theory in the Naming and Necessity section
I think that the following passage is a bit misleading: "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." Kripke uses rigidity to demonstrate that the meaning of a name is its referent. This doesn't have anything to do with the causal theory as such. Since the distinction between theories of meaning and theories of fixation is so important to Kripke, it should probably be emphasized more in the article.
