Saul Kripke's 1980 book — originally three lectures delivered at Princeton in January 1970 — that revived essentialist metaphysics in analytic philosophy, attacked the description theory of reference, and developed the causal-historical theory of naming that has shaped the philosophy of language and metaphysics for five decades.
naming-and-necessity
Kripke's 1980 book based on the January 1970 Princeton lectures that revived essentialist metaphysics, developed the causal-historical theory of reference, and produced the framework of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths.
Based on three lectures delivered at Princeton in January 1970. Originally published in Davidson and Harman's Semantics of Natural Language (1972); revised and republished as a separate book by Harvard University Press in 1980.
Introduction
Naming and Necessity is the lectures Saul Kripke delivered at Princeton in January 1970 and published as a separate book in 1980. The lectures are widely treated as the most influential single body of lectures in twentieth-century philosophy; they revived essentialist metaphysics in analytic philosophy, attacked the description theory of reference that had dominated the philosophy of language from Frege and Russell through the mid-twentieth century, and developed the causal-historical theory of naming together with the framework of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths.
The lectures are short (about 170 pages in the standard edition), accessible in their prose style, and concentrated in their argument. The combination of accessibility with technical depth made the work unusually influential: graduate students could read the lectures with profit; professional philosophers found themselves engaging the technical issues at depth; the framework reshaped subjects from metaphysics to philosophy of language to philosophy of mind to the philosophy of natural kinds.
Composition and publication
Kripke delivered the three lectures at Princeton on January 20, 22, and 29, 1970. The lectures were transcribed and lightly edited; the transcribed text was published in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman's Semantics of Natural Language (Reidel, 1972) as a single contribution. The Harvard University Press separate-book edition appeared in 1980 with new prefatory material in which Kripke discussed the framework's development and clarified several positions.
The oral character of the original lectures is preserved in the published text. Kripke is reported to have delivered the lectures with no notes; the published version reflects the spoken delivery, with the philosophical positions developed conversationally rather than in the more formal style of analytic philosophy publications. The accessibility of the prose style is partly an artifact of the oral origin.
Central doctrines
The attack on the description theory
The first lecture attacks the description theory of reference that had dominated the analytic philosophy of language. The description theory, in its most common form, holds that a proper name (Aristotle, Cicero, Gödel) refers to whatever uniquely satisfies the descriptions speakers associate with the name. Aristotle refers to whatever uniquely satisfies the philosopher who taught Alexander and wrote the Metaphysics; Cicero refers to whatever uniquely satisfies the Roman orator who denounced Catiline.
Kripke's attack proceeds through several arguments. The modal argument: the description theory makes incorrect predictions about counterfactual situations. Aristotle refers to the same individual even in counterfactual situations where Aristotle did not have the properties the descriptions attribute to him (where he died young, where he did not teach Alexander). The reference is held fixed by something other than the descriptions.
The epistemic argument: the description theory makes incorrect predictions about what we know. A speaker who associates with Gödel only the description the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic could in principle have been mistaken about who proved the incompleteness (Kripke's famous example imagines that Gödel in fact stole the proof from a man named Schmidt); the speaker would still be referring to Gödel rather than to Schmidt by use of the name.
The semantic argument: the description theory cannot account for the way speakers competently use names whose descriptions they could not accurately produce. A speaker who knows only that Cicero is a Roman name can use it competently to refer to Cicero in a sentence (Cicero existed); the reference does not require the speaker to associate any specific descriptions with the name.
The causal-historical theory of reference
The positive proposal: a name's reference is fixed by a causal-historical chain that begins with the original baptism in which the name was first attached to its bearer and is transmitted through subsequent uses by speakers who intend to refer to the same individual as those from whom they learned the name.
The framework dissolves the description theory's puzzles. Reference is not held fixed by the speaker's mental descriptions but by the historical chain connecting the speaker's use to the original baptism. A speaker who associates incorrect descriptions with a name still refers correctly because the reference is fixed by the chain rather than by the descriptions. A speaker who learns a name without learning any descriptions still refers correctly because the chain still connects the use to the original baptism.
The framework has been continuously generative. The subsequent literature on the philosophy of language, on the theory of natural kinds, on the metaphysics of reference, and on the broader engagement between metaphysics and the philosophy of language operates within the Kripkean framework.
Rigid designation
A name, on Kripke's account, is a rigid designator — it refers to the same individual in every possible world in which that individual exists. Definite descriptions, by contrast, are typically non-rigid — they refer to whoever satisfies the description in the world being considered, and different individuals might satisfy the description in different worlds.
The rigid/non-rigid distinction is consequential. Statements of identity between rigid designators are necessarily true if true at all. Hesperus is Phosphorus (the identity statement that Hesperus, the evening star, is identical with Phosphorus, the morning star) is necessarily true: in every possible world in which Hesperus exists, it is identical with Phosphorus (since both rigidly designate the planet Venus). The identity is a posteriori (known through empirical astronomical observation, not through analysis of the names) but necessary (true in every possible world).
The framework opens conceptual space for necessary a posteriori truths (truths that are necessary but known empirically) and contingent a priori truths (truths that are contingent but knowable a priori). The framework reshaped the philosophy of modality, the philosophy of mathematics, the metaphysics of natural kinds, and the broader engagement between metaphysics and epistemology.
Natural kinds
The second and third lectures extend the framework to natural-kind terms (water, gold, tiger). Natural-kind terms, on Kripke's account, are rigid designators in a parallel sense: they refer to the natural kind that the original baptism associated with the term, and the reference is held fixed by the causal-historical chain rather than by the descriptions speakers associate with the term.
The famous example: water is H₂O. The identity is a posteriori (it was discovered empirically that water is H₂O) but necessary (in every possible world in which water exists, it is H₂O — a counterfactual liquid in some other world that had all the macroscopic properties of water but was chemically XYZ rather than H₂O would not be water but a different substance). The framework gives the contemporary analytic articulation of essentialism about natural kinds and has shaped the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, and the broader engagement with scientific realism.
Hilary Putnam developed a parallel version of the natural-kind framework in The Meaning of 'Meaning' (1975), known as the Twin Earth thought experiment. The Kripke-Putnam framework on natural kinds is one of the major contributions of late-twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
The mind-body problem
The third lecture extends the framework to the mind-body problem. If pain is identical with a particular brain state (the type-type identity theory of materialism), then the identity is necessary on the Kripkean framework (since both pain and the relevant brain-state term are rigid designators of natural kinds). But the identity pain is C-fiber firing (the standard textbook example) does not seem necessary: it seems clearly possible that there be pain without C-fiber firing (in a creature with a different neurology) or C-fiber firing without pain (in a creature for which C-fiber firing did not produce the relevant subjective experience). If the identity does not seem necessary, then on the Kripkean framework the type-type identity theory is in serious trouble.
The argument has been continuously engaged. The contemporary literature on the mind-body problem, especially through David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind (1996) and the broader debate about consciousness, operates within the Kripkean framework.
Reception
The reception was immediate and substantial. Within years of the 1972 publication in Davidson and Harman, Naming and Necessity was the most-cited single contribution in the analytic philosophy of language. The 1980 separate-book edition extended the readership; the lectures became required reading in graduate philosophy programs across the English-speaking world.
The contemporary engagement is sustained. Scott Soames's Reference and Description (2005) and his broader work give the major systematic engagement; Nathan Salmon's Reference and Essence (1981) developed the metaphysical framework; the contemporary work on two-dimensional semantics (David Chalmers, Frank Jackson) is in part a response to Kripke. The post-Kripkean analytic metaphysics through Kit Fine, Theodore Sider, Timothy Williamson operates within the Kripkean framework.
Place in the wiki
Naming and Necessity is the canonical work of late-twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language and metaphysics. It is the principal source for the causal-historical theory of reference, the rigid/non-rigid distinction, the framework of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths, the revival of essentialism in analytic philosophy, and the Kripkean engagement with the mind-body problem.
Further reading
- Kripke — the author
- Analytic Philosophy — the tradition the book transformed
- Frege — the predecessor whose theory of reference the book engaged
- Russell — the predecessor whose theory of descriptions the book modified
- Quine — the predecessor whose anti-essentialism the book reversed
- Essence and Existence — the metaphysical category the book revived in analytic philosophy
Kripke's 1980 book — originally Princeton lectures of January 1970 — that revived essentialist metaphysics and developed the causal-historical theory of reference.