Saul Kripke
1940–2022 · Philosophy of Language · Prominent
Kripke was one of the most important analytic philosophers of the later twentieth century. Water had to be H2O, he argued, though only a laboratory could ever have told you so, which pulls apart what must be true from what can be known in advance. A name reaches its bearer down a chain of use running back to the first act of naming, whatever description you attach to it. The book is Naming and Necessity.
Signature
The position Kripke is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Realism
- Language
- Representation
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (100 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Kripke refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Knowledge
- Naturalism
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language?