Kripke Lecture 1 [Yuchen Jiang]

Kripke Lecture 1 [Yuchen Jiang]


"If someone identifies necessity with a prioricity, and thinks that objects are named by means of uniquely identifying properties, he may think that it is the properties used to identify the object which, being known about it a priori, must be used to identify it in all possible worlds, to find out which object is Nixon. ( Kripke 49)"

"It [The table] has all these properties and is not a thing without properties, behind them; but it should not therefore be identified with the set, or 'bundle', of its properties, nor with the subset of its essential properties. ( Kripke,52)"

For the first quote here, I understand Kripke as stating that if necessity is understand as being a priori then identification of certain object would be based on recognizing its essential properties. In this case, he starts his attempt to rejects this idea that  a priori properties are sufficient to identify certain objects in different worlds. For the second quote here, I find it to be surprise. Kripke denies the empirical approach of these issue of identification, though he confirms that these objects have indeed properties, and essential properties.

For the first I agree him to the extent that a priori properties may be meaningful as well as the necessary properties, yet when identifying certain objects, such properties may divert from  necessity. That is to say, a priori properties and necessary properties may be similar in this world, but it does not follow that they would always be the parallel to each other in some other situations.For the second one, I just some what unclear, if Kripke rejects the view of "bundle of properties", is he has to have the ability to identify things intuitively, which could follow that he has to identify things a priorily?