This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's (...) work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Kripke and Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, after outlining the methodological role Wittgenstein's appeal to language-games is supposed to play, I examine the picture of language which his discussion of such games and their relations to what Wittgenstein calls forms of life suggests. It is a picture according to which language and its employment are inextricably connected to wider contexts—they are embedded in specific natural and social environments, they are tied to purposive activities serving provincial needs, and caught up in distinctive ways of life (...) which creatures of a certain sort enjoy. In the remainder of the paper, I consider whether Wittgenstein's emphasis on the link between language and the circumstances surrounding its use points in the direction of an influential view widespread in contemporary philosophy of language, namely, semantic contextualism. I examine carefully a number of passages which scholars have appealed to in support of the claim that Wittgenstein advances contextualism and argue that they in fact provide no such support. The connection which Wittgenstein sees between what is expressed in the use of words and the circumstances in which they are used is not the connection the contextualist insists on. (shrink)

The new theory of reference has won popularity. However, a number of noted philosophers have also attempted to reply to the critical arguments of Kripke and others, and aimed to vindicate the description theory of reference. Such responses are often based on ingenious novel kinds of descriptions, such as rigidified descriptions, causal descriptions, and metalinguistic descriptions. This prolonged debate raises the doubt whether different parties really have any shared understanding of what the central question of the philosophical theory of reference (...) is: what is the main question to which descriptivism and the causal-historical theory have presented competing answers. One aim of the paper is to clarify this issue. The most influential objections to the new theory of reference are critically reviewed. Special attention is also paid to certain important later advances in the new theory of reference, due to Devitt and others. (shrink)