I need about half page on each. ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
300 FG reward
Text: Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 1 &2 ONLY
if you need text, i can send via email in the form of a .pdf -- all answers can come from txt or internet sources just make sure its actually Kripke's opinion
1. What is the causal theory of reference? What is the theory rigid designation? Are these two theses logically independent, or does one entail the other? Explain.
2. How does Kripke defend the claim that there are necessary a posteriori truths? Does this position depend upon the claim that some singular terms are rigid designators, or can it be defended independently of it?
3. Suppose that, contrary to fact, the actual world had contained no cows. Then the natural kind term “cow” would have applied to nothing. Applying to nothing in the actual world it would have been just the like the denotationless natural kind term “unicorn.” Kripke claims that since the term “unicorn” is empty, it is not possible for it denote anything. Applying the same doctrine to “cow” in our counterfactual situation yields the thesis that although the actual world does contain cows, if it hadn’t, it could not have. Is thesis really a consequence of Kripke’s position on fictional names? If it is not, explain why. If it is, is this a problem for the theory?
4. How does Kripke critique the description theory of names advanced by Frege and Russell? Do his arguments show the description theories to be untenable?
5. On page 24 of Naming and Necessity, Kripke makes the following claims:
So it is said that though we have all found out that there are no unicorns, of course there might have been unicorns. Under certain circumstances there would have been unicorns. And this is an example of something I think is not the case. Perhaps according to me the truth should not be put in terms of saying that it is necessary that there should be no unicorns, but just that we can't say under what circumstances there would have been unicorns. Further, I think that even if archeologists or geologists were to discover tomorrow some fossils conclusively showing the existence of animals in the past satisfying everything we know about unicorns from the myth of the unicorn, that would not show that there were unicorns.
Kripke later (p. 156) says that there is a metaphysical and an epistemological claim here. What are they? How does he defend them? Is he correct? Explain.
6. Kripke claims that the fact that scientific identifications that involve rigid designators, if true, are necessarily true makes trouble for the possibility of an identity theory of mind that identifies mental states with physical states. Sketch Kripke’s argument for this claim and assess its success.
7. Kripke claims that one important difference between the Frege/Russell descriptive theory of names and his theory of names is that the Frege/Russell theory treats descriptions as giving the meaning of names, whereas his view merely assigns them a role in fixing the reference of names. Explain this difference.
8. How does Kripke distinguish between the a priori and the necessary? He claims that there are propositions that are both a priori and contingent. How does he argue for this? He also argues that it might be true that not all necessary truths are knowable a priori. How does he argue for this claim?
This post was edited by TMang214 on Mar 30 2013 03:55pm