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Notes on Kripke "Naming and Necessity," Lecture 3, Part 2 of 2 (pp. 136-155)

1. Continuing on p. 136, where Kripke is in the middle of discussing his distinction between a priori and necessary knowledge, he portrays the “simple" way we referentially fix the natural phenomena we directly observe with our senses by presenting it as an equation:   “Heat = that which is sensed by sensation S .” But isn’t heat the sensation itself? Other natural phenomena he says are “identified as the causes of certain concrete experimental effects.” Okay - but then, such phenomena are "baptised" via description. It would seem that the only objects that can be baptised without description are the immediate contents of perception, and here Kripke seems blocked by a failure to distinguish between the sensation and what it is a sensation of . This issue will come up at the end of the lecture, when he attempts to argue against identity theory. Now we reach the third main point of Kripke’s argument : Once we have identified a natural kind (by virtue of paradigmatic ca
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Notes on Kripke, "Naming and Necessity," Lecture 3, Part 1 of 2 (pp. 111-136)

Kripke says we can imagine a possible world in which the Queen of England was actually born of the Trumans (in the usual manner) and passed off as a member of the Royal Family. But, he asks, can we imagine that this woman the Queen was actually born of the Trumans? He says no, but why not? What if he met her. Could he not wonder if she were really a Truman? He says no. He can imagine if some other woman had been born of the Trumans and passed off as the Queen, and perhaps that woman could greatly resemble the actual Queen, but they are not the same. In short, he is saying that when he imagines the possibility that Queen Elizabeth is actually a Truman, he is not imagining anything about Queen Elizabeth at all, but about somebody else. Now, remember that this is exactly what he said he did not want to do back in Lecture 1. He criticised Lewis’ counterpart theory because he (wrongly) thought it prevented him from making just the sorts of counterfactual considerations he should be able
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