Conversatio Divina

Part 8 of 21

Naming

Dallas Willard

Speaking for the whole lecture about Saul Kripke and his book Naming and Necessity, Dallas Willard starts off with a topic he knew well: the debate around the, so-called, identity thesis. Are brain and mind identical? But eventually he moves on to the theory of names, discussing Kripke’s causal or historical-chain theory of names. On the other side of Kripke are philosophers like Frege, Russell and Quine who believe that names have entirely to do with descriptions. That is, one could always replace a name with a description.

If this seems far afield from theology and the Bible, maybe it is, but recall how important names are in the Bible. Moses is given a name for God and Jesus tells his disciples to baptize people in names.


Footnotes

Part 3 of 21
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Skepticism

Dallas Willard
January 12, 1984
Part 8 of 21
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Naming

Dallas Willard
January 31, 1984
Part 14 of 21
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Categories

Dallas Willard
March 1, 1984