it's pretty amazing what errol morris is doing in the new york times. (but memo to nyt: it is stupidly difficult to get access to all the parts of the piece smoothly: make sure each post links smoothly to all the others right at the top.) and kuhn's ashtray is a pretty good little concomitant to wittgenstein's poker etc. i do remember a long and laborious apprenticeship before i could get anything out of kripke's naming and necessity - which is, for one thing, a beautiful model of philosophical prose - or even understand the questions from which it emerged or the taxonomy of positions in which it took up a place.

kripke was that rarest of things - a philosophical prodigy - and there was just no denying the lightning-strike brilliance. but he also kind of flamed out, and i don't think anyone would take his later work (wittgenstein on rules and private language, for example, which i remember everyone waiting eagerly for at hopkins in 1982) to be comparable. and kuhn wasn't the only jerk; a couple of female students i knew had insanely difficult experiences with kripke at princeton. anyway, i have to say i'm with kripke on reference in a big way, and that would have gotten me an ashtray from rorty. only rorty was not the kind of fuckhead who threw ashtrays! this will tell you a lot about the intellectual culture of the era and place morris describes. it really really mattered! which is good, but not good.

one reason it was not good was that if you disagreed with your prof - which one would think offhand should be welcome - you could get smacked to the tune of ending your career, which is what morris is describing. rorty, who came right out of that princeton environment, was sort of weary of being disagreed with, but he also just wanted to make sure you gave the best argument you could for your disagreement; that is a very very better approach.

there is not a direct contradiction between kuhn and kripke, though there is a tension. and kuhn was always trying to hedge his thing about incommensurability. (i did see him give a series of lectures at uva, rorty in attendance.) people were always like: but according to you there's no real world and no truth! and then he'd say: no not at all, and then it got really complicated. but rorty, who taught kuhn all the time, would be all 'exactly. no real world, son. aren't you tired of that crap anyway? it's so oppressive.' and his eyes would twinkle.