A self-described "avid reader of the blog" writes:
I recently came upon an important piece of news I thought you might want to share with the wider philosophical community on the blog.
Saul Kripke offered a widely known critique against materialism in Lecture III of Naming and Necessity. However, in a recent article published in Philosophical Perspectives Adriana Renero shows that around 1979 Kripke expanded such a critique and offered a knowledge argument against materialism. In that argument Kripke agreed with Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and considered that "a materialist must defend not merely that any mental facts must follow from physical facts by necessity, but in addition that any mental facts follow from physical facts a priori: that the truth of everything is deducible a priori from a complete material description of the world." So, Kripke's notion of the "necessary a posteriori" as offered in Naming and Necessity would not play a role when dealing with materialism. In my view, this is a novel analysis that seems to pave the way to understand Kripke's position concerning materialism and motivates further discussion in the philosophy of mind.
Here’s a link to the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/VKDKEAMFXYPKBXVY2WHW?target=10.1111/phpe.12195
Comments from readers informed about these issues welcome.
Leave a Reply to Tom Hurka Cancel reply