A Study in Philosophy

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...

1. Kripke on Wittgenstein and the meter stick (pp. 54-57): Wittgenstein famously claimed that we cannot say of the standard meter in Paris that it is one meter long. This is because it was used to define the length equal to one meter. In other words, the competence to use the measurement “one meter” was nothing more than the competence to measure something against the standard meter in Paris. Since you cannot measure the length of the standard meter against itself, there is no procedural competence that could make sense of the claim that it is equal to one meter. Kripke doesn’t like this, and he tries to undermine the point by changing the terms. Instead of (1) Stick S is one meter long, Kripke claims that the length equal to one meter cannot vary over time. So he changes (1) to (2) Stick S is one meter long at time t 0 . Then he claims there are two possible uses for such a sentence. The first one is to “give the meaning” of “meter.” This is the usage that Wittgenstein...