Kripke Possible Worlds
About the event
Saul Kripke was an outstanding logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher who completely changed modal logic. The story goes, he published his first paper in 1959 on modal logic, which was so good, Harvard immediately offered him a position in the Mathematics department. The answer he sent back to Harvard was, "My Mom says I have to graduate from High School first". He was 17 at the time.
Because there is now a lot of interest in another one of Kripke's works, *Naming and Necessity*, I thought it might be a good time to put together a very introductory discussion on modal logic, Kripke semantics, possible worlds, and whether or not Gödel's modal ontological proof of the existence of God has any merit. (No, really, Gödel did write such a proof.)
The goal is to help those reading *Naming and Necessity* see some of the details of his key topics. But, you haven't had read anything by Saul Kripke to attend. This is an intro that doesn't assume you are familiar with the topic.
Saul Kripke didn't write down all of his clever ideas. But, lot's of people have taken his ideas and fleshed them out so that the rest of us can follow his thoughts. A few intro level YouTube videos might help you get started:
[Modal Logic Intro](https://youtu.be/_kZLnqsIuMo?si=ca2B4D02-G1tcXCA) [Modal Logic Trees](https://youtu.be/ilxm2fv0lMg?si=-PcVg-FFkfufPWM8) [Kripke Semantics](https://youtu.be/k3Jjw8oJqBk?si=FE2WN1Fva4P1BMl-)
For the brave and bold, some of his original really big papers can be found at:
[A completeness theorem in modal logic (1953)](https://people.irisa.fr/Nicolas.Markey/PDF/Papers/jsl24(1)-Kri.pdf) [Outline of a Theory of Truth (1975)](https://www.impan.pl/~kz/truthseminar/Kripke_Outline.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
Enjoy! :-)
