Page 543 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

semantic analysis of natural language in the logical tradition.
Besides his pioneering work in possible worldssem- antics, Kripke has also made influential contributions to analytical philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic.
In philosophy of logic, his work on truth and the analysis of the liar paradox ('Outline of a Theory of Truth' 1975, reprinted in Martin 1984) has spurred a renewed interest in logical and semantical paradoxes. In particular, attention has turned from the older tech- niques of neutralizing or avoiding the paradoxes (such as Russell's paradox, the liar paradox), to ways in which they can be incorporated in the semantics of a system as such. Kripke has also made important contributions to mathematical logic.
In analytical philosophy, the lectures which Kripke delivered in Princeton in 1970 (first published in a collection in 1972, in book form as Naming and Necessity in 1980), turned out to be nothing less than revolutionary. Overthrowing one of the cornerstones of analytical thinking, the sharp distinction between necessary and a posteriori truths, these lectures form one of the major turning points in the analytical tradition. Its main thesis, that of the rigid designation of names and natural kind terms, which was also explored independently by David Kaplan, Keith Donnellan, and Hilary Putnam, forms a sharp break with the Fregean analyses of these classes of expres- sions in terms of distinct meaning and reference. Its consequences are far-reaching, but the associated claim that the theory in itself would provide a signifi-
cant class of necessary a posteriori truths did not stand up to closer scrutiny (see Salmon 1982).
In philosophy of language, Kripke's major con- tribution has been his interpretation of the work of the later Wittgenstein. His view is that the latter's Philosophische Untersuchungen have to be intepreted as a systematic skeptical attack on the notions of a rule and of rule following, and thereby on the notion of meaning, and that the celebrated argument against the possibility of a private language is simply a par- ticular instance of this all-embracing radical skep- ticism. This view goes straight against the accepted traditional interpretation of the point and measure of Wittgenstein's later work. Interpretations resembling Kripke's have been proposed independently by other authors (Wright, Fogelin), but it was mainly through Kripke's forcefully argued presentation of this view (first published in a collection in 1980, in book form as Wittgenstein on Rulesand Private Language in 1982) that it had the impact it had.
See also: Montague Grammar; Names and Descrip- tions; Natural Kinds; Necessity; Paradoxes, Semantic, Reference: Philosophical Issues.
Bibliography
Kripke S 1980 Naming and Necessity. Blackwell, Oxford Kripke S 1982 Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.
Blackwell, Oxford
Linsky L (ed.) 1971 Reference and Modality. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, Oxford
Martin R (ed.) 1984Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar
Paradox. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Salmon N U 1982 Reference and Essence. Blackwell, Oxford
Alexius Meinong was an Austrian philosopher and psychologist. A pupil of the philosopher Franz Bren- tano, he is considered to have anticipated many of the concerns and preoccupations of the analytic move- ment in philosophy, especially in the fields of the philosophies of language and mind. His significance for linguistics resides principally in his systematic investigation of issues in syntax and semantics, and his theory of 'objects.'
1. ElementsoftheTheory
Meinong starts from the consideration that all thought appears to be directed at, or 'about' some-
thing. This directedness has been taken as a consti- tutive feature of the mental and is standardly known as 'intentionality.' It is reasonable to say that if one thinks, there is (in some sense) something that one is thinking about. Additionally, there is the content of one's thought, what one thinks about the object. How- ever, the objects of thought need not be concrete exist- ing things like trees and tables. It is possible to think about all manner of things without thereby being com- mitted to their existence. Meinong is concerned to explain how it is that we think about one thing rather than another, and this introduces questions of ref- erence and truth. One person may be thinking about unicorns and another about dragons, and while
Meinong, Alexius D. E. B. Pollard
Meinong, Alexius
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