Dr. Nathan Salmon

Kripke's paradox about time and thought is reminiscent of Russell's paradox about the set of sets that are not elements of themselves. At a particular instant t 0 , for example, during the writing of his paper, Kripke entertains the following set concept, while not thinking of any other set: the set of instants t such that: (i) Kripke is thinking at t of exactly one set of instants; and (ii) t itself is not an element of the time-set Kripke is thinking of at t.

Jeffrey King's principal objection to the direct-reference theory of demonstratives is analyzed and criticized. King has responded with a modified version of his original argument aimed at establishing the weaker conclusion that the direct-reference theory of demonstratives is either incomplete or incorrect. It is argued that this fallback argument also fails.

AbstrAct A russellian notion of what it is for a proposition to be " directly about " something in particular is defined. Various strong and weak, and mediate and immediate, russellian notions of general (direct or indirect) aboutness are then defined in terms of russellian direct aboutness. In particular , a proposition is about something iff the proposition is either directly, or strongly indirectly , about that thing. A competing russellian account, due to Kaplan, is criticized through a distinction between knowledge by description and denoting by description. The epistemologi-cal significance of russellian aboutness is assessed. A russellian substitute for de re propo-sitional attitude is considered.