Beyond Formalism: Naming and Necessity for Human Beings

The principal claims advanced in Saul Kripke's classic 1972 work, Naming and Necessity, quickly acquired the status of largely uncontested tenets in the philosophy of language and logic. Jay Rosenberg belongs to the minority of scholars who have maintained a more skeptical attitude towards Kripke's work. In Beyond Formalism, he draws attention to significant problems implicit in Kripke's views regarding necessity, reference, and belief.
Following his analysis of the shortcomings of both "descriptivist" and "causal-historical" approaches to nominal reference, the author sketches his own "epistemic" account of proper names. In Rosenberg's view, names should not be understood as devices for empirically relating language users, but as instruments for structuring the transmission and accumulation of descriptive content, issuing from various forms of inquiry, within a linguistic community.
Rosenberg concludes with a critical reassessment of widely accepted views regarding the relationships among natural languages, mathematical formalisms, and philosophical commitments. The culmination of twenty years' reflection, Beyond Formalism is an original and sophisticated book of importance to both philosophers and linguists.