On Language and Logic | Saul Kripke and Timothy Williamson

Watch the full talk at iai.tv/video/on-language-and-...
Saul Kripke and Timothy Williamson discuss why language has come to dominate the field of philosophy, why logic matters, and what the future for the Anglo-American tradition looks like.
Saul Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeritus professor at Princeton University. Since the 1960s, Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory.
Timothy Williamson has been the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford since 2000. He was a lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, a fellow and tutor at University College Oxford, and Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh. Williamson has contributed to analytic philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics and epistemology.
#analytic #philosophy #kripke #angloamerican
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[@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

What do you think of this talk? Leave a comment below You can watch this talk, On Language and Logic, in full at iai.tv/video/on-language-and-logic-saul-kripke-timothy-williamson?KZbin&

[@JonSebastianF]

This full talk is only 5 minutes longer - is there a “more full” talk? :O

[@helenlauer9545]

thank you for the link to the full talk.

[@robertthiesen2687]

I'm not going to lie, when I understood what Kripke was talking about with the difference between metaphysical necessity and epistemological certainty, and other such clarifications in Naming and Necessity, damn that was exciting. Better than most sci-fi for me.

[@timhorton2486]

Can you potentially recapitulate your understanding here?

[@user-nb3mq3cg8k]

I don't understand

[@MontyCantsin5]

Kripke's speech is much easier to follow now compared to videos of lectures from almost a decade ago. It's almost as if the years have been rolled back. Anyway, good to see him doing more discussions and talks recently.

[@markslist1542]

Okay, you've got my attention.

[@igormendonca4026]

agreeable ISTJ

[@RenRealism]

Hard to understand what this Tim guy is saying

[@user-nb3mq3cg8k]

You need to study and fix your life

[@CopelandMeister]

I love Kripke but I wish he wouldn't assume such a stereotypical and disparaging view towards so-called continental philosophy.

[@willp6046]

well, the fact that he holds the view might be evidence in its favor.

[@alepho4089]

I disagree. The open contempt Kripke and Williamson have towards ‘continental’ philosophy is a very good thing. It is a uniquely diseased branch of philosophy and its defects have no parallel in any other discipline in the modern university. If we go further, and judge continental philosophy by the standards of its leading practitioners then we can add ‘worthless at best’ and ‘deeply evil at worst’ to its list of faults. The day we go from marginalising it to completely eliminating it from the university (and the culture at large) we will have taken a necessary step towards towards the moral and intellectual advancement of our society.

[@aungsettkyawmin9094]

It's such a shame because Kripke is obviously too smart to be taking potshots at a wide ranging discipline that offers so much internal diversity.

[@jedsamuels9409]

@@alepho4089 awww did that little Adorno hurt your feelings?

[@MS-il3ht]

@@jedsamuels9409 Well, not really. It's just weird, ideologically charged arguments and people who cannot measure up to the developments of the last 200 years

[@surfinmuso37]

He lost me with the first comment. Not true. The study of language tells us an immense amount about the underlying nature of our reality. I agree more with McKenna-our language dictates our reality in ways that many of us do not even realize.

[@animadverte]

You just miss the history of analytic philosophy of the last 50 years or so.

[@surfinmuso37]

@@animadverte u have absolutely no idea what u are talking about.

[@brookspn]

This is a substantive claim, and I suspect Williamson would agree in some respects (e.g., w.r.t propositional attitudes de se). I take his point here to be that, for the most part, doing philosophy of language well is necessary but not sufficient for doing other parts of philosophy well. Arguing that it is sufficient, full stop, is rather an uphill battle.

[@internetenjoyer1044]

I think Williamson is saying that philosophical questions aren't inherently linguistic; that it's more than just understanding the words we're using. Figuring out the mind body problem, for example, is more than just understanding ordinary uses of the words. Sometimes that's essential, sometimes we have to say the ordinary language is wrong. It depends on the case. Of course our language defines our reality, although to how much is contestable. But Philosophy doesn't end with that acknowledgement and the answer of "how much".

[@danien37]

it is absurd to think the words we use dictate physical reality. there is only one reality, which can be spoken abut correctly or incorrectly.

[@johnnowakowski4062]

All this babble where no one can even understand what they're talking about...

[@calvinsaxon5822]

It's not that what they are saying is incomprehensible. It's quite the opposite. They are saying so very, very little but taking so long to say it that it has the veneer of being mystifying, but it's not at all. Williamson takes 5 minutes at the beginning to say this, literally: "Part of philosophy is making sure you are using its primary tool, language, correctly." That's all he said. I turned it off after that, couldn't take it.

[@brookspn]

@@calvinsaxon5822 Analytic philosophers of language are just a very careful bunch. I mean, most of Williamson's papers are significantly longer than they need to be.

[@surfinmuso37]

@@calvinsaxon5822 Yes, utterly and needlessly verbose. Also that repetitive hand movement is a bit weird.

[@user-fc7dh8yz9d]

@@surfinmuso37 yes, those fellas tend to be less talented at verbal abilities when their brain's initially and totally preocccupaid with math and logic, metalanguage

[@alepho4089]

I’m very sorry but if you’re a fluent English speaker and you don’t understand what they’re saying then you’re probably just stupid. The comment by Calvin Saxon is the ‘for dummies’ summary of their talk. If that comment is unclear to you...well I suppose no case is truly hopeless...

[@ruvstof]

Williamson's speech is gibberish based on mistaken views of what the best linguistic analysts tried to do. See Ayer's metaphilosophy or the aims of logical atomism. Kripke made a genial work, but now only repeats himself.

[@randlyce]

tim speaks too much to me that signs he knows nothing saul speaks straight to the point he knows what he's talking about.