The New Theory of Reference: Kripke, Marcus, and Its Origins (Synthese Library, 270)

On January 20th, 22nd, and 29th, 1970 Saul Kripke delivered three lectures at Princeton University. They produced something of a sensation. In the lectures he argued, amongst other things, that many names in ordinary language referred to objects directly rather than by means of associated descriptions; that causal chains from language user to language user were an important mechanism for preserving reference; that there were necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths; that identity relations between rigid designators were necessary; and argued, more tentatively, that materialist identity theories in the philosophy of mind were suspect. Interspersed with this was a consider­ able amount of material on natural kind terms and essentialism. As a result of these lectures and a related 1971 paper, 'Identity and Necessity' (Kripke [1971]), talk of rigid designators, Hesperus and Phosphorus, meter bars, gold and H 0, and suchlike quickly became commonplace in philosophical circles 2 and when the lectures were published under the title Naming and Necessity in the collection The Semantics of Natural Language (Davidson and Harman l [1972]), that volume became the biggest seller in the Reidel (later Kluwer) list. The cluster of theses surrounding the idea that a relation of direct reference 2 exists between names and their referents is now frequently referred to as 'The 3 New Theory of Reference'. This collection of essays is the definitive version of a widely discussed debate over the origins of the New Theory of Reference. In new articles written especially for this volume, Quentin Smith and Scott Soames, the original participants in the debate, elaborate their positions on who was responsible for the ideas that Saul Kripke presented in his Naming and Necessity. They are joined by John Burgess, who weighs in on the side of Soames, while Smith adds a further dimension in discussing the contributions of philosophers such as Føllesdal, Geach, Hintikka, and Plantinga. Also included are lengthy excerpts from Føllesdal's 1961 Harvard dissertation and a careful examination by Sten Lindström of the respective contributions of Kripke and Stig Kanger to the development of modal semantics. The collection will be essential reading for anyone acquainted with these influential ideas Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Marcus, Kripke, and the Origin of the New Theory of Reference....Pages 3-12 Revisionism about Reference: A Reply to Smith....Pages 13-35 Marcus and the New Theory of Reference: A Reply to Scott Soames....Pages 37-61 Front Matter....Pages 63-63 More Revisionism about Reference....Pages 65-87 Marcus, Kripke, and Names....Pages 89-124 How not to Write History of Philosophy: A Case Study....Pages 125-136 Direct, Rigid Designation and a Posteriori Necessity: A History and Critique....Pages 137-178 Front Matter....Pages 179-179 Referential Opacity and Modal Logic....Pages 181-202 An Exposition and Development of Kanger’s Early Semantics for Modal Logic....Pages 203-233 A More Comprehensive History of the New Theory of Reference....Pages 235-283 Back Matter....Pages 285-290 The New Theory of Reference in the philosophy of language became widespread in the 1970s and is still flourishing today.