I remember studying Naming And Necessity in my undergrad and being blown away by the clarity of his arguments. It is an amazing skill to express oneself so concisely, and many of his arguments/thought experiments have a 'commonsense' quality to them that make them very persuasive.. By contrast other great philosophers of language like Wittgenstein had the insight but somewhat struggled to express it.
I don't entirely agree with some elements of Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein (I'm more partial to the Baker and Hacker position), but he was so important to keeping Witty in the discussion that it's hard to not give him enormous credit.
As an aside, it is very interesting how many writers on Wittgenstein, and working in what we might broadly call Ordinary Language philosophy, achieve such a startling clarity. An early example (even before Wittgenstein) is also RG Collingwood. His writing is straightforward and clear as day, eschewing jargon for the language we use day to day, for that was ultimately their focus. They wanted to dissolve philosophical problems.
A philosopher at my alma mater wrote a controversial paper accusing Kripke of plagiarism. I'm not competent to weigh in on that question, but I thought this article was interesting: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html
Jim Holt's writing was gripping, read the whole affair. But now I'm left thinking that all this analysis of names is silly, and they are heavily overloaded and turing complete. Why even try to box them as something related to possible universes?
When I was right out of college I worked with a guy who had a PhD in philosophy and had studied Kripke closely. He was working in software at the time because it’s hard to make a living as a philosopher. He gave me one of his extra copies of Naming and Necessity. I had never read any philosophy and I was amazed.
> He was working in software at the time because it’s hard to make a living as a philosopher.
Yeah, there are a lot of us. Spend a few years deeply studying logic and reasoning, and programming really just feels like a different version of the same thing.
Learning an algorithm is very similar to learning an argument or a proof, and designing algorithms is very similar to designing arguments.
An influential and astonishing mind. Reading him in my 20s really changed my relationship with language. I owe him a debt as he changed my professional life.
Yet nothing I've seen in the press has described his predation of women in the department. In fact I learned of it only later when speaking with female linguists.
I heard him speak once and could have gone and spoken with him but turned down the opportunity. I'm male, but why should I then be so lucky to be able to have an ordinary conversation with him?
I know we're not supposed to talk about comment voting but I am disturbed that this on-topic comment was downvoted.
His attitude towards women was notorious, and he didn't work with any as far as I know. I consider it's as much worth discussion as Heidegger's or Sartre's politics.
Recently been reading up on model checking, and Kripke structures are mentioned often. They are somewhat similar to Labeled Transition Systems, but then with propositions on the nodes instead of labels on the edges. Turns out they are named after this person, fascinating.
I went to a Philosophy conference with a professor friend in the early 2000s. I was standing in a circle talking to about 10 professors. All 10 had some anecdote of Kripke's brilliance with a few questioning why even stay in the field when you could never get to his level.
Now maybe we can finally get our hands on the unpublished work!
(This is a joke, but something I used to hear in philosophy is that kripke felt some of his drafts were “not ready” despite circulating since the 70’s. The John Locke lectures are an example, I believe.)
From one of the obits I learned the Locke lectures were finally published in 2013! In the early 2000s our prof handed out what I believe were a former colleague’s xeroxed notes from them.
A true genius of the sort that might come around every hundred years. I look forward to his literary estate going through his hundreds of boxes worth of papers and manuscripts and notes and publishing them over the next few decades.
It is very odd that the New York Times hasn't published an obit for him. Maybe they will take some time to do so but I always thought that they had these things pre-baked.
I heard about his death elsewhere this morning and was surprised I didn't see it before. They have a ton of obits for less consequential people.
[+] [-] yung_steezy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beezlebroxxxxxx|3 years ago|reply
As an aside, it is very interesting how many writers on Wittgenstein, and working in what we might broadly call Ordinary Language philosophy, achieve such a startling clarity. An early example (even before Wittgenstein) is also RG Collingwood. His writing is straightforward and clear as day, eschewing jargon for the language we use day to day, for that was ultimately their focus. They wanted to dissolve philosophical problems.
[+] [-] pavlov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhevahir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raincom|3 years ago|reply
Here is the book where Soames, Smith engage with each other: https://www.amazon.com/New-Theory-Reference-Origins-Synthese...
[+] [-] justin66|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archon1410|3 years ago|reply
hah, person of gender.
[+] [-] goldenkey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwowsersx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baremetal|3 years ago|reply
edit: my mistake
[+] [-] chasingthewind|3 years ago|reply
Kripke was truly a brilliant philosopher.
[+] [-] routerl|3 years ago|reply
Yeah, there are a lot of us. Spend a few years deeply studying logic and reasoning, and programming really just feels like a different version of the same thing.
Learning an algorithm is very similar to learning an argument or a proof, and designing algorithms is very similar to designing arguments.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
Yet nothing I've seen in the press has described his predation of women in the department. In fact I learned of it only later when speaking with female linguists.
I heard him speak once and could have gone and spoken with him but turned down the opportunity. I'm male, but why should I then be so lucky to be able to have an ordinary conversation with him?
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
His attitude towards women was notorious, and he didn't work with any as far as I know. I consider it's as much worth discussion as Heidegger's or Sartre's politics.
[+] [-] f-jin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the-smug-one|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isaiah____|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domenicrosati|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] base698|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huitzitziltzin|3 years ago|reply
(This is a joke, but something I used to hear in philosophy is that kripke felt some of his drafts were “not ready” despite circulating since the 70’s. The John Locke lectures are an example, I believe.)
[+] [-] redtexture|3 years ago|reply
This is a typical philosophical tradition.
Many college professors have a library of essays of others' circulated and unpublished work.
[+] [-] morelisp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhickok|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmorein|3 years ago|reply
I heard about his death elsewhere this morning and was surprised I didn't see it before. They have a ton of obits for less consequential people.
https://www.nytimes.com/section/obituaries
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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