Kripke’s Naming and Necessity is an edited transcription of three lectures. Topically also, it can be divided into three parts—an introductory discussion of a number of concepts, Kripke’s criticisms of and his own alternative to a common theory of proper names, and the consequences of his view of proper names for a number of issues, most of which are tied in some way to equality or identity. The two divisions into three don’t quite coincide. I’ve followed the latter in my assignments, and I’ll follow it also in these guides. But it would be okay to simply read one of the three lectures for each of the three weeks we’ll spend on the book.

The first lecture is introductory and addresses a number of topics. Kripke first lays out the basic issue concerning the semantics of proper names that will be at the center of the whole book.

• First note Kripke’s stipulation of the terminology (proper) name, (definite) description, and designator (p. 24). (Even before this, Kripke mentions his views on the term unicorn; he doesn’t return to them in the main text but he does in the first of the Addenda at the end, pp. 156-158.)

• Donnellan’s example (p. 25) and Kripke’s extension of it to names (in note 3) point to an important distinction analogous to the distinction between implication and implicature that some of you have encountered in Phi 270. Kripke developed this distinction elsewhere but it plays little role in these lectures.

• The central topic of Naming and Necessity is the choice between the two views of proper names that Kripke attributes to Mill on the one hand and Frege and Russell on the other. He describes the difference initially on pp. 26-27. Before going on, think about which you favor; Kripke will support Mill.

• Kripke mentions a series of three arguments for the Frege-Russell view (one in each paragraph on pp. 27-29). Each amounts to a puzzle about names for which the Frege-Russell views offers a solution. Once Kripke has argued against the Frege-Russell view, he will take on the task of solving (some of) these puzzles from his point of view.

• The specific form of the Frege-Russell view, Kripke will eventually argue against is the “cluster concept” theory he motivates and introduces on pp. 30-31.

• Kripke finishes framing the issue concerning proper names that he will discuss by making a distinction between giving meaning and determining (or fixing) reference (pp. 32-33).

In the rest of the first lecture, Kripke turns to the sort of concepts Russell introduced at the beginning of ch. 8 of Problems of Philosophy and then to the issues Quine addressed in “Notes on Existence and Modality.” We will look at the first group of ideas today.

• One of Kripke’s original contributions was a new way of relating the concepts of the necessary, the a priori, and the analytic (pp. 34-39). He begins with a discussion of the logical complexity of the concept of the a priori (pp. 34-35) and ends with a suggested account of the meaning of “analytic” (p. 39). However, the material in between is the most original; there he distinguishes between the a priori and the necessary in a way that points to the possibility of necessary truths known a posteriori and contingent truths known a priori. Although his discussion of the Goldbach conjecture points to an example of the former, clearer and more important examples will appear later. The idea of the contingent a priori is less central to his later discussion, but he will offer an example in the final part of the first lecture and another sort of example later in the book.