Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures by Saul A. Kripke

Reference and Existence, Saul Kripke's John Locke Lectures for 1973, might be learn as a sequel to his vintage Naming and Necessity. It confronts vital concerns left open in that paintings -- between them, the semantics of right names and typical type phrases as they happen in fiction and in fantasy; adverse existential statements; the ontology of fiction and fable (whether it really is precise that fictional characters like Hamlet, or legendary types like bandersnatches, may need existed). In treating those questions, he makes a couple of methodological observations that transcend the framework of his previous ebook -- together with the impressive declare that fiction can't supply a try for theories of reference and naming. furthermore, those lectures offer a glimpse into the transition to the pragmatics of singular reference that ruled his influential paper, "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference" -- a paper that helped reorient linguistic and philosophical semantics. a number of the topics were labored out in later writings by means of different philosophers -- many encouraged through typescripts of the lectures in circulate -- yet none have approached the cautious, systematic therapy supplied the following. The virtuosity of Naming and Necessity -- the colloquial ease of the tone, the fantastic, on-the-spot formulations, the logical constitution of the general view progressively rising over the process the lectures -- is on exhibit right here as well.