{
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  "title": "Reference and Existence",
  "subtitle": null,
  "slug": "reference-and-existence",
  "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke/reference-and-existence",
  "json": "https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke/reference-and-existence.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke/reference-and-existence.md",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Saul Kripke",
      "slug": "saul-kripke",
      "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke"
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  "language": "en_US",
  "original_title": null,
  "original_language": null,
  "first_published": "2018-02-08",
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      "heading": "Philosophy"
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  "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/oxford-university-press/saul-kripke/reference-and-existence_978-01-9066-061-1-3823e58f.webp?v=2026-10-17%2003%3A37%3A17",
  "description": "Reference and Existence, Saul Kripke''s John Locke Lectures for 1973, can be read as a sequel to his classic Naming and Necessity. It confronts important issues left open in that work -- among them, the semantics of proper names and natural kind terms as they occur in fiction and in myth; negative existential statements; the ontology of fiction and myth (whether it is true that fictional characters like Hamlet, or mythical kinds like bandersnatches, might have existed). In treating these questions, he makes a number of methodological observations that go beyond the framework of his earlier book -- including the striking claim that fiction cannot provide a test for theories of reference and naming. In addition, these lectures provide a glimpse into the transition to the pragmatics of singular reference that dominated his influential paper, \" Speaker''s Reference and Semantic Reference\" -- a paper that helped reorient linguistic and philosophical semantics. Some of the themes have been worked out in later writings by other philosophers -- many influenced by typescripts of the lectures in circulation -- but none have approached the careful, systematic treatment provided here. The virtuosity of Naming and Necessity -- the colloquial ease of the tone, the dazzling, on-the-spot formulations, the logical structure of the overall view gradually emerging over the course of the lectures -- is on display here as well.",
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    {
      "title": "Reference and Existence",
      "subtitle": null,
      "url": "https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke/reference-and-existence/9780190660611",
      "publisher": "Oxford University Press",
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      "isbn": "978-01-9066-061-1",
      "pages": 186,
      "published": "2018-02-08",
      "language": "en_US",
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