Beyond formalism

The principal claims advanced in Saul Kripke's classic 1972 work, Naming and Necessity, quickly acquired the status of largely uncontested tenets in the philosophy of language and logic. Jay Rosenberg belongs to the minority of scholars who have maintained a more skeptical attitude towards Kripke's work. In Beyond Formalism, he draws attention to significant problems implicit in Kripke's views regarding necessity, reference, and belief. Following his analysis of the shortcomings of both "descriptivist" and "causal-historical" approaches to nominal reference, the author sketches his own…