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A great thinker has passed. One of the great names of 20th century analytical philosophy. They have now all left us, Quine, Rorty, Davidson and now Putnam. RIP. I guess they had a similar event on Twin Earth... even though their "water" may be a bit different from our H2O.
Tyler Burge, Kripke, and David Kaplan are still left from the old guard of the golden age of philosophy of language/mind era.
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Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.
yeah. kripke can be convicted of truly awful exegesis of russell, frege, wittgenstein, but his own contributions to philosophy are mammoth. his attack on the identity of necessary truths and a priori knowledge alone is excellent.
FWIW, I personally find Putnam, Quine, and even Rorty far more interesting to read both now and from a historical perspective.
Hilary Putnam had many achievements in the field of philosophy. Here's some context about his concept of "brain in a vat"[1], in his 1981 book, "Reason, Truth and History". The brain-in-a-vat concept was famously used in the The Matrix films.[2] A summary from Philosophy Index: "The example supposes that a mad scientist has removed your brain, and placed it into a vat of liquid to keep it alive and active. The scient…
Hilary Putnam had many achievements in the field of philosophy. Here's some context about his concept of "brain in a vat"[1], in his 1981 book, "Reason, Truth and History". The brain-in-a-vat concept was famously used in the The Matrix films.[2] A summary from Philosophy Index: "The example supposes that a mad scientist has removed your brain, and placed it into a vat of liquid to keep it alive and active. The scient…
How is the "Brain in a vat" version different from the Descartes version?
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yeah. kripke can be convicted of truly awful exegesis of russell, frege, wittgenstein, but his own contributions to philosophy are mammoth. his attack on the identity of necessary truths and a priori knowledge alone is excellent.
I enjoy reading Kripke and agree he's done solid work. But I must admit I don't get the "Great Philosopher" thing. He did great work in mathematics as a teenager then basically just applied that model root and branch to the philosophical problems his teachers fed him. Which was a perfectly legitimate, even clarifying contribution for the time. But it's not clear to me how the result was a huge advance outside the loc…
to put it another way, i think it would be hard to take many other philosophers as deeply entrenched in a particular set of concerns and assumptions (take, like, derrida or godel) and as effectively press the points of their major work against the work of kant or aristotle or some other towering "we all claim her/him!" figure. "naming and necessity" speaks to kant in terms that need to be answered, which is way more than most publish or perish philosophy professors ever achieve in their lifetime (much less right away, in a lecture presenting a semantics based on modal logic!).
but yeah, the point is well taken. kripke is worth reading once / reading about. putnam is worth reading a lot.
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yeah. kripke can be convicted of truly awful exegesis of russell, frege, wittgenstein, but his own contributions to philosophy are mammoth. his attack on the identity of necessary truths and a priori knowledge alone is excellent.
While I would agree that his interpretation of Wittgenstein on following a rule and private language, is wrong as such, i.e. as an interpretation, it is definitely very interesting and thought provoking stuff. It is good philosophy and bears good witness to the creative genius of Kripke.
to be fair, i don't believe his "take on wittgenstein" is exegetical anyway. he's putting forward his own (interesting!) plus/quus argument. kripkenstein is worth reading in its own right; if you care enough to get wittgenstein right in the first place you shouldn't really be looking to kripke's writing to get there.
and of course, "the frege-russell picture of names" is just a straw man to propel his argument forward in N&N. he's really talking to/about searle there, and most people who are going to read N&N know that. but the stuff he says is still wildly inaccurate if you take it at face value.
(not that frege's views on sense and reference are all that clear in the first place, but they weren't the nonsense that frege (or searle!) attribute to him)
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I enjoy reading Kripke and agree he's done solid work. But I must admit I don't get the "Great Philosopher" thing. He did great work in mathematics as a teenager then basically just applied that model root and branch to the philosophical problems his teachers fed him. Which was a perfectly legitimate, even clarifying contribution for the time. But it's not clear to me how the result was a huge advance outside the loc…
i agree on the last point (all 3 more interesting, and i agree with including the 'even'). like i said above though, it's hard to deny that his discussion of contingent a priori as such speaks to kant more directly and strongly than, yeah, "two dogmas of empiricism" (i wasn't impressed either). to put it another way, i think it would be hard to take many other philosophers as deeply entrenched in a particular set of…
In Kripkes favor I would also add that he was a great stylist, with warmth and humor and...flexibility of presentation. And that partly because of this NN and WRPL are perfect introductory philosophy texts for "generally educated" people. If I taught philosophy instead of working in tech, I'd probably help keep Kripkes legacy alive for that reason alone!