Saul A. Kripke - A Puzzle About Belief

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, theoretical background, and logical principles from Saul A. Kripke's paper 'A Puzzle About Belief'.

Millian View of Proper Names

The view that a proper name simply refers to its bearer and has no other linguistic function, without describing its bearer as possessing any special identifying properties.

Fregean View of Proper Names

The view that a speaker associates with each proper name a property or conjunction of properties that determines its referent as the unique thing fulfilling that property, constituting the sense of the name.

Disquotational Principle

The principle stating that if a normal English speaker, on reflection, sincerely assents to 'p,' then he believes that p.

Strengthened Disquotational Principle

The biconditional principle stating that a normal English speaker who is not reticent will be disposed to sincere reflective assent to 'p' if and only if he believes that p.

Principle of Translation

The principle asserting that if a sentence of one language expresses a truth in that language, then any translation of it into any other language also expresses a truth in that other language.

Rigid Designator

A term that designates the same object in all counterfactual situations or contexts of metaphysical necessity and possibility.

Salva Veritate

A Latin condition meaning 'truth value remaining intact,' occurring when replacing one expression with another leaves the truth value of the sentence unaltered.

Salva Significatione

A condition occurring when replacing an expression with another leaves the proposition expressed or sentence content unaltered.

De Dicto Belief Context

The small scope reading of belief contexts concerned with the explicit proposition or sentence content expressed, such as 'Jones believes that: Cicero was bald.'

De Re Belief Context

The large scope reading of belief contexts that attributes a property directly to an object, such as 'Jones believes, of Cicero, that he was bald.'

Shakespearean Context

Peter Geach's term for a linguistic context in which codesignative proper names are interchangeable salva veritate.

Referential Opacity

A characteristic of contexts where substitution of coreferential definite descriptions fails to preserve truth value salva veritate.