# Reference and Existence

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- Authors: [Saul Kripke](https://www.bookquiver.com/saul-kripke)
- Language: en_US
- Published: 2018-02-08
- Genres: Philosophy

## 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.

## Editions

### Reference and Existence

- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- ISBN: 978-01-9066-061-1
- Pages: 186
- Published: 2018-02-08
- Language: en_US