Kripke, Saul

"Essentialism explains why some truths hold across all possible worlds."

"The puzzle of identity over time dissolves when we distinguish essence from accident."

"Proper names and demonstratives share the feature of rigid designation."

"Reference is determined by the actual causal-historical connections between speaker and object."

"Counterfactuals are not reducible to material conditionals in standard logic."

"The direct reference theory vindicates our pre-theoretic understanding of names."

"Modal discourse is meaningful and truth-evaluable despite its apparent metaphysical extravagance."

"Identity statements are necessarily true, not merely true in fact."

"The world contains objective possibilities that constrain what could have been."

"We grasp necessary truths through intellectual intuition of possible worlds."

"The meaning of a name is exhausted by the object it designates."

"Essentialism need not commit us to unknowable natures or occult properties."

"Our modal intuitions, while not infallible, provide genuine access to reality."

"A rigid designator picks out the same object in every possible world where it exists."

"The causal theory explains how ignorant speakers can refer to unknown objects."

"Necessity is not epistemic; it is a feature of the world itself."

"Possible worlds are what make counterfactual statements truth-apt."

"Identity is transitive, symmetric, and reflexive in all possible worlds."

"Reference does not require that the speaker have identifying knowledge of the object."

"The necessity of origin follows from the causal account of identity."

"We can meaningfully discuss non-actual possibilities without reifying them ontologically."

"Names are conventional in origin but conventional in a way that fixes reference."

"The speaker's intention to refer determines what object a name designates."

"An object's origin is essential to its identity, not merely contingent."

"Possible worlds are legitimate theoretical posits despite their apparent extravagance."

"The direct reference theory explains why identity statements need not be informative."

"Rigid designation is compatible with multiple satisfaction conditions."

"The necessity of identity cannot be reduced to linguistic necessity."

"Our grasp of possibility is immediate and not derived from logical or linguistic facts."

"Names introduce singular propositions that concern objects directly."