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 Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection Philosophical Troubles.In this book Kripke's long-time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.

Preface page viiAcknowledgments xIntroduction 1Background 2Plan 71 Naming 11Mill vs Frege 11Error and Ignorance 19Metalinguistic Theories 24The Historical Chain Picture 28Reference vs Attribution 332 Identity 37Modal Logic and its Archenemy 37Rigidity 45The Necessity of Identity 50Resistance 53The Contingent a Priori 563 Necessity 59Imagination and the Necessary a Posteriori 59Natural Substances 64Natural Kinds 69Natural Phenomena and Natural Law 71The Mystery of Modality 744 Belief 78Direct Reference 78Puzzling Pierre 83Poles Apart 88Counterfactual Attitudes 91Empty Names 985 Rules 104Conventionalism 105Kripkenstein 108The Analogy with Hume 110The Skeptical Paradox 116The Skeptical Solution 1206 Mind 128Physicalism 128Functionalism 131Against Functionalism 134Against Physicalism 136The Mystery of Mentality 140Appendix A Models 143The Logic of Modality 143Kripke Models 147The Curse of the Barcan Formulas 150Controversy and Confusion 153Appendix B Truth 157Paradox and Pathology 158Kripke vs Tarski 159Fixed Points 165The Intuitive Notion of Truth 170Notes 175Bibliography 204Index 211