Beyond Rigidity The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity [Paperback]

In this fascinating work, Scott Soames offers a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions. He also demonstrates the irrelevance of rigid designation in understanding why theoretical identities containing such predicates are necessary, if true.

In this admirable book, Scott Soames provides well defended answers to some of the most difficult and important qurstions in the philosophy of language, and he does so with characteristic thoroughness, clarity, and rigor. --Michael McKinsey,Canadian Journal of Philosophy

This excellent book is aptly titled, for in it Scott Soames systematically discusses and greatly extends the semantic views that Saul Kripke presented inNaming and Necessity. As Soames does this, he touches on a wide variety of semantic topics, all of which he treats with his characteristically high degree of clarity, depth, and precision. Anyone who is interested in the semantic issues raised byNaming and Necessity,or in more recent work on proper names, attitude ascriptions, and natural kind terms, will find this book indispensiable. --David Braun, University of Rochester, inLinguistics and Philosophy.