57 - Richard Kimberly Heck: Reference, Names, and the Philosophy of Language

Richard Kimberly Heck has been a professor of philosophy at Brown University since 2005, at which time they left their post at Harvard, where they had taught for over a decade. On the way to receiving their PhD in philosophy and linguistics at MIT, they studied at Duke and Oxford. Riki has also been a guest on three prior episodes of Robinson’s Podcast—5, 17, and 41—that covered the philosophy of sex, pornography, and gender. In this episode, however, Robinson and Riki turn to the philosophy of language, and more particularly the reference relation. They pick up with Frege and travel up through Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Kripke, and Lewis, up to the present, covering a range of topics including Fregean senses, the descriptive theory of names, ordinary language philosophy, natural kinds, possible worlds, externalism, and more.

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OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:37 The Importance of Names

9:59 Recent Shifts in Philosophy of Language

12:44 Riki’s Interest in Frege

17:35 Who Was Frege?

30:05 Uber Sinn und Bedeutung

48:33 Knowledge by Description and Acquaintance

55:06: The True and The False

1:00:41 Bertrand Russell On Denoting

1:17:50 Distinguishing Representations

1:20:54 P.F. Strawson and Ordinary Language Philosophy

1:31:43 Carnap on Meaning and Necessity

1:34:52 Kripke and Lewis on Naming and Possible Worlds

1:55:19 Current Work on Naming

2:02:15 Experimental Philosophy of Language

2:12:20 On Twin Earth

2:19:31 A Digression on Philosophical Practice

2:25:14 Ty Burge and Natural Kinds

2:27:55 Referential Vagueness

2:33:08 Internalism and Externalism

2:38:40 Sense, Reference, and Sex

2:41:16 Sense, Reference, and The Begriffsschrift

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.