Yes I imagine you would 
. And there is definitely a part of me which would agree. But it is yet to convince the other parts! The problem with Kripke in particular though is that he is really creative in his own right, and not at all the kind of person who I can comfortably dismiss as ‘misoriented’ just yet.
Regards,
James
James,
What would you say the brilliance of Kripke is, when put in contrast with Davidson? Just what does Kripke contribute to the discussion?
Dunamis
Well the way I see it, Davidson sprouts off from Quine in one direction, and Kripke goes in another, which is very different. The locus or centre of his concern seems pretty much in the following distinctions;
Quine seems to have questioned the relevance of analyticity; Kripke seems to have answered, thus showing Quine to have over-stepped his warrant by dismissing it entirely. Kripke is clever because he has offered interesting arguments that dissolve the assumed connections between the above statements - i.e. undermined the assumption that analytic=apriori=necessary, for instance. He has tried to accomplish this by giving putative examples of contigent apriori propositions, as well as necessary aposteriori ones. He wants to show that Quine has been too cavalier and made a ‘leap of faith’ by dismissing modal notions such as necessity, indeed dismissing intensional semantics altogether, and he has gone some way to rescue modal logic and along with it metaphysics and especially essentialism. (of course Quine himself did much to rescue metaphysics, although in a very much different sense to Kripke)
Indeed one of the things which is said about Quine and Kripke is that, where the former took away the philosophers ‘toys’, so to speak, the latter gave them back. It is because of Kripke that we have the curious sight of philosophers proclaiming themselves proudly to be ‘Aristotlelean essentialists’ - a queer thing amongt philosophers like Davidson and Rorty, who never really understood what the fuss was all about. In any case I think that the least which can be said about Kripke is that the jury is still out, which is in itself a tremendous achievement on Kripke’s part given the weight of Quine’s thinking on the mood of philosophy in the last 60 years.
In any case, if you are well versed in the history of the analytic tradition up to Quine, you will appreciate Kripke’s book Naming and Necessity, which is the author’s own attempt to translate his work in (admitedly obscure) modal logic into terms where its consequences are easier to understand for philosophers who do not specialise in that field. In any case, it is just a little book and very interesting whether you agree with it all or not (I didn’t but is intriguing and Kripke is obviously very clever). It has a nice conversational tone due to the fact that it is mostly comprised of lecture transcripts (he delivered the whole thing without notes!), and if you pay attention you will pick up hints of Kripke’s satisfying sense of humor (at least satisfying to me) in amongst it all.
However comparisons with Davidson are more difficult for me. I have only read a few of his papers, along with some of the stuff which Rorty has written on him. So at the moment they still seem like apples and oranges to me, at least on the surface. Beneath the surface, on the other hand, I suspect that Kripke’s pretensions are far reaching; it is just a matter of properly evaluating them.
Regards,
James
James,
Thanks for the rundown, but of course since what I appreciate about Quine is the door he opened as to the insufficiency of analytic philosophy, making a very proud marriage of such with Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Heidegger in Rorty for instance, I’m quite sure the relevance of Kripke is a “wrong turn” in my book. Quine didn’t go far enough, rather than the idea he went too far. I find sadly lacking anything that imagines that the manipulations of propositions, very high order constructs, provides anything revealing about the nature of reality, unless those manipulations reveal the impotence of propositions in the first place. The transparency of language does not appeal, for it seems to me that as such, it cloaks the nature of power and its constitution.
Dunamis
Ok no worries. 
James
Ahhh. ’ can’t negotiate the car well around you. 
True. BUT, and it is a big but, “rational psychology” is the concept I’m aiming for—meaning, like what Frege would complain about, we are mixing logic with psychology and he wants to delineate the two. And that is not what I mean. Rational/pschological in the Humean sense. I’m not sure. I maybe wrong, I have not read extensively on Hume.
YES. This is what I have in mind, hence anti-Realist.
arendt,
“BUT, and it is a big but, “rational psychology” is the concept I’m aiming for”
The only rational psychology I know of, as such, is Spinoza’s theory of affects, which is both rational in basis and focused on the power structures of thinking and experience.
Dunamis
Okay. I’m happy with that. 
Imp,
What does it mean to say that a philosopher “dismissed” something?
Dunamis
the dismissal falls within kant’s arguments against metaphysics…
dismissal in this instance is logical denial…
on metaphysics, kant roughly agreed with hume…
-Imp
Imp,
So are you equating “rational psychology” with metaphysics derived through introspection? I’m a little confused as to the nature of your point, and if it has anything to do with what arendt is pursuing, or what Spinoza proposed.
Dunamis
I was simply pointing out other discussions of rational psychology… particularly ones that refute spinoza …
-Imp
“We don’t live in a world of reality, we live in a world of perceptions” (Gerald J. Simmons)
That is so true. For example, I see it as “ti oedstn’ tametr tahw odrre het tterles rae ni, het orwsd itsll kame nesseâ€. This is reality as it is before me in black and white, and I can see it. I perceive it as “It doesn’t matter what order the letters are in, the words still make senseâ€. This isn’t reality, as this is not what is presented before me. I made “sense†of it through some sort of system, probably through the problem solving experiences during my school years. To perfect that statement, I would probably change “cultural assumptions†to “valuesâ€, as our values influence our beliefs and thus will influence our perception of reality.
I never really liked the concepts of objective and subjective reality. I believe that objective reality is to some degree subjective reality. Reason being is that there are so many (what I would call) “omnipotent†factors (e.g media, dominant political system, education system, etc) that indirectly influence our perception of reality. Are these not forms of authority in our society?
Not really. I don’t have to go to war, to be convinced that is bad. It’s just my cultural stereotype of the word war (something bad, horrible, and sad) that convinces me that it is bad. Have you ever read about the concept of the school of thought known as structuralism (talks about three concepts, i.e. sign, the signifier and the signified) by Saussure?
Peace
structuralism had its place…
until derrida tore it apart…
-Imp
Imp,
Wow! First Kant dismisses, then Derrida tears apart. These guys are getting serious. I hate to think what the next one will do. Perhaps he will nuke it.
Dunamis
LOL… yes, nuking it is quicker than death by a thousand cuts…
the effect however is the same…
-Imp
C.R.,
“It’s just my cultural stereotype of the word war (something bad, horrible, and sad) that convinces me that it is bad. Have you ever read about the concept of the school of thought known as structuralism (talks about three concepts, i.e. sign, the signifier and the signified) by Saussure?”
I know Saussure primarily through Lacan, and I would say that Lacan has had some influence upon me, particularly his conception of the structured subjectivity, and more subtly the de-centered self, which has some resonance with Spinoza’s decentered psychology of the passions. I liked and agreed with the general nature of your comments, although I always place the body as the root of all conceptualization. Nothing that occurs to the “mind” that does not take place within the “body”.
Dunamis
Dunamis,
I am curious where you gained the term “diasomatic” from, the only reference I could find for it after a quick search was from a book on parapsychology.
Xander,
“I am curious where you gained the term “diasomatic” from.”
A neologism. Greek dia (through) soma (body), in foil to “dialectic”, dia (through) lexis (speech).
Dunamis