Kripke, Saul

"Naming and Necessity shows that proper names are rigid designators"

"The meaning of a term is not determined by the objects it refers to alone"

"Possible worlds are not distant concrete objects"

"Water is necessarily H2O in all possible worlds where it exists"

"A posteriori truths can be necessary"

"The baptism of an object fixes its reference"

"Essences are not purely a matter of definition"

"Rigid designators refer to the same object in all possible worlds"

"Natural kind terms have their reference fixed by the world"

"The causal theory of reference explains how names get their meaning"

"Identity is necessity itself"

"Counterfactuals tell us about possible worlds and causation"

"Qualia and consciousness present genuine philosophical puzzles"

"Semantic externalism: meaning ain't in the head"

"Twin Earth cases show that content depends on environment"

"Mental states are individuated by their causal roles"

"Modality and metaphysics are deeply interconnected"

"We must distinguish between epistemic and metaphysical possibility"

"Reference is fundamentally historical and causal"

"The intuition that Hesperus and Phosphorus are different serves us well"

"Language connects us to the world through causal chains"

"Intuitions about identity guide our philosophical work"

"Kripke's Wittgenstein: rule-following admits no fact of the matter"

"Wittgenstein shows that meaning cannot be determined by private rules alone"

"The rule-following paradox challenges the very foundation of language"

"Skepticism about meaning is the deepest philosophical problem"

"Yet this paradox has a skeptical solution, not a straight solution"

"Our community and practices give content to our words"

"Necessity and contingency carve reality at its joints"

"A priori knowledge does not guarantee necessity"