In this paper we present a solution to Saul Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief Meaning and use, Dordrecht, 1979) based on Kaplan’s metaphysical picture of words. Although it is widely accepted that providing such a solution was one of the main incentives for the development of Kaplan’s theory, it was never presented by Kaplan in a systematic manner and was regarded by many as unsatisfactory. We agree with these critiques, and develop an extension of Kaplan’s theory by introducing the notion (...) of “conservative” word uses, as well as arguing for the restriction of Kripke’s Disquotational Principle only to such uses. This restriction allows us to solve Kripke’s Puzzle by arguing that the assent of the puzzle’s protagonist does not allow disquotation and ascription of corresponding inconsistent belief, as it contains the non-conservative use of a proper name. At the end of the paper, we defend two of Kaplan’s theses that we find essential for our argument to work: that individuation of word tokens involves taking into account the intention of the speaker, and that different uniquely referring proper names of the same shape should be regarded as different homonymous words. (shrink)

In his famous 1979 article 'A Puzzle About Belief' Saul Kripke presents two puzzles regarding belief attribution, and he uses them to cast doubt on classical substitution arguments against the Millian view that a proper name has a 'denotation' (or reference) but no 'connotation' (or sense). In this article, I present Kripke's puzzles in what I take to be their most revealing form, discuss their relevance to the abovementioned arguments, briefly survey the ways in which philosophers have responded (...) to these puzzles, and call attention to some issues related to the puzzles that have yet to receive the consideration they deserve. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a solution to Kripke's puzzle about time and thought, which lives in harmony with the axiom schema of separation and does not invoke paraconsistency. I also compare my solution with Parikh's semantic interpretation, and answer to three potential objections.

In his famous essay, "A Puzzle About Belief," Saul Kripke poses a puzzle regarding belief. In this paper I shall first describe Kripke's puzzle. Second, I shall introduce and examine five positions one might take in attempting to solve Kripke's Puzzle. In so doing, I shall show why each of these attempts fails to solve Kripke's Puzzle. The significance of this analysis is that if Kripke's Puzzle remains unresolved, then (as (...) Kripke himself claims) the normal apparatus for belief ascription needs rethinking. (shrink)

A traditional argument is often used against Mill's theory of names (the meaning of a name is exhausted by its referent). Mill's theory implies transparency of proper names (coreferring proper names are substitutable salva veritate); but examples like Frege's and Quine's show that proper names are not transparent in belief contexts. This could be thought to be a reductio ad absurdum of Mill's theory. In " A puzzle about Belief" (1979; 1988) Kripke builds up an argument which aims to (...) show that the same problems, given by the principle of transparency of proper names, can also be generated without the use of that principle, but with some weaker and more general principles, which seem to be difficult to reject. (see Donellan) Therefore, the traditional argument against Mill's theory does not work. If you want to reject Mill's theory with some reductio ad absurdum, you should reject two very intuitive and apparently valid principles. The well known puzzle is based on the assumption that our speaker is normal non omniscient, sincere, reflective and not conceptually confused. The two principles used are the Disquotational Principle (DP) and the Translation Principle (TP). (shrink)

Recently Saul Kripke has drawn attention to a puzzle about belief and proper names, a puzzle of which philosophers have been aware for a long time, but which has never been completely resolved. Kripke gives a new, bilingual illustration of the puzzle:1 Pierre, while living in his native France, learns much about the city of London, which he calls ‘Londres,’ and comes to believe something which he would express in French with the words, ‘Londres est jolie.’ Using (...) standard principle of translation, it seems correct for us to say, ‘Pierre believes that London is pretty.’ Suppose however that Pierre learns English, travels to London, learns that the name of the city he is in is ‘London,’ and sincerely and comprehendingly asserts, ‘London is not pretty.’ On the basis of his assertion, it seems correct for us to say, ‘Pierre believes that London is not pretty.’ But suppose he does not realize that ‘Londres’ is also a name for the city he is in, so he retains the belief which he would express with the French words, ‘Londres est jolie.’ Then, by the same principles of translation as before, it seems that we are still justified in saying, ‘Pierre believes that London is pretty.’ But now we have attributed to Pierre contradictory beliefs, and that does not seem acceptable, since Pierre has committed no logical oversight.Kripke believes that this is the same puzzle as one that arises in older, monolingual examples, such as that used by Quine: suppose Tom believes that Cicero denounced Cataline. Since ‘Tully’ is another name for Cicero, it seems acceptable to paraphrase his belief and say, ‘Tom believes that Tully denounced Cataline.’ But suppose Tom does not realize that Cicero and Tully are the same person, and suppose, in fact, that he sincerely and comprehendingly asserts, ‘Tully did not denounce Cataline.’ Then it also seems acceptable to say, on the basis of Tom’s assertion, ‘Tom believes that Tully did not denounce Cataline.’ But now we have attributed to Tom contradictory beliefs, and, as in the Pierre example, that does not seem acceptable. (shrink)

In "A Puzzle About Belief" (_Meaning and Use, A. Margalit (ed.), D. Reidel (1979), pp. 239-283), Saul Kripke argues that linguistic moves to all appearances normal in reporting the beliefs of others can be shown to generate paradox. In this paper, I argue that the supposed paradox is one in appearance only, and that the appearance rests on a covert vacillation in Kripke's paper between two conceptions of linguistic understanding, a weak, or 'minimal' one, and a 'strong' one. (...) Only the weak conception allows Kripke to set up the example which allegedly generates the paradox; only the strong allows the actual generation of the paradox. (shrink)

Frege introduced the distinction between sense and reference to account for the information conveyed by identity statements. We can put the point like this: if the meaning of a term is exhausted by what it stands for, then how can 'a =a' and 'a =b' differ in meaning? Yet it seems they do, for someone who understands all the terms involved would not necessarily judge that a =b even though they judged that a =a. It seems that 'a =b' just (...) says something more than the trivial ’a = a' - it seems to contain more information, in some sense of 'information'. So either we have to add something to explain this extra information, or sever the very plausible links between meaning and understanding. This is what some writers have called 'Frege's Puzzle' It is undeniable that there is a phenomenon here to be explained, and it was Frege's insight to see the need for its explanation. But how should we explain it? Frege's idea was to add another semantic notion - Sinn, or Sense -— to account for the information conveyed. Sense is part of the meaning of an expression: it is the 'cognitive value' of the expression, or that ’wherein the mode of presentation is contained' (Frege 1957 p.57). Sense has a role to play in systematically determining the meanings of complex expressions, and ultimately in fixing the contents of judgements. It is the senses of whole sentences — Gedanken or Thoughts - which are candidates for truth and falsehood, and which are thus the objects of our propositional attitudes. Of course, introducing the notion of sense in this way does not, by itself, tell us what sense is. It only imposes a condition on a theory of meaning (and ultimately) belief: that it must account for distinctions in cognitive value or 'mode of presentation' (this is not a trivial thesis —- some philosophers today would deny that an explanation of Frege's Puzzle must occur within semantics or the theory of meaning: see Salmon 1985). In this paper I want to explore one way of meeting this condition for the theory of names in natural language, by examining Kripke's well-known 'Puzzle about Belief' (Kripke 1979).. (shrink)

Brandom's "solution" of Kripke's puzzle in Making it Explicit [573-583] is to be read on the background of four main ideas, plus his general concern on inferential role semantics. I will give some hints about these basic presuppositions, because, once they have been accepted, Kripke's puzzle seems to have no more appeal (at least from Brandom's point of view). If already acquainted with Brandom's general ideas, you may skip part I and go directly to part II.

This paper provides a defense of the description theory of proper names by constructing a ‘two-component’ theory of names. Using Kripke’s puzzle about belief as the stepping stone, this paper first points out problems with Kripke’s direct reference theory of names. It then presents the two-component theory of names and defends it against Kripke’s general criticisms of the description theory. It also compares the two-component theory of names against other leading description theories and shows how the two-component theory provides (...) a better analysis of names. The paper offers a comprehensive summary of the debate between the description theory and the direct reference theory of names. At the end, it shows how the two-component theory of names can deal with Kripke’s puzzle and more. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the prospects for using the distinction between rejection and denial to resolve Saul Kripke’s puzzle about belief. One puzzle Kripke presents in A Puzzle About Belief poses what would have seemed a fairly straightforward question about the beliefs of the bilingual Pierre, who is disposed to sincerely and reflectively assent to the French sentence Londres est jolie, but not to the English sentence London is pretty, both of which he understands perfectly well. (...) The question to be answered is whether Pierre believes that London is pretty, and Kripke argues, of each answer, that it is unacceptable. On my proposal, either answer to the question is to be rejected, but neither answer is to be denied, using the resource of partially-defined predicates. After demonstrating how this serves as a solution to the puzzle, I illustrate some philosophical motivations—independent of Kripke’s puzzle —for adopting a view on which belief is a partially defined predicate. I conclude that there are decent prospects for the proposed response to Kripke’s puzzle. (shrink)

This article offers a resolution of Kripke’s well-known belief puzzle.

This paper gives attention to a special point in Brandom’s Making it Explicit. Brandom proposes in MIE a “Fregean” way out of Kripke’s puzzle about belief. In the first part, I analyze two main features of Brandom’s strategy, the definition of anaphoric chains as senses of proper names and the implausibility of the application of a disquotational principle to proper names. In the second part, I discuss the problem of the stability of contents and the problem of sharing contents. (...) I claim that Brandom’s strong holism leads to irresolvable difficulties with the concept of conceptual content as it emerges from the discussion of Kripke’s puzzle. (shrink)

Frege's theory of indirect contexts and the shift of sense and reference in these contexts has puzzled many. What can the hierarchy of indirect senses, doubly indirect senses, and so on, be? Donald Davidson gave a well-known 'unlearnability' argument against Frege's theory. The present paper argues that the key to Frege's theory lies in the fact that whenever a reference is specified (even though many senses determine a single reference), it is specified in a particular way, so that giving a (...) reference implies giving a sense; and that one must be 'acquainted' with the sense. It is argued that an indirect sense must be 'immediately revelatory' of its reference. General principles for Frege's doctrine of sense and reference are sated, for both direct and indirect quotation, to be understood iteratively. I also discuss Frege's doctrine of tensed and first person statements in the light of my analysis. The views of various other authors are examined. The conclusion is to ascribe to Frege an implicit doctrine of acquaintance similar to that of Russell. (shrink)

In this paper, I have argued that Lewis fails to undermine thatP-theory by means of a variation of Kripke'sPuzzle. The flaw in Lewis's argument, given a wide interpretation ofworld-fitness, is that it simply begs the question against theP-theorist. I then argued that, given the narrow interpretation ofworld-fitness, Lewis's argument fails because Pierre doesn't have a belief that is narrowly characterizable by a sentence like,Pierre believes that the city that he identifies asLondon is pretty in either Kripke's story or even (...) in Lewis's own variation of Kripke's story. It now remains to be seen whether theP-theory can be directly refuted by other arguments. (shrink)

This paper concerns Kripke’s puzzle about belief. I have two goals in this paper. The first is to argue that two leading approaches to Kripke’s puzzle, those of Lewis and Chalmers, are inadequate as they stand. Both approaches require the world to supply an object that the relevant intentional attitudes pick out. The problem is that there are cases which, I argue, exhibit the very same puzzling phenomenon in which the world does not supply an object in the (...) required way. The second goal is to draw out a more general lesson about Kripke’s puzzle. I argue that Kripke’s puzzle should be understood as intimately related to a phenomenon known as ‘intentional identity’, and that an adequate account of Kripke’s puzzle should be extensible to cases in which the relevant attitudes are empty. (shrink)

Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece, Naming and Necessity, reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection Philosophical Troubles. In this book Kripke’s long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to (...) all of Kripke’s published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke’s influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke’s work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher’s major publications. Kripke will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy’s greatest living thinkers. (shrink)

'Practices without foundations' is, in genesis and in effect, a discussion of the following quotation , which serves therefore as an epigraph to it: ;Nelson Goodman's discussion of the 'new riddle of induction' ... deserves comparison with Wittgenstein's work. Indeed ... the basic strategy of Goodman's treatment of the 'new riddle' is strikingly close to Wittgenstein's sceptical arguments .... Although our paradigm of Wittgenstein's problem was formulated for a mathematical problem it ... is completely general and can be applied to (...) any rule or word. In particular, if it were formulated for the language of color impressions, as Wittgenstein himself suggests, Goodman's 'grue', or something similar, would play the role of 'quus'. But the problem would not be Goodman's about induction--"Why not predict that grass, which has been grue in the past will be grue in the future?"--but Wittgenstein's about meaning: "Who is to say that in the past I didn't mean grue by 'green', so that now I should call the sky, not the grass, 'green'?" vskip9pt ;This fascinating remark of Kripke's suggests a project, that of charting out both the interpretive and philosophic points of connection and disconnection between Wittgenstein, Goodman and Kripke. That project is this dissertation. ;My work severely tests Kripke's remark. For I argue that Kripke not only misreads Wittgenstein, but also mistakes the extremity of the 'scepticism' of his version of Wittgenstein for the priority of the philosophical puzzle that Goodman has bequeathed to us. ;To reach this conclusion, I show that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'meaning-scepticism' is unanswerable if statable, but actually unstatable; and that, under certain interpretations, the same is true of putative scepticisms derivable from Goodman's text. The upshot is that the sceptical reading of most twentieth century philosophy must be displaced in favour of 'post-scepticism' and 'philosophical ethnography'. The latter concepts, sketched toward the end of the dissertation, are perhaps its telos. (shrink)

Saul Kripke's puzzle about belief demonstrates the lack of soundness of the traditional argument for the Fregean fundamental principle that the sentences 'S believes that a is F' and 'S believes that b is F' can differ in truth value even if a = b. This principle is a crucial premise in the traditional Fregean argument for the existence of semantically relevant senses, individuative elements of beliefs that are sensitive to our varying conceptions of what the beliefs are (...) about. Joseph Owens has offered a new argument for this fundamental principle, one that is not subject to Kripke's criticisms. I argue that even though Owens' argument avoids Kripke's criticisms, it has other flaws. (shrink)

In “What Puzzling Pierre Does not Believe”, Lewis ([4], 412‐4) argues that the sentences (1) Pierre believes that London is pretty and (2) Pierre believes that London is not pretty both truly describe Kripke’s well‐known situation involving puzzling Pierre ([3]). Lewis also argues that this situation is not one according to which Pierre believes either the proposition (actually) expressed by (3) London is pretty or the proposition (actually) expressed by (4) London is not pretty. These claims, Lewis suggests, provide a (...) starting point from which a correct resolution of Kripke’s puzzles about belief ([3]) can be developed. At the end of his paper ([4], p. 414‐7), Lewis considers and replies to a number of potential objections to his position. According to one of these, Lewis’s contentions regarding (1)‐(4) cannot all be true because ‘believes that’ and ‘believes the proposition that’ are synonymous. Although the objection Lewis considers is unsound and his response to it correct, a minor variant of that objection provides significant reason to be skeptical of his contentions. This variant, moreover, is not persuasively addressed by anything either Lewis or any other well‐known defender of this sort of view (such as Stalnaker [8]) has had to say on the matter. All of this is relevant, moreover, not 2 only when it comes to assessing Lewis’s contentions regarding (1)‐ (4), but also when it comes to drawing lessons from certain standard objections to the view that the propositional objects of belief and assertion are sets of metaphysically possible worlds. (shrink)

Je soutiens que Kripke n'a pas réussi à montrer que certains principes plausibles gouvernant l'attribution de croyances, tels que les principes de décitation et de traduction, pouvaient nous conduire à attribuer des croyances de dicto contradictoires à un sujet réfléchi et linguistiquement compétent sans présupposer une théorie descriptive des noms propres ou des termes désignant des espèces naturelles. Les cas décrits par Kripke se réduisent à des variantes du problème de Quine concernant les croyances de re ou à des variantes (...) du puzzle de Mates concernant l'intersubstiruabilité des synonymes dans les contextes de croyance.I claim that Kripke failed to show that certain plausible principles governing belief ascription, such as the disquotation and translation principles, could lead one to ascribe contradictory de dicto beliefs to a reflexive and linguistically competent agent without presupposing a descriptive theory of names or natural kind terms. Kripke's examples are nothing but variants either of Quine's problem about de re beliefs, or of Mates' puzzle concerning the interchangeability of synonyms in belief contexts. (shrink)

Kripke’s puzzle has puts pressure on the intuitive idea that one can believe that Superman can fly without believing that Clark Kent can fly. If this idea is wrong then many theories of belief and belief ascription are built from faulty data. I argue that part of the proper analysis of Kripke’s puzzle refutes the closure principles that show up in many important arguments in epistemology, e.g., if S is rational and knows that P and that P entails (...) Q, then if she considers these two beliefs and Q, then she is in a position to know that.. (shrink)

This chapter introduces Kripke's work to advanced undergraduates, mainly focussing on his "A Puzzle About Belief" and "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language".

Relocating Kripke's puzzle about belief, this paper investigates i) in what the puzzle consists, exactly; ii) the method used in its construction; and iii) relations between meaning and rationality. Essential to Kripke's puzzle is a normative notion of contradictory belief. Different positions about the meaning of names yield different views of what constitutes the attribution of contradictory belief; and Kripke's puzzle unwittingly _imports a Millian assumption. Accordingly, the puzzle about belief is not (...) independent of positions about the meaning of names. (shrink)

Description: The book points to a new logic of singular designators based upon a close analysis of work in the area by contemporary philosophers of language. The philosophers range from Frege, Russell, Quine, Strawson and Dummett to Kripke, Hintikka, Plantinga, Kaplan, Donnellan, Searle and Burge. It is generally taken for granted that proper names are rigid designators, having no meaning content, which explains their intranslatability into other languages. However, they do have their modes of presentation that must constitute their sense. (...) There is little room for contradiction here in admitting that proper names have a sense, which does not amount to meaning. One of the advantages of this position is that it blocks the emergence of the Kripkean puzzle about belief by accepting different belief contents corresponding to a variation in the senses of the names involved. Is Kripke's distinction between rigid and non-rigid designators finally valid' the author asks, questioning the corollaries that are supposed to follow from the distinction, viz., that proper names do not have descriptive backing, and that there are contingent a priori truths. He draws our attention to predicative occurrences of proper names, in the modal context, matching corresponding occurrences of definite descriptions. His explanation of contingency, where proper names or definite descriptions are involved, is innovatively straight, simple and broad-based, at par with situations having ordinary predicates. Parts of the book have taken a final shape in response to comments by Strawson, Dummett and Burge. (shrink)

In recent literature in the philosophy of mind and language, one finds a variety of examples that raise serious problems for the traditional analysis of belief as a two-term relation between a believer and a proposition. My main purpose in this essay is to provide a critical test case for any theory of the propositional attitudes, and to demonstrate that this case really does present an unsolved puzzle. Chapter I defines the traditional, propositional analysis of belief, and then introduces (...) a distinction, motivated by the intuitions that underlie Kripke's arguments for direct reference, between purely qualitative and individual propositions. Beliefs typically expressed using proper names, indexicals or demonstratives appear to relate the believer to individual propositions with the entity that may be referred to as subject constituent. Chapter II presents the critical test case . In this and Chapters III-VI it is used to show that the latter sorts of beliefs are not analyzable as dyadically relating the believer to individual propositions. The case constitutes a genuine counterexample to the traditional analysis only if it is possible for a believer to believe an individual proposition with a contingent thing other than herself as a constituent; and the believer in the case is in optimum conditions for believing an individual proposition. In Chapters III, IV, and VI, I criticize views prompted by rejection of , and in Chapter V, I criticize Stalnaker's view, which rejects . Chapter VI also considers the non-traditional, triadic analyses of belief proposed by Kaplan and Richard; they fall prey to the main criticisms of Chapter V. In the Postscript, I give a comparative assessment of approaches to resolving the Two Tubes Puzzle, and I place it in historical context by pointing out the puzzle's similarities to the 'problem of sense data' . Correlatively, I indicate the bearing of Methodological Solipsism on future attempts to solve the puzzle. My conclusion is that although the puzzle remains a puzzle, it gives us reason to supplement, rather than completely abandon, the use of propositions in the analysis of thought; and I say what a supplementing solution must do to remain faithful to the intuitions of Chapter I. (shrink)

Refutes Cristian Constantinescu's proposed solution of Kripke's puzzle about belief.

The author presents and defends a general view about belief, and certain attributions of belief, with the intention of providing a solution to Saul Kripke's puzzle about belief. According to the position developed in the paper, there are two senses in which one could be said to have contradictory beliefs. Just one of these senses threatens the rationality of the believer; but Kripke's puzzle concerns only the other one. The general solution is then extended to certain (...) variants of Kripke's original puzzle, which have to do with belief attributions containing empty names and kind terms. (shrink)

Je propose une solution à l’énigme de Kripke en distinguant tout d’abord les usages matériel et intentionnel du verbe « croire ». L’usage intentionnel est ensuite analysé à partir de l’usage matériel. Une croyance intentionnelle n’est rien d’autre qu’une croyance matérielle réitérée, c’est-à-dire, une croyance matérielle que l’agent entretient au sujet de ses propres croyances. L’énigme de Kripke peut alors être résolue pourvu que l’on accepte aussi l’inscriptionnalisme. On est ainsi en mesure de reconnaître que Pierre a bel et bien (...) des « croyances » contradictoires, mais seulement au sens matériel de l’expression. Il n’a cependant pas de croyances intentionnelles contradictoires puisque les contenus de croyance sont des inscriptions et qu’il se croit lui- même en rapport avec ces inscriptions.I offer a solution to Kripke’s puzzle by first distinguishing between material and intentional uses of "believe". The intentional use is then analysed in terms of material uses. An intentional belief is nothing but a material belief that an agent entertains towards his own beliefs. Kripke’s puzzle can then be solved if inscriptionalism is also accepted. It can indeed be claimed that Pierre has contradictory "beliefs", but only in the material sense of the word. However, he does not have intentional contradictory beliefs since the contents of his beliefs are inscriptions and he represents himself as being directed towards those inscriptions. (shrink)

Belief states are only contingently connected with the objects of belief. Burge's examples show that the same belief state can be associated with different objects of belief. Kripke's puzzle shows that the same object of belief can be associated with different belief states. Nevertheless, belief states can best be characterized by a subset of the propositions one believes, namely those one directly or immediately believes. The rest of the things one believes are believed indirectly, by virtue of one's (...) direct beliefs. This distinction sheds light on Kripke's puzzle, the problem of the contingent a priori, and the problem of logical omniscience. (shrink)

It is a fundamental feature of language that words refer to things. Much attention has been devoted to the nature of reference, both in philosophy and in linguistics. Puzzles of Reference is the first book to give a comprehensive accessible survey of the fascinating work on this topic from the 1970s to the present day. -/- Written by two eminent philosophers of language, Puzzles of Reference offers an up-to-date introduction to reference in philosophy and linguistics, summarizing ideas such as (...) class='Hi'>Kripke's revolutionary theory and presenting the various challenges in a clear and accessible manner. As the text does not assume prior training in philosophy or linguistics, it is ideal for use as part of a philosophy of language course for philosophy students or for linguistics students. -/- Puzzles of Reference belongs to the series Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy of Language, in which each book provides an introduction to an important area of the philosophy of language, suitable for students at any level. (shrink)

Although Kripke’s œuvre has had a major impact on analytic philosophy and nearly every aspect of his studies has been thoroughly examined, this does not hold for his schmidentity argument, which, so far, has been widely neglected. To the extent to which it has been treated at all, it has been for the most part radically misunderstood. I hold that this argument, in its correctly reconstructed form, has general relevance for a treatment of Frege’s Puzzle and points towards a (...) fundamental methodological restriction for philosophy of language and especially for semantics, as far as informativity and the general topic of cognitive significance are concerned. To show this, I will briefly set out the context of the schmidentity argument and, in Sects. 2 and 4, sketch a reconstruction thereof, including some criticisms of the argument, and an excursion about Kit Fine’s semantic relationism, which stands in stark contrast to this paper’s central claim. Moreover, I will draw a genuinely new and probably quite unexpected conclusion from all the above, to finally give a glimpse at a bigger picture of where this conclusion should lead our thinking about a theoretical treatment of informativity and a linguistic expression’s cognitive value. (shrink)

Kripke's puzzle about rule-following is a form of the traditional problem of the nature of linguistic meaning. A skeptical solution explains not what meaning is but the role that talk of meaning plays in the linguistic community. Contrary to what some have claimed, the skeptical approach is not self-refuting. However, Kripke's own skeptical solution is inadequate. He has not adequately explained the conditions under which we are justified in attributing meanings or the utility of the practice of (...) attributing meanings. An alternative skeptical solution may be founded on a nonepistemic conception of assertibility. Roughly, a sentence is assertible if it facilitates cooperation. The function of meaning-talk is to resolve certain sorts of conflicts in assertion. Attributions of meaning to persons outside the community may be a proper expression of a practice whose reason for being lies entirely within the community. -/- . (shrink)

A puzzle about warranted belief, often attributed to Kripke, has recently come to prominence. This puzzle claims to show that it follows from the possession of a warrant for one's belief in an empirical proposition that one is entitled to dismiss all subsequent evidence against that proposition as misleading. The two main solutions that have been offered to this puzzle in the recent literature - by James Cargile and David Lewis - argue for a revisionist epistemology which, (...) respectively, either denies the so-called 'Closure' principle that warrants transmit across known entailments, or 'contextualizes' the epistemic operator in question. In contrast, it is argued here that such revisionism is unnecessary because the puzzle in fact depends upon an ambiguity in the notion of warrant. It is claimed that once this ambiguity is made explicit then the puzzle dissipates. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Kripke's Puzzle Some Related Puzzles A Response A Solution A Deeper Puzzle A Deeper Solution The Role of Variables in Belief Reports Some Semantical Morals.