When1: 1972
When2: 1982
Who: Saul Kripke [Kripke, Saul]
What: linguist
Where: USA
works\ Naming and Necessity [1972 and 1980]; Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [1982]
Detail: He lived 1940 to ?.
Statements can be true and cannot be false {necessary truth, Kripke}, like arithmetical equalities. Statements can be true, though possible to be false {contingent truth}, like historical facts. Some necessary truths are not a priori, because people can learn identities later.
Terms, such as person names or natural substances {natural kind, Kripke}, can always mean same thing in physical and all other worlds {rigid designator, Kripke}. Terms {non-rigid designator}, such as variables or descriptions, can allow different possible values in physical and/or all other worlds. People can use rigid designators to refer to same things to which previous persons referred {causal theory of reference, Kripke}.
However, time can change references.
Necessary identities involve two rigid designators, and contingent identities involve at least one non-rigid designator. Identity theories of mental state and physical state are either necessary identities or one term is non-rigid. They cannot be necessary, because people can imagine mental state, like pain, without physical state. They do not have non-rigid terms, because mental-state instance is essence, not property, and physical state specifies atom positions and motions.
Proper names are always about same object. Proper names can be about people about whom people know nothing more and so have no sense, only reference. Proper names of people about whom people know something else have sense and reference.
People can conceive of matter and consciousness as separate being, so they are both possible, and so must be different, not just different names for same thing or different levels in hierarchy of knowledge or being, because one is objective and one subjective. Mental states, representing ideas, cause linguistic responses, which report mental state using signs. Response pattern depends on similarity or relation, represented by mental state, which people do not necessarily consciously know. Because mental states vary widely, natural occurrences have incompatible expressions.
People think and speak based on social word usage {anti-individualism}. Meaning is normative, as language communities make rules, and relates to individual dispositions. Perception is also necessary for communication about objects.
People can have a priori knowledge of contingent things {mind, Kripke} and empirical knowledge of necessary truths {essence, Kripke}.
Social Sciences>Linguistics>History>Semantics
6-Linguistics-History-Semantics
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Date Modified: 2022.0224