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Saul Kripke has died

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Re: Saul Kripke has died

#31

Post by fuy »

routerl wrote: post #25
chasingthewind wrote: post #4

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. Kripke was truly a brilliant philosopher.

> 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.

I think you've just discovered Curry-Howard isomorphism!

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#32

Post by daviddaviddavid »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #16
yung_steezy wrote: post #5

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.…

I would add HP Grice to the list of startlingly clear ordinary language philosophers. His 1957 essay "Meaning" has this definition:

"A means something by x" is equivalent to "A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention".

It may seem less than clear taken out of context, but there is a wonderful argument working toward the definition and once he finally presents it, it's a bit of a mic drop moment.

Also, he is one of the few philosophers whose work proved to be foundational in linguistics. Any book/course in pragmatics will talk about Grice's work on implicature and background knowledge.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#33

Post by morelisp »

redtexture wrote: post #29
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #18

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.)

Unpublished essays are commonly circulated for commentary, and many are unpublished. This is a typical philosophical tradition. Many college professors have a library of essays of others' circulated and unpublished work.

Most philosophers also publish quite a lot even while doing this. Kripke dominated the field while publishing almost nothing publicly.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#34

Post by the-smug-one »

f-jin wrote: post #8

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.

They're named after Kripke for inventing them when he was in highschool. The kind of stuff that makes you feel woefully intellectually inadequate :-).

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#35

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

aildours wrote: post #27
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The bit about RG Collingwood sounds very interesting. Could you provide some examples?

His book The Principles of Art from 1938 is probably the best example. He offers a definition of art arrived at through ordinary language philosophy, and, along the way, also develops a theory of imagination, language, and anti-copyright.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#36

Post by goldenkey »

xhevahir wrote: post #9

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?

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#37

Post by lultimouomo »

routerl wrote: post #25
chasingthewind wrote: post #4

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. Kripke was truly a brilliant philosopher.

> 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.

> Yeah, there are a lot of us.

I wouldn't say a lot, I've never met a fellow philosopher/developer in person. I would expect there would be more!

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#38

Post by gumby »

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?

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#40

Post by csh0 »

lultimouomo wrote: post #37
routerl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Yeah, there are a lot of us. I wouldn't say a lot, I've never met a fellow philosopher/developer in person. I would expect there would be more!

I did a Philosophy/CS double major for undergrad. I work as an SRE now, but when I was in school there was one other student in my cohort who was also doing the same pairing, she intended to go work on machine ethics last I heard.

There really are a number of delightful intersections between the two subjects and I have considered writing a book on them,“Philosophy for Computer Scientists” or perhaps “Computer Science for Philosophers” :)

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