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Saul Kripke has died

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Re: Saul Kripke has died

#41

Post by gumby »

gumby wrote: post #38

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…

I know we're not supposed to talk about comment voting but I am disturbed that this on-topic comment was downvoted.

His attitude towards women was notorious, and he didn't work with any as far as I know. I consider it's as much worth discussion as Heidegger's or Sartre's politics.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#42

Post by raincom »

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

Thanks for sharing. This piece helps me better understand the New theory of Reference, in the historical context.

Here is the book where Soames, Smith engage with each other: https://www.amazon.com/New-Theory-Reference-Origins-Synthese...

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#43

Post by aildours »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #35
aildours wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks!

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#44

Post by nsajko »

gumby wrote: post #41
gumby wrote: post #38

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…

I know we're not supposed to talk about comment voting but I am disturbed that this on-topic comment was downvoted. His attitude towards women was notorious, and he didn't work with any as far as I know. I consider it's as much worth discussion as Heidegger's or Sartre's politics.

Didn't down vote, but a possible reason for doing that would be that "his predation of women in the department" is accusatory but vague. It speaks ill of Kripke, but if you disagree with the statement there's no point in replying to it because the statement itself basically isn't refutable.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#45

Post by leoc »

csh0 wrote: post #40
lultimouomo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Good Lord I wish more people understood which elements of RDBs are essential features of the logic they’re based on; which ones are results of the way the relational model screwed up the logic it was supposed to be based on (hello there, Closed World Assumption); which ones are results of the way SQL screwed up the relational model; and which ones are just elements of a performance and security model that is quite independent of the logic (eg. there’s nothing in the logic which dictates that adding a row is routine but adding a table is a Big Deal). It probably doesn’t qualify as a delightful subject, but it would be a great service if someone could explain this stuff to people.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#46

Post by gumby »

nsajko wrote: post #44
gumby wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we're not supposed to talk about comment voting but I am disturbed that this on-topic comment was downvoted. His attitude towards women was notorious, and he didn't work with any as far as I know. I consider it's as much worth discussion as Heidegger's or Sartre's politics.

Didn't down vote, but a possible reason for doing that would be that "his predation of women in the department" is accusatory but vague. It speaks ill of Kripke, but if you disagree with the statement there's no point in replying to it because the statement itself basically isn't refutable.

Thanks. I think it's reasonable to ask an epistemic question about such an assertion. People sometimes respond with a single-word comment, "Source?", which sparks such a thread. Despite its brevity I (and apparently most HN readers) consider it a substantive comment.

In the case of my GP comment, I mentioned how I learned of it with that in mind. In my case, still hearsay of course.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#47

Post by therealdrag0 »

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 minored in philosophy. Was tempted to go all the way. But money. And I always did love computers.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#48

Post by As_You_Wish »

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.…

>eschewing jargon

This is humorous

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#49

Post by archon1410 »

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

>piped up one person of gender present, causing a hush to fall briefly over the gathering.

hah, person of gender.

Re: Saul Kripke has died

#50

Post by raincom »

jhickok wrote: post #26
morelisp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From one of the obits I learned the Locke lectures were finally published in 2013! In the early 2000s our prof handed out what I believe were a former colleague’s xeroxed notes from them.

There is a great podcast on this topic: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/episode-61-jeff-buechn...

Thank you for sharing this podcast. It is helpful to understand functionalism in the historical context.
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