Naming and Necessity, reading group?
We've got the Philosophical Investigations reading group up and going. I'm reading it; but, don't have much to contribute to it.
I was wondering if we could multi-task and address the book by Kripke called Naming and Necessity?
Any takers?
EDIT: Banno has started the reading group here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/230603
I was wondering if we could multi-task and address the book by Kripke called Naming and Necessity?
Any takers?
EDIT: Banno has started the reading group here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/230603
Comments (1817)
Then what do you think about quantification across possible worlds? Is it nonsensical to do so?
So, bear with my confusion! If we are to quantify over possible worlds then, we can only "measure" (quantify) counterfactuals by an accessibility relation to our own world. Therefore how can we assert something as necessarily true in all possible world's if quantification of modal relations (counterfactuals) is/are restricted to only our world?
I already posted this in a separate topic, but, my confusion hasn't ceased since.
What I found out was that "actualist" interpretations of QML (Quantified Modal Logic) tend to agree with this sentiment.
And, this is where I stumbled on the Barcan Formula, and then from there I started reading about de re and de dicto propositional attitudes. The Barcan Formula seems to support actualist interpretations of QML.
Quine would disagree, but the SEP entry on QML asserts that his criticism holds little weight nowadays.
Furthermore, knowing who Jane is talking about does not help a listener at all to know which man satisfies that description...
"The man who killed Bob" is a definite description as a result of the fact that there is only one man who satisfies the conditions of the description. Jane's case shows that one can use a definite description in order to successfully refer even when it is the case that the language user does not know who actually satisfies the conditions therein(even when their belief about who satisfies those conditions is false).
And yet, the definite description "the man who killed Bob" sets out conditions that only Allen satisfies.
One can use a definite description to successfully draw another's attention to the same thing that one's attention is already upon even when that thing does not satisfy the description. That's because doing so is belief based. It is also the case that the DD is satisfied by a unique individual. That's because doing so is truth based. Belief presupposes truth. Hence, Jane can successfully refer to Joe by virtue of using a definite description that only Allen satisfies because she believes that Joe satisfies it.
So...
Jane's case clearly shows the irrevocable role that belief plays in all successful reference. It doesn't matter whether or not the definite description(belief) is true of Jane's referent when it comes to her being able to successfully draw an other's attention to the same thing that her attention is already upon.
However, Jane's case does not warrant concluding that definite descriptions are inadequate for successful reference. Rather, it shows that definite descriptions are capable of being used in more than one way as a means for successful reference.
A comment on the discussion over the last few pages, first.
Seems to me that there has been considerable loose play between truth and belief in the preceding critique of Kripke. That is, perhaps folk have failed to notice just how different "Paris is in France" is from "Jenny believes that Paris is in France". It introduces a second modality on top of necessity, and scampers the possibility of direct substitution.
And "knowing" suffers the same fate, since it involves both belief and truth.
It all adds up to a bit of a mess.
While I am all for using the simplest framework possible for taking proper account, I am also all for taking proper account. If the possibility for direct substitution is hampered by virtue of taking proper account, then it is not an issue with the proper account my friend. It's an issue with the inherent inability of formal logic to offer a proper account of belief.
Kripke points this out, or so I am told, as a problem with versions of descriptivism. I would agree. While Kripke did not attempt to clear up what was going on. I have been.
This paragraph just doesn't make sense.
What do you mean by "measure" or "quantify" counterfactuals?
There is no such thing as "an accessibility relation to our own world." Accessibility relations hold among a set of worlds – it doesn't matter which one is actual, and the standard modal logic does not even mark an actual world.
Modal logic's semantics determines the truth of a formula relative to a model, world and variable assignment – this also makes no mention of the "actual world." If you want to include a special, designated actual world to the model, you can do this, but it's just not needed for the semantics. The whole point of the modal logic is that any arbitrary formula can be evaluated fro truth or falsity relative to any world. And once you have a semantics for counterfactuals, you can plug this into your modal logic.
This depends on whether you are an actualist or possibilist for QML.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Again, I am professing an actualist interpretation of QML. If you assume my position then Counterfactuals can only be truth apt relative to our world. This is an assumption that I understand applies to both actualist and possibilist interpretations.
No it doesn't. The modal logic is a formal device, indifferent to metaphysical interpretations of modality.
Quoting Wallows
There is no modal logic that in principle only allows the evaluation of a formula for truth relative to the actual world (you could create a vacuous frame with only one possible world, but this would be a pointless exercise, and says something only about the frame, not the logic). Indeed the entire point and expressive power of the logic is that it allows evaluation relative to multiple worlds. If you remove this, then you have a vacuous modal logic, i.e. one that only has the expressive power of a non-modal logic.
What's your take on the Barcan Formula?
I suspect that resistance to it is due to the confusion that distinct worlds 'have' distinct domains of individuals associated with them, over which quantifiers operate. You can make your logics this way, but it's probably a bad idea. Many bad ideas in logic come from philosophers having qualms independent of the logic, and trying to force their prejudices back into the logic, with bad results. Presumably, in this case it has something to do with the idea that the domain of quantification represents what 'exists,' which is not right.
I believe the point I'm trying to make is the following and bears some semblance to the Barcan Formula in restricting the domain of truth-aptness to the actual world (note that the range can span to an infinite amount of counterfactuals, whilst the domain can be restricted to the actual world):
I can stipulate a possible world where an event might have happened otherwise; but, the framing condition for doing so, to sound technical, will always be restricted to the world where the stipulation was made with respect to that event or state of affairs. A roundabout way of positing counterfactuals.
The Barcan formula doesn't 'restrict the domain of truth-aptness,' whatever that's supposed to mean. It is just a formula, valid on an ordinary modal logic, and its validity follows from the way quantifiers and modal operators are ordinarily interpreted.
The issue you're talking about is that the Barcan formula's validity makes it impossible that worlds accessible from a world have 'larger' domains than the world from which they're accessed: in other words, domains don't 'grow' across accessibility relations. This is fine, however, not because of commitments to modal actualism, but because to think that distinct worlds are associated with distinct domains in the first place is a mistake. One can make a logic this way, but it is probably a bad idea. There is just one domain of individuals, and it is not anchored to worlds to begin with.
The conditions of the description "the man who killed Bob" could not be satisfied if a woman was the murderer. Yet, "the man who killed Bob" can be used to successfully refer to someone other than the murderer, regardless.
Jane's case exemplifies this.
Definite description is also capable of being used to successfully refer to the unique object which does satisfy the conditions of the description.
A proper account of Jane's case(including Allen) shows that.
What all this clearly shows is that the unique individual satisfying the conditions of a definitive description is not always the referent of a speaker using that definitive description, and thus... the referent of a speaker using definitive description is not always determined by the truth conditions of their belief statement(definitive description), and/or the unique individual satisfying those conditions.
So, when we talk about possible worlds, and specifically make stipulations about counterfactuals, then we are restricted to the domain of the actual world? Does that make sense?
Quoting Snakes Alive
What do you mean?
Not really. Are you talking about the domain of individuals?
Quoting Wallows
In a standard quantified modal logic, there is a domain of individuals, and a set of possible worlds. Each world does not have 'its own' domain of individuals associated with it.
I guess so. What is it?
Yes, that is precisely what I have been arguing. But, we also refer by designation and the fixing of designation is dependent upon ostention and/ or description. I think perhaps what Kripke wants to argue is that description is also dependent on designation (we must name things before we can describe them, we must name the descriptive attributes themselves) whereas designation can be independent of description, by depending only on ostention, when the named (designated) entity is present.
I found an enlightening text specifically in regards to Kripke's NN and the de re/de dicto distinction. Let me know what you guys think about it. It's a brief and very good text.
Here you go.
I'm sympathetic to the view that names do not exhibit this distinction, as Kripke predicts, due to their being rigid designators. The effects described have to do with independent mechanisms, though articulating exactly what they are is somewhat difficult. I doubt they have anything to do with names specifically.
Are you a philosophy grad student? Sorry, I had to ask due to my inferiority complex on this forum of not being a formally trained philosopher but an auto-didactic.
This paper delves into the meter-rule. Let me know if you find it of any use.
In some possible world, the Queen was the daughter of the Trumans.
But, says Kripke, that is not a case in which Elizabeth was the daughter of the Trumans, but instead a case in which some other person, the Truman's daughter, took on the characteristics that in the actual world are associated with Elizabeth.
The method Kripke is using here is worth setting out. When the characteristics of same individual are strained by our stipulations to the point where credulity breaks, he suggests we look to the possibility that what we have is a distinct individual.
Especially in cases where the origin of the individual is called into question.
Hence there is a sort of inheritance of individuality...
If B is made from A, and C from D, in no possible world is B the very same as C. SO part of the grammar Kripke is proposing is that if two things have distinct beginnings, then they are distinct in every possible world.
That seems intuitively pretty obvious from the extensional nature of his approach to modality.
If B is made from A, then in every possible world B is made from A; To propose that B might have been made from D would be contradictory; yet instead one might propose that some B might never have existed, but that instead there was another individual - B' - which was made from D.
Might the Thylacine have been a type of dog?
Could have been in the same way a red panda is a type of panda.
Giant Pandas are bears; Red Pandas are Musteloidea, along with skunks and weasels.
So is a weasel a panda, too?
I don't think so.
This is why they killed Socrates. Questions like this.
Better to say that the Thylacine could never have been a dog, because dogs are not marsupials. Despite the similarity in appearance, it's not a dog.
In no possible world is there a marsupial dog.
That's not a marsupial. It's a dog with a pouch.
He says that it is not the case that cats could turn out to be robots. That if it turned out that cats were automata, we should say that what we had thought to be cats were not cats, but robots. (p.125-6).
TO be a cat is necessarily to be an animal.
SO if it turned out that the fellow we thought to be Nixon was actually an automata, then we were wrong to think he was Nixon.
Once we know that cats are animals, then it is not possible that cats not be animals; and, once we know Nixon is human, it is not possible that Nixon not be human.
Or something like that.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/240807
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/240808
I think that you and I hold very similar views regarding several different aspects of this topic. Even during the objections I didn't see that much difference aside from you presenting a view that kept existential dependency in the forefront of thought, whereas I have not been consistent regarding that.
I began my considerations by carefully thinking about what we're doing when positing hypothetical scenarios(possible world scenarios) involving proper nouns, because that is Kripke's ground/justification.
Quoting Janus
Let me see if I understand this part(the notion of designation) according to your position. I'm assuming, based what's written in the above quote, that you're argument/position here goes something like this...
Some successful reference is by designation. All designation is dependent upon the fixing of designation. All fixing of designation is dependent upon ostension and/or description. Therefore, all reference by designation is dependent upon ostension and/or description.
Given that...
The notions of designation and fixing the designation cannot be equivalent to ostension and/or description. This holds because you agreed that we successfully refer with both ostension and/or description, and made a point to say that we "also refer" by designation. This clearly implies a remarkable (ontological?)distinction between successful reference by ostension and/or description and successful reference by designation.
If all reference by designation is dependent upon ostension and/or description, and there is a remarkable difference between successful reference by ostension and/or description and successful reference by designation, then it only follows that not all ostension and/or description includes(or is) designation. So, cases of successful reference by designation are more complex, and thus they must include something aside from just ostension and/or description. This additional element, part, feature, etc. must also be something that neither ostension nor description is dependent upon. Neither can include it. Furthermore, this extra bit must be something that neither can account for.
So...
What is that additional something that all designation has that no other successful reference by ostension and/or description does? I mean what does reference by designation include that reference by ostension and/or description does not?
Quoting Janus
Keeping in mind that Kripke said early on that the term designator is one that can be used to cover both, names and descriptions.
When one holds that description is dependent upon designation, and descriptions are one kind of designator(names are the other), then one must also hold that at least one kind of designator(description) is dependent upon designation. It only follows that designation is not description. This seems compatible/coherent so far...
If designation can be independent of description, and all designation is dependent upon a designator, then it would only follow that some designators are not descriptions. Again, that's no problem as far as I can see. I mean, it's perfectly consistent with what I've understood about Kripke's terminological framework. Both names and descriptions are designators.
Do you find it lacking somehow?
"Could Nixon have been a golf ball" is still about Nixon. Even if the answer is "No".
I could try to lay out Quine versus Kripke on the issue.
SO water was first identified by a bunch of "phenomenological" characteristics. Then it was found that water was Hydrogen Dioxide. This chemical structure is an a posteriori necessity.
Should we come across a substance with the same phenomenological characteristics, and find that it has a different chemical structure, then the correct grammar according to Kripke is to say that we have a different substance, one that is not water but looks and feels the same. PArt of the essence of water is being hydrogen dioxide.
One the face of it, this is fine.
Could you say more about "clouded other philosophical issues"?
Then we add Davidson.
There's a lot here.
The phenomenology and the science are not so clear...
Just saying.
This seems quite wrong...
So, how is it wrong?
There's a joke among biblical scholars about whether Paul actually wrote all those letters and the answer is: no, it was some other guy named Paul.
Point is, for a Biblical scholar, Paul is shorthand for a description: the guy who wrote those letters. This is an on-going issue in the ancient world where writers frequently present their work as if it was of someone famous. The name is linked to a description whereas for a fundamentalist, the name picks out an individual possibly unbound from any definite description.
This is one of the many reasons that context will help determine if there really are some properties we should think of as essential to the entity spoken of.
Is Kripke wanting to discover essential properties without consideration of context? If so, I don't think that will work. He's right that we cant dispense with the concept of essence because we're clearly using it in ordinary speech. That intuition should direct us toward the intricacies if ordinary speech, though.
So, if it turns out that the celestial body we thought to be Pluto is not a planet, then we were wrong to think it was Pluto?
Yeah, something is most certainly amiss with that accounting practice.
I'm claiming that that bit is wrong. If we have called someone or something "X", and we later come to learn that X is not what we thought it was, it's still X. It's just that X is not what we thought it was.
We are not wrong to call a specific celestial body in the evening "Hesperus". We are wrong to think Hesperus is a star.
I don't have much time, so I'll keep it short. I haven't thought this through extensively; but it occurred to me that there are three ways in which we can refer to things: by descriptions, even though that referring may not be precise. The imprecision may occur, more often not in my own idea about what I refer to, but in what is conveyed to others.
We can refer to things by pointing at them. I am thinking of referring in general as (my) attending to and my drawing (other's) attention to things (in cases where I am referring to things).
Then apart from pointing to and describing, we have referring to (attending to and drawing attention to) things (mostly people and places, but also pets and even houses and so on) by designating (properly naming) them. Kripke refers to this by describing it as baptizing.
In order to know what entity is being referred to by a proper name, the entity must be either pointed out to me (in its presence or by photograph or drawing or voice recording or whatever), or described to me in such a way that I am able to single it out from all others. The latter could be achieved by a false description if that description is believed by a sufficient number of other members of the linguistic community to which I belong; this is the case with historical figures, where there is no longer any possibility of meeting them.
Another interesting point that occurred to me is that general terms for things are really proper names for generalities; for example 'tree'. 'person', 'dog' and so on, and there is usually no problem determining the reference in these cases of naming, but when there are problems (as in the 'Thylacine/ dog' example given by Banno) the problems are on account of definite descriptions (the Thylacine is a marsupial so it can't be a dog or a tiger and so on).
This conflates proper names for particular entities with names for general types of things. We would only be wrong to think that he was Nixon, if we stipulated that it is wrong in general to give automata proper names. What we would have been wrong about in this case is in thinking that the name 'Nixon' designated a person.
Not as I understand it. A rigid designator picks out the very same individual in all possible worlds. But a description might change from world to world.
That's actually a good question. Does anyone want to address it?
As Banno pointed out, a different person might have won the election. So the man who won the election is a rigid designator only in the actual world...but then that's not how Kripke wants to define 'rigid designator', it seems.
On the other hand, Nixon might not have been called 'Nixon'. So, Nixon is the man who in this world is called Nixon, and also won the election. Personally, I don't think possible world semantics is of much help at all.
Yeah; but, quantification can occur across possible words, so meta-logically you could even have states of affairs as obtaining (not instantiating) for all possible worlds. This is where I think, the cart has been placed in front of the horse. We should treat possible states of affairs and descriptions as ontologically above particulars (clumps of things) and individuals.
Yes, but we can only imagine possible or counterfactual states of affairs as involving actual particulars and individuals. 'What if that house had burned down' is not the same as 'what if that house had never existed'. There must be some minimum of actuality in our counterfactual imaginings or it just becomes 'what if everything had been different' and then the whole notion of counterfactuality is without any reference to actuality, and hence becomes meaningless.
How much does "much the same way" have to be before it becomes the same way, and hence and example of conflation, or subsumption?
This isn't necessarily so. Or is it, according to Kripke?
Quoting Janus
Well, I tend to take quantification of particulars (like the house) as representative of assigning them a name in the structure of the world through adhering to treating circumstances and states of affairs in logical space.
Quoting Janus
So, we're getting into metaphysics. I think, that we can treat any state of affairs, as tantamount to a 'name'. Just, that the de-re/de-dicto assertion crops up when speaking about existential quantification from a birds-eye perspective or from a particular individual.
Can you explain why you don't think it is a problem?
For the most part, descriptions made use of in natural languages are not rigid designators. But this is a contingent, and so interesting, fact about language. In constructing an artificial language, there is no problem with constructing rigid descriptions.
Yeah, so my point seems to be that descriptions or more aptly states of affairs are as important as individuals, as individuals cannot exist without descriptions of their states of affairs. I don't like the hard line being drawn between the two. You can have both co-existing, and drawing a hard line tends to make people confused about what's being talked about.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Can you expand on this "modal actualizer" thing?
Quoting Snakes Alive
Interesting. I have no idea what a language with contingent properties being rigid designators would even look like. Do you have an example in mind?
(Edit: Indeed, I'm not too sure what it is we are talking about here. But that's been the case for most of the discussion. The objections seem based on misreadings or misapprehensions.)
What seems to work?
In some modal logics, a world is set aside in the frame, to be the distinguished 'actual world,' sometimes symbolized @. An operator that means 'actual' then operates on a formula to make it true at any world just in case the formula it operates on is true at @.
If you write this as 'actual,' then 'the actual president of the US' denotes Donald Trump, not just at the actual world, but at any world. So, it is a rigid designator.
But this is a technical device, since the English word 'actually' doesn't work this way.
I feel as though this is just changing the axioms or premises for the framing condition to only "actualize" a certain fact into a framing condition for all possible worlds, hence rendering a description as rigid. Nice, technicality though.
This would be trivially true in a logical space that you had control over, such as the logical space of a computer or artificial language. But, you can alter the software and not the hardware of a computer, so there are limits to this concept also. A Turing machine would be a good example, to your point no?
The reference of a rigid designator can be fixed by a description giving a contingent property of its bearer. That's what's going on with the meter stick.
The referent of the word "metre" can be fixed by "the length of that stick in Paris". But "The length of that stick in Paris" is not a rigid designator - for that stick might not be a metre long.
Today, a meter is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. A second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. So in effect, we have substituted the caesium-133 atom for the standard meter bar. The same points could still be made, but we’ll stick with the meter bar for simplicity.
I'm thinking of this extensionally. So the referent of "Elizabeth II" is Elizabeth Windsor, with no connotation, description, properties or whatever involved in resolving that reference. And the referent of "cat" is each individual cat, considered as a group, with no connotation, description, properties or whatever.
Not to confuse the meaning of a description for rigid designators. The two co-exist; but, can differ in meanings in other possible worlds, de re.
"Any definite description at all can be treated as a rigid designator by indexing it to the actual world. I can, by simple fiat, decide to use the expression 'the inventor of bifocals' in such a way that it refers to the actual person who invented bifocals and continues to refer to that very person in any possible world, even in a possible world in which he did not invent bifocals. Such a use of the definite description will always take wide scope or will be in a sense scopeless in a way that is characteristic of proper names." --Searle (1983: 258)
That take makes a lot of sense to me, but it's not accepted by everyone. Note that Searle is bringing in the speaker's intentions. That's what my post was about. It appears intentions will specify essential properties. I don't think we can make a theory of essentialism beyond that.
So much as I like Searle, I think he must be wrong here.
It's not a settled issue. I'd argue Searle's view does work, don't want to derail, though.
I read Searle as suggesting that we know that 'the inventor of bifocals' is a rigid designator, We know this is true, even if we don't specify who it is that actually invented bifocals in this or any other world.(Of course the caveat here is that we discount cases in which more than one person collaboratively invented bifocals in which cases it would 'inventors', or cases where bifocals did not exist[/b])
In other words, even if we don't know who it is, the phrase in question designates either some individual, or a specific lack of any individual, that invented bifocals
I fail to see the importance of that as it applies to my last couple of posts. That does not mean that it is not. It means that I have not drawn correlations between the same things as you. Help me out by connecting the dots - your dots - for me. I do not have unshakable conviction. I am certain.
Are you invoking the notion of individuation? I don't think Kripke spells that out, does he?
While paving the way to where we are... Kripke's use of the term "individual" referred to the unique 'object' picked out of this world by virtue of being given a proper name. Moreover, he clearly showed that in such cases, we can keep the name, stipulate a wide range of circumstances involving that particular individual and retain our ability to successfully refer. I do not have a problem with any of that on it's face. It is crucial, I think, to remind ourselves that Kripke was not talking about just any object. Rather, he was talking about objects that we had named by virtue of proper noun.
So, he was talking about individuals objects that we pick out by virtue of our naming practices(proper nouns, mind you). Overall, by and in large, I was left with a good impression.
However, I would strongly object to anyone who wants to use the fact that we can use a proper noun as a means for successful reference when positing hypotheticals as ground for saying much anything else aside from we cannot seem to do the same thing by virtue of using any of the particular circumstances that we believe to be the case regarding the named individual. In short, proper nouns - when used alone - seem to always allow successful reference during hypothetical discourse, whereas descriptions of the thing being named(by virtue of proper noun) do not.
I do not see adequate justificatory ground for much else. So...
What am I missing?
Does not "the present president of the US' now unfailingly pick out Trump provided he is still president?
In this world, at this time... sure. That entirely misses the point though doesn't it?
No, because that can be used to pick out Trump in all possible worlds. We are always necessarily speaking in "this world, at this time" just as texts speak in this world, about the world as it was at the the time of writing...when else?
This is standard rubbish based upon a gross misconception of how meaning is always attributed...
The meter bar fixes the reference by virtue of a capable creature drawing a correlation between the term "meter" and it's referent(the bar).
Sigh...
:brow:
Drawing that connection is the attribution of meaning. The meter bar is not something that gives anything to anyone or anything else.
I don't understand what you are objecting with respect to the quoted text.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
I read p127 and I am still no clearer on its relevance to my comments or your responses to them. What do you think the problem I postulated was? How do you think "considering it extensionally" would solve that problem?
I have no idea what you are referring to, and for me that was "end of that line of thought" unless you provide some way to advance the discussion.
What are you talking about Janus?
"The president of the United States" cannot be used to pick out Trump in all hypothetical scenarios because some of them specifically stipulate circumstances about the president of the United States and not all of them stipulate that that is Trump.
The manner of speaking regarding the author of that text...
I can't find anything wrong with it.
Are meter bars the sort of things that are capable of giving anything at all?
You're missing the point. Of course counter-factually Trump in other possible worlds may not be president (either now or ever) but that definite description 'the man that in this world was president of the US at 3.03 PM EST 28 December 2018' picks out Trump (if he was in fact president at that time) in all possible worlds.
You're changing targets.
What are you talking about?
Well yes, to an observer. But this is trivially true and the author didn't seem to state otherwise.
No it was the president of the united states as of now. Of course 'now' always refers to the present, and the present, obviously, does not stand still; but I have no doubt you knew what I meant. But in any case, to avoid possible misunderstanding I added the time and date. I can't see what is hard to understand or problematic about that. It doesn't change the fact that true definite descriptions can be understood to be rigid designators; I mean they just are rigid designators. We know that without even needing to know who exactly they designate.
Ah, whatever...
Keep talking like that. My chair gave me a splinter. The splinter gave me pain. The meter bar does not give me either. My chair does not give me meaning. Neither does the splinter. Nor does the meter bar.
Why?
Because meaning cannot be given to someone, even by a creature capable of giving things away. Rather, meaning is attributed and emerges onto the world stage within thought and/or belief formation itself. That's too far out of the scope here, so don't ask me to elaborate or what I mean. If you are sincerely interested, click on my avatar and look at any one of several different topics. They will answer any question you may have. If not, post there about it.
Furthermore, inanimate objects have nothing in their possession to be given away to begin with. Such language use is utterly inadequate for understanding meaning... That was why I objected.
I'm confused creative. What's the problem with first person reports and third person descriptions here?
Since you seem to have more time than earlier... I'm curious about the other stuff.
That makes two of us. What's their relevance?
I already gave the short answer. If you respond to that first then the discussion may continue.
That reply did not answer the question. It was straightforward.
That said, that reply did skirt around some interesting things that Kripke does. Can you further elaborate?
I'm not sure. I will have to sleep over it.
Rest well. I hear ya. I think all of it is much more simple than these accounts make it seem to be.
Can you tell me what question it did not answer, and why you don't think it answered it? Then I would be happy to elaborate on what I said, and consider how it might have 'skirted around some interesting things that Kripke does' once I know what you are referring to with that. I don't want to move onto other topics or really discuss anything until I am clear about what exactly it is that we agree we are discussing.
What is that additional something that all designation has that no other successful reference by ostension and/or description does? I mean what does reference by designation include that reference by ostension and/or description does not?
Anyone here care to take this to task?
It's sorely needed.
Surely not, for the same reason that water could be nothing other than hydrogen dioxide.
You see the difference here... right everyone?
Now, I think Kripke's claim is that all designation requires a designator. Both names and descriptions count. Proper name usage during hypothetical discourse retains our ability to successfully refer by virtue of still being able to pick out the specific individual even though we can stipulate wide ranging circumstances(all of which are descriptions), whereas descriptions can and do change. Thus, proper names are called "rigid designators" on Kripke's view because they always retain the ability to pick out the referent despite stipulating a wide range of different circumstances. He always left room for certain versions of essentialism/elemental basic constituents.
Lecture three seems to begin the long awaited subsequent demarcations...
:wink:
Descriptions consist in describing and categorizing the entity being referred to.
Ostention consists in pointing to or at the entity being referred to.
Designation consist in naming the entity being referred to.
Three distinct functions, of which only ostention can be completely independent of the other two.
Designation relies on ostention and/ or description, depending on the circumstances.
Description also relies on ostention at least, but if ostention is not possible then it relies on designation (which in turn relies on description if ostention is not possible)..
So it would seem that description and designation (of the object itself only, mind) can do without each other when ostention is possible (i.e. when the entity being named or described is present)..
I'm a bit skeptical regarding this use of "necessary". Is Kripke showing and/or arguing that acceptable cases of essentialism can be adequately exhausted, and thus properly accounted for, by possible world semantics or by what we're doing during such hypothetical discourse?
So, reference by designation includes naming but reference by description and/or ostension does not?
Ok.
Seems agreeable enough.
Designation includes naming but ostension and/or description does not. All cases of successful reference are dependent upon one or more of these three 'kinds'.
So, naming is not necessary for successful reference. "Necessary" in the sense of existential dependency which is not determined by how we posit hypotheticals...
Is that what you're claiming?
Of course common naming of kinds and attributes is necessary for description, but proper naming is not.
And as for proper names being rigid designators 'The man who was president of the US at such and such a time and date' is as much a rigid designator as 'Donald Trump' because the latter must be shorthand for ' The man who was named 'Donald Trump' at such and such a time and date.'
There could be many other individuals named 'Donald Trump', so the name alone would not seem to be a rigid designator.
Again, this looks to me like a rejection of intensional meaning in favour of mere extension...
If B is made from A, and C from D, in no possible world is B the very same as C. From a world such that B is made from A, the worlds in which B is made from D are inaccessible.
So given that a Thylacine is a marsupial, the we cannot access any possible worlds in which a Thylacine is a dog.
A notion that is at least worth considering.
that which is sensed by sensation S'; but it is 28º outside; is that hot? It will be 38º in a few hours. The edges are never as clear cut as logicians might wish.
Why would you say that? If you think you found something mistaken in what I had written, that you are responding to with this unhelpful comment, why not instead try to explain clearly in your own words what you think the mistake is? If you can't or won't do that, why should I take you seriously?
But not a priori; we may have found that cats were demons, but we didn't, we found that they are animals. So the possible world demon-cats are not cats.
No point moving to the third lecture if the problems in the first have not been adequately dealt with.
Right, so if you can't adequately deal with the problems of the first, why have you moved on to the third?
If you think what I have been saying is a misrepresentation, based on a misunderstanding, of the first, or any part of Kripke's book, then why not explain just how you think it is so?
You haven't even tried, Banno. I suspect it is because you don't actually have the goods; you just want to make it appear as if you do.
I see it as important that we see this as the overall approach - that Kripke is offering one way to look at how we might use modal language, but not the only one. So if someone wishes to use modal language in a divergent way, let 'em go for it. It might be productive. However for my part Kripke's approach looks promising, in terms of producing a coherent and complete account.
Curious, that you seem to think me under some obligation to you. Our conversation is now just tit-for-tat, and hence rather pointless. I don't see your contributions here as adding anything that was not dealt with in the book, which you admitted earlier to not following. The answers to what you have suggested are all there; or you could look up some secondary literature on Kripke. Sort it out for yourself.
Now that sits well with my own negative attitude towards concepts. It's the use that counts, not some inaccessible mental furniture.
SO while I suspect Kripke is thinking in terms of extension, I'm looking at the same thing in terms of use. Where he sees a need for something like a causal chain to link different instances of a name's being used, I'm lazily happy to say that it's just what we do - how the game is played.
I haven't said, or even implied, that you are "under some obligation" to me. This is a discussion forum that should proceed on the basis of good faith. If you think that I am in error, and you could easily and clearly explain the error, then it would cost you little to do so. But you are obviously under no obligation to do it. It has nothing to do with "tit for tat" either. I am merely being honest in saying that your failure to come up with the goods leads me to believe that you simply don't have them.
As an example, when you say "the answers are all there"; that is your opinion, and it is no use directing me to reread something which I have already found to be bereft of the answers. Reading any text is a matter of interpretation, so if under your interpretation, the answers are there, and you genuinely want to discuss the issues, you should explain just how the answers are there under your interpretation.
If you don't want to, then fine; it's really no loss to me.
I don't think my objection being "spread over a dozen or more pages" is really the issue. I haven't even made direct reference to Kripke's text; or even said i am definitely disagreeing with him. @Pierre seemed to think based on what I had written that Kripke and I are "pretty much on the same page".
You made the effort to comment on this post:
Quoting Janus
implying that rereading of the first lecture would disabuse me of alleged mistakes expressed in the post.
So, all I am saying is that you could have, with probably less words than you have already expended on this exchange between us, clearly and concisely explained what you think is wrong with what I wrote in that post.
But that cannot be done with "Donald Trump".
Further, supposing that "Donald Trump" is shorthand for "The man named Donald Trump at such-and-such a time" is explicitly dealt with several times in N&N. It's what (C) rules out at p.71, and what is discussed at the end of the first lecture. That other people have been named "Donald Trump" does not prevent our conversation being about Donald Trump.
Indexed to actuality, it's necessarily one person. Janus is talking about a situation where it's implied that we mean actually.
Thanks for you response, but I disagree on two counts. First, I am not saying that 'the man who was president of the US at such and such a time and date' necessarily rigidly designates Donald Trump. It does if Donald Trump was indeed president at that time and date.
Second, there could indeed have been a conspiracy such that Donald Trump is not current president, but there could also be a conspiracy such that Donald trump does not exist, and that the figure we know is a CGI.
Yes, I noted that Searle, as quoted, agreed with what I have been saying. Also, I have acknowledged that I am not claiming that I disagree with Kripke, although I would be if he would disagree with Searle and me that definite descriptions may be rigid designators.
After all, they do it in Hollywood.
But it's not possible that Trump not be Trump.
And the view that someone else, who is not Trump, might have the name "Trump" - well, so what?
Nor am I. Seems irrelevant.
SO what?
Detail. Take this back and link it to what I said. Sure, Trump might have been president. But he would remain trump. But no individual is picked out to the exclusion of all others by "President at time T". At best you have the conditional fact that it was Obama; but that's not set in every possible world.
It looks to me as if the notion of a rigid designator has been misunderstood.
Look back at the section on indexicals. We aren't analyzing sentences spoken within possible worlds. We're analyzing sentences with respect to possible worlds.
There is only one actual world. Every true sentence about the stuff in it is necessarily true.
Would Trump be Trump if he didn't exist? As I pointed out there could be a conspiracy such that Trump is a CGI. He is then no more Trump than he is president.
Also I could change the description to something like 'The person who, in this world, was almost universally believed to be president of the US at 10.42 AM EST on December 29 2018'. That would only fail to designate Trump if Trump did not exist; if he was, for example, not a person, but a CGI.
:up:
Necessity is not truth with respect to the actual world. It is truth with respect to all possible worlds (within some restricted domain).
The relevant part is that it designates the man who was president, if indeed there was such a man.
We analyze sentences with respect to possible worlds. A true sentence which is indexed to the actual world is true with respect to every possible world. It's necessarily true and known a posteriori.
The only thing at stake in this conversation is whether "by fiat" a description can be a rigid designator.
But all words are spoken within possible worlds...
As @Snakes Alive points out, that's not right.
I explained above why he's wrong.
No, all words are spoken within the actual world. Other words could have been spoken in possible worlds. There is a difference between actuality and possibility.
So if P in the actual world, then, in any possible world, (P in the actual world)?
Which did Kripke mean?
Yes, whatever is true of the actual world is true of the actual world in all possible worlds. Conversely whatever is stipulated to be true of some possible world is true of that possible world in the actual world and in all other possible worlds.
And as Kripke argued in several places, this is not a case in which Trump is not Trump, but a case in which some other individual has taken on the name "Trump".
Of course: Trump not being Trump is a contradiction. It is not a case where "some other individual has taken on the name 'Trump'", but a case where an individual called 'Trump' is mistakenly thought to exist.
Quoting Janus
does not follow from your argument. After all,
Quoting Janus
Of course it does; it is the world in which all talk of possible worlds is carried out, the world in which possible worlds are stipulated to be as they are. Do you imagine there is a possible world in which people are stipulating what exists in the actual world? Or conversely do you believe that the possible worlds we imagine are stipulated into existence by our imaginings, and become actual worlds for their inhabitants?
Quoting Janus
Yes.
You're picking me up on a mere technicality, an infelicitously expressed thought. I think it is obvious that what I meant is that the CGI is no more Trump than it is president.
So, you beleive that what we experience in the actual world is a result of what people in some possible world have stipulated? And following on from that you believe that the inhabitants of possible worlds that we have imagined experience the actuality of their world just as we do ours?
Otherwise, it just looks like you haven't bothered to read him.
You're reverting back to not saying anything.
Try this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/241441 gives an example of a world you said could not exist:
Quoting Janus
Your reply?
Yet it has something to do with a cat's essential properties?
This is laughable; I have acknowledged that I am not saying Kripke is definitely wrong. I am saying that I, in reading him, have not found satisfactory answers to, for example, why definite descriptions cannot be rigid designators. If he gives such answers, and you have found them, then you should be able to provide the arguments fairly concisely in your own words.
I'm not assuming bad faith, perhaps you simply can't say anything cogent on this issue; your not saying anything would then not necessarily be a case of bad faith.
Imagine a possible world in which, when someone first cut up a cat, it was found to be full of machinery instead of guts.
The consequences?
Are you saying that world actually exists? You agree with David Lewis, then?
I'm not attacking you, Banno. I am simply asking for you to respond to argument with relevant counter-argument; then we might get somewhere.
They might have started cutting up more cats to see if they're all full of machine parts.
The term "Cats" has been found, a posteriori, to refer to a machine. Yes?
You say that they were, in this possible world, cutting up cats. On what basis are you able to say that it was cats that they were cutting up? Is it because they called what they were cutting up 'cats'? Or was it because what they were cutting up looked identical to cats? Or something else?
Maybe. They might also conclude that an animal can have machine parts. Depends.
Quoting Banno
I can imagine a world where that happens.
OK. I don't see how that fits, but let's keep it as moot.
Quoting frank
SO taking that as agreement, lets call this world "Katworld" for convenience.
Every cat in Katworld is a machine. What would the take of Kripke, were he in that world?
Wouldn't he say that, in every possible world, if it is a cat, then it must be a machine?
Yes.
And if it is a necessary fact, for the folk of katworld, that cats are machines, then it is a necessary fact for us that...
Yep. Because...
But for us, the folk of katworld think that cats are machines in every possible world.
So are cats machines or animals?
I'm not going to pursue showing you that you agree with Searle, although I think you do. I want to get to the Puzzle of Belief, so lets move on.
This is where we came in.
SO now we have two possible worlds. In one, the word "Cat" refers to a type of animal, and in every possible world, cats are animals. In the other, the word "Cat" refers to a type of machine, and in every possible world, cats are machines.
Neither world has a special place in the logic of possible worlds.
Or we could follow Kripke and say that the folk of Katworld do not mean the very same thing as we do by "cat".
You choose.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Kripke thought of the actual world as a member of the set of all possible worlds, right? If you're wanting to say Kripke did not recognize actuality as an important concept, you're wrong.
Sure, the actual world is a possible world. And we and Kripke happen to live in the actual world.
What further role do you suppose it might have?
The actual world is an abstract object like possible worlds.
I appreciated it very much.
Because that's the point of this approach to modal logic; to give coherent accounts of modal issues that might otherwise seem intractable. And that's why the detail is so important. And that's why so much of this thread is confabulated mush.
That we're not inside the actual world? The actual world is like a history book. Napoleon isn't really in there.
Yes, tomorrow. I have to go to sleep. Thanks for the discussion!
Not all that clear, eh?
"Loose and inaccurate" statements can be parsed in such a way that the issue is made clear while removing shadows of contradiction.
In the Katworld example, one might be misled to think that a contradiction had been shown. For Katworld folk, that cats are necessarily machines is an posteriori necessity. For us, that cats are necessarily animals is just as discovered, and just as necessary. A too casual philosopher might conclude that there is a contradiction here. But what we have found, on closer examination, is that cats are necessarily animals, while some other thing - we might call them Kats, to make it clear that they are not cats - found in Katworld, is necessarily a machine.
Definite descriptions can be rigid designators, and Kripke acknowledges this. However, ordinary descriptions used in natural languages are typically not.
Where does he acknowledge this in Naming and Necessity? Quite interested.
All possible worlds, according to Kripke, consist of stipulated alternative circumstances. The actual world does not.
Look back in the preface. Should be on page 19.
Also, look back at your Katworld example. Do you notice that it points toward internalism?
The above is about existential dependency. I do not think that you understand what Kripke is getting at. I think that understanding what Kripke is getting at is itself existentially dependent upon drawing and maintaining the distinction between "necessary" as the term is used in modal discourse and something's being necessary for another thing's existence(existential dependency).
I do not think that you're keeping that much in mind.
Quoting Janus
I'm in agreement with the hairy man on this one. I do not think that you've given due attention to the bits of Kripke's lectures that deal with these objections you're levying. I'll attempt to clearly explain this here and now.
Kripke begins these lectures(ignoring the introduction) by pointing out what we're doing when positing possible world scenarios(hypotheticals) while using proper nouns. Kripke notes that these hypothetical scenarios always include usage of the proper noun accompanied by and/or placed into some alternative set of circumstances. He further notes that our doing this does not stop us from knowing who(or what) we're talking about. That's what's going on when positing hypotheticals with proper nouns.
The important - dare I say crucial - consideration here(by my lights anyway) is that that part of Kripke's account is not about hypothetical scenarios. Rather, it's about actual world scenarios and what's going on within them. Thus, a valid objection to that can only be showing otherwise. Kripke uses what's going on in this world when we posit possible world scenarios with proper nouns as justificatory ground. The only objection capable of diminishing the brute strength of Kripke's justificatory ground would be one providing a possible world scenario using a proper noun that shows his account to be in error.
So, as this all pertains to your criticism above...
"The man who was president at such and such a time and date" picks a unique individual out of this world just as well as "Nixon" does. However, the reason your criticism falls flat on it's face here is due to the fact that "the man who was president and such and such a time and date" is not an example of a possible world scenario using a proper noun. That is precisely what grounds Kripke's discourse here.
Furthermore...
Kripke calls both names and descriptions "designators". The difference between "rigid" designators and "non-rigid" designators is that the former retains the ability for successful reference in all possible world scenarios using proper nouns whereas the latter does not.
There is no need to fry the best fish.
:brow:
Kripke's notion of "rigid designator" includes proper nouns used within possible world scenarios, and excludes description used within possible world scenarios. Kripke's ground for that is how we use proper nouns and descriptions within possible world scenarios.
:wink:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Banno
How can I answer it myself when I don't know what you mean by 'cats' in you imaginary scenario. Were they just ordinary domestic cats being cut up? Are there wild cats and big cats in your scenario? Are they also machines? Are there mammals in your scenario which are not machines?
Whether or not they would still be called cats depends on so many details about this "possible world' you have very inadequately imagined!
And you haven't explained what you think the distinction is.
The rest of what you say does nothing to explain why definite descriptions cannot designate rigidly as proper names do. All possible world discourse depends on the actual world because this is where the discourse happens. And this, of course includes naming. So, as I see it possible world discourse does not help that much to illuminate the semantics involved in our practices of ostention, description and designation.
I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but I haven't seen any decent arguments yet. And those who seem to pride themselves on being most familiar with Kripke's thought seem to be unwilling or unable to answer what I understand to be the hard questions, or alternatively to show just why they are not significant questions at all, which is instead merely baldly asserted.
The main point for me is that if definite descriptions can rigidly designate, then the purportedly semantically significant distinction between names and descriptions dissolves.
I'd like to say a bit more here...
What Kripke says about our use of proper nouns and/or descriptions as a means for hypothetical discourse is true. That is what makes it such strong justificatory ground. The strength of justificatory ground is determined(on my view at least) by virtue of it's being true. There is no better standard.
However, I realize that some people may rationally infer that I'm talking about something other than that. I'm not. I'm not commenting upon it's scope.
Well, if this is true then as @Pierre-Normand said earlier, I am not disagreeing with Kripke at all. If this is so it makes my exchanges with @Banno seem puzzling! He has not made it clear (perhaps he cannot) what he thinks I am mistaken about.
I'm going to wait a bit prior to replying to you. I implore you to re-read the post that you're replying to.
At least in the early part of the lectures, Kripke doesn't appear to address hypotheticals, which are events that, for all we know, may happen in the future of this world. Indeed, Kripke tends to only use the word 'hypothetical' in relation to 'hypothetical languages', which is something different altogether. Rather, Kripke is concerned with counterfactuals, which are events that we believe did not happen in this world, such as the loss of the 1968 election by Nixon.
If he were only talking about hypotheticals it would be uncontroversial that we know who we are talking about. For instance, if he were to imagine a world in which Nixon's skeleton is dug up in the year 2020 and put in a museum, there would be no confusion about the skeleton to which he was referring.
But as soon as we move from hypotheticals to counterfactuals, the certainty disappears. Change any thing, however slight, of past events in the world, and statements such as "B did X at time T", where person B is a person that was in our actual world at time T, become uncertain at best, and empty of meaning at worst. What we can say is "imagine a world that was the same as this in every respect and, up to time T has a one-to-one correspondence of objects and events in that world to objects and events in this, except that, at time T, the object in that world that corresponded to the object B in our world at time T, did X instead of the Y that the object in our world did at that time".
I think the term 'imaginary world' is much more appropriate than 'possible world' for such cases, because those worlds are not possible in the sense of being accessible from this one, starting at the time where we are now. We would have to change the past to get there (and doing so generates ambiguity in any reference to an object at a time later than that at which the change is imagined to occur). In contrast, the term 'possible worlds' is fine for hypotheticals, because one can get to such worlds without having to change the past.
I don't agree with this because Nixon (any Nixon) is 'a man called Nixon in this world'. What enables us to pick a particular Nixon out from all the others (apart from being able to recognize his appearance)?
Look Janus...
Offer up a possible world scenario using both proper names and descriptions.
Then we can look to see if what you say about Kripke's position rings true. That offering is the only acceptable form of criticism, for possible world scenarios involving both proper names and descriptions are precisely what Kripke is talking about.
Got one?
Try to come up with one using your own description "the president of the United States at such and such time"...
Show me how we can use it along with a proper name as a means for setting out some possible world in order to see that Kripke is wrong. That would require the definite description maintaining our ability to successfully refer to the referent of the name, in addition to our also seeing that we can change the proper name within possible world scenarios and still successfully pick out the referent.
Another irrelevant comment.
I've told you I don't agree with what you wrote, and why. If you disagree with my reasons for disagreement then explain why, explain just what's wrong with those reasons. Answer the question or tell me why it is a misguided question. It should be as simple as that.
If you can't do that then you're just pissin' in the wind...
Well, I'm going off of what Kripke wrote about stipulating the circumstances thereof. Those can be either true or false with respect to the actual world, whereas counterfactuals cannot be true. So...
You're being a twit.
Quoting Janus
Kripke is talking about possible world scenarios involving both proper names and descriptions.
Agree or disagree?
I'm going to spoon feed you... ok widdle guy?
You can do it.
Typically when you can't offer any cogent response you resort to insult. So, I've lost all interest in this exchange.
:roll:
Anyone can look and judge for themselves what's taken place here.
Kripke is claiming that during possible world discourse using both proper names and descriptions, that we can change the description while retaining the ability for successful reference but we cannot change the proper name while maintaining that ability. There are no examples to the contrary.
It follows from that that we've the strongest possible justificatory ground for concluding that description is not necessary for successful reference within possible world discourse involving both proper names and descriptions.
It says nothing at all about what is or is not necessary for us to begin such possible world discourse(about what it takes to successfully pick the individual out of this world)...
Thus...
You're shooting at the wrong target.
He agrees that both are necessary for picking some objects out of this world. At least, his notion of designator allows for that because it covers both. His notions of being rigid and/or non-rigid are determined by whether or not the designator in question is capable of successful reference without the other within a possible world scenario involving proper names and descriptions after the referent has already been picked out of this world.
That's the best I can do...
Quid pro quo?
I'm ok with that.
Quoting Banno
This one doesn't sit as well...
Help me out, if you would...
:smile:
Wait, I think I understand...
Instead B may have never existed(the B made from A), but rather there is another individual with the same namesake made from something other than A.
What good is that?
Ah! That's the basis of the cats in KatWorld. Cool.
What follows from the fact that we can imagine such things?
What comes after the ellipsis?
So, I'm not sure that his focus was upon counterfactuals exclusively. Rather, I took his notion of possible world scenarios to be one of a much more minimalist criterion, which makes more sense if he aims at gathering all of the different versions that he wants to target 'under one roof', so to speak.
p.18-20 and n.
Seems to me that this is an admonition for philosophers not to make too much of possible worlds. Not to pose "questions whose meaningfulness is not supported by our original intuitions"; not to over-endow their possible worlds. "A practical description of the extent to which the 'counterfactual situation' differs in the relevant way from the actual facts is sufficient".
His target here seems to me to be those who fuss about transworld identification.
So in saying that the "actual world", as used in modal discussion, is not the world around us, he is pointing out that "actual world" here is used as a piece in modal games, no different to any other possible world. Hence when he says "the possible but not actual worlds are not phantom duplicates of the 'world' in this other sense", the other sense is that of a world of "the enormous scattered object that surrounds us".
He's saying that we ought not overcook the cake.
So after that I will maintain two things. Firstly, that the modal world in which we live is no different in ontology* to any other modal world. And secondly, that the modal world in which we live is one of many possible worlds; to think otherwise would be to imply that our world is not possible.
That is, to play modal games we just pretend that our world is one of many possible worlds.
(*Edit: that's going to be misread. Someone will say "but the actual world has a completely different ontology - it's real!" - or some such. Yes, it does. Perhaps it will help to imagine folk in some possible world thinking "damn, wish we were in the actual world, instead of just a possible world...")
I think that there's actually much to be uncovered by virtue of our teasing out some nuance here. Particularly, there's much packed up into the notion of "alternative circumstances"...
You've skirted around it...
Quoting andrewk
I have a problem with this notion of counterfactual. I argued several pages back strongly against it. Events that we believe did not happen in this world are not always counter to fact. They are always counter to belief.
It is also the case that we stipulate circumstances that we do believe to be true of this world within possible world scenarios.
My cat goes missing in the actual world...
We think through all the different circumstances that could have caused that event. Each set of alternative circumstances constitutes being it's own possible world if all possible worlds consist of stipulated circumstances. The one we believe may or may not be true. Whether or not it is so is not determined by our belief. Rather, it is determined by the actual events.
Yep.
Ooooh... :yikes:
Hmmmm...
That doesn't seem to follow from anything I've read thus far...
That's not as frightening a claim...
So, if you start describing a possible world scenario involving someone called 'Donald Trump', how do I know which Donald Trump (assuming there are more than one) you are referring to without the benefit of any definite description?
What you say seems, on the face of it at least, to be self-contradictory. You seem to be saying that description is not necessary for discourse involving both proper names and description. How can I make sense of such a statement?
Making sense of what I said first requires at least an accurate account thereof. Start there. I'm not interested in defending your misrepresentation of what I said to you...
Kripke is talking about possible world scenarios involving both proper names and descriptions.
Agree?
Why must it be so difficult? All I said was that what you wrote, as far as I can tell, offers no reason to believe that possible world discourse can do without descriptions, definite and otherwise. It also offers no reason that I have been able to glean, as to why we should believe that definite descriptions cannot be rigid designators. I had thought that you wanted to disagree with me on these two points.
But I don't find it easy to tell exactly what you are trying to say in most of what you write, so I could have misinterpreted. If I have not misinterpreted, and you do indeed want to disagree on these two points then I am mostly interested in your reasons for disagreement, although it would also be interesting to hear whether, according to your interpretation of him, Kripke would want to agree or disagree with both those points, and what his argument, according to you, would be for such disagreement.
I don't wish to be needlessly blunt, but if you don't give me one of the two things, then I am not interested in further conversation with you. On the other hand, if you don't disagree with either of those, then we have nothing further to talk about, and we have been arguing about nothing for quite some time now! (Or at least, I have been presenting reasons and arguments in favour of what I had thought you were disagreeing with, and you have been offering explanations, asking me questions, and asking me to provide stuff, none of which I have been able to discern the relevance of, or sometimes even what exactly you are wanting to argue against, to argue for or to explain).
I gave you an account of what I thought you were saying. I also told you I disagreed with what I thought you were claiming and why I disagreed with it. In any case, If you are not prepared to correct my account (if it is wrong), then forget it; it's fine by me!
"This [lectern] looks like wood. It does not feel cold and it probably would if it were made of ice. Here my entire judgement is a posteriori … but one knows by a priori philosophical analysis … [if] the table is not made of ice it is necessarily not made of ice … we know by empirical investigation that … this table is not made of ice. We can conclude by modus ponens that it is necessary that the table not be made of ice, and this conclusion is known a posteriori, since one of the premisses on which it is based is a posteriori."
-Identity and Necessity
I've not claimed that possible world discourse 'can do without' descriptions, definite or otherwise(whatever the hell that's supposed to mean).
In thus snippet, Kripke isnt talking about a kind, nor a proper name whose meaning emerged from a chain of events. This is a particular lectern. Surely the conclusions Kripke draws about its essential features would be shared by the majority, but thats not the source of his conclusions (community consensus). One knows a priori that if it's not made of ice, its necessarily not made of ice.
So answer this: if the lectern has a dent from being hit by a hammer, why don't we also know a priori that if it has that dent, it necessarily has it? Why wouldn't that be part of the connotations of 'that lectern'? Quine says it can be. Why is Quine wrong?
The dent isn't an essential part of the lectern is it? It's not made of a dent. The dent does, however, help us to refer to it as opposed to other lecterns which are made of the same stuff.
With regard to Kripke's approach we could imagine that lectern without the dent, but we cannot imagine that lectern made of ice?
Good questions.
Is there some special pleading happening?
As far as I can tell, all this says is that ice and wood have different attributes. The different attributes are known a posteriori. And if ice and wood are to have different attributes then it is necessary thst they have different attributes.
If B is made from A, and C from D, in no possible world is B the very same as C. From a world such that B is made from A, the worlds in which B is made from D are inaccessible.
For Kripke, it's the "made from" that is missing from the table that was bruised with a hammer; hence it's the same table. But a table made from ice would be a different individual.
What Kripke objects to is Quine's conclusion that there can't be contextless essential properties. He appeals to common sense.
That's just plain wrong.
I'm merely pointing out the fact that all knowledge of elemental constituents(that something is an elemental constituent) depends upon naming practices(language, context, etc.) whereas the existence of elemental constituents does not always.
The overlap(the elemental constituents that are existentially dependent upon language) has not been properly taken into account here. Doesn't look like it can be given the frameworks in use.
That would be essential to successful reference, not essential to it's existence...
Can we substitute here?
Necessary for successful reference, and not necessary for it's existence?
Seems we can... the dent is necessary for successfully referring to that desk(for picking it out uniquely amongst others alike it in all the other ways noticeable), but is not necessary for the existence of that desk.
As a result of their being known a priori?
Quoting creativesoul
OK, so do you think "successful reference" in possible world discourse can do without definite descriptions, even though the discourse itself cannot? What would be left of any discourse, 'possible world' or otherwise, without successful reference, I wonder?
Speaking in terms of "do without" cannot take account of what I'm saying.
So , according to you, what's the difference between something being "not necessary" for something else, and that something else being able to 'do without it'?
What's known a priori is that if the table is made of wood, then it's wood necessarily.
You have to look at the table to tell what it's made of.
OK, so do you think definite descriptions are not necessary to "successful reference" in possible world discourse, even though necessary to the discourse itself? What would be left of any discourse, 'possible world' or otherwise, without successful reference, I wonder?
That's one part of all this that makes me cringe, the notions of a posteriori and a priori.
Well, that's much closer...
Definite descriptions are not a necessary part of successful reference within possible world scenarios. Definite descriptions are not a necessary part of successful reference in the actual world.
If that were true, then you should be able to outline a simple scenario without resorting to any definite description that is in need of no further elaboration to be exhaustively referentially comprehensible,
Rather, I should be able to outline two scenarios(examples of successful reference), one in the actual world, and one possible world scenario where definite description is not actually being used in(is not a part of) either.
That's been done already several times over...
Which says nothing more than if the table were made out of something else, it would be a different table.
Nothing all that profound or mysterious.
Yes, if what you say is true, you should; so....in order to substantiate the truth of what you are saying...start outlining...
Quoting Banno
That's right "nothing at all profound or mysterious" but rather, as I expected, "much ado about nothing"...
I thought you were confident earlier that Nixon could have been a golf ball. What persuades you otherwise?
Why ought I?
There have been more than enough examples here in the thread and in the lectures which satisfy those conditions. I've drawn my conclusions based upon those. Do you not see that?
Point to one of those, then...or I will assume that you cannot back up what you have been claiming.
But remember the specific point being made in that conversation was that "What if Nixon were a golf ball" is about Nixon.
But I have some concerns still with the idea of an essence. For Kripke one part of essence is to do with whaat an individual is made from. It occurs to me that someone might dig up his corpse and rubberise it... Would he then be a golf ball?
Why? First of all, I'm not confident that you even know what I'm saying. Therefore, offering an example which proves the point(and they most certainly do) wouldn't be rightly understood to begin with. Second of all, I'm not even sure of what you're asking me to do, but I'm almost certain that your request is grounded upon the earlier confusion that I already remarked upon, and have posted several different times elaborating upon it. You know, that bit about the distinction I accused you of neglecting and you subsequently accused me of not having made it clear to start with. Here's our big chance!
So, to help clarify all of this, I ask you to answer a question regarding the following snippet of your request...
Quoting Janus
To avoid any possible further misunderstanding as a result of the ambiguous language use in the above quote...
Are you claiming that I should be able to outline a simple scenario without resorting to any definitive description, because that's precisely what was written? Seems that at face value your expressing your opinion about what my(or 'the') ability to outline takes. The steps I must take(what's necessary for me) to outline cases of successful reference that do not include definitive description are utterly irrelevant to whether or not there are cases of successful reference that do not include definitive description.
My ability to outline the two scenarios for you is necessarily dependent upon definitive descriptions. So, I cannot outline without resorting(using?) to any definite description. Now, the astute reader will realize and certainly agree that it does not follow from that that definitive descriptions are a necessary part of the scenarios themselves, unless one conflates what's necessary for my outline with what's necessary for what's being outlined. That - of course - is absurd.
To quite the contrary, if my account is true, it will consist of true descriptions about actual cases of successful reference that do not include definitive descriptions. So, when you say that I should be able to outline a simple scenario without resorting to any definitive description, are you talking about what my outline necessarily requires?
:worry:
Quine continued to deny Kripke's contextless essentials. Kripke saw Quine as defying common sense. Surely Nixon couldn't have been a month of the year. He couldn't have been a number.
My common sense is silent on the issue of Nixon's rubberized corpse. Even if you squashed it with a hydraulic press, it would still be too big to play golf with. Curling maybe?
You write so much to say so little!
Just answer the question...
When you say that I should be able to outline a simple scenario without resorting to any definitive description, are you talking about what my outline necessarily requires?
OK, golf balls...
Aren't you two at all concerned about where the consequences are leading?
I actually think that Janus fails to meaningfully draw and maintain the distinction between what our report of cases of successful reference takes(what's necessary for those reports) with what certain cases of successful reference takes(what's necessary for certain cases of successful reference). That seems to be a consistent oversight of his expressions here.
I think Kripke kept that in mind.
Well, I'm not so sure that the consequences of Kripke's take on what counts as essential parts are unacceptable. However, it does seem to be a possible case of special pleading for it does not allow one to stipulate circumstances within a possible world that are contrary to those concerning the essential parts, but he does allow a broad range change of circumstances involving people and proper names.
Then it should take far less effort to produce such an outline than it does to keep giving excuses for why you won't.
I've been asking the same questions from the start, have received no cogent or relevant answers to them, or explanations laying out why they are not relevant questions.
Kripke developed a complete semantics for formal modal logic. In N&N he is examining its implications for a workable grammar for modal statements in English. This had been such an intractable issue that it had pretty much been rejected as hopeless by most analytic philosophers - Quine and Russel as cases in point.
But for at least a very large number of modal sentences in English, Kripke has shown how to parse them in a consistent, coherent fashion.
One of the costs involved is that individuals are more fixed than was thought, across our modal musings. Specifically, a proper name fixes one individual across all accessible possible worlds in which that individual exists. An implication of this is that, since a definite description that fixes an individual in the actual world might turn out to be false, or be stipulated to be false, then the theory that the meaning of a name is given by an associated description is bunk.
Rather, in so far as the referent of a proper name is fixed at all, it is by what Kripke calls causal chains, but what I might call shared use.
This analysis can also be applied to kinds. Considered extensionally that seems reasonable to me. If "Dog A" refers to a placental mammal, as does "Dog B" and "Dog C" and so on, so that we conclude that all dogs are placental mammal, we also conclude that being a dog involves being a placental mammal. SO something we come across that is dog-like but not a placental mammal, ought not be considered as a dog - the Thylacine being a case in point. The extension of "Dog" includes only placental mammals, in all accessible possible worlds.
It seems to me that it is the notion of accessibility that pushes this point. In our world, dogs and Thylacines evolved quite separately, so that their common ancestor was neither dog nor thylacine. So the possibility of both dog and thylacine lies open - is accessible - to that common ancestor. But since both developed along quite distinct evolutionary lines, it is no longer possible for a dog to become a thylacine, or vice versa. The two lines have split forever.
Note that this is nothing more than a grammatical stipulation. It remains (perhaps) possible for a scientist to take a dog and modify it genetically so that it has the attributes of a marsupial. Such a creature would not be a thylacine, indeed, it would not be a marsupial, since it did not evolve from other marsupials. At best it would be a marsupial-like creature.
Such esoteric considerations probably will interest no one else but philosophers.
It seems to me that all that is being offered is a grammar that might help us avoid some confusion. The philosophical tool being used here is to ask, when modal musings start to look confused, if we are better off talking about distinct individuals, or distinct kinds.
Should we accept this grammar? SO long as it helps, why not?
OK, let's try again. I just summarised in my own terms. What do you see are problematic here?
Just answer the question...
When you say that I should be able to produce an outline of a simple scenario without resorting to any definitive description, are you talking about what my outline necessarily requires?
Yes.
Quoting Janus
Then you're aiming at the wrong target.
This bears repeating:One can easily outline cases of successful reference that do not include definite description; one cannot outline cases of successful reference that do not include definite description without one using definite description. You're asking me to describe cases of successful reference that do not include definite description without using definite description as a means of proving that definite description is not a necessary part of successful reference.
What an account of those cases necessarily requires is not equivalent to what those cases necessarily require.<--------That is what you're conflating.
The proof that definite description is not a necessary part of successful reference are cases of successful reference by false description. My own case in point was Jane.
My ability to outline the two scenarios for you is necessarily dependent upon definitive descriptions. So, I cannot outline without resorting(using?) to any definite description. Now, the astute reader will realize and certainly agree that it does not follow from that that definitive descriptions are a necessary part of the scenarios themselves, unless one conflates what's necessary for my outline with what's necessary for what's being outlined. That - of course - is absurd.
:yikes:
Turns out that what was said was not so 'little' after all...
If you can refer to someone with a false description, then you must know something true about them. Remember that for you to "refer successfully" is for someone else to know who (or what) you are referring to.
If I construct a counterfactual scenario involving a man named Trump, how would you know which man I am referring to?
What I have been claiming is that you would need to see the man; in person or a photo, or I would need to tell you some stories about the actual man. Stories involve descriptions, which are definite or not depending on how precisely they are specified.
On the other hand if the 'person' in the counterfactual scenario is a fictional character, then I would not be referring to any actual person, but rather constructing a fictional one.
Quoting creativesoul
Are you merely saying that the account is not the actuality? Well, of course that is trivially true, pre-discursive actuality does not consist in descriptions, designations or ostentions, whether definite, rigid or otherwise. I don't think bringing ontology into what is meant to be an analysis of semantics will be helpful at all.
Thales is the chap who thought all was water.
Suppose that he never thought anything so silly.
After all, there are so few references to him, and they come in the main from his critics.
Suppose he never fell into a hole while looking a the stars.
Suppose that nothing we know about Thales is correct.
Now, who is this post about?
Seems to me that it is about Thales. And that despite our not knowing anything about him.
I don't see that a proper name, by itself, "fixes one individual....". If I set up a counterfactual scenario involving a man named 'Donald Trump' how will you know which man I am referring to if you don't know Donald Trump personally, or at least know who he is?
It is perhaps true that any particular definite description of Donald Trump could turn out to be false. But all of them could not be (given that the character we know as Donald Trump is not a CGI, as per the example I gave earlier).
The other problem is that if I just start talking about someone named Donald Trump outside of any pre-established context, you might assume that I am speaking about the most renowned Donald Trump who is best known as the current POTUS, whereas I might be talking about another Donald Trump who was born a woman, but underwent a sex-change.
So, consider these alternative questions about counterfactual scenarios:
What if Donald Trump had not been POTUS?
What if Donald Trump had not been born a woman?
How do you know which Donald Trump I refer to in each case? I say you know because each implies a description.
In the first case the implied description is that Donald Trump was the POTUS; and this description is a definite description if no other man named 'Donald Trump' was ever president.
In the second case the implied description is that Donald Trump was born a woman, and again this is a definite description if not other person named 'Donald trump' was ever born a woman.
(BTW, I am not denying that they could turn out to be the same person).
I don't even know what it could mean to say that "the meaning of a name is given by an associated description". Names have references, not meanings. The references of names are determined by descriptions as I believe I showed in the examples above.
Anyway, I have provided this in good faith. I'm happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood something, but please don't just keep saying that I have not understood, and directing me to read Kripke again. Instead explain in you own words and with counterexamples just where you think I am going wrong. If you can't or won't do that then that would seem to indicate the end of the discussion.
Well of course that is trivially true just as what we say about fictional characters is about them. But what you say about Thales does not refer to anyone, if such a person never existed. And what could it possibly mean to say that Thales did exist, even though every definite description of him is false?
Every description could not be false; it must be the case at minimum that there was a man who was named Thales about whom many stories abound but nothing is known other than that he lived in some more or less definite area at some more or less definite time. That he lived in a certain place at a certain time is a description just as is that he was named 'Thales'. If even those descriptions were false, then it could not mean anything to say that Thales had actually existed.
But he did exist.
Quoting Janus
That's not difficult. There was a chap named Thales, who people told lies about. And this is a story about Thales, despite our not having definite description of him.
Quoting Janus
But that's just a bald assertion. Everything we know about Thales might be wrong. There's nothing impossible about that. And yet, the sentence "Everything we know about Thales is wrong" is about Thales.
Quoting Janus
...and that contradicts your theory, because it is about Thales, and yet we have no definite description of him.
Quoting Janus
But crucially, not a definite description. It does not single him out, at least not without the circularity of "Thales" is the man named Thales.
Quoting Janus
Again, you are asserting this without argument.
It seems, piecing it together, that you want to assert that if we know nothing about Thales, then we have no reason to think that he exists. But of course, we have no reason to think that he did not exist, despite our not being correct about anything we know about him
Same goes for Job, Noah, Jonah, and so on. That what we think we know about them might be false, simple does not imply that they do not exist.
And in the end, if you continue to insist that it does, you are just wrong.
"...across all possible worlds". Quoting Janus
You've let "know" creep in here. What's it doing? If you set up a counterfactual scenario involving a man named 'Donald Trump', then it is about the Donald Trump to whom you refer. That I don't know him does not change that.
See the Thales example.
Hell, even the sentence "everything we know about Trump is false" is about Trump...
And in that case I would have misunderstood you. But that does not mean that "Trump" could not refer to Trump. Insofar as you have moved from description to context, we are not far from the same page. But what does not follow is that the context must involve a definite description.
Another example. Someone with no knowledge of US politics overhears a conversation about Trump. They ask "Who is this 'Trump' person?". Who is their question about, if not Trump. And this, despite their not having an available definite description.
He may not have existed. In any case, if he did exist, and if everything else we know about him is false, then we have no idea who we are referring to. Just to say 'we refer to Thales' is nothing more than an empty tautology in that case, as far as I can tell. Also, would you not need to know at least approximately when and where he was born to make a purported reference to a purported Thales valid?
Quoting Banno
But it's not about a man named 'Trump' if such a man never existed.
Quoting Banno
It seems to me that at the very least I must know who I refer to, or else it is meaningless to say that I refer to someone. Would it be possible for me to know who I refer to, even if no one else does?
Quoting Banno
Thales could be a fictional character in that case. "There was a chap names Thales" is a description, and a definite one if there were no other men named Thales; I'm surprised you apparently can't see that.
Quoting Banno
But it doesn't contradict what I have been saying, because that there was a man named Thales about whom many stories abound, and who lived in Ancient Greece and was a philosopher is a definite description that refers rigidly if there was no other man named Thales etc. If there was another then how would we know who we refer to if not by means of some other distinguishing description? And it's always the case that it is possible that historical figures are mythological; and that when we speak about Thales we are not referring to any actual previously existing person.
Quoting Banno
As I've said repeatedly, it's not as if any one description can infallibly single out an individual, unless we posit that the person was the only one to whom the description applies, but then any such position cannot be infallible. Usually it's a constellation of descriptions, which are more or less definite depending on how precisely the time and locations involved in the description are specified.
Quoting Banno
If nothing we think about Thales is true, then what could it mean to say that Thales existed? In the case that nothing we think is true is true, and there was no man named Thales who lived at the time and in the place we think there was a man named Thales, because that description is false, who is it that we could be saying existed if even that most minimal description were false?
So. I'm not simply "insisting" I'm giving reasons for why I think it would be meaningless to say that a man existed about whom everything we think we know is wrong, even that he lived in a certain place and time and was called Thales. If you want to counter that assertion then you need to tell us why it would be meaningful to say such a man existed.
Perhaps. But not all descriptions are definite descriptions. Context will be sufficient to differentiate the two without any definite description.
One of the issues hereabouts is a failure to differentiate clearly between descriptions and definite descriptions.
Yeah, I don't know what else to say, so I'll take a stab at showing you where our positions diverge. It is worth noting that that divergence is largely as a result of my participation here.
Definite descriptions are not a necessary part of successful reference within possible world scenarios. Definite descriptions are not a necessary part of successful reference in the actual world.
The examples of successful reference by false description are too numerous to deny. Those are actual examples. So, the above two statements follow from actual cases. That's worth mention as well.
So, if one holds that definite description is necessary for all reference, then one has an inherent problem taking account of actual examples of successful reference that do not include definite description. That's where you find yourself, and it's where I found myself as well... struggling as a result of attempting to use an inherently inadequate framework. It quite simply is found to be sorely lacking in explanatory power.
The problem is resolved by virtue of making the framework amenable to the facts(the actual cases of successful description by false definition).
Well done Banno. You proved my argument better than I could have.
You are right to point out the conflation of true/false descriptions. Definite ones must be true, if I understand correctly.
This.
You think that names do not have meanings, but that the reference is determined by a description.
Then that description gives the meaning of the name, doesn't it? That's the view of Russel, Searle and so on. Your view here is quite unclear.
Which example? There have been so many.
As I've said from the start I don't think that an infallible distinction can be made between indefinite descriptions and definite descriptions, and my argument has been that descriptions are more or less definite depending on how precisely they are specified.
To say that Trump was POTUS is not a definite description. To say that he was POTUS at some specific time is a definite description and a true one if no other person was also president at that time. To say that he was called Trump and was president is also a true definite description if no other man named Trump has ever been president.
Here's the trouble. An hour spent responding to you. And now there are four more replies to deal with.
Philosophy is detailed. Seurat did not pain with a roller.
No, I don't believe that a description that determines the referent of a name "gives the meaning of the name" because there could be countless other descriptions that also determine the referent of that name.
So, I haven't been claiming that any description uniquely determines the referent of a name, although of course it could determine the unique referent of the name, which is a different thing.
Well, no, we are clearly referring to Thales. Who is it, about whom we know nothing? Thales.
Now I find that utterly convincing.
Edit: for the sake of keeping the discussion on track, let's follow this argument in more detail. What do you think?
What replies are you referring to? All the replies I have made are dealing with the same basic issue; if I have repeated myself it is only for emphasis; there is no need for you to reply to repeated points is you have addressed the point once. That would be the proper pointillist technique, each point should convey some new information, if it is to warrant a response.
But you are under no obligation to respond. If you don't find it interesting or you can't be bothered, then I'm happy to let it go. But I will not admit that you have adequately responded if I don't believe you have.
The meaning of your paragraph remains oddly opaque.
Which Thales are we referring to then, if nothing we think we know about him is true? Or if there were a hundred Thales living in Greece at the time; which one are you referring to then? I'll find it "utterly convincing" when you can tell me which one without using any descriptions.
There were some typos and infelicities of expression. I've tidied it up. Here it is again:
No, I don't believe that a description that determines the referent of a name "gives the meaning of the name" because there could be countless other descriptions that also determine the referent of that name.
So, I haven't been claiming that any description uniquely determines the referent of a name, although of course it could determine the unique referent of the name, which is a different thing.
If there is anything in there you don't understand all you need to do is ask.
Well, even those are descriptions. And of course we are talking about a man called Thales, who is reputed to have lived in Miletus around 600 BC, and to have been a philosopher. Now, if there was such a man as fits that description then we are talking about an actual person, but if there was no man who fits that description then we are talking about a fictional character.
This seems unproblematic and perfectly in accordance with ordinary usage, as far as I can tell.
I see no reason why any description, whether definite or not, could not be true or false.
I thought it was by definition that definite descriptions must be true.
Janus seems focused upon what's necessary for us to take an account of successfully referring to Thales by false description, whereas Banno is just pointing to the fact that we're referring to Thales by false description.
Two different targets.
But not definite descriptions. They do not serve to single out one individual. But "Thales" might.
Hence the importance of differentiating a definite description from just any description.
Quoting Janus
So it might be worth your setting this out in more detail.
I can't see why. I can say something false about someone that could not apply to anyone else. Of course there must be something true in the description, but it need not be wholly true.
I mean the point is not that definite descriptions must be true, but that they are definite if they don't apply to anyone else.
So, as an example, if I said 'Donald Trump's penis is the smallest in the world', that may or may not be a true definite description, but it could not apply to anyone else (not named Donald Trump).
Then what grounds your objections to the actual cases of successful reference by false description?
I don't see any real distinction. I don't think Banno admits that we refer to Thales by description, whether true or false, definite or indefinite, but claims that we refer to Thales merely by name. Of course, I admit that in a purely formal sense this is true, just as it is with fictional characters. But I see this formal truth as a trivial truth; it doesn't tell us anything interesting about our practices.
You missed the part where I said that here must be something true in the description.
Then that's not a case I'm talking about. There are numerous ones where there is nothing true in the description and yet successful reference happens anyway.
I think we are talking about two different things. I have said that a definite description does not need to be wholly true to refer uniquely to someone. I think the question about whether successful reference is possible by false description is related, and as I have already said, I am not convinced that it is possible without the person referring knowing something true about the person being referred to, even if that is nothing more than knowing what they look like
Quoting Banno
But they are definite descriptions if they determine which Thales we are referring to, which you seemed to be claiming that they do, when you used them to specify which Thales we have been referring to.
I have been thinking that it is not really the name 'Thales' which is a rigid designator, but rather something like 'that man'. Which man? 'The man called Thales who.....'
Interestingly, 'The man called Thales' is a description but not a definite one, until you specify exactly when and where he was first dubbed 'Thales', and/or add other identifying descriptions about him and his doings.
I find that examples like these highlight the inadequacy of trying to analyse parts of speech rather than entire speech acts, and that approaching it correctly (according to me) provides both a defence and a criticism of Kripke's approach. A defence, because some of his examples of how he sees his theory working, that appear nonsensical to many, can be made sensible when analysed as part of a complete speech act, and a criticism because the examples he uses to attempt to demonstrate the inadequacy of descriptivism also rely on analysing a reference out of the context of the speech act in which it occurs.
Consider the first of the two above counterfactuals. We can remove all ambiguity by placing the question in the context of a speech act. For instance:
'I wonder what Donald Trump would have done if he had lost the 2016 presidential election. Would he have tried to incite civil unrest, claiming electoral fraud? Would he have gracefully departed the political scene? Would he have turned back to his business activities with renewed energy or would he have retired to live a life of seclusion and contemplation?
It is clear from the context provided by the full speech act that we are talking about the person that was the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election. The definite description 'the person that was the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election' picks out a single person in this world and is then used to contemplate possible worlds that split from this at some point between the Republican nomination of Trump in mid-2016 and the declaration of the election result in late 2016.
For the second one, a containing speech act might be:
'I wonder whether, if Donald Trump's parents' fourth child had been a girl, they would have continued to have children in the hope of having a second boy.'
Here, a definite description picks out the parents as those that are, in this world, the parents of Donald Trump. It then considers possible worlds that split from this at some time between the birth of that couple's third child and the naming of their fourth child. There is no doubt about which couple we are referring to, and the subject of the 'had been born' part is the fourth child of that couple.
I am confident that, if we reject analysis of references out of the context of a speech act as invalid, much of the metaphysical gymnastics that goes on in philosophy of language is shown to be just an entertaining diversion involving moving words around into new configurations.
The basic principle in such counterfactuals is to use the reference part of the speech act to pick a unique object in this world (the 2016 Republican candidate and Donald Trump's parents, in the above two examples) and then to consider possible worlds that split from this at some time after the entry of that object into that world. We then evaluate the question in relation to that object, or items that relate to it.
I am confident that this process can even work for the 'If Nixon were a golf ball' example but I'll leave it up to someone else to come up with a complete speech act in which that counterfactual is contemplated. If the speech act is complete enough to be understood by an ordinary person, it will point to a path for uniquely identifying the object it is concerned with.
PS Unless I've missed a post, the above discussion of references to Thales gets nowhere because it does not discuss speech acts that contain references to Thales. Discussion of references in the absence of their containing speech act cannot lead to any useful and valid conclusion. I am (fairly) confident that, if someone were to put forward an example complete speech act containing such a reference, it would be easily resolved in any of the situations discussed (1. Thales existed and did what we are told he did. 2. Thales existed but did only some of those things. 3. Thales existed but did none of those things. 4. There was no Thales).
Well, if there is only one individual that satisfies some given description, then that is a definite description. Do you agree?
My point is that there need be no such thing for us to talk about Thales. Indeed, the sentence "There is no definite description that singles out Thales" is itself about Thales. It's the very same person that Aristotle described, incorrectly.
Quoting Janus
No, it's the name that is a rigid designator. Again, a rigid designator has as its referent the very same individual in any possible world in which that individual exists. The rigid designator is not the individual, but the reference - the name.
Quoting Janus
But "The man called Thales" is never a definite description, since there may be - indeed, are, - other folk named Thales.
And it is plane that we can talk about Thales despite not knowing anything of his dubbing, or any other definite descriptions of his life and times.
SO it seems to me that this line of reasoning is off track.
Quoting Banno
Quoting andrewk
Actually my example was 'What if Donald Trump had not been born a women" , and the point was to show that there is an implicit description, something like; "Donald Trump, although now identified as man, was born a woman" which would show, given that we have no evidence that the current POTUS has had a sex change, that another Donald trump is being spoken about.
But I do agree with what you say about contextuality. I have referred to that as 'networks of description'; they are both explicit and implicit, but nonetheless essential, in our discourses, because without them there would be no context, just names without referents floating around in the void.
Oh, sorry. I thought the 'not' was a typo and removed it in a misguided attempt to be charitable. The sex change possibility (or it could just be a woman posing as a man) provides grounds for another useful example. We consider the complete speech act:
"I wonder whether, if Donald Trump had not been born a woman, he would have made that appalling comment about 'grabbing by the pussy'"
The reference is fixed in this world by the implied DD that Trump is POTUS. The context of the speech act is that the speaker believes Trump was born a woman and either has had a sex change or is impersonating a man. The possible worlds being considered are those that split from this one at some time between the birth of the current POTUS and the time Trump made that revolting comment. Given the speaker's beliefs, it seems reasonable that they hypothesise that the comment was made in order to bolster Trump's credentials as a man, in order to head off inquiries that might reveal Trump's sex at birth - since either a sex change or transvestitism would be a liability to a presidential candidate in a conservative country like the US.
Again, analysis of the complete speech act, rather than a fragment thereof, dispels all ambiguity.
But again the obvious question to "There is no definite description that singles out Thales" is (unless you know by description who Thales is) 'Who is Thales', which translates as 'But which man exactly does this single out?' It's interesting that you add the description "it's the very same person that Aristotle described, incorrectly". This description may or may not be a definite description, because Socrates may have misdescribed more than one person, and even if you add 'called Thales' to 'the very same person' Socrates may have misdescribed more than one Thales.
Quoting Banno
Again, I disagree. 'That man' is a truly rigid designator because (in usage as opposed to principle) it can only refer to one man, whereas multiple men might have been called 'Thales'. I understand that it is not the individual who is the rigid designator; of course not, because the individual is the rigidly designated
.
That's a nice imaginative extrapolation of the example!
It's been interesting, but gotta go!
Around and around. Who is the question 'Who is Thales' about?
It's about Thales.
This, despite the fact that the person asking the question cannot give a definite description that singles out Thales.
Therefore, one does not need a description that singles out an individual to the exclusion of all others, in order to refer to that individual.
Well, I don't interpret it that way: I say the question "Who is Thales" is equivalent to the question "Which individual does the name Thales (in this particular case) refer to?"
And this question may be answered by pointing, showing a photograph or describing the characteristics, actions and life events of the individual being referred to.
To say that the name 'Thales' refers to Thales is to tell me nothing; it's merely a tautology.
But if I were to answer that Thales is a Disney character, would that answer your question? No, you want to know who Thales was, so not just any answer will do.
So the word “Thales “ is not empty. Rather it already has a roll in the conversation- or speech act, as @Andrew called it.
And it has this roll despite there being no definite description available.
We were. Much of that is on my part as well... My apologies.
The answer that Thales is a Disney character would do if Thales was a Disney character. I don't know where you are going with this.
I agree that 'Thales' is not, in the case that the name is being used to refer to the famous Presocratic philosopher, merely an empty placeholder; it does indeed have a role in the conversation or speech-act in those kinds of cases.
But it has this role only because people know who Thales was (or at least is thought to have been) on account of the stories they have read that describe what is known (or thought to be known) about the purportedly having-existed individual called 'Thales'. So there are definite descriptions available (and that are implicit in all our discourse about Thales) and the fact that some of them may be apocryphal is not problematic for our talk about Thales. Only in the extreme case that there never was any such person would our talk fail to refer to any actual individual.
I can't see any problems, paradoxes or mysteries associated with this account.
Yes, likewise.creativesoul, as they say "it takes two to tango", and I admit that I can jump to conclusions, be impatient and rude sometimes.
Then you agree that when it was asked "Who is Thales?", the question was about Thales. So the questioner made reference to Thales without themselves being able to provide a definite description.
That is, it is possible to refer without having access to a definite description.
Now you say there must be a definite description which is somehow remote form the speakers: Quoting Janus
And if all of these descriptions of Thales are all of them wrong, but there was such a person? Then no one in the conversation can produce a definite description of Thales. And yet, again, the conversation is about Thales.
"But there must be some sort of chain of conversation back to Thales..."
...and now you would be agreeing with Kripke. That chain does not require that definite descriptions be available in order to talk about Thales.
Ah I wasn't worried about anything like that. That stuff is nearly inevitable. I just realized that my own analysis here was treating false descriptions as though they could not be definite descriptions, and that that seemed to be a large part of our misunderstanding.
That problem was on my end...
Well, if a conversation is about Thales,the famous Presocratic philosopher, then right there is a definite description of who the conversation is about.
In a merely tautologous sense a conversation about Thales is about Thales, just as a conversation about Humpty Dumpty is about Humpty Dumpty, or a conversation about Baktrianwartweasel is about Baktrianwartweasel. Is that all you want to claim?
In any such conversation of course a novice who is asking 'Who is X?' is asking for the definite descriptions they lack due to not knowing who X is. This seems trivially obvious to me.
Quoting Banno
If every description of Thales were completely wrong, including that there was such a person living where and when we thought Thales lived and who was involved with philosophy, then what could it mean to say that there was such a person? Or alternately, what if there were a hundred Thales that had lived in Ancient Greece, but none of them ever had anything to do with philosophy?
These kinds of questions seem to make any claim beyond your merely tautologous sense in which talk about Thales is about Thales incoherent if the function of descriptions that determine who Thales was (or is reputed to have been) in any "Chain of conversation back to Thales" is denied.
Oh, OK, I see what you mean now. :smile:
Yeah you and Banno are talking about different things as well.
He's pointing out that the questioner successfully refers to Thales without themselves being able to provide a definite description. That is, he's pointing out what's not included in that case of successful reference. It does not include a definite description. Thus, not all cases of successful reference include definite description.
You're pointing out what's included in a completely different scenario.
I don't see it that way. As I said, in asking "who is Thales?" the questioner is assuming that there is a definite description of just who he is, and is asking for it.
Think about it, if you don't know who is being spoken of in a conversation, how could those who do know (or purport to know) answer your question about who is being spoken of without giving any definite descriptions?
All questioners asking that??? Some perhaps could be. Definitely not all. You're assuming precisely what's at issue here. Seems that all definitely assume that the person they are asking can answer the question. Not all answers to that question include definite description. So, your comment above is found wanting...
The questioner did not use definite description. The questioner successfully referred to Thales nonetheless.
Quoting Janus
What's at issue is not what an answer to the question includes. What's at issue is whether or not the question itself can be used as a means for successful reference. It certainly can, and it does not include definite description. The fact that another can set out the referent of "Thales" by virtue of definite description proves this point beyond any and all doubt.
Isn't it a moot point whether or not the questioner 'successfully referred to Thales'? I can't see that any tangible difference follows from a Yes vs a No answer to the question 'was a successful reference made?' Rather, it's just a question of what words one uses to describe the speech acts. It's what David Chalmers calls a Verbal Dispute - something about choice of words with no actual import.
FWIW I regard 'who is Thales?' from an eavesdropper to the conversation as shorthand for:
"Your conversation sounds interesting and, If you don't object, I'd like to join in. I note that you keep on using the word 'Thales' as if it were a name of a person. Is it the name of a person? If so, could you please tell me a little about the person whose name it is, so that I can enjoy your conversation more, and maybe even participate?"
The meaning of that is quite clear, and whether or not the questioner has 'successfully referred to Thales' seems to have no significance.
What counts as successful reference underwrites this entire thread.
Seems to me that that is not established and/or determined solely by the words we choose to talk about it. Rather, we successfully referred long before our ability to take an account of what we had long since been doing. As a result, we can be mistaken in our account thereof. So...
Not just any words will do.
The question "who is Thales?" does not include definite description. It can be used as a means for successful reference. That much is undeniable, and proven beyond all reasonable doubt by the cases where the question gets correctly answered. The correct answer is not a part of the question. The question successfully refers to Thales. The correct answer is not a part of the successful reference. It only follows that not all successful reference includes description(definite or otherwise).
The only true answer to the question of whether or not that is a case of successful reference is "yes". That's of utmost importance.
Quoting andrewk
That is a very charitable attribution of underlying meaning to the question. While it most certainly may be true when some people ask the question, it cannot be true when everyone asks the question. The question can be asked by people with different personalities and/or world-views and in a number of different scenarios besides the very polite and considerate eavesdropper scenario you've put forth.
I pretty much agree with @andrewk that the notion of "successful reference" is moot or irrelevant.
Say in our hypothetical conversation the novice has not been able to tell whether Thales is a man or a women, or even a domestic animal or a place. In then inquiring 'What does "Thales" refer to?", would you say she or he has "successfully referred", or even simply referred, to Thales?
Well, in that case, you're both sorely mistaken.
:wink:
"What does 'Thales' refer to?" is a case of successful reference if "Thales" has a referent. The questioner is asking about the referent of the name.
'Mistaken' is not a relevant concept in this field. There is no correct and incorrect. There are no proofs of correctness. If there were, Kripke's opinion would either have been proven correct and thereby accepted by everybody that is capable of following logic, or it would have been proven incorrect, in which case no logically competent person would accept it. Since neither of those is the case, it must not be amenable to proof, so 'right' and 'wrong', 'mistaken' and 'correct' are not applicable concepts.
What really matters is 'Is it useful?' Does it better help us to understand the psychology and history of language? Does it help us to better understand what went wrong when people misunderstand each other - as they so frequently do? Does it give us clues as to how to communicate more effectively? Does it help us understand how children learn language, so that we can better aid them in that task? Would it help us in a situation where we encountered people with a different language, with no interpreters?
My impression is that Kripke saw his mission as coming up with a theory of language that explained hypotheticals and counterfactuals ('modal discourse'), while still allowing him to say that the hypothetical/counterfactual is about the same person as in this world, rather than an imaginary avatar thereof.
If so, then asking about whether a reference was successful is not relevant to Kripke's purpose, and that may be why he does not talk about 'successful reference', at least not using those words.
Quoting andrewk
Being mistaken is relevant to everything ever written, spoken, and/or otherwise uttered. Being mistaken is not existentially dependent upon formal logical proof nor the ability thereof to properly account for it. It quite simply does not follow from the fact that there is no formal proof adequate for showing how you're both mistaken, that you're not, that you cannot be, or that different positions in the field cannot be. Rather, it only follows that formal logical proof is inadequate for showing that and/or how different positions can be and/or are mistaken.
Being mistaken is not just a matter of being true/false. It's also a matter of being adequate/inadequate for taking proper account of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our account thereof.
Successful reference is one such thing amongst many.
You're both mistaken if you think and/or believe that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to Kripke's lectures and/or many of the historical positions that he targets. You're both mistaken if you think and/or believe that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to philosophy of language. You're both mistaken if you think and/or believe that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant for being useful and/or helping us out in all of the ways that you've implied philosophy of language is.
Sure, if all 'mistaken' means is 'has an opinion that I do not agree with'. If the difference between being mistaken and having a different opinion is not the presence of a proof, then what is it?
Quoting creativesoul
Do you not find it strange then, that Kripke does not mention 'successful reference' in N&N? If you think he mentions it but calls it something different, what does he call it?
My feeling is that Kripke finds it unsatisfactory to say it is about 'a world that was identical to this' and wants to say that the key protagonists in the novel are the same entities as in this world, rather than simulacra thereof. That, as I understand it, is why he ventures into modal logic and possible world semantics. It appears that, to him, it feels more natural to say that it is the same Winston Churchill in the novel as the one in this world. To me that feels weird. But who can argue feelings?
The impasse between Banno and Janus is a direct consequence of incompatible frameworks attempting to take account of the same thing... successful reference.
Banno looks at what the specific examples of successful reference include and draws conclusions about what's needed or not based upon what's included or not within the example. So, he's working from the presupposition that what's necessary for a specific case is equivalent to and/or determined by what's included within that case. I do not know if he would agree with this summary of his method, but it seems clear to me and the evidence in the thread(his examples and their explanations) support it.
Janus works from the notion that all examples of successful reference are existentially dependent upon the same core set of things, and draws conclusions about what's needed or not based upon that core regardless of what may or may not be included within the example.
Hence, when Banno points out that "who is Thales?" successfully refers to Thales and yet does not include definite description, he concludes that there is no need for definite description, because that is a prima facie example of successful reference that does not include definite description. If definite description need not be included in an actual case of successful reference, it most certainly is not necessary for that case. If it is not necessary for that case, then it is not necessary for all cases.
However, Janus points out that definite description for "Thales" has already been provided somewhere else along the line, and if it were not for that being so, then "who is Thales" would fail to successfully refer as a result of "Thales" having no referent.
The underlying issue is that there's a gulf between what all successful reference is existentially dependent upon(the basis of Janus' position), and what all cases of successful reference include(the basis of Banno's position).
That gulf, I would strongly argue, is a direct result of inadequate frameworks. That's plural on purpose. The bridge would be a framework that can take account of the fact that some cases of successful reference do not include that which they are existentially dependent upon.
Janus offers no direct concerted attempt to bridge that gulf, although skirts around it when claiming that all cases of successful reference are dependent upon descriptions even when and if those descriptions are not always used within the successful reference.
Banno also offers no direct concerted attempt to bridge that gulf. I suspect it is because he does not see the need to do so. However, I do think that Kripke's notion of a causal chain of reference, and Banno's invocation of shared meaning also skirt around it.
We do not have to argue about feelings. It's a real possibility that the Axis powers might have won WWII. The nuances in which our reality has been shaped by the acts of noble people is worth memorizing. Hence, what?
That's not what I mean. Let me clarify...
Having an opinion that I do not agree with is having a different opinion. Having a different opinion is equivalent to and/or the result of having different belief. I do not always disagree with different beliefs. All opinions that I disagree with are different.
Being mistaken is the result of having false belief. Two people can have different false beliefs. They are both mistaken. Two people can have the same false belief. They are both mistaken. Two people can have different true beliefs. Neither is mistaken. Two people can have the same true belief. Neither is mistaken.
So, having an opinion I disagree with requires having different belief. Having different belief is not equivalent to being mistaken.
And...
It's still does not follow from the fact that there is no formal proof adequate for showing how you're both mistaken, that you're not, that you cannot be, or that different positions in the field cannot be. It follows that a formal logical proof is an inadequate means for showing the mistakes.
Quoting andrewk
See above.
Quoting andrewk
It's not at all strange to me.
It is possible that there is such a thing as absolute truth, whereby something can be the case even if nobody can ever know it. I tend not to believe in absolute truth, but let's adopt the concept for the sake of furthering discussion. Then, I can be mistaken if I hold a belief that contradicts the absolute truth. But if that absolute truth is not knowable then nobody is in a position to say definitively that I am mistaken. The only way to demonstrate that a belief contradicts absolute truth is to show that it leads to a contradiction.
If person A believes in absolute truth, she can have a belief that person B is mistaken in their belief that proposition P is true. However A cannot know that B is mistaken unless she has a proof of the falsity of P. In the absence of such a proof, at best A can have a hunch or suspicion that B is mistaken. To state definitively that B is mistaken cannot be justified and smacks of hubris.
Some might complain that such an analysis implies we cannot do most philosophy at all, and so it must be rejected in order to save philosophy. I say that we can still do all the philosophy we have been doing just fine. It's just that, except in those rare cases where we are dealing with items that are amenable to formal logical proof, we should have the humility to restrain ourselves from saying that others are mistaken. It should suffice to say 'I don't agree' or 'It doesn't seem that way to me' or 'I doubt that'.
I note that both Kripke and Russell suffered from the hubris of saying that other people were mistaken, or wrong, on topics where, even if there were an absolute fact of the matter about it (which in most cases I suspect there isn't), that fact would not be knowable by mere humans, and certainly not by Russell or Kripke.
I find the notion of 'absolute truth' at least just as flawed as you. It's not helpful here.
I've already answered this.
Being mistaken is always a result of having false belief. It is not the only result.
As it pertains to the earlier parts of this conversation, you and Janus are both sorely mistaken as a result of believing that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to N&N. You've pointed out that Kripke doesn't mention "successful reference". I can only assume that you believe that that lack of mention somehow warrants the subsequent belief - expressed by your claim - that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to N&N.
If lack of mention constitutes warrant to believe that that which is not mentioned is moot and/or irrelevant, then it would only follow that all of Kripke's original terminological use explicating his doctrine of rigidity is irrelevant to any and all of the philosophical positions he's targeting simply because those positions did not mention his doctrine and/or it's terminological use.
:brow:
All of Einstein's conceptions would be moot and/or irrelevant to all of that which they expanded upon. Every single paradigm shift that begins with new ways to talk about the same things; all of the new language would be moot and/or irrelevant.
That's patently absurd.
There's more than one way to show that a position is mistaken. You and Janus are both sorely mistaken if you think/believe that successful reference is moot and/or irrelevant to N&N.
The Man in the High Castle was written 5 years after the Many Worlds quantum theory was proposed. Kripke wasn't trying to assess that theory. :)
The internalist view is that a speaker must have in mind a definite description, as if all proper names and kind names are shorthand for definite descriptions (Russell) and that conundrums appear if we don't consider sense (Frege).
Frege pointed to the Hesperus/Phosphorus situation to explain sense:
1. Bill knows that Hesperus is the Evening Star.
2. Hesperus is Phosphorus.
C. Bill knows that Phosphorus is the Evening Star.
C doesn't follow from 1 and 2, but by a Millian theory of reference, it should. Mill said names have denotation, but not connotation. The name just points straight to the object and there's no need to know the context of the speech act. Frege solves the problem by abandoning Mill and positing that we have to consider something beyond just the denotation and consider how the words are being used. That's what he means by sense.
Kripke doesn't go all the way back to Mill, but he does pry Russell's and Frege's grip off of reference a little by pointing out that we don't always have a definite description in mind when we use proper names and kind names. For instance, I might speak of Albania, but I can't give you a definite description of it. It's a country somewhere over there. I'm sure of that.
Do we all sort of agree with the above? Or do I have something wrong?
And that's not what Kripke proposes. A lot of the time we obviously do have access to definite descriptions when we're communicating. And when we don't, we would, on reflection, say that we expect them to be out there somewhere. And that's an example of externalism. In the same way part of your brain is outsourced to your phone, part of your ability to refer is outsourced far and wide.
I bring up "on reflection" because I'm interested in bringing in Heidegger. But that would make a frank-kripke, just like Banno tends to express a Banno-kripke, which is fine by me. That's 100 times more interesting to me that trying to be a philosophy historian. :)
I'd say that your knowing that Albania is " a country over there", is entertaining a definite description. Not as definite as it might be, but all descriptions could be more definite, as in more uniquely specified. So "over there" could become 'Europe' or 'South-Eastern Europe' or 'bounded by some set of definite coordinates'. Implicit in 'a country' is the idea that it has borders and excludes other countries, and that it is a unique entity with its own customs and culture, probably its own language, and so on.
Even merely knowing that Albania is a country is to know a description, which together with the name 'Albania' most likely becomes a definite description (that is if it is the only country called 'Albania'). I'd say reference is to the entity which is being named 'Albania', and its being so named is actually part of its definite description.
So, I'd say descriptions don't have to be "in mind" (whatever that could actually mean) but are instead implicit insofar as they constitute the contextual web of meaning and reference in which usages of names are established and maintained.
Quoting creativesoul
What does it mean for a belief to be 'false' if there is no absolute truth?
Science is forward-looking. It would not matter one whit if Einstein's theory of relativity were irrelevant to Newton's theories of motion and gravitation. It would be easy to conclude that too, as Einstein does not - as far as I recall - mention Newton in his key papers on relativity. We would still use Einstein's theories when useful, and Newton's when they are useful, just as we do now. Fortunately, in most cases, science is about getting results that are interesting or useful, not about scoring points off past writers. I suggest that many philosophers would do well to follow that example.
On Frege and the Hesperus/Phosphorus example: while I think it can be useful to distinguish between meaning and referent, or any of the other words that are used to indicate the difference between the pointer and the pointed-at, I don't find the Hesperus-Phosphorus example a good one. I think it is simply poor communication to say 'Hesperus is Phosphorus', because it can have so many different meanings. What is actually being said is that there is a planet (Venus) that appears in the evening and has been referred to as Hesperus in that manifestation, and appears again in the morning and has been called Phosphorus in that manifestation. So I reject arguments that contain enigmatic statements like 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' in them, because to accept them requires accepting so many dubious, implicit assumptions about exactly what was meant.
I dont think it's in northern Europe. Anyway, you're venturing off the map that N+N focuses on.
Quoting Janus
Contextual web?
Of course, you're right, and it just goes to show how impoverished is my mental map of Europe or how careless I can be in assuming that I know something when I don't! (I corrected it).
I'm perhaps not agreeing or disagreeing with Kripke, but I'm trying to examine the same semantic practices he focuses on. If I come at those from another angle, and can show that it is free of problems and an equally or even more consistent and useful way, phenomenologically speaking, to look at those practices, would that be "venturing off the map"? If it were, then how could we critique Kripke's way of looking at things at all without "venturing off the map"?
Quoting frank
I think it is basically Kripke's 'causal chain' without all the constituting descriptions artificially 'sublimed out'.
There's your problem.
I don't have a problem, it would seems the problem is yours. I might come to have a problem if you can explain convincingly why I should.
SO, why would you think it is not a more or less definite description? Why would you think that being called Albania is not also part of its definite description?
What's the problem exactly, are you able to explain precisely what you think it is?
And again.
You are misusing the term definite description.
I looked after I wrote that. I thought it was further east.
Quoting Janus
Well, you dont want to completely strawman him. I think Mill is probably closer to the view you want to criticize.
In your view does that constitute a definite description? It seems like one to me.
What if I knew even less? What if all I knew is that there was a country called Albania?
It seems to me that just a name can suffice as a DD for a country where it cannot for a person, because no two countries on the Earth have the same name.
I wonder if Kripke would agree that 'the country called Albania' is a DD.
Perhaps, but as I've said, I'm not definitely asserting that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with Kripke. I've mainly been responding directly to the discussion in this thread, which is comprised of other's interpretations of Kripke, and trying to get a discussion going which unpacks and analyses just what it is it that Kripke wants to assert regarding definite descriptions.
The closest I've seen to an explanation of why I might not be disagreeing with Kripke is @Pierre-Normand's contention that Kripke acknowledges the role of DDs in "fixing" reference, but not in "determining" it. However, I am still unclear as to what the purported distinction between fixing and determining is.
I imagine it is something like this: fixing refers to the role of DDs in explaining (perhaps most clearly seen as per the examples I've given, to someone who doesn't know) what a name refers to. Determining then would be the "causal chains" of reference which establish and maintain the usages of a name to refer to a particular individual over time (in the cases of historical individuals sometimes very long times).
The problem here for me is that I cannot see how such causal chains of reference are separable from the DDs that have historically fixed them. So, separating rigid designation form definite description seem artificial to me. The artificiality and vacuousness of such separation seems to be exemplified statements like "To ask about Thales is to refer to Thales"; in the fact that they are of a merely tautologous nature and don't reflect the fullness of our practices
I think as mentioned previously, definite descriptions can be categorized under certain conditions as rigid designators. What do you or anyone else think of this?
I think they can. 'Thales', if it is being used to refer to the famous Greek philosopher and not some other Thales, seems to me to be equivalent at minimum of something like 'The man named 'Thales' who lived in Ancient Greece and was a philosopher'.
That whole statement seems to me to be a definite description that rigidly designates that man (in case there was in fact such a man, and there was in fact no other). If there was no such man, then the statement rigidly designates an apocryphal character. If there was another such man then the name designates but does not rigidly designate, just as the description is of, but is not definitely of, a particular man.
If it is, it would have to be synonymous with the name Albania. IOW, it would have to be necessarily true that Albania is the country called Albania. And it's not, because it could have been called something else.
Full disclosure: I'm not really sure what the answer to your question is. I gave my first stab. I'll either give a second attempt later or somebody else will wander along and answer it. :)
Bishops move diagonally.
As I explained already the DD " the man who was POTUS at midnight New Year's Eve 2018" picks out the man we refer to as 'Donald Trump' as infallibly as 'Donald Trump' does.
We've already been all through this, so for you to claim that my usage is wrong without having explained why you claim that is puzzling.
As much as I'd love to get into this. I'm not. It's too far off track. Besides, I just wanted to explain how and that your charge of irrelevance was unfounded. That's been done.
Back to Kripke's N&N...
Then you're equivocating. There have been numerous descriptions that are not capable of picking out a unique individual that you've referred to as "definite". "A country over there somewhere" is one.
If your remark is about whether or not a discussion of true/false belief is too far off track... well... I'm trying to make sure I have a good grasp upon what Kripke is not claiming...
:wink:
I don't know, but it seems to me that he's doing very little aside from pointing out the facts. I mean, I'm very impressed by the first two lectures. The more I read, and the more I watch folk like you put his stuff into actual practice, the more impressed I become with his method.
The notions of reference/identity that Kripke's targeting seem to be the ones that claim and/or lead to claiming that all reference depends upon definite description. A criticism of those is rightfully applicable to the purported problems with identity across possible worlds as well.
That's killing several birds with one stone.
And of course, the ambiguity regarding the notion of "depends upon" is proving to be much fodder as well. I've been playing around with the consequences following from different versions, as well as different versions of "necessary" and the interplay between the different combinations thereof. Interesting results. Could be very powerful justificatory ground. May already be, and I've just begun to recognize that much.
Seems that Kripke was at pains promoting intuition as adequate ground for certain notions. What counts as being necessary seems a fantastic candidate for that.
No I acknowledged that DDs are more or less definite. Read again and discover the facts about what I wrote. (Of course it is taken as read that "over there" in this context connotes 'in Europe's, and also implicit is that the country is names Albania. So a country over there named Albania is in fact a description definite enough to pick out just the one country that satisfies it.
No???
The charge was that you are equivocating with your terminological use of "definite descriptions"...
You've neglected to draw and maintain the meaningful distinction between definite descriptions and one's that are not definite. The proof of this is the thread itself. The above quote overtly denies equivocating and then goes on to describe what you're doing. The description itself satisfies what counts as equivocating.
So, charged with abusing an otherwise perfectly intelligible notion like "definite description", you answer "No" in the same sentence that is also admitting to satisfying it's criterion. That is to compound the abuse by adding the term "no" to the term "definite description".
That's a performative contradiction is it not andrewk? I mean, you've been invoking the speech act theorists.
Furthermore, the abuse is even further compounded by how the term "acknowledged" is used. "Definite description" is a pre-conceived notion. Kripke invokes it. No one here determines the criterion for what counts as a definite description. That has already been determined.
Definite descriptions are always definite. What makes them so is that they are - purportedly - both necessary and sufficient for picking a unique object out of the world to the exclusion of all others. That is what makes them different from those that are not.
There is no "more or less". They either meet the criterion or they do not. One cannot acknowledge that definite descriptions(as invoked by Kripke) are more or less definite, anymore than one can acknowledge that a square is more or less a rectangle with four sides of equal length. Some of your 'less definite' ones look more like triangles.
One can acknowledge that they have been using the term in such a way. That would be to admit of equivocation. Equivocation is shown by and/or results in self contradiction, as well as the kind of incoherency that renders the otherwise perfectly intelligible notion of "definite description" virtually meaningless.
So, are you mistaken or is this a deliberate attempt at muddying the waters?
Whatever, of course I believe that. It's also true.
Not equivocation, rather allowing for the obvious fact that descriptions can be more or less definite. It's not black and white and there may even be disagreement in particular cases as to whether a definite desciption is "necessary and sufficient" to pick out just one entity or not. Your qualification "purportedly" acknowledges this.
If someone were to ask, where is Hesus in Spanish, the referent might be ambiguous as it's a very common name in Latin America. But, had I said where is the Son of God? Then, I believe the issue disappears despite there being no name that would designate such an entity or person.
My qualification "purportedly" acknowledges that I may not agree with the pre-conceived notion's criterion. It is the criterion none-the-less. A description either satisfies the criterion or it does not. If it does then it is a DD. If it does not, then it is not.
Triangles are not more or less squares...
"Some country over there" is not a DD. Calling it such is equivocating the term DD.
Rubbish. There are all sorts of statements that I know are true but cannot be proven by any means. Formal logical proofs cover even less.
:snicker:
Banno's charge of abuse holds good. It's certainly been '[i]proven[i]' true by the facts.
Not all cases of successful reference include description(definite or otherwise).
All successful reference is existentially dependent upon that which not all successful reference includes. That which all successful reference is existentially dependent upon is not equivalent to that which all successful reference includes.
If what counts as "necessary" for successful reference is determined solely by virtue of existential dependency, and not all examples of successful reference include that which it is existentially dependent upon, then it only follows that successful reference need not include that which is necessary for it's own existence.
If what counts as "necessary" for successful reference is determined solely by virtue of what's included in specific cases thereof, and successful reference does not always include that which it is existentially dependent upon, then it only follows that successful reference need not include that which it is existentially dependent upon.
How's that for intuitive?
The Modal Argument is simple: descriptivism fails because descriptions aren't usually synonymous with names because they're usually contingent properties.
Since Albania didn't have to be called that, it's a contingent property of Albania.
Read N+N from pg 53-75.
It depends on context. 'Some country over there' is a definite general description of European countries (in the context of this discussion 'Europe' is implicit in 'over there'). 'The country over there called Albania' or even just 'The country called Albania' is a definite description, if there is no other country called Albania.
Quoting frank
I look at it differently; I see the name 'Donald Trump', in the absence of any context at all to be synonymous with 'A man called Donald Trump'. Once we have some descriptive or ostensive context, that is we are given a description of a particular man called Donald Trump, or we have him pointed out to us when we are in his presence, or we are shown a photograph, then in that context the name refers to just one man: 'the man called Donald Trump'.
Of course the country called Albania did not have to be called Albania, or even be recognized as a geographical region, all of that is contingent. But once a geographical region has been defined in terms of latitudinal, longitudinal and topographical boundaries and so on and named Albania, that definition which can be given as a more or less precise description distinguishes it more or less definitely from all other geographical regions. And that description as pertaining to the actual world can then be used modally, to talk about counterfactual or 'possible world' scenarios.
What would be an example of such a statement?
Can someone "successfully refer" to some entity if they have absolutely no idea at all what that entity is? You might say, in a case where someone hears others speaking about Albania, and has no idea what Albania refers to (that is, whether it refers to a country, a cleaning product, a person, a pet, a brand of toaster or whatever) that when they ask "Who or what is Albania?" they are successfully referring to Albania.
I think that would be wrong-headed, because I think the question being asked is "Who or what is being referred to by the name 'Albania'?", and looking at it this way no particular entity is being referred to, rather a description of whatever entity is being referred to, sufficient to define it, is being requested.
I covered that issue in this post.
I'll expand on it here in the hope of bridging the gap.
A DD is applicable at a point in time. To include 'was POTUS' in a DD of Nixon would be invalid in 1940 but valid in 1980. When we wish to consider counterfactuals in relation to event E at time T3, that concerns object X, we choose time T2 that is before T3 but after the beginning of X (T1).
Next we select a DD that would have been valid at T2 and uniquely identifies X at that time.
We then consider the set of possible worlds that branched from this one at time T2. Those are our counterfactuals concerning X and E.
All properties of the DD that we used for X are necessary in that set of possible worlds because they were valid at T2 and everything that was true at T2 in this world is true in all the other worlds.
In the case of an event in Albania, say the opening of its borders, we backtrack to a time T2 before that event, and find a DD that was valid at that time. If T2 is before the country was named Albania, we cannot use 'The country named Albania' as a DD in this counterfactual exercise. However, if the event is the opening of its borders (eg the counterfactual might be 'If Albania had not opened its borders, would it still be communist?'), that was after adopting the name Albania, so the name is necessary, not contingent. If the event is earlier, we'd need to use a different DD such as 'the region bounded by ... mountains, ... rivers and the Mediterranean sea'.
Summary: arguments against DDs that don't take account of their period of validity are invalid.
This is a very nice and clear statement and completely in accordance with my view.
Yet it doesn't perform the role the descriptivist says it must.
Quoting andrewk
But it was never a necessary property.
I'm getting the impression this discussion isnt valuable to any of us.
No, it really doesn't. The definition is "The x such that ?(x)"
Notice the "The"? That's there because a definite description picks out an individual. "That country over there" might count as a definite description; "some country over there" never will. Even if you try to twist the context to make it so.
You are just wrong on this.
If the question is parsed as "Who or what is being referred to by the name 'Albania'", then what answer will suffice? What answer is correct?
Not "Some country in northern Europe". That is certainly wrong. "A country bordering Greece" might well be sufficient. despite not being a definite description.
Now, since the question has a correct answer, then the question must have referred to something. That is, the question is clearly about Albania, and hence a correct answer will also be about Albania.
Again, you are just wrong.
Indeed.
I'd like to move on to the topic of consciousness, from the end of N&N. This is for me the most interesting part, since I think that Kripke goes quite wrong. But the incessant misdirected discussion of descriptions has doubtless chased away those who have some idea of what is going in N&N.
It pisses me off.
Yeah. Introducing time is just another tangent, taking us away from the point of the book.
It is necessary in the collection of possible worlds being considered, which is those that split from this at time T2 that is between the naming of the country and the opening of its borders. That's why the question of 'accessibility' of worlds is important. The name 'Albania' is a necessary property of the country in the set of all worlds that are accessible in this particular counterfactual. For a different counterfactual, there would be a different splitting time, and the name may not be a necessary property in the set of accessible worlds for that counterfactual.
To consider a counterfactual and the associated set of possible worlds without taking account of the properties that held at the splitting point can lead only to confusion.
On the other hand, if one wants to argue that the splitting point is irrelevant then those worlds have nothing to do with this one and there is no basis at all for saying that an object in one of those worlds 'is' or "isn't" the 'same' object as in this world. It is only the state at the splitting point that connects the different versions of the object.
Cool. Let's do that.
You're straying again from the descriptivist's claims. Are you interested in starting a different thread?
I can only speak for myself, but it's been valuable for me.
My prior impression, based only really on the text and secondary sources, was that Kripke's purported demonstration of the failure of descriptivism fails itself, and that his causal theory was of no interest because it is too laden down with arcane metaphysical baggage.
Having the opportunity to discuss it with some real-life Kripke enthusiasts, as well as sceptics, has done two things - on the one hand given me a better sense of just where the attempted demolition of descriptivism fails, and on the other, made me appreciate some of the aims of Kripke's positive program, and the features of his causal theory that some philosophers find attractive.
I think it's essential to make a distinction between the negative and positive parts of N&N. The positive parts set out his causal theory, which is an admirable thing to do. It's a theory with some very nice aspects, and there's room for plenty of different theories of language (as previously stated, my favourite is Wittgenstein's). The negative side essentially says 'and all other theories are wrong'. I have plenty of sympathy for the positive side, and none at all for the negative side. The discussion only keeps getting dragged back to the negative side when people fail to distinguish between the attack on descriptivism and the outlining of the causal theory.
If people only want to focus on the latter, that's great. I probably won't have much to say about it, but will enjoy reading and thinking about it. But every time there's a 'that's why DDs don't work' or 'that's why descriptivism is wrong' comment, that takes the discussion off topic, if the topic is examination of the causal theory.
No, I am straying from the claims that Kripke attributes to descriptivists. Kripke doesn't get to rule on what those claims are. I have said from the start that Kripke misrepresents the descriptivist position.
Shall we drop discussion of the attack on descriptivism and focus only on Kripke's positive program?
It's up to you. If you want to accentuate the positive and move on to lecture 3 and his positive proposals, great. If you want to accentuate the negative and harp on about why all non-Kripkeans, and especially descriptivists, are wrong, expect rebuttal.
"That country over there" if "there" is implicitly referring to a continent is a definite description that distinguishes countries over here or any where else from countries over there. The fact that 'that' is used also indicates that the speaker has a definite country in mind, but that the particualr country in mind has not been specified. "That country over there presently called Albania" is a definite description.
You are simply wrong on this.
In any case quibbles over whether definite descriptions are absolute or relative aside, it is the assertion that a definite description which is 'time, date and place stamped' is effectively a rigid designator, and the assertion that, for example, 'Donald Trump' is really shorthand for "an unspecified entity called Donald Trump", the latter of which is itself a definite description that picks out all entities named Donald Trump from those which are not so named that is at issue here.
Sure. What are your thoughts on that?
"A country bordering Greece" is a definite description that distinguishes all countries bordering Greece from those which do not. "A country called Albania which on the 4th of January 2018 borders Greece" does uniquely pick out Albania, and can thus be used as rigid designator. Sure it is Albania being talked about, but that depends upon its having been called 'Albania', and its having been called 'Albania' is a contingent matter, since it could have been called something else, in which case we would not be talking about Albania, but about the entity which is presently called Albania.
You seem to be reifying the name, and ignoring the fact that a name 'X' is really shorthand for 'an entity called X' (which is itself a definite description that distinguishes all entities called 'X' from all entities not called 'X') and that it is the entity itself, whatever we might call it, which is being spoken about.
I could play tit for tat and reply with "you are just wrong with this" but I actually don't think it is so much a matter of being wrong or right, but of looking at it from different perspectives. One or other of the perspectives might be more useful, but that would depend on what we are trying to do.
Personally I find the idea that when someone asks about Albania, even if they have no idea at all who or what 'Albania' refers to, they are nonetheless referring to Albania, to be misconceived and even confusing at worst; or an empty tautology at best. You don't seem to want to address this, but rather just to keep insisting 'you are wrong, you are wrong' without provided any argument.
SO the first aspect is the application of the discussion of names to kinds.
I mentioned earlier - in pages hidden by the surrounding murk - that this seems to me a consequence of the extensional nature of modal semantics. No one commented on that, so I will go along that line.
SO we get to p.144, and identity. Three different ones:
1. Identity of mind with body
2. Identity of (for example) pain with a certain neural pattern
3. Identity of types of mental states with types of brain states.
SO we used the word "water" to refer to water, then we find that water is hydrogen dioxide; and the convention advocated by Kripke is that water is therefore necessarily hydrogen dioxide; that is, anything that is water-like but not hydrogen dioxide is not water.
So why not say that "pain" refers to pain, and that if we found that pain and certain nerve impulses are occur always together, why not claim that pain is necessarily those impulses?
Let 'A' name water, and let 'B' name the corresponding chemical... Prima facie, it would seem
that it is at least logically possible that B should have existed... without the presence of A
Well, no. As Kripke himself says.
No, it isn't. It does not single out ONE THING. Bold, all caps, italic, just to push the point.
Actually, it does, it singles out ONE class.
It's a pedantic point you're both making. 'A country bordering Greece' does single out all individuals that belong to the class of countries that border Greece. "Countries bordering Greece" singles out the same individuals, and also singles out the class of such individuals.
Anyway you are pedantically focusing on a point which is of little consequence instead of addressing the more difficult objections to your view. "The country called Albania, which borders Greece" is a definite description by your own definition. It is also a rigid designator, whereas 'Albania' by itself is not a rigid designator except in principle, because it could be the name of a country, a person, a pet, a type of vacuum cleaner and so on and on.
The same goes for people's proper names because there could be hundreds or thousands of people with the same name. All it takes is more than one. You need to address this objection, and forget about pedantic quibbles over what constitutes definite descriptions.
"Some country that borders Greece" is not both necessary and sufficient for picking out a unique individual to the exclusion of all others.
Rather, it picks out a single country within a group. It is not capable of picking out an individual country to the exclusion of all others because it picks one out of many. If it picks one out of many, it is not picking out one to the exclusion of many. If it is not picking out one to the exclusion of many, it is not picking out one to the exclusion of all others. If it is not picking out one to the exclusion of all others, then it is not a fucking definite description...
For fuck's sake....
If this would make any fucking sense at all, it would have been followed by an objection to something I said.
It wasn't.
:roll:
See where paraconsistency leads when applied where it doesn't fucking belong?
Directly and relevantly address what I have written if you want a response.
I'm going back to re-read some stuff in N&N. Trying to catch up to Banno. Kripke's arguments at least follow from what he said. Yours don't and as a result are moot and irrelevant.
The irony around here could be called "delicious" by some...
It just stuns me...
Well, Kripke agrees with you. But we need more than that you think they are not the same while I think they are.
Here's how I understand Kripke's argument, on p. 146.
Let A be a pain, and B be a neural state, and the supposition to be rejected, that A is necessarily the same thing as B.
Now A is a pain, and hence necessarily a pain. If A and B are identical, then B is also necessarily a pain. But a brain state is not a pain.
Or being a pain is somehow a contingent property of A. Somehow A must be both a pain and not a pain.
SO, concludes Kripke, A and B cannot be the very same thing.
No, it isn't. Again, you show your own confusion. My* definition is "The x such that ?(x)" For what you say here to work you would need a predicate something like "Albainiates", and a description something like "The x such that x Albaniates".
Your view is looking more and more like bullshit, Janus.
Edit: that is, not my own definition, but the one I gave earlier and that is accepted by logicians.
:incredulous stare:
Quoting Janus
This is a definite description, yes. The same thing, replacing the with a, is not. That would be an indefinite description. The way in which indefinite descriptions refer, if indeed they do, is different, and not at issue here.
Quoting Janus
It is not a rigid designator, since in another possible world, another country, besides the actual Albania, could be called Albania and border Greece. Say, a world with our geography, but in which Macedonia had been given the name 'Albania' instead. In that world, this description picks out (our) Macedonia, not (our) Albania.
Quoting Janus
The issue is not what a name could refer to. Being a rigid designator has nothing to do with the alternate ways the language could have been, so that the meaning of the word changes. The point is that the meaning of the word, as it is now, is such that it, as it is actually used, picks out the same individual relative to every world.
That is for me the interesting part. Kripke's account looks fraught.
'A country called Albania which borders Greece' is a definite description because there is only one of them; the logic is obvious.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Quoting Snakes Alive
I don't see why the logic is not the same in both the case of the definite description and the case of the name. It is the fact that names and definite descriptions refer "rigidly" to what they do in the actual world that allows them to pick out the same entities relative to counterfactual scenarios.
It amazes me when others almost shriek that I do not adhere to Kripke's understanding of definite descriptions when it is that very understanding which I find seems impoverished and lacking in relation to our actual usage of description in discursive reference.
In any case I am going to cease participation in this thread unless I get some cogent argument, because I am not interested in the irrational reactions I have been getting from some others when their ideas are challenged. Exchanging ideas can be fun, exchanging insults not so much. :roll:
Dude, no it's not. Accept this and move on.
It's also not at all obvious that words like 'pain' are rigid designators. In fact, 'pain' is only apparently referential in one of its uses. It is usually a mass predicate, as in 'a lot of pain,' or 'the pain in my eye.' Here the predicate seems to apply to portions of an experiential quantity, or something like that. It's only when the word appears in argument position, as seeming to name the kind of experience itself, as in 'Pain is irritating,' that it might look to rigidly designate something (the 'experiential kind,' I suppose).
So you want to claim that "A country called Albania which borders Greece" is not a definite description? Your reasoning? Why should I "accept it and move on" unless I see valid reasons for thinking it is not?
As to their semantic values, definite descriptions de jure pick out a single individual: so if there are two salient cats, or none, the cat appears to fail to refer. Indefinite descriptions are not like this: one can say a cat is in the room regardless of how many salient cats there are, and as long as there's at least one, the sentence is apparently true, and a cat looks not necessarily to refer to any individual in particular.
Even if there happens to be only one country called Albania bordering Greece, 'a country called Albania bordering Greece' is not semantically a definite description, since the fact that there is one such is contingent. If in another possible world there are two such countries, then the description will not pick out some one of them at that world, nor will it fail to refer: it will simply again result in true statements as long as there is at least one such country.
Thus, in our two-Albania world, 'the country called Albania bordering Greece sued for peace' might sound odd, since there are two satisfying the descriptive material, and the description purports to pick out the unique individual that does. However, 'a country called Albania bordering Greece sued for peace' is just true, so long as one of the two really did sue for peace. It doesn't matter which one.
OK, I can see that is true from a purely abstract terminological point of view.
But all modal logic depends on what is the case in this world, and since there is only one country called Albania bordering Greece, and in fact only one country called Albania: "A country called Albania that borders Greece" and even "a country called Albania" picks out just one entity and thus should be considered to be a definite description.
The same thing applies when you say that 'Donald Trump' is a rigid designator (leaving aside for the sake of the argument the objection that the name does not pick out just one entity if more than one person is called Donald Trump); it is only contingently so because the man named Donald Trump was named Donald Trump.
Read the rest of the post.
Quoting Janus
No. 'Donald Trump' picking out Donald Trump is not contingent on his being named so in another world. We can entertain counterfactuals to the effect of If Trump had been named Stephenson..., and in these we entertain possibilities in which Trump has another name, using the name 'Trump' to refer to him in those alternative possibilities.
That is not a counterargument
Quoting Snakes Alive
I didn't say it was; I said it was contingent upon the man named Donald Trump being so named in this world. All reference in counterfactual discourse is established by reference to the actual world; and this goes equally for names as it does definite descriptions. The name 'Donald Trump' is shorthand for 'an entity named Donald Trump' or 'the entity named Donald Trump' (in case there is only one such entity).
I could name my car 'Donald Trump' if I wished to. In the case where multiple entities are named the same, then further qualifications (descriptions) are required to establish which of those entities is being referred to (except in ostensive contexts as I have already acknowledged many times).
.
Yeah, so? That's a trivial fact. How does that mean the name isn't a rigid designator?
Quoting Janus
No, it doesn't. If we say if the South successfully split from the Union, the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century would have governed a smaller territory. Here the definite description does not depend in any way upon who was the president of the United States at which time in the actual world – only in the counterfactual scenario.
Quoting Janus
This is simply irrelevant. Yes you could name anything anything you wanted. So what? The name, as it is actually used, based on the actual naming convention, rigidly designates.
Equivocation of the term "necessarily"?
Let's see...
The first use joins two variables with unknown value. The second does not.
Yep.
Yes, I think that, rather than 'all refs in counterfactuals are fixed in this world' it is 'all refs in counterfactuals that are rigid designators across the set of possible worlds under consideration are fixed in this world'.
The key for a rigid designator is that it picks out a unique individual at the time in which the possible worlds split for the counterfactual, and hence it continues to pick out corresponding versions of that unique individual in each of the possible worlds after the splitting time.
'POTUS at end of 19th C' is not a rigid designator for a counterfactual that splits in 1863, whereas 'The man named Richard Milhouse Nixon who was VPOTUS under Eisenhower' is a rigid designator for a counterfactual that splits in 1967, and 'The country called Albania' is a rigid designator for any counterfactual that splits at any time between when people first started calling it Albania and the present.
I think it would be hard to specify a concise rule for which designators in a counterfactual must be rigid. But I also suspect that in any given counterfactual, it will be easy to point out which designators of interest have to be rigid.
[I add 'of interest' because otherwise we have to consider infinitely many combinations, like 'Nixon's Mum's best friend's brother-in-law's father's barber's girlfriend's poodle's previous owner' - the rigidity or otherwise of which is almost certainly unimportant to the counterfactual]
In other words, if you have to throw up your hands and say that 'they are rigid, except when they aren't,' you don't have a theory.
Fair enough. And thank you. I like a stimulating challenge. Perhaps my last post was a little lazy.
Let's see then. How about this:
A DD is a rigid designator in a counterfactual that splits at time T2, iff it picks out a unique object X in the real world, based only on events that have occurred up to T2.
Note that the rigidity can be assessed by looking only at this world and the split time for the counterfactual. It is not necessary to look at the other possible worlds to determine rigidity.
With this definition, in the counterfactual:
'If the South successfully split from the Union, the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century would have governed a smaller territory.'
the DD 'the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century' is not rigid because the split must occur before the end of 1865, and it is not possible to pick out in 1865 the winner of the last POTUS election in the 19th century (unless we assume superdeterminism, in which case a can of worms large enough to derail all existing theories of reference is opened).
But in the counterfactual:
'I wonder whether, if the man called Richard Milhouse Nixon, who contested the 1968 POTUS election as the Republican candidate, had lost that election, he would have given up politics and joined the circus'
the DD 'the man called Richard Milhouse Nixon, who contested the 1968 POTUS election as the Republican candidate' is rigid because the split must occur after Nixon was nominated the Republican candidate, and the DD picks him out uniquely at any time from then on.
That seems to work.
PS Thinking about this and the last few posts has helped me realise that Kripke's notion of rigidity is quite useful. I had previously not seen the point of it. So score one for Kripke.
We can create the appropriate context easily within a discourse, for example by first saying, 'what if some other guy with the same name won the 1968 election under the same circumstances, etc.? I wonder whether...'
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
The latter is true, by virtue of the fact that is countered, but the former is false; not all possible worlds are counterfactual.
It is possible, even probable (if the Good Lord spares me), that I will go shopping tomorrow. I might go to Asda, or I might go to Aldi. Until tomorrow, which possible world will be actual is unknowable. The actual world of tomorrow is on equal footing with any (other) possible world of tomorrow - until tomorrow.
Can I say that "I" rigidly designates unenlightened here? That is, if @Banno tomorrow says "I didn't go shopping", that is irrelevant. Such is context; even in the possible world where the Good Lord does not spare me, it is unenlightened and not Banno who is not spared, and thus does not go shopping.
Kripke's rejection of the pain/C-fiber-stimulation identity is related to that.
No, because the referent of the DD was the Republican candidate. If the Dem candidate was named Peter Nixon, or even Richard Milhouse Nixon, that person would not be the referent of the DD.
I think DDs in hypotheticals are covered by the same method as DDs in counterfactuals, and the splitting time for the possible worlds becomes the present, rather than some date prior to a fact that is being countered.
Consider the hypothetical:
'I wonder whether unenlightened will go to Asda tomorrow'
If I were to think this (although I always thought of you as more of a Waitrose person :razz: ) I would associate the name unenlightened with a DD like:
'The member of TPF that was an admin on the old forum, has a knack for composing pithy, memorable sayings that find their way onto the TPF facebook page, likes Krishnamurti and, despite his enormous literacy and intelligence, has worked as a janitor'.
That fixes the ref to you in this world and is the same across the ensemble of alternative possible worlds that are under consideration when we contemplate if you will go shopping tomorrow.
I'm talking about an alternate world in which the Republican candidate had that name, but was not the same man that actually won the election.
Because you said so?
You are the one who isn't making sense.
If you want to start with your own intuitions and base modal language on them, you can, just as Lewis did, but you have to present your comments with that in mind. Otherwise we'll think you're trying to present Kripke's view and getting it wrong.
Do you have a ref for that? A problem with N&N is that it's very verbose and lacks clear, concise definitions. Which is one of the reasons it is so open to many different interpretations. A bit like Kant's CPR.
The genesis of this sub-thread was a comment by Janus about the use of DDs and when they rigidly designate. The response - I forget by whom - was that that was somehow inconsistent, and a possible counterexample was provided. To say that a response to that is not consistent with the way Kripke likes to do things misses the mark. The accusation was that the statement about DDs fails tout court, not just when playing by Kripke's rules.
If one wants to demolish descriptivism, one has to do it by rules and definitions that are generally accepted, not by rules that are only applicable within Kripke's theory.
That's why it's so important to distinguish between the positive and negative cases. In the positive case, Kripke is proposing a view of the world, and is free to set whatever rules he likes, as long as it is comprehensible and internally consistent. But the negative case - the attack on descriptivism - needs to play by rules and definitions that would be accepted by any philosopher, in phil of language or modal logic generally.
It has been suggested above that the positive and negative cases are inextricably intertwined. I don't agree. The motivation for the direction the positive case takes may lie in the things Kripke doesn't like about descriptivism. But that doesn't mean that the internal consistency or comprehensibility of his causal theory rely in any way on the success of his negative case.
Seriously?
I'll start a thread on it just to get it straight in my mind. It's an interesting issue.
But, you do agree that in some cases where ambiguity arises about the object of interest, that a definite description can attain the status of a rigid designator?
Quoting Snakes Alive
I haven't said the name is not a rigid designator and the fact might or might be be "trivial", but that is irrelevant since I was merely correcting your mistaken reading of what I had said.
In any case if you say it is a trivial fact, then you agree thereby that it is a fact. A name by itself does not rigidly designate, it can do so only in a context either ostensive or descriptive; do you acknowledge that?
As I see it there are two related issues when it comes to reference: the referentiality of names and the referentiality of descriptions. If a name definitely refers to a particular entity we can say that it rigidly designates that entity. The fact of the name definitely referring is a fact of this world, and it is on account of that fact that the name can be used to definitely refer to the entity it designates in counterfactual or possible scenarios.
The referentialty of descriptions is subject to the same conditions; if a description definitely refers to a particular entity we can say it rigidly designates that entity. The fact of the description definitely referring is a fact of this world, and it is on account of that fact that the description can be used to definitely refer to the entity it designates in counterfactual or possible scenarios.
So, the question becomes: How do we know that a name or a description definitely refers to just one entity?
The only test I can think of is that the name or description should allow anyone with the requisite knowledge to understand the reference of the name or description to infallibly identify which entity is being referred to. So, the name Donald Trump by itself does not definitely designate any entity, since there could be any number of entities (including my car) named Donald Trump. So, then an accompanying description is required to fix which entity named 'Donald Trump' is being referred to.
In contrast to this the description: 'The POTUS at 10.03 AM EST on January 6 2019' does uniquely refer to just one entity. The description 'The entity named Donald Trump' or for short 'Donald Trump' refers to the same entity iff the entity named Donald Trump is in fact named Donald trump and is in fact the POTUS at that time. Moreover, 'The POTUS at 10.03 AM EST on January 6 2019' refers to just one entity (provided there is a POTUS at that time of course) even if we don't know which entity it happens to refer to.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Snakes Alive
So, what reference exactly in your scenario is not established by reference in this world? We have "the South", "the Union" and " the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century". Are you saying that the fact that we don't know who would have president of the United States at the end of the 19th century in that alternative scenario is somehow relevant to what I have been arguing? I'm not seeing it.
The referent of the description 'the president of the United States at the end of the 19th century' in the alternate scenario may or may not have been the same person who was president of the US at that time, but the reference is not a definite reference to a particular person in this alternative scenario (since we obviously cannot identify who that would be), but to whatever person would have been president in that scenario. 'President', 'United States' and 'end of the 19th Century' are all designations that are established only by reference to this world, though.
Quoting Snakes Alive
There are two points, which you seem unable to grasp. The first is that names only rigidly designate by virtue of descriptive or ostensive contexts. The second is that names are themselves shorthand descriptions, the definiteness of which depend on further description. 'Donald Trump' is equivalent to 'the entity named 'Donald Trump' and doesn't rigidly designate until further information is provided: 'the man named Donald Trump who was POTUS at December 5 2019' for example; or 'the car that was named Donald Trump at (insert latitude and longitude) at (insert precise time)'.
Did you have a particular part in mind? The concept of necessity is used in most parts of the book except some passages in lectures 2 and 3. It is used most heavily in the middle part of lecture 1, p34ff in my version, where he discusses the relationship between 'necessary' and a priori. Is that the bit you meant?
All the referents there: you, Asda, Aldi are established by reference to this world, so I am not clear what point you are trying to make here un.
Yes, I suppose so. What are your thoughts about it?
What is the relevance of this? It's trivial, and doesn't have anything to do with the claim that names are rigid designators. Any word needs to have certain conditions met for it to be employed – there have to be people who speak a certain language, etc. That names have such conditions is unsurprising, and no one has denied it. It is also not the issue on whihc the descriptivist v. Kripkean accounts turn.
Quoting Janus
Again, this is just not relevant. It doesn't matter who or what might be named this or that. We're not talking about what names could denote if the language had been different in this or that way.
Quoting Janus
I think you are not reading the text, because this is precisely what is at issue, not background to be agreed upon. Kripke also addresses the view than a name N means 'the entity named N,' briefly. This view is not equivalent to the sort of classical descriptivism that Kripke is targeting. I think this latter view has more plausibility than the classical one, though it too is ultimately incorrect, because names are observably rigid in a way that descriptions like 'the entity called N' are not.
Anyone care to take a stab at baptism in contrapositive with definite descriptions?
It's not trivial because it shows that the rigidly designative capacity of names is dependent on description (or ostention) in ways that I have repeatedly stated that I take Kripke to be disagreeing with. If Kripke is not disagreeing then those I have been arguing with have been arguing about nothing. But if that were true then Kripke would not really be saying anything that is itself more than trivial.
Quoting Snakes Alive
'N' and 'the entity called N' seem to me to be logically equivalent. You are suggesting they are not; can you explain why you would think that. "The entity called N" is a description and it shows that names are really shorthand descriptions (outside of ostensive contexts at least), although perhaps not in the way that some of the descriptivists may have thought. The other possibility is that Kripke and his supporters are misrepresenting the descriptivist's accounts (I am not familiar enough with descriptivist literature to give an opinion about that).
Then you should be able to give a concise summary of my position and why it is wrong. If all you are saying is that I don't strictly adhere to Kripke's account, that may well be true, since all I am interested in is trying to clearly explicate the logic of description and naming based on the common senses of our actual practices.
All you seem to be interested in is controlling the direction of this thread and casting aspersions on, and making assertions about, anyone who dares to ask difficult questions about what is being claimed therein. So, is this a free philosophical discussion or not? I mean you, and all participants, are free to completely ignore any posts you don't want to respond to, aren't you?
Well, Banno is still the leader of this reading group and perhaps the most competent person to be it. So, I'm content with how he is doing. Perhaps a new thread is in order in regards to the issue of definite descriptions standing in as designators for names.
Notice how this issue doesn't apply to empty names...
Who voted him to be leader? I haven't seen much evidence of his competence.
I don't have time to read N&N again, so all I've been doing is questioning what has been said in this thread. As I said in my last post, no one need respond if they don't want to, but if they choose to respond then they should do so with reasoned argument, not with bare assertion, innuendo and insult.
I designated him leader when starting the thread. He obliged, and here we are approaching page 52 of a quality thread. I don't mean to sound rude but are you being ungrateful?
Perhaps we can resort to some secondary literature or comparisons or criticisms of the descriptive theory of reference through the lens of Kripke's causal theory of reference.
That looks to be the case.
Quoting Janus
No. Kripke's point is that the semantic value of a name is not like that of a non-rigid definite description. The latter varies in what it denotes across possible worlds, while a name does not. This is not a question about the processes, whatever they might be, that cause a word to acquire whatever meaning it might have, but rather about what its meaning is.
Kripke later does present a picture of how names come to acquire their meanings, but that's not what's at issue to begin with.
Quoting Janus
They are not. It is a contingent matter that Trump is named Trump; it is not contingent that Trump is Trump (i.e. that he is himself). In another world, where someone else is called Trump instead of Trump (say, Clinton), then 'the entity called Trump' refers to Clinton in that world, not Trump.
Well, I haven't said anything that contradicts that. I haven't said that a description which cannot infallibly pick out one particular entity could denote one particular entity either in this world or 'across possible worlds". To say that would be a contradiction; an absurdity.
Quoting Snakes Alive
I think this is where the misunderstanding lies. It is a contingent matter that Trump is named Trump. Any entity called 'Trump' would not be Trump if it had not been so-called, but of course it would be the same entity. So, when you say "it is not contingent that Trump is Trump" this can be misleading and seems to be leading to a kind of reification of the name, as I suggested earlier. All it really says is that it is not contingent that the entity that is called Trump is the entity that is called Trump. In other words the entity is one and the same; and this is tautologous, or trivially true.
You seem to be conflating the statement 'it is necessary that the entity that is called Trump is the entity that is called Trump' with the statement 'it is contingent that the entity that is called Trump is called Trump'.
What is contingent is that Trump is called Trump. He might have been called something else.
Yes, that's right. Of course we say that Trump would still be Trump even if he had not been called that, and we say that because he has been called that. But we wouldn't say that if he hadn't been called Trump. All we are really saying is that a particular entity is a particular entity regardless of what you call it, and that is tautologously true.
That is right.
The name refers to the entity; it doesn't refer to whichever entity has that name. That would be what 'the entity called Trump' refers to. This description refers to people besides Trump in different possible worlds, when they have that name instead of him.
Hence 'Trump' doesn't mean the same as 'entity called Trump.' The former refers to Trump; the latter refers to whoever happens to have that name, whether it's Trump or not.
Again, this seems to be where we disagree. The former (without any further qualification or description) refers to anyone called 'Trump', just as 'the entity called Trump' refers to any entity called Trump unless we give supplementary descriptions sufficient to pick out just one entity.
I get and agree with the first part, but what you want to say with the above is obscure to me.
Not across possible worlds. It may refer to anyone named Trump in the actual world, but once we establish the use of the name by naming conventions, its denotation remains invariant across possible worlds in evaluating counterfactuals. That's not how definite descriptions work.
What do I have to be grateful for? Being misread, strawmanned and insulted?
Yes, but all you seem to be saying here is that once the particular entity called 'Trump' that is being referred to in this world is established (by ostention or sufficient description) then we can refer to that entity by the name 'Trump' across possible worlds.
So, the point is that once we have established the entity being referred to in this world, by sufficiently definite description, we can use that definite description as it obtained in this world at a particular place, time and date, to establish the same entity being referred to across possible worlds. We need such place/time/date/-indexed descriptions to establish precisely which entity is being referred to in the first place; just a name is not enough.
Yes, that is the point. Minus the 'ostensive/descriptive' stuff, which I never said.
Quoting Janus
There is no reason to think, IMO, that the initial fixing of the individual requires a definite description either.
Yes, the "ostensive/descriptive stuff" was in brackets. The point of what I said there was to show that 'Trump' and 'an entity called Trump' are logically equivalent. You don't seem to be disagreeing now, so it would seem that I have shown that to your satisfaction.
Quoting Snakes Alive
The only other way I could think of would be pointing at the individual, or showing a photograph and the like; in other words: ostention. In the case of "baptism", the original act of naming, for those present it would be ostention and for anyone who subsequently met the baptized entity and was told 'it's name is X' it would be ostention also. For remote figures and historical figures, the referent of the name is established by description, and perhaps by ostention in the form of images: photographs if there are any, drawings, prints or paintings.
We've been over this. They aren't. Read above.
Quoting Janus
I don't think there is any one way in particular names get established, nor is it relevant to the question.
I've read it and I can't see an argument for it that I believe I haven't refuted. Perhaps if you could restate your argument for why Trump is not logically equivalent to an entity called 'Trump' or 'Trump' is not logically equivalent to 'an entity called 'Trump'' we might get somewhere on this point.
Quoting Snakes Alive
I wasn't saying there is any one way, but was outlining the imaginable ways, in which names get established and since my contention has been that one of the ways they get established is by description I can't see how it is not relevant to the question.
The denotation of 'Trump' is Trump.
The denotation of 'the entity called Trump' is whichever entity is called Trump in the relevant world – whether it's Trump or not.
Quoting Janus
The issue is not whether names somehow make use of descriptions to achieve their semantic value, but what their semantic value is, and that it is not descriptive.
OK, I think I see where the confusion lies now: I think the precise formulation should be 'the entity called Trump in this world' (for me the 'in this world' is taken for granted, since I believe all reference in possible worlds or counterfactuals must first be established in this world).
As I see it, in general the denotation of 'the entity called 'Trump'' is the entity called 'Trump'', and it is implicit that there is only one such entity.
The general denotation of 'Trump' is Trump, and no particular entity has been specified; so 'Trump' is more properly equivalent to 'an entity called 'Trump''.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Sure, but the point is that the semantic value of names can be expressed, and best understood, in terms of descriptions as I think I have shown above.
As I showed above, this is not the case.
Quoting Janus
No, this is even worse. The denotation of Trump is Trump (this is an obvious point, which makes it interesting how many confusions people get themselves into). Of course he is called Trump too, in virtue of being the referent of the name. But this doesn't mean that the name means anything to do with being called Trump. It simply refers to the man.
Quoting Janus
No, which is the whole point of Lecture I. Names and descriptions have different modal profiles, due to the lack of rigidity of the latter. The same goes for descriptions about who has which name.
You have not shown that as far as i can see. Please provide a concise argument or quote exactly where you think you've shown it.
Quoting Snakes Alive
LOL, who's confused now? The denotation of Trump is not Trump; the denotation of 'Trump' is Trump. Of course the name means means something to do with being called Trump; that the name 'Trump' refers to Trump just is that the entity the name refers to is called 'Trump'. I don't even know what point
you are trying to make in the above passage; it doesn't seem to address anything i have said.
Quoting Snakes Alive
More assertions without argument; this is getting boring. Might as well leave it there if you can't come up with any cogent argument that actually addresses what I have written.
Of course this response is no surprise, either. Just more posturing. Let me know when you become interested in doing some actual philosophy. Honestly the level of your discussion is appalling; you should be ashamed of yourself!
Specifying an accessibility relation is an indispensable part of any exercise in modal logic, so Kripke's failure to do this is hard to fathom. Talk of possible worlds without a specified accessibility relation is doomed to make no sense.
The accessibility relation I use to make sense of counterfactuals and hypotheticals is that all the worls, including this one, must be identical up to a 'splitting time' T2. That provides a clear, objective means of determining reference and rigidity.
I'd like to consider alternative accessibility relations. Perhaps Kripke does choose one somewhere, and I missed it. If so, I'd be grateful if somebody that has spotted it could point it out. @Wallows did you spot an accessibility relation in the text?
Read. the. fucking. book. The arguments are given in Lecture I + II.
Well, if you'd read the book, you'd know this weren't true, and that Kripke does address this question precisely! Not only that, but these issues, and the part of the book they come from, have been discussed in this very thread! Funny how that works.
Seriously, if you chuckleheads don't start showing some evidence that you have read the book we're supposed to be talking about, I'm just going to stop posting. I know you must think you're so intelligent that you don't need to read anything before criticizing it, but I assure you that is not the case.
Read.
Yeah, I agree. You win.
Now can we get on with it?
A new thread for those interested in things other than definite descriptions.
If you had read my post, you would have seen that it was specifically about my experience from reading the book. If you have a different experience, that includes finding a spot where Kripke specifies an accessibility relation, all you need do is point to that spot.
The fact that you chose to hurl insults instead suggests that you have not found such a spot.
The same applies to your claim that it has been discussed in this 52-page long thread.
Slowly and with care.
Can a definite description be a rigid designator?
Now a rigid designator refers to the very same individual in all the possible worlds in which it exist.
So your question is the same as "can a definite description refer to the very same thing in every possible world in which that thing exists?"
But remember that if something is true in all possible worlds, it is true necessarily.
So "Can a definite description be a rigid designator?" is the same as asking "Can a definite description be necessarily true of its referent?".
Agreed?
Which is the actual world, and which is the counterfactual world?
(A). I go to Asda.
(B). I don't go to Asda.
But all modal logic depends on what is the case in this world
— Janus
It's very very simple. One depends on the other, according to you, but you cannot say whether A depends on B, or B depends on A.
I would not say that A depends on B or the obverse, but that both A and B depend upon there being an actual world such that there is an Asda to go to and an entity---yourself---able to go or not to go to it..
Finally you lay your argument out clearly!
If an individual is to count as the same across possible worlds then the individual must have some attributes across those worlds such that it can be counted as that unique individual. If those attributes can be described, even in principle, then there must be descriptions that rigidly designate.
The other point is that the entity we call X may not be called X in other possible worlds so us referring to the entity as X is valid or coherent only insofar as the entity is called X in this world. This is the same as counting a definite description which is valid in this world as rigidly designating the entity across possible worlds even if that description is not valid in those worlds. These are just different ways of specifying which entity we wish to talk about in counterfactual or possible scenarios.
No, it doesn't. Counting as the same individual is stipulated, not discovered. Having a different name in other possible worlds is trivial.
Read the book.
Yes it does or your counterfactual talk will be nonsense. I am saying that the individual must be stipulated, not discovered, (I didn't use the latter term, and how could we discover anything counterfactual or merely possible?) to have some attributes the same across possible worlds, otherwise the counterfactual thinking would be incoherent. Nixon being a golf ball is an example.
You keep telling me to read the book. I have read it years ago. I am not interested enough to read it again. I am here responding to what others write, since this is a philosophy forum. Read what I write and respond relevantly to that or don't read it and don't respond at all. I couldn't care less, but I am tired of your pompous bullshit!
And you don’t see your problem here.
Read the book.
The individual is identified by some set of stipulated attributes. If you think there is a problem with that then why behave like a pompous smartarse by merely insinuating that there is a problem ? Why not just act in good faith and explain what the problem is?
Here's an example: if I say 'What if Trump had had black hair?' how would you know who I am referring to?
Kripke agrees that the individual must have some shared attributes:
[quote = N&N p46]If we can't imagine a possible world in which Nixon doesn't have a certain property, then it's a necessary condition of someone being Nixon. Or a necessary property of Nixon that he [has] that property. For example, supposing Nixon is in fact a human being, it would seem that we cannot think of a possible counterfactual situation in which he was, say, an inanimate object; perhaps it is not even possible for him not to have been a human being. Then it will be a necessary fact about Nixon that in all possible worlds where he exists at all, he is human or anyway he is not an inanimate object.[/quote]
These are necessary properties under Kripke's approach. Where he departs from the DD approach is that he says we don't have to have necessary and sufficient properties in order to pick out the individual in the alternative worlds. The picking out from amongst objects that have the necessary properties is done by stipulation. The stipulation is not by attributes but by mental ostension. We point our mental finger towards the group of objects selecting the necessary conditions, select one and say 'this one is Nixon'.
When I first read this a while back I didn't spend much time on it. I thought it just didn't sound like a helpful way to think about things, and moved on. But given the length of this thread and the passion displayed herein, I'm trying to be charitable. It still sounds to me like an odd way to proceed, but I will reflect on it and see if it starts to appear any more appealing.
Atributes that may not be true of that individual in some possible world.
Quoting andrewk
This just seems odd to me, though. I would say that we must be able to stipulate sufficient properties to establish an identity across worlds.I am not too sure about thinking in terms of necessary properties. as an example if someone said "what if Nixon had been a golf ball?' I would ask instead 'what properties could a golf ball possibly have sufficient to establish that it was Nixon?'.
That's right and it is in accordance with what I have been saying. The individual is identified by attributes which are given as descriptions. Those attributes are the ones we recognize in the actual world. That must be so otherwise we could not know what individual is being referred to in the first place. A mere name is not enough, because many individuals could have the same name.
So let's consider how Kripke might treat "Could Nixon have been a golfball?"
First, that's a question about Nixon. That's stipulated; and fixed in all possible worlds in which Nixon exists, by the fact that "Nixon" is a rigid designator.
Second, Nixon is human. What this means is that if we talk about a situation in which the thing we call Nixon is not human, we will not be talking about Nixon. SO if for instance we posit that Nixon was an automata, then we are not talking about a world in which the person we call Nixon is an automata, but a world in which Nixon* does not exist, and rather there is some other individual, with certain attributes that are the same as Nixon, but who is decidedly not Nixon because it is a robot.
The conclusion: since Nixon is necessarily human, and since golfballs are necessarily not human, Nixon could not be a golf ball.
There is no possible world in which Nixon is a golf ball.
And "There is no possible world in which Nixon is a golf ball" is a statement about Nixon.
*(perhaps - he might still be there, but flipping burgers in Mexico under another name...)
And without a hint of irony.
Quoting Janus
Now that's just not true. As has been shown multiple times here. We can refer when there is no available description.
And notice again the way you slip from definite description to description per se. Is that a rhetorical device or a failure to recognise the distinction?
You are not reading the book, so you have no idea what he is saying - as is clear form your posts.
Read the book.
The question is not really about Nixon at all. It is really a general question: 'Could human beings have been golfballs?'
So there is at least one description that must obtain in any possible world "Nixon is human". If that is a necessary property then it seems that there must be at least one necessary property. But the other question would be 'what attributes are sufficient to establish that Nixon is being coherently referred to?'. There may be a set of such attributes, and any of them may be sufficient, but none of them necessary, to establish that Nixon is being coherently referred to.
I have said from the start that in my view descriptions are more or less definite. A description is adequately definite if it allows anyone with the relevant knowledge to pick out just one entity. It is absurd to criticize me for not adhering to your definition of definite description when that is the very thing I am arguing against.
I am trying to propose an alternative understanding of description and definite description. I am not saying that that understanding is complete or infallible, I am open to critiques of it, but not to rejections of it merely on the basis that it doesn't accord with your preconceived notions of what a definite description is.
You never even attempt to answer the salient questions. You can't refer when there is no available description. Again, if I say to you "What if Trump had black hair?' how do you know who I am referring to? I say you don't and you must be given some description that tells you who i am referring to. If you disagree then tell me how else (apart from my pointing to the entity or some image of the entity) you would know.
As I said before I am not going to read the book again. But since this is an open philosophy forum I consider I have the right to ask questions of those who are purporting to be offering exegesis of the work. No one need respond to my questions if they think they are inappropriate or even if they simply don't want to.
If you are going to respond then it should be done in good faith, without innuendo and insult, but with cogent arguments or quotes from the actual work that address what I am actually saying. You have not been doing that.
Which only shows that you have not understood definite descriptions. That is, you are talking about something else.
Quoting Janus A question about Nixon is not about Nixon. This is about as demonstrable wrong as one could get.
Of course in a completely empty formal sense a question about Nixon is about Nixon. What I meant is that the substance of the question is not dependent on which human being it is about. And on a different point you as usual evade answering the question as to how you know which Nixon it is about. If you don't know that then it is just empty words. I think you are a dishonest interlocutor, Banno, more concerned with posturing than with sincere discussion. I won't bother you again.
...becasue we both know which Nixon it is about, but for some odd reason you pretend otherwise.
Quoting Janus
Yes you will.
OK, if you want to be bothered I will.
Quoting Banno
So we know which Nixon it is about because we both know which Nixon it is about! The sky is blue because the sky is blue...great!
I haven't said we don't know; I asked you to explain how we know...
We focus on what things we wish to consider being different about Nixon, with everything else remaining the same if it does not create a logical contradiction. It will be relevant to consider whether the things that remain the same are sufficient to pick out Nixon in the alternate world.
Counterfactual 1: Would Nixon have retired from politics if he'd lost the 1968 election?
For that, a bunch of necessary properties could be everything that was true of our Nixon up to one week after he received the Republican nomination. It turns out that those properties are also sufficient in this counterfactual, as the only thing we are interested in varying about Nixon is his winning the 1968 election. So it's easy to make a DD that is necessarily true in all possible worlds of the counterfactual. Note that the only way this Nixon could be called something other than 'Nixon' in the alternate worlds would be if he changed his name between receiving the Rep nomination and the date of the presidential election.
This 'splitting time' approach doesn't work if we want to change something that happened before Nixon was conceived. So let's consider:
Counterfactual 2: 'If Nixon's parents had been living in Nevada when he was conceived, would he still have entered politics?'
The thing we want to change is the parents' residence at a point in time. Implicitly, we want to keep as much as possible up to the moment of conception the same as in this world because otherwise we have no basis for determining who represents our Nixon in the alternate world. So for instance we could require the world to match this up to the date of Nixon's older sibling being born. Then we require that the parents moved to Nevada some time between then and the time their second child was born. If that child was a boy, that is the representative of our Nixon, and he is uniquely identified by being the second son of parents that are uniquely picked out by virtue of sharing the same past as OUR Nixon's parents, up to the birth of their first child.
So even though this second counterfactual involves changes before Nixon began, there are DDs that uniquely identify him, and hence are rigid across all possible worlds under consideration in the counterfactual.
Where it gets trickier still is where we change something that extends indefinitely far into the past, for instance changing one of his parents. We consider:
Counterfactual 3: 'I wonder whether Nixon would have become a Republican if his mother had been the daughter of a freed slave.'
[I'm not suggesting that would be unlikely. After all Lincoln was a Republican]
In this case his entire ancestry on his mother's side is different, so the differences from this world go back indefinitely far. However I think we can still uniquely pick him out. We establish a DD that rigidly designates Nixon's father, and then identify Nixon, in all possible worlds under consideration, as the male second child of that man. Worlds where the father does not have a second child that is a boy are not accessible.
Now I don't think we necessarily need to find a DD in order to refer to Nixon in these alternate worlds. We have specified what properties we want to be different and, as long as it seems likely that that leaves enough scope for properties that are the same to uniquely identify him, we can take the existence of such a set of properties (a DD) as assumed and go on to refer to the person in the alternate world as 'Nixon'. What we mean by that is 'the unique individual in the alternate world that satisfies some DD that also uniquely picks out Nixon in our world'.
Now to the extreme:
Counterfactual 4: 'If Nixon had been a golf ball, would he have thought that a rapprochement with China was a good idea?'.
[One of Nixon's great achievements was bringing China back into the community of nations by visiting there]
The alternate world for this is going to have to be very different from ours, because it has to have golf balls that are not only sentient, but sophisticated enough to have opinions on international relations. There is nothing logically impossible about such a thing, however bizarre it might be. The difficulty will be in establishing the connection between the golf ball Nixon and OUR Nixon. What about if pregnant women gave birth either to humans or sentient golf balls? - again bizarre but not logically impossible! Then we can fix Nixon by having him be the second child of the parents of OUR Nixon.
So even in the golf ball example we can, with sufficient imagination, establish an alternate world that is like ours in sufficient respects that a DD exists that picks out a single item in both that world and this. In this world that item is Nixon and, in the alternate worlds under consideration, that second child was a sentient golf ball.
TLDR version: I don't think we need to explicitly identify a DD that is shared by alternate versions of our protagonist. We just need to be reasonably confident that there would be one. I think in most realistic cases it will be very easy to identify one, given the full details of the counterfactual or hypothetical - eg the male second child of the people that are parents of Nixon in our world.
Interesting analysis! However if Nixon's parents had conceived a male child at a different time, or even at the same time but it had been a different sperm that won the race, then the entity would not have been the entity we are referring to as 'Nixon'.
Quoting andrewk
So, the "male second child of the people that are parents of Nixon in our world" would not necessarily have been the same person we call 'Nixon' even if he had been named the same.
And this raises the point as to whether it could be coherent at all to say that Nixon could have been any entity other than the entity he was. In a possible world he could have been born at a different time and still been the same entity I suppose (had the same DNA or whatever it is that qualifies biological entities as being uniquely the entities that they are (since twins throw a spanner in the DNA criterion)) but he could not have, counterfactually, been born at a different time in this world and still have been the same entity.
You might find it a curious case of Jesus exists in all possible worlds, having the definite description of being the Son of God, further being of greater import than the name "Jesus" as a rigid designator in our world. What do you make of an entity that only attains its meaning or import by the definite description that is rigid in all possible worlds?
This goes to my topic raised a while about quantification of entities in possible worlds along with how we talk about them as either de re or de dicto. A curious case is "God", who is quantified in all possible worlds, by the very definition of she, he, it's properties or definite description. Further, the Son of God, being Jesus is another case where the accessibility relation is satisfied over all possible worlds by virtue of being modally absolute (or the accessibility relation is transcendent above/over counterfactual's) or necessary de dicto. De re one can always just say that that is nonsense because I don't "believe" in "God".
And so the confusion arises when we talk about names de re in possible worlds, but not de dicto.
Quoting andrewk
Nope.
For me this is a key difficulty with Kripke - possibly the main one.
I am dubious about whether it makes sense to say that somebody that differs from Nixon in even the slightest way 'is' Nixon in another world. The Nixon of 1971 to whom Kripke referred would have been shaped by his victory in 1968 and the events that followed from that. So to imagine 'him' as not having won in '68 seems questionable. For me it makes more sense to say we are imagining an alternate version of Nixon.
I can live with the discomfort there as long as there is a shared past that is identical up to some point, probably because that is essentially the same framework as the Everett many-worlds hypothesis, with which I have been familiar for much longer than I have with Kripke.
But when we get to differences that do not allow any period of shared past - such as Nixon having a different mother - I think it becomes ridiculous to refer to the alternate as 'the same person'. Rather, I think of it as 'the person in the alternate world that shares a specified set S of uniquely identifying properties with OUR Nixon'.
Kripke appears to me to want to say that the versions in the alternate worlds are 'the same person', and to reject as unintuitive the notion that it is a similar person. He does this by using phrases like 'what if this man had lost the election', always with the 'this' italicised as if those italics somehow cut through the fog of uncertainty surrounding the reference in the possible worlds context (it doesn't, for me at least).
For me the 'similar person' approach is far more intuitive and the statement that it is 'the same person' seems at best meaningless and at worst repellent.
It seems to be a matter of feel rather than of proof. That is certainly the yardstick Kripke takes, as he repeatedly refers to what he finds 'intuitive'. All I can say is that in key cases my intuitions seem to be opposite to his - and he notes that his intuitions are different to those of philosophers that went before him.
That determination of sufficiency for picking out Nixon in an alternate world scenario is always and only established by whether or not the actual language expression being used to refer to Nixon successfully picks Nixon out of this world to the exclusion of all others. If it successfully picks out Nixon to the exclusion of all others in this world, then it most certainly is sufficient for picking Nixon out in a possible world scenario.
There is no need to consider the group of things that remain the same.
Quoting andrewk
We do not openly espouse and/or express all of the things that we think and/or believe about Nixon, and yet we still successfully refer to Nixon. It only follows that successfully referring to Nixon need not include everything we believe about Nixon. Since successfully referring to Nixon in this world need not include everything that we think and/or believe about Nixon, and this world is a possible world, it only follows that successfully referring to Nixon in a possible world scenario need not include everything we think and/or believe about Nixon.
Not by definite descriptions.
How so? Isn't the designator for "Jesus", the definite description that he is/was the "Son of God"? And this designates rigidly...
There's more than enough talk of Jesus hereabouts without adding to it. It shits me, so I think I will let it be.
So, back on topic, is "Can a definite description be a rigid designator?" the same as asking "Can a definite description be necessarily true of its referent?" as I argued?
And this is exactly what Kripke shows is bunk. Read the bloody book.
I think this is right, that it is mostly a matter of personal intuition and/or stipulation when we talk about arcane matters such as what it could mean for a name to rigidly designate the very same entity across possible worlds, and it remains for me a somewhat vacuous domain of enquiry, reliant on mere tautologies, especially when the dominant modus operandi seems to be negating the role of description.
When it comes to rigid designation of names per se, I can't see how there could be any fact of the matter, although @Banno seems determined to think there is, even though he is apparently unable to support that claim. I prefer to put my trust in what can be supported by observation and cogent argument. To each their own, I suppose.
Examination of the ways in which descriptions enable us to specify and determine which entities we are referring to seems to be a much richer, more empirical/phenomenological area of investigation.
Anyway, it seems that this thread has now more or less died. It's been fun, more or less...
The name 'Jesus' is not generally regarded as meaning the Son of God. Christians use the name 'Christ' to refer to the (believed to be) Son of God. 'Jesus' is the name of a man that is said to have existed in Palestine during the reign of Augustus. The statement 'Jesus is Christ' could be said to be the core belief of Christianity.
So using the name 'Jesus', even if used in a way that is intended to make it rigidly designate, does not carry with it implicit propositions about the existence and nature of God. It just refers to a historical figure that some people believe was God/Christ.
Some ancient historians suggest that there may have been no single historical Jesus of Nazareth, and that the stories of him may be an amalgam of stories about a number of different holy men of that era. It is a minority view, but even its possibility raises the question of possible worlds in which Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. Kripke touches on this type of possibility on p29 in relation to Aristotle:
[quote=N&N p29]Also we may raise the question whether a name has any reference at all when we ask, e.g., whether Aristotle ever existed. It seems natural here to think that what is questioned is not whether this thing (man) existed. Once we've got the thing, we know that it existed. What really is queried is whether anything answers to the properties we associate with the name-in the case of Aristotle, whether any one Greek philosopher produced certain works, or at least a suitable number of them.[/quote]
Could you elaborate on why you think that?
Consider the following: let us suppose that in this world Nixon was the only Republican politician that was born in California in 1913, was a male second child, and was on the House Un-American Activities Committee. That is a DD that uniquely picks out Nixon in this world.
What is to stop us from considering an alternate world in which two different people satisfy that DD, and we stipulate that one of them is our Nixon?
You could even say that there is just one entity in this world that satisfies the criteria you described without even naming the entity or by simply calling the entity X. And then go on to imagine alternative worlds in which X was not the only entity to satisfy the description, or in which X did not satisfy that description. In either case the determination of X seems to be relative to the description as it is valid in this world.
How else would you suggest that we answer the question:Is 'X' capable of picking an individual out to the exclusion of all others? Let 'X' be the language expression being considered.
What would Kripke's say about empty names?
Anyone?
What do you mean? What else could we possible use as a standard, as ground, upon which to build our position, if not for how we do it in this world?
The underlying point, on my view, is that that is what Kripke seems to be attempting to do. He lays out all sorts of different historical issues and/or accounts, and then shows how a case of successful reference places those under suspicion.
He doesn't assume. He doesn't presuppose. He doesn't conclude.
He shows the actual cases of successful reference, and then applies them to the specific historical position and/or issue he deems fit.
[quote=N&N p158]I expect to elaborate on [the content of these lectures] elsewhere, in a forthcoming work discussing the problems of existential statements, empty names, and fictional entities.[/quote]
It seems to me that the closest he comes is on p31, where he contemplates what to make of references to Moses, if there never had been a Moses.
My understanding of Kripke's position is that he believes we use stipulation. We mentally point at an individual in the alternate world and stipulate 'this one is Nixon'. See page 44.
That is not my position. But as far as I can tell it appears to be Kripke's.
It seems to me that that's relatively important.
That's not my understanding at all actually.
Stipulation is key to Kripke.
Kripke says that when we are talking about possible world and/or counterfactual scenarios, we begin by picking an individual out of this world and stipulating alternative circumstances for that individual. The possible world then consists entirely of such stipulation.
[quote=N&N p44]There is no reason why we cannot stipulate that, in talking about what would have happened to Nixon in a certain counterfactual situation, we are talking about what would have happened to him.[/quote]
The italics on 'him' show that the additional stipulation to which Kripke is referring is that the protagonist in this alternate world, who loses the election, is Nixon. The stipulation is neither by name nor by DD, as both of those may be different in the alternate world. It is by mental pointing.
I don't find it surprising that we reach different conclusions about passages like this though. I find Kripke's writing alarmingly rambling and unclear, for somebody that is thought of as an analytic philosopher.
You misunderstand. Kripke is clear at the very beginning of the lectures. If you do not work from what he actually claims, then you're not talking about what he actually claims. What he actually claims will not be captured by a quote taken out of context to such a degree that the truth conditions of the claims are questionable.
That's what you've done here. Looks a bit like confirmation bias?
He is referring to the individual picked out of this world. He continues - as do we all - referring to that same unique individual that we've already picked out. We're not - according to Kripke - picking Nixon out of alternative circumstances. In fact, he readily appeases anyone who wishes to say that that individual could have a different name. Different name, same referent. His point is that the proper name alone is both adequate and sufficient for picking out the unique individual from this world.
The evidence is brutally strong. Actual examples do not include anything else in order to do so. There is no stronger justificatory ground for either holding that claim to be true or assenting to his point.
The referent is Nixon. The name of the referent is "Nixon". We pick Nixon out of this world. That man, that individual is picked out in this world to the exclusion of all others. We then stipulate the alternate circumstances.
I think that a proper understanding of Kripke can be of two varieties. The first requires having a good grasp upon several different philosophical positions, which further require a good grasp upon formal modal logic, Possible World Semantics, and a host of other highly nuanced philosophical notions.
The second requires understanding the methodology he's proposed be used as both a method of implementation and a method by which to sensibly interpret what's being said during possible world discourse.
He is not claiming that his method is the only one. He is not claiming that he has offered a replacement theory of reference/identity/meaning. He admits an overwhelming amount of times that he's not answered all possible questions.
He's pointing out that proper names are always used as rigid designators. He's pointing out that there are other things we can glean from holding that fact in proper consideration.
The first group above is existentially dependent upon naming practices. The second group above is existentially dependent upon descriptive practices. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth group above are existentially dependent upon both naming practices and descriptive practices.
The term "both" applies only to a quantity of two. There are four combinations.
What this shows us is that there are four possible ways to combine naming and descriptive practices and asserts that there are six different ways to successfully refer. Successful reference can be the result of any one of these 'methods'.
Or at least...
That is exactly what I'm attempting to take proper account of, and hopefully by doing so will be able to determine whether or not all six suggested methods are capable of successful reference.
If my current musings are relevant to Kripke's examples has yet to have been determined. It is relevant to successful reference. By default alone, it ought be at least partially applicable, for Kripke's lectures directly involve what counts as successful reference.
Yes, do you know in which lectures he proceeds to talk about empty names and fictional entities like Santa Claus.
As far as I can understand, Kripke either brilliantly states that content or semantic value is mental and not always empirical or that because of this then the descriptivist might be right about semantic value of a counterfactual with no reference.
That's a brilliant phrase.
Do we actually do this?
Yes, we do.
Does it successfully pick out an individual to the exclusion of all others?
Yes. It does.
Can it be done?
It is, therefore... not only can it be done, it has already been done!
Conclusion:Descriptive practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference.
There's an 'intuitive' use of the term "necessary"...
Do we actually do this?
Yes, we do.
Does it successfully pick out an individual to the exclusion of all others?
Yes. It does.
Can it be done?
It is, therefore... not only can it be done, it already has been done!
Conclusion:Naming practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference.
There's an 'intuitive' use of the term "necessary".
Can either 1.) or 2.) be done by a language user that has never used the other?
In other words, can someone who has never used descriptive practices point and name?
Surely they can. They do!
Can someone who has never used naming practices employ descriptive practices?
Surely they cannot!
The point is that it successfully refers in this world. It only follows then that either it is capable of successfully referring in some possible world or this world is not possible.
Take your pick.
The larger point, by my lights, is that we start out our endeavor by virtue of establishing what sorts of expressions are used in actual cases of successful reference...
We go from there.
That seems to me to be exactly what Kripke wants to do.
While on p93, I was reminded of this bit, which proponents of the view that Kripke proved descriptivism 'wrong' would do well to read and consider:
[quote=N&N p93]Haven't I been very unfair to the description theory? Here I have stated it very precisely - more precisely, perhaps, than it has been stated by any of its advocates. So then it's easy to refute. Maybe if I tried to state mine with sufficient precision in the form of six or seven or eight theses, it would also turn out that when you examine the theses one by one, they will all be false.[/quote]
Kripke goes on from there to try to justify this unfairness (lack of charity, as I pointed out on about page 1), but all he can offer is that descriptivism 'seems to be wrong' and Kripke's approach 'seems to' be 'better'. Seems to whom? To Kripke of course.
Quoting creativesoul
They are not equal here. Let's compare this bit to the last and see what comes of it...
Descriptive practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference. Can someone who has never used descriptive practices point and name? Yes! Pointing to an individual thing and saying it's name aloud is more than adequate for successful reference. Successful reference is prior to descriptive practice!
Naming practices are used prior to descriptive practices. That which exists prior to something else cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else in any way whatsoever. Some successful reference(the first group) is in no way existentially dependent upon descriptive practices.
That's well worth noting!
What about the other? Let's see.
Naming practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference. Can someone who has never used naming practices employ descriptive practices? No!
One could argue:But toddlers can and do point to a blue ball and say "blue" prior to saying "ball". "Blue" is a descriptive term!
I would say "blue" is a descriptive term. It does not follow that the toddler is using descriptive practices as a means for successful reference unless she is talking about the color of the ball.
We are talking about successful reference. In that light, If she says "blue" as a means for referring to the color of the ball, she is using the term "blue" correctly. If she says "blue" while thinking about the shape of the ball, she is not.
Remember, we're talking about whether or not it is possible to use descriptive practices as a means of successful reference prior to ever using naming practices or descriptive practices.
The only way to use the term "blue" as a means for successful reference, is to use the name of the color to talk about the color.
Remember the above group 'cases' in question...
There are no members in group 2. It's sheer logical possibility alone. Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief. There are no actual cases of a creature using descriptive practices as a means for successful reference doing so prior to their already being involved in naming practices.
Descriptive practices are not necessary for the members of the first group. The first group are cases of successful reference. All successful reference is existentially dependent upon fixing the referent. Descriptive practices are not necessary for fixing the referent.
See what I mean about just taking what he claims at face value and putting it to use?
It's simply not true.
Let's revisit this in light of earlier revelations...
Some cases of successful reference include descriptive practices without using names. "The man who killed my husband" picks the unique individual out of this world that the speaker believes killed her husband. No proper name included in the example. Naming practices have already had long since begun however.
Yeah, I don't know how to proceed with this factoid in mind. It seems like a glaring example, that is brushed aside, of not being able to specify a referent that obtains to the same "entity" (however you define that metaphysically or ontologically, as Kripke seems to be inclined to state that entities exist in only an empirical manner) in (any) possible world, apart from the actual one.
This is sort of a roundabout way of stating that the "sense" of a name, under Kripkean semantics, is only restricted to the domain of the actual world. Or it could also mean that the sense of a name is conflated with the reference. What do you think about addressing this idea here?
This is in accordance with what seems to be the usual way to characterise things, which is that ostension is different from DD. But recently I've been wondering whether ostension is just a subcategory of DD.
Could it be that the act of pointing when naming something is a non-verbal way of communicating the words:
. . 'The first object that is intercepted by the line indicated by my finger is named.....'
That seems reasonable to me, and works for cases where the object is Tarzan, Jane or a dog, in which cases the only verbal output is 'Tarzan', 'Jane' or 'dog'. [my memory suddenly decides to inform me it is 'Me Tarzan' and 'You Jane', but let's ignore the Me and You for now]
If we accept this account, then the speech act contains the DD
'The first object that is intercepted by the line indicated by my finger'
and so it involves use of a descriptive practice and it becomes hard to think of a naming practice that does not rely on a descriptive practice.
The referent is the entity.
For empty names, yes.
For proper names, no.
Personally, and I think that Kripke would agree, there is no reason to believe that pointing and/or showing another something is capable of successful reference unless it is or has been already accompanied by language use...
There's an issue with incompatibility in my musings.
No one pointed it out. It's an old problem regarding the ambiguity of "necessary" as it relates to existential dependency.
Well, it depends upon one's terminological framework.
I see no reason to hold otherwise. The referent is the thing picked out to the exclusion of all others. It is the thing being talked about.
How is that not the case? I mean, what framework draws and maintains the distinction you've invoked? Can you show me?
If we're talking about a toddler who is first learning how to do things with and/or use words, that quote above could not possibly be the content of such rudimentary thought and/or belief.
Just think about it. An empty name only has meaning with respect to its descriptive content because there is no referent.
Proper names also (not a feature exclusive to empty names only) hold descriptive semantic content. However, their meaning obtains in the actual world, given through their referent.
Does that help?
Example?
Ok, I guess you can assert that Santa Clause is a plump, elderly man with a white beard who lives in the North Pole and delivers candy, presents, or coal depending on how nice you have been for the past year. All of the "a, who, how's" stand in as the descriptions of the person and what "he" does on Christmas, of giving out presents that time of year.
Quoting Wallows
Set this out.
This is an example of an empty name?
Empty of what?
It's an example of how the meaning and semantic content rests wholly within the descriptions ascribed to a fictitious entity that is Santa Claus.
I'm asking you to explain to me what is meant by "empty name"...
I'm asking you to given an example.
Is that your example?
Yes.
Quoting creativesoul
An empty name has no referent. Examples include; a unicorn, Pegasus, Harry Potter?
Quoting creativesoul
I just did.
What's being described again? Are imaginary entities somehow not entities?
Well, Santa Claus, clearly had no referent. Think about the sentence, "It is raining". The "it" in that sentence stands in as a dummy referent. Now, think analogously to empty names that are "entities" or semantically have content due to their descriptions.
Simple.
The referent is the entity. "Santa Claus" picks it out, or at least aims to. I do not car one way or the other whether or not it picks out a unique entity to the exclusion of all others.
"It is raining" is one of many appropriate expressions to use when water is falling from the sky.
Elegant.
"It is raining" means that there is water falling from the sky. "It is raining cats and dogs" literally means that cats and dogs are falling from the sky. It is however, just a figure of speech meant to emphasize the amount of water...
The referent is the entity. The invocation of "empty name" has not show itself to be relevant. I'll continue on with my ramblings...
:wink:
So, what's the referent for "Harry Potter"?
Santa Claus
It's a picture of the referent. There it is. The imaginary entity commonly called "Santa Claus"...
Surely, you've seen pictures of Harry Potter.
Yes, I have. He's got glasses and has a mark on his forehead. But, you didn't really answer the question, or did you?
I've shown you pictures.
Show me a picture, give me an example, of an empty name.
Yeah, but the descriptions, and semantic content was arrived at by J.K Rowling's books on him. I didn't read Harry Potter so I never formed a mental image of him.
I agree. None of that is a problem.
Yeah, so the picture didn't come first, although a picture may be worth a thousand words. Still, Harry Potter or Santa Claus, or Pegasus are all empty names by definition of not having a referent.
How many more ways can it be shown that those names are chock full of meaning for any and everyone who knows how to use them. including yourself.
The referent is the entity picked out by the name. If that counts as being an "empty name", what on earth counts as not being empty?
Question begging. What's the referent for Harry Potter?
A theory that became influential following Kripke's attack is that empty proper names, have, strictly speaking, no meaning. This is the so-called direct-reference theory. Versions of this theory have been defended by Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Nathan Salmon, Scott Soames and others. The problem with the direct-reference theory is that names appear to be meaningful independently of whether they are empty. Furthermore, negative existential statements using empty names are both true and apparently meaningful. How can "Pegasus does not exist" be true if the name "Pegasus", as used in that sentence, has no meaning?
They all refer to their own respective imaginary entities. The entity is the referent, the same way the as entities that are not imaginary are the referents of their namesakes. It is the thing picked out of this world.
Your notion of "empty name" leads to falsifiable claims. I've just shown yours to be false. All names have a referent. That is what makes them names. It's always been that way, and it always will be. Happened way before we began taking account of it.
Do what you wish. Think what you may...
You're employing an inherently impoverished linguistic framework. Don't worry though, you're in good company.
So, your basically assuming that there are no such things as empty names at all?
Assuming?
That's a conclusion based upon actual events, and true claims about them.
I'm confused. Empty names are simply defined as proper names without an referent. I've provided examples of Pegasus, unicorns, Harry Potter, even old saint Nick as representative of the class falling under the category of being entities without a referent.
How do you respond to this?
See Wikipedia if you haven't already:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_name
What are those names empty of? They are meaningful because those who use them have drawn a correlation between the name and the imaginary entity, the referent, the thing being picked out.
Empty of a referent. That's the very definition of what constitutes an empty name. If you disagree with the definition and think that Harry Potter, Pegasus, or Santa Clause have a referent, then explain what they are. You say that the imaginary entity is what makes the name have a referent. I've never heard of talking like this so please explain this process.
The notion of "empty referent" carries along with it a definition that conflicts with actual events. All names are proxies for that which carries the namesake. The referent carries the namesake by virtue of it's having been involved in naming practices. That's just how it works.
All names can be used to successfully refer. The entity being referred to is the referent. "Santa Claus" is the name of an imaginary entity. We refer to the imaginary entity by using the name of it.
It's not a mystery.
Certainly there is a question as to whether a DD has to be verbal. Usually we think of it as verbal, because, courtesy of Russell, we are used to examples such as 'the first chancellor of Germany' or 'the author of Waverley', but I see no need for it to be verbal.
Well... you are conversing with me, ya know?
I tend to stand upon the shoulders of many. No one was completely wrong. No one was completely right. I'm not an adherent to any common philosophical position and/or school of thought.
None of them have gotten thought, belief, meaning, and/or truth right.
You'll have that.
Well, it's a matter of what such rudimentary thought and belief are capable of actually having as their content...
The reason why not is because it is impossible for such a complex linguistic construct to be formed by a creature who has yet to have been involved in naming practices and/or description. I work from the bare assumption that at conception there is no thought and/or belief.
That's too far off topic, but just wanted to offer a brief answer.
I do not object to the ability of DD to successfully pick a unique 'thing' out to the exclusion of all others. I object to the idea that definite descriptions are not existentially dependent upon naming practices.
No. The term "it" is standing in place for something else(the actual situation, the events at the time of utterance, what's happening), but referents do not do that. Rather, they are the things being stood in place for. They are the things being referred to. They are the things being picked out by...
It's not a mystery.
Sorry, I meant dummy subject.
I'm just attempting to offer a bit of justification for warning you about the particular framework you were employing...
:wink:
I'm not sure still what you mean by "entity being picked out successfully" here.
Quoting creativesoul
But... descriptive practices are existentially dependent upon naming practices.
That is... where there has never been naming practices, there could never have been descriptive ones. That seems to stand in direct contradiction to the first conclusion above.
Not all successful reference includes both naming and descriptive practices. Some do not include one. Some do not include the other.
How can we make sense of this?
What is the relation between inclusion, necessity, and/or existential dependency?
Where is the existential dependency for an empty name?
The referent. That which is given a name.
Suppose we place ten pictures on a table. One of them is Santa Claus(with suit, sled, and reindeer). All others are old bearded white guys... philosophers.
I ask the average American four year old... do you see Santa Claus?
She picks him out immediately.
There are no empty names. It is itself the name of a empty category. An empty container called "empty names".
Other than that, the question doesn't make sense to me.
The notion is the result of grossly misunderstanding how the attribution of meaning works.
:wink:
Hmm, I'm not so sure about that...
How do you account for a reference to 'The man next to the window with champagne in his glass', which appears to be a DD that does not use proper names?
Let's assume that, unlike in the example in N&N, I can see the bubbles and colour and so can be confident that the glass contains neither white wine nor sparkling water or other carbonated soft drink.
I can't see grounds for your objection here. The toddler will understand a concept that we would express as 'that thing over there' from the gesture and that's all that's needed. They only need the concept, not the words for it, and my fairly wide experience of toddlers is that they do understand the concept.
How do you think Kripke's would respond to the issue of "empty names"?
You're referring to an expression, then calling that expression a DD(using names), and then further describing it by pointing out that it contains nothing that we've named "proper names".
They weren't given. What you've suggested as thought/belief content of a language less creature is a complex language expression. The child has no language. I reject the suggestion on those grounds alone.
It appears our positions are irreconcilable on that particular point.
:yikes:
When further questioned, some folk adamantly point out - as if it were a good move to say this - that think, believe, and/or further argue that that is so by virtue of definition alone.
Sometimes, while doing so, they are actually in the midst of accusing others of circularity.
:gasp:
And this is the ground against what I've been arguing? In light of the fact that there have been no subsequent valid refutation of anything I've claimed and/or argued?
There's at least one important consideration, and it also serves to better answer the following question earlier asked of myself...
Quoting andrewk
This is based upon the dubious presupposition that all thought can roughly equate to words.
Roughly?
If thought is equal to words, and a creature has no words, then a creature has no thought.
It is also based upon a gross negligence. That is, it neglects to draw and maintain the distinction between thought and belief, and thinking about thought and belief.
Those words - the ones you're actually expecting me to believe somehow belong to a language less creature - are thoughts that only a creature that is capable of thinking about it's own thought and belief can possibly have.
:cool:
This is written as if you're referring to the claim itself.
Not all cases of successful reference include overt proper name usage.
Conclusion:Naming practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference.
— creativesoul
There are actual cases of using naming practices to successfully refer, to successfully pick something out, to bring another's attention to the same thing, while not actually putting description to paper by pen.
Conclusion:Descriptive practices are not necessary for all cases of successful reference.
— creativesoul
But... descriptive practices are existentially dependent upon naming practices.
That is... where there has never been naming practices, there could never have been descriptive ones. That seems to stand in direct contradiction to the first conclusion above. Not all successful reference includes both naming and descriptive practices. Some do not include one. Some do not include the other.
How can we make sense of this?
What is the relation between inclusion, necessity, and/or existential dependency?
Descriptions are about things. They can also refer to things. Names are not about things. They can only refer to things.
We pick things out of this world by talking to others. We use nouns to do so. Nouns refer to people places and things. Prior to being able to describe something in detail, that something has to be identified, isolated, and/or otherwise picked out from it's surroundings in order to be more carefully examined in it's details. Names do that.
What are your thoughts on that?
I consider that in light of stronger ground.
Given that the facts clearly demonstrate the actual difference between them regarding everyday use for reference, that sounds like a problem with the logic to me.
For those others who may be so inclined...
It does not follow from the fact that there are purely logical coherent formulations consisting of unbound variables that there are a set of corresponding things in the actual world that are bound by the same rules that govern the variables.
Just because something is called "logical" or even a "logical rule" doesn't mean that it preserves the truth of the premises it's being applied to.
Saying that there is no logical difference, presupposes and/or leads to claiming logical equivalence.
Descriptions are not names.
Nixon may have had another name. Then he would not be the person whose name is Nixon.
Hence they are distinct.
It's in the book.
No. "Nixon" refers to Nixon. "The man named 'Nixon'" refers to the man with that name. That he has that name is a contingent fact about Nixon.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes; but because "The man named Nixon" does not pick out the same thing in all possible worlds, adn hence is not necessary.
Quoting creativesoul Yes. And that is a fact about Nixon. Indeed, we can only posit that he might have had a different name because we can refer to him with the rigid designator "Nixon". How could we make sense of "The man named 'Nixon' may have had a different name"... Only by indexing it to the actual world: "The man who in the actual world is named 'Nixon' might have been given another name". That sort of index is implied by the very shared language we are using for this conversation.
If people can get this, they can get Kripke.
That there is no apparent logical difference between the two is shown by the fact that "Nixon might have had another name" is equivalent to 'The person whose name is 'Nixon' might have had another name".
Quoting StreetlightX
Finally! Surprisingly (given it has been ignored and rejected out of hand by @Banno) this is exactly what I have been arguing, most specifically the bit about indexing DDs to the actual world. Of course every element of discourse, including names as rigid designators, must be indexed to the actual world, since that is where all our discourses happen.
No, they are not. "Nixon might have had a different name" is about Nixon. "The person named 'Nixon' might have had a different name" is about a person named 'Nixon'. That person might not be Nixon. Hence they are not equivalent.
Possibilities are not facts on my view. That's a quibble. Kripke talks like that too...
Contingent facts... I guess...???
No, you got it wrong again; it is about THE person named 'Nixon'. 'A person named "Nixon'" is about A person named 'Nixon'.
Judicious use of the definite and indefinite articles will eliminate any confusion you may have about this.
Both are rigid if they are qualified as such and neither are rigid if not. They are logically equivalent.
Publish it. Change modal logic forever.
(0) 'The man named "Nixon" might have had a different name'
arises because one side uses a method in which the DD is used as to pick out an individual in this world, and then to contemplate alternate worlds for that individual, and the the other uses a method in which the DD is also evaluated in alternate possible worlds.
These correspond to two different elaborations of the sentence:
(1) 'The man that is called "Nixon" in this world might have had a different name in an alternate world'
(2) 'The man that is called "Nixon" in all possible worlds in an ensemble S might have had a different name in one of those worlds'
So disagreement just arises from different ways of filling out the overly-abbreviated and hence vague statement (0).
N&N is not much help in resolving this as Kripke fails to address accessibility relations, which determine what the ensemble of possible worlds under consideration is.
I talked about this issue in the de re and de dicto distinction. Have we arrived at this point yet?
Kripke doesn't provide any grounds for counterfactual definitiveness; but, nowadays it's assumed that the same laws of physics and of nature are the grounds where accessibility relations are maintained. AFAIK, theories like the many world hypothesis don't even maintain counterfactual definitiveness, so good luck with accessibility relations wrt. to that theory.
Well methodology is certainly a big part of the problem, but I don't think that that report quite captures it. It runs much deeper than the scope of that account allows us to dig.
Quoting Janus
Above we have the supposition that being a rigid designator is no different than having been called such by a community of language users. If they are "qualified as such" is just another way of saying that they are called such, or defined as such. In other words, a thing is a rigid designator by definition alone; because we say so.
So, let's give this a bit of consideration. If we hold to such a notion, the only thing that makes a rigid designator what it is is it's having been given the namesake "rigid designator". I am being reminded of Witt's often referenced(pun intended) argument against essentialism:What counts as being a game is being called such. The only thing that some things have in common is that they've been given and so they share the same name.
Sure... One could say that. Lots of folk tend to think that that's the case or that that's a good argument far more often than I think it is. However, I mean, to be fair and all - that is how naming and descriptive practices work, right?
Furthermore, also supporting this kind of thinking is the fact that there are all sorts of different common ways to talk about possible worlds. Kripke suggests that whether or not "The man named 'Nixon' is a rigid designator is determined by what's going on during specific kinds of possible world discourse. There's more than one criterion for what counts as a possible world. So, right off the bat Kripke dismisses some of these other common ways to talk in terms of possible worlds, and stipulates cases when we pick an individual entity out of this world to the exclusion of all others by virtue of using it's proper name.
In light of the actual world...
"The person named 'Nixon'" can be successfully used as a means to pick a person named Nixon out if more than one person have been given the name. One of many. The same is true of "Nixon". Neither picks the referent out to the exclusion of all others in such actual circumstances.
However...
"The person named 'Nixon' is capable of being used to successfully pick out a unique individual to the exclusion of all others in the actual world. I mean, it does and can be used as a means for successful reference in certain actual circumstances. In other actual circumstances, the same descriptor cannot. However, this is also clearly the case with the use of "Nixon" as well.
Successful reference most certainly existed in it's entirety prior to our account of it. Or if you'd rather... we most certainly successfully referred to many things in many ways long prior to our taking account of those facts.
If A is necessary for a case of successful reference in this world, it makes no sense at all - to me at least - to say that it's not simply because we can imagine otherwise.
It cannot.
Kripke shows that much.
If the meaning of a name(X) is equal to "the thing named 'X'" then the meaning of names would be equivalent to/with a referent and/or a description. Meaning is equivalent to neither one, that's true no matter how anyone fucking defines their terms.
That's point of view invariant. Meaning is attributed long before we take account of it.
The meaning of the following descriptor - "the thing named 'X'" - is not equivalent to the referent of 'X', but "the thing named 'X' can be used to pick out the thing named 'X'. The thing named 'X' is the referent of "the thing named 'X'" .X is the referent of "X".
Rather, meaning is attributed to solely by virtue of the correlations one draws between the name and something other than the name. After, and only after, meaning has been attributed to 'X' by more than one speaker by virtue of drawing the same(or similar enough) correlation(s) between 'X' something other than the name, can 'X' be used to pick out the thing named 'X'.
Quoting creativesoul
No, its that a name or a definite description suitably indexed to the actual world just is a rigid designator. It will logically qulaify as such on account of its ability to uniquely pick out just one entity.
1b.)"using naming practices without using descriptive practices"
2a.)"using descriptive practices without ever having used naming practices"
2b.)"using descriptive practices without using naming practices"
If there are no actual cases of 2a(None have been found) and one keeps aware of that, then it makes no sense to use 2b as justificatory ground for claiming that picking a unique individual out to the exclusion of all others depends upon descriptive practices.
That which is prior to something else cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else. Successful reference can and does happen in the actual world by virtue of naming practices alone. We do this without ever having used descriptive practices. Successfully picking out a thing by name identifies the thing. The thing is the referent. The name identifies the referent.
In all cases of 2b, there had already been naming practices.
So 'Bob the Builder' starts out as a rigid designator - 'Bob', and an appended disambiguating description. Just as there is more than one Nixon, so there is more than one Bob. Such names are rigid, but not definite. But once I have made clear that it is Bob the builder I am referring to and not Bob the sagger-maker's bottom-knocker, then it is the same person I am referring to whatever I am saying: "Bob might have been called 'Sam' and joined the fire service." If he had, of course he would not have been called 'Bob the Builder', but 'Fireman Sam'. But for this to have any meaning, it must be Bob who would have been called Sam, and Bob who would have joined the fire service - to suppose that Fireman Sam was called 'Sam' and joined the fire service is to suppose nothing at all, and simply to have changed the subject of discussion - It's a whole other story.
The rigidity of the name is inherent in the way we speak. In due course, Bob might have a son, who due to the aforementioned name shortage is also called Bob, and as often happens, he might follow his father's profession. And then we would need to further disambiguate Bob the Builder and Bob Builderson, or Bob the Builder Senior and Bob the Builder Junior, or some other scheme; thus there is a flow between names and descriptions...
But there is not the same flow between definiteness and rigidity. There are many builders named, Bob, and there are at least 2 philosophers named Bob on this very thread. But there is only one Bob the Builder, and here he is:
Accept no imitations! #therealbobthebuilder.
One might say that the rigidity of names is a function of their arbitrariness; they are Humpty-Dumpty-an in meaning exactly what the speaker intends:
This totalitarian anarchy becomes unworkable applied to the whole language, but limited to names, and signalled by a beginning capital, it seems to work just fine. 'Alice' means the Alice I am talking about and none other, and you don't know which Alice I am talking about until I tell you (It's Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass). In the same way, there are many builder's named 'Bob', but only one Bob-the-Builder.
Names are rigid even if ambiguous, whereas if descriptions are ambiguous, they are not definite.
"The person named 'Nixon'" can be successfully used as a means to pick a person named Nixon out even if more than one person have been given the name. One of many. The same is true of "Nixon". Neither picks the referent out to the exclusion of all others in such actual circumstances.
However...
"The person named 'Nixon' is capable of being used to successfully pick out a unique individual to the exclusion of all others in the actual world. I mean, it does and can be used as a means for successful reference in certain actual circumstances. In other actual circumstances, the same descriptor cannot. However, this is also clearly the case with the use of "Nixon" as well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The earlier account of four different actual circumstance is above . These deserve a bit more attention.
Here, we must bring the language users' thought, belief, and/or knowledge into the mix, because here is where their consideration sheds a bit of much needed light. I think a strong criticism of externalist accounts is that they do not do this, and the language users' thought/belief matters because thought/belief have efficacy. It is solely by virtue of thought/belief that any and all meaning is attributed. Kripke's notion of a causal chain of reference, Banno's invocation of shared meaning, Janus and andrewk's referring to context of historical use, and Un's recent introduction of ambiguity all skirt around it.
When listener and speaker know how to use the description, know how to use the name, and know of only one Nixon, then both the name "Nixon" and the description "the person named 'Nixon'" can be and are actually used to successfully pick out one individual to the exclusion of all others. That's always the case in those particular circumstances.
When listener and speaker know how to use the description, know how to use the name, and the speaker knows of more than one, but the listener knows of only one, then both the name "Nixon" and the description "the person named 'Nixon'" can be and are actually used to successfully pick out one individual to the exclusion of all others. That is not always the case in those particular circumstances. The speaker could be referring to a different individual than the one the listener knows of.
When listener and speaker know how to use the description, know how to use the name, and the speaker knows of only one Nixon, but the listener knows of more than one, then neither the name "Nixon" nor the description "the person named 'Nixon'" is capable of successfully picking out one individual to the exclusion of all others.
That is Nixon.
"The man named Nixon" is no less and/or no more capable of picking Nixon out of this world than "Nixon" is.
I can't blame anyone, though – actual analytic philosophers proposed such a thing at various times.
Of course, then one might say what they meant is "the individual actually named Nixon," where "actual" is to be read as some sort of indexical picking out the actual world. But then, oh dear, we have a rigid designator referring to Nixon, which was Kripke's hypothesis.
This seems to be escaping the issue of actual world designation with more than a little hand-waiving. I think if you want to justify your rather hyperbolic tone at the beginning of this post you'll need to do a bit better than just "... we have a rigid designator referring to Nixon" as if the matter were self-evident from there.
Yes, absolutely I'd like an explanation, that was the purpose of my post.
Let "actual" be an indexical such that "actual P" is a property true of an individual just in case that individual is P at w@, where w@ is the actual world. Then "actual individual named Nixon" is true of any individual in the actual world who is named Nixon. Finally, "the" takes this property and returns the unique individual that instantiates it (assuming we have only one Nixon), which is the individual named Nixon in the actual world.
What happens if we evaluate this definite description at a non-actual world? Let w be an arbitrary world, then "the actual individual named Nixon" denotes at w the individual named Nixon at w@. Since this is true of an arbitrary world, it is true for al worlds – thus, at all worlds, "the actual individual named Nixon" denotes the individual named Nixon at the actual world. Since it denotes the same individual at all worlds, it's therefore a rigid designator, and designates Nixon.
But this was just Kripke's hypothesis.
That all makes perfect sense, but you started with the proposition that "it predicts a de dicto reading of "Nixon might not have been named Nixon" that is contradictory.". Its the conclusion here I'm not getting. I don't get how you go from" the individual named Nixon" to the contradictory reading. I get how if you parse Nixon as "actual individual named Nixon" the rigid designator follows, but I don't get why you think this is the only way to parse "the individual named Nixon". I mean, if you I can think of a half dozen other ways to parse that.
I was under the impression that de dicto is all that can be said. De re there is nothing that can be said. Is that correct?
Quoting Snakes Alive
Through essentialism? Oh, wait I thought Kripke was against that...
Sorry if Im not writing clearly, I wasn't asking you to reiterate what you thought, I got that bit, I was asking why you thought it. Why does the bad de dicto reading necessarily follow from all ways to parse 'the individual named Nixon'? I get that it does if you replace 'the individual named Nixon' for both instances of 'Nixon' (leads to a non-question), I get why it leads straight back to rigid designators if you replace either instance with 'the actual individual named Nixon'. What I still haven't seen your argument for (and can't seem to work out myself) is your claim that all possible parsing of 'the individual named Nixon' lead to either contradictions or back to rigid designators, which is what would be required for you to sustain your hyperbole that such arguments were "wrong"
Consider a long discussion between friends about Nixon, encompassing his life story, Watergate, his achievements and failures as POTUS and as VPOTUS before that. After the first few sentences of the discussion nobody uses the name Nixon, except when needed to distinguish him from another person that is mentioned in the same sentence. They just use 'he' or 'him', because everybody knows who they are talking about, and will have both the name and a DD in mind.
One of the friends has a theory that Nixon experienced dissonance from being a patrician mind in a plebeian creature (in terms of ancestry, education and so on). They wonder whether he would have pursued a different life course if he had one of the names of American aristocracy, like Schuyler. So they might say:
'Just say he had been called not Nixon but Schuyler, do you think he would still have gone into politics?'
The subject of the question is not identified by the name 'Nixon' but rather by 'he', which refers to the person the friends have all been talking about. There is no de re / de dicto distinction in this sentence, because the subject is not identified by a word ('Nixon') or DD that is capable of such a distinction.
If a passer-by hears the sentence and asks who it is about, the response might be 'We are talking about Richard Nixon, the POTUS in 1969'. But being told that doesn't mean the passer-by will take that DD and substitute it for 'he' in the question. People don't think like that. They just note the explanation, conjure up their mental image of Nixon and then reconsider the question with that mental image in mind for the 'he'.
The corresponding sentence that all the analytical divagation concerns itself with would be something like:
'Just say Nixon had not been called Nixon, but was called Schuyler instead, do you think he would still have gone into politics?'
I contend that somebody would not say it that way unless they were being facetious, hoping to get a laugh from the circle with their little play on words. If they seriously wanted to consider the influence of his name on the man that in this world was POTUS in 1969, they would say it something like the first way above.
In short: analysis of whether the utterance 'Nixon might not have been named "Nixon"' has a meaning, and if so what, has nothing to do with how humans use language.
N&N pp142-3
:roll:
Nixon might not have been Nixon...
There's a difference here. The first makes perfect sense. The second is a contradiction because it is poorly worded/framed. It does not consider the difference between names and referents.
https://imgur.com/a/1D0QNp6
Please, let's move on.
Now, why do you think the writer made that choice?
My understanding of common usage is that quotes are not required around a word to indicate it is a mention rather than a use when that is already implied by the context. The word 'called', which you slyly omitted from your second sentence, provides that context.
By all means contest my idea of what common usage is - it's only an impression. But don't critique a sentence that nobody has written.
READ.
You literally invented an entire imaginary conversation in your post! Are you for real?
Are you seriously implying that no one can look at novel sentences of a language that they haven't found in an actual corpus or conversation?
Even if that were true, you're still wrong, because there are examples of these constructions! You just did not even bother to look for them before making up nonsense claims about what people do and do not say!
Take the fucking L, man.
One day, one day, people will read. I dream of that day. Til then ciao.
It's later in the same sentence, and relies on the setup that is done in the first part of the sentence, which meticulously avoids using a proper name as subject.
By the way, I'm not suggesting nobody would ever say your Nixon sentence. I've already noted that somebody might express it that way facetiously. It's also possible that somebody might say it non-facetiously if they hadn't given much thought to how to express the idea they had in mind. In such a case, the likely outcome would be confusion and/or mirth, a request for clarification and a re-expression of the sentence. Which means the sentence is unclear. Which means it's a meaningless waste of time to write long dissertations about what it 'really means'.
Quoting Snakes Alive I haven't come across that idiomatic expression before. I like it! What does it mean? Is it a reference to the elevated railway, which in some US cities is colloquially referred to as 'the L'?
The author above uses 'Nixon might not have been named Nixon' as a means for critiquing an imaginary opponent.
Nixon might not have been named "Nixon" would be an actual one.
And then that same author says the following???
Quoting andrewk
No, but it is an interesting thought experiment, and the sentence is perfectly well structured. Akin to the liar paradox.
As much as I would want to call 'philosophy' mental masturbation, I have learned a lot and have been stimulated by this thread. It has helped me understand that analytic philosophy can be fun to entertain.
You're describing that which had already been named and described.
The referent is not identified by the name "Nixon"? Really now?
Which person are we talking about again that could have been named otherwise, but was not?
:roll:
"He" is used to refer to Nixon. "Nixon" identifies the referent.
You covered nothing...
It's not about the overrated use/mention distinction...
Hmm, that's a more interesting and complex question than I thought at first. The actual-world properties by which we identify the person depend on what our counterfactual is. Given this counterfactual is about them (1) having a different name - presumably at birth, since it is their surname, and (2) not entering politics, we need a way to identify him using information prior to the birth. We can try to do that via the parents, but without necessarily using the name Nixon. We could envisage them changing the name by deed poll but, given the counterfactual is about feeling that one might have aristocratic lineage, that wouldn't really satisfy the purpose of the counterfactual. The name Schuyler would have to go back a few generations into his ancestry at least.
One way to achieve it while minimising the differences from this world would be to imagine a world in which there is no surname "Nixon", and everybody with surname 'Nixon' in this world has 'Schuyler' in the other world. In all other respects the world would be identical to this up to the naming ceremony of Richard Milhous Schuyler/Nixon.
In light of that I'd say the person we are talking about is the person that, in the alternate (actual) world, was born in Yorba California as the male second child of the Quaker couple Francis A Schuyler (Nixon) and Hannah Schuyler (Nixon), née Milhous.
It's all a bit weird, but that's counterfactuals for you. Few of them make much logical sense.
Well, they do outside of this thread.
So, how do you address the issue of trans-world identification?
Transworld identity is not a problem because transworld identity is stipulated, not discovered.
Remember that?
If you had understood it, you could point out to @andrewk where he has gone astray.
This is like trying to teach table manners to a kangaroo.
:rofl:
'John Kennedy' is a rigid designator referring to a particular entity in all possible worlds. 'Jack Kennedy' is also a rigid designator referring to a particular entity in all possible worlds. In this actual world, they are the same entity, which means that 'John Kennedy' and 'Jack Kennedy' mean the same thing. But normally (assuming analycity), when words mean the same thing, we can interchange them in a sentence. But the sentence "is John Kennedy Jack Kennedy?" does not mean the same as "is John Kennedy John Kennedy?". The first is a question about the proper application of an alternative name, the second is nonsense. So the terms 'John Kennedy' and 'Jack Kennedy' do not mean the same thing in each use within a sentence.
That's what I was referring to.
Ok, that much I understand. But, the standard length of a meter isn't stipulated, is it?
Napoleon: "See this here stick? From now on, we call the length of this stick, right here and now, 'one metre'. Got that? And it works in all possible worlds, right? Just like any proper name"
Well, it probably didn't quite get a baptism like that, but it might have...
So, let me break it down.
The meter stick is not the rigid designator, but the length of the meter stick is? How can this be?
Having the same referent is not equivalent to meaning the same thing...
Unless you've solved the arguments around sense and reference I think what you meant to say was that having the same referent is not necessarily equivalent to meaning the same thing. (there seems to be something of an epidemic of this sort of absolutist hyperbole in this forum at the moment, this thread is a classic, you'd think Kripke had solved reference and the rest of the linguistics department might as well retire).
Notwithstanding that, however, you're basically making the point I was trying to make. Two uses of the term 'Nixon' can be used in different senses, and so saying that any use applied to one must apply to the other is not necessarily accurate. The overly simplistic idea that if 'Nixon' means 'the individual named Nixon', then the sentence "Nixon might not have been named Nixon" would be obviously contradictory, relies on both uses of the word 'Nixon' having to have the same sense. I'm just pointing out that they needn't.
I said precisely what I meant.
From the very beginning of rudimentary, elementary, and/or otherwise basic thought/belief formation throughout the ends of our lives and amongst some of the most complex linguistically informed notions of thought and belief that we can imagine...
During our entire thought-life, a referent is always picked out of this world. Meaning is part of the picking process. Having the same referent is not equivalent to meaning the same thing... ever. The meaning of a statement/proposition and it's referent are not equivalent... ever. Reference and meaning are not equivalent... ever.
That said...
I'm not all that clear on what "the arguments around sense and reference" is referring to, nor do I care much at all to get mired in such historical baggage. That is confidently said as a result of knowing that I haven't adopted the terminological framework, conceptual scheme, historical academic school of thought, and/or taxonomy/lexicon that those problems arose from. That much I can guarantee. Thus, there is ample good reason to doubt that I arrive at those same issues.
With that much in mind, it always behooves us all to remain aware of our own fallibilities. Very important. So, as aways I'm ready, willing, and able to learn better through better reasoning. I've not seen this yet. Unless someone here can show me how my framework suffers the same problems as the academic ones you're referring to, they're an utterly inadequate means by which to measure their own unseen problems. My position sets those out and simultaneously avoids them.
Don't get me wrong here. These aren't flippant dismissals I'm expressing here. Rather, I am more than happy to not only grant but readily acknowledge the tremendous mental abilities of philosophers of old, particularly given the familial, social, cultural, and/or historical particular circumstances. In the bigger picture, thought and belief begin simply and grow in complexity. The history of human knowledge supports this. Therefore, because we ought be confident in the kings' wisdom given their individual particular circumstances, we can conclude that if those problems were solvable by the available means(linguistic/terminological framework) at their disposal, they would have been solved already. They're not. There's no better reason to begin to question the framework itself.
It's taking an account of that which exists prior to the account itself. Therefore, it can be very wrong...
A thought/belief system is 'self-contained'. No one makes a mistake on purpose. We cannot see the flaws in our own thought/belief system. Godel shows that that is true of all axiomatic and/or otherwise purely inductive reasoning. Granted, not all thought/belief is purely inductive/axiomatic type thinking. However, that kind of thinking(axiomatic/inductive) - is itself - thinking about thought/belief. Thought/belief is something that exists in it's entirety, prior to our account of it. Our account of it is existentially dependent upon lots of things like shared meaning and/or language use itself. What we're taking account of is not always. Some thought/belief is prior to language. All thought/belief systems begin simply and grow in complexity.
If we could see our own flaws, none of us would ever have false belief. Rather, amongst other things, it takes someone else to show us our flaws. But I digress...
If two sides of a historical debate both shared the same flaw, then neither side would be able to see it. Some problems are consequences stemming from our terminological use and dissolve all by themselves when better language comes to bear. So, I suspect there's nothing for me to 'solve' despite others finding themselves needing to.
Open the lid...
I don't think we were making the same point.
You're talking about the rules of thinking about thought/belief:What we're doing here... now... You're then applying that to all reference and/or sense. Some of that is prior to your account, ya know? The methodological/terminological framework you've adopted cannot take that into account.
I'm talking about what all successful reference takes and applying that standard to the differing positions actively taking account of reference at any level.
Sense, on my view, is equivalent to accepted usage. Some of the same terminological expressions mean different things to different people. These are different senses. Sense is existentially dependent upon shared meaning. Shared meaning is existentially dependent upon two creatures drawing mental correlations between the same things. That is existentially dependent upon a plurality of capable creatures.
Quoting Isaac
I've no idea what you're trying to say here either. Here's what I do know...
If "Nixon" means the same thing as "the individual named 'Nixon'" then both are capable of standing in as proxy - one for the other - without losing coherence and/or changing truth conditions of the statement/proposition containing them. If two different designators mean the same thing, then we will be able to effectively substitute one for the other.
If we replace "Nixon" with "the individual named 'Nixon'" and reconstruct the claim in question, we arrive at the following, which I'm sure we'll all agree amounts to gibberish...
The individual named Nixon might not have been named the individual named Nixon.
That clearly doesn't work regardless of how we use quotes. Now, let's try the other...
Nixon might not have been named Nixon.
That makes perfect sense when spoken and/or written in lots of cases.
When written, successful reference may vary due to the different senses in use being represented by the same marks. So, depending upon both the reader and the writer the sensibility of the second can and often does make perfect sense. Other times can be more precise as well. Philosophers are the only ones to get themselves all befuddled... along with those around them at times.
"Nixon might not have been named 'Nixon'" is as clear as a bell. "The individual named Nixon might not have been named the individual named Nixon" is gibberish.
Because the already meaningful example loses all sensibility when we attempt to substitute one for the other, we can only conclude that...
...the name and description do not have the same meaning despite the fact that they have the same referent. That was the point. It has been made.
:joke:
What is a counterfactual existentially dependent for successful reference?
Some notions of counterfactual are rubbish. Simply put, being counter to fact is existentially dependent upon prior facts.
One can successfully refer to each and every individual particular conception of counterfactual by virtue of talking about the name(counterfactual) and the definitions/descriptions...
I would bet that "Jack Kennedy" has far more emotional/familial connections to Jack Kennedy and his remaining family than "John Kennedy" does...
My friends call me "Jack"...
I'm using the word 'means' is a term to capture both sense and reference in actual use. The question is why is it necessary in the example being used to replace both instances of the term 'Nixon' with the same meaning?
Not to me.
If I were to hear somebody say such a thing I would ask them what on Earth they were on about. Fortunately, I have never heard anybody say such a thing. And I have only ever seen it written in a context of people arguing over philosophy of language.
I'm not saying it can't be made sense of, given a good deal of additional explanation. But that explanation is needed, and that need means it is definitely not 'as clear as a bell'.
Here, for comparison, are some statements that are 'as clear as a bell':
- I am hungry.
- I admire Nixon
- All dogs are mammals
- What is your name?
- Take your hands OFF that red, auto-destruct button!
It means, if we rolled back in a time machine (which is impossible), to way back before Nixon and his family got the name, and somehow got them to use a different name, then Nixon would not be named "Nixon".
More simply put, it's contradiction, clear as a bell.
What? You've never heard of counterfactuals?
Or what about "John would have been named Andrew, if his parents picked a different name?"
Do you seriously not understand these sentences?
(1) they are ambiguous, and need more detail to clarify the particular meaning, and
(2) as stated and in isolation, it would be extraordinary for somebody to say it - and the same goes for your statement about John. It is not part of normal language, does not warrant analysis, and any analysis that is conducted of it tells us nothing about how language is used. There are certainly longer statements that bear some superficial similarity to it, that one could imagine being used (eg Pat says 'Oh Richard, I do love you and want to marry you, but I wish you had a Scottish name like McGillicuddy instead of plain old Nixon. I always fancied having a long, exotic last name'), but the context of those statements makes the meaning clear, which is not the case for 'Nixon might not have been named "Nixon" '.
How????
Quoting andrewk
According to who??? What on Earth is in any way strange about those sentences???
This is the most baffling thing I've ever heard. Where the hell do you get these intuitions that perfectly normal sentences are things that we can't analyze for some reason?
So let me get this straight. You get to pull entire made up conversations out of your ass, but simple sentences are just too bizarre to warrant analysis.
Perfectly normal? Have you ever heard somebody say such a thing out of the blue?
All I can say is that, if you regard that as a perfectly normal sentence when uttered in isolation, your life experience of conversation must have been radically different from mine.
Quoting Snakes Alive
I find that surprising. But nevertheless I am chuffed to learn that I have that unique honour and I thank you for notifying me.
Yes! Parents talk about naming their kids all the time, and what names they would have had if such-and-such!
Quoting andrewk
You've never fucking heard people talk about counterfactual situations in which someone has a different name?
And this on the heels of your constructing elaborate examples of made-up conversations that have actually never happened.
I'm sorry, this whole thing is just so utterly bizarre.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/twitter-might-have-been-named-friendstalker/281380/
Now what is something that is 'not a normal part of language' doing as the headline of an article, said out of the blue?
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/audience/david-whitley/os-ae-orlando-name-david-whitley-0622-story.html
"Another theory is that a politician named J.G. Speer loved Shakespeare and named the city after a character in the play “As You Like It.”
If that one’s true, we should be grateful Speer wasn’t a huge fan of “Hamlet” or Orlando might have been named Guildenstern."
[mod edit]
Nixon is a family name. It's not a matter of saying I wish I had called my son Nick instead of Dick.
I suggest you read the posts to which you respond more carefully before firing off responses. I wrote 'in isolation' twice above, and with very deliberate intent, yet you seem to have missed both.
I can't make much sense of the first statement. As far as the question goes, the example shows that the description "the individual named 'Nixon'" does not mean the same thing as the name "Nixon".
Why do you think that both instances of "Nixon" are replaced by the same meaning? I don't even know what to think of that wording. Let's look at another example to clear up matters here...
Nixon could have been named something other than "Nixon".
That makes perfect sense. Nixon could have been named something else. Now, in order for that to have happened, there would need to be other alternative circumstances as well. That doesn't matter here. Those are all stipulated.
For the nuanced understanding...
The second use of the name is in quotes because I am using it as a means of referring to the name and not the individual picked out by the name. The first use of the name is not in quotes because I'm using it as a means of referring to the individual picked out of this world by the name.
The issue I was addressing was whether or not the description "The individual named Nixon" has the same meaning as the name. We can test for that by virtue of substitution.
The individual named Nixon could have been named something other than "the individual named Nixon".
Clearly that is nonsense! We've no choice but to conclude that the description does not have the same meaning as the name. Salva veritate...
You're [mod edit] neglecting to consider hypothetical, possible world, and/or counterfactual discourse. [mod edit]
Wow, you and @Snakes Alive need to chill out against the name calling. Please stop.
Quoting andrewk
I'll second that. As an aside, I don't see why andrewk's comments, qualified as they are, should be a cause for such consternation.
It's such a bad thing too...overtly implied to some uses of specific expressions...
Unless of course it's properly qualified... and my use.
Then, it's just a double standard.
It's only poisoning our own well if some one else notices.
May I suggest that you learn a more adequate framework?
People talk hypotheticals all the time. Normal people. People talk about "what if"... and then stipulate circumstances alternative to what they believe(assuming sincerity in speech). These are normal everyday people and their language use is no different in basic form than many philosophers'.
Denying that that is the case, whether we're talking about an outright openly expressed denial or a more covertly implied one, is to deny actual events. Any position which denies that much is utterly incapable of properly accounting for actual events.
If there is another position which can yield all the benefit of the aforementioned emaciated ones, but does not lead to the same irresolvable problems, then what possible ground could one offer as reason for maintaining the old?
What I did say was that the meaning of a counterfactual is deeply dependent on context, which can be supplied either within the sentence or in the surrounding speech acts. Without that context, ambiguity reigns. 'Nixon might not have been named "Nixon" ' is a highly complex (because it involves a name that was not given to the individual in a naming ceremony) and contextless statement, of a type that I would be astonished to hear anybody say outside of a philosophy of language discussion.
You said that a string of words did not make sense to you. You used that same string of words. You critiqued my punctuation of the same string of words. You charged me with slyness regarding this same string of words...
That's the key distinction that came into my head when reading this. Of course, Richard Nixon might have been named John Nixon if his parents had decided differently... etc. But the same everyday counterfactual can't be applied in saying Nixon might not have been named "Nixon" (By who?). Which is what makes it something you're unlikely to hear and is likely to cause a double-take outside of an explicitly philosophical context.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. My best guess is that it's my response to this: In that post you appeared to wrongly attribute to me the sentence 'Nixon might not have been Nixon' and mock it with an eye-roll icon. I asked you not to criticise me for things I didn't write. If I misunderstood your post and it was not intended for me then say so and I will gladly apologise.
If you are referring to some other interaction then please provide a link and I'll have a look.
However, I take another step back and ask, that if we're talking about Nixon by assigning a different name, then how is that possible.
I assume the answer is straightforward...
Hmm, am I to blame or what's the issue here?
Here's a bit of refresher...
Quoting andrewk
That's what you wrote. That is a critique regarding a string of words. Part of that critique claims that that is a sentence that nobody would ever use. That's clearly false. We're all using it.
Another issue is the fact that you've misrepresented the way the sentence is written by someone like myself, and I'm clearly not alone.
Nixon might not have been named "Nixon".
That's the way it is used when drawing a distinction between meaning and referent, name and referent, referent and sense...
You did not put forth an accurate representation of the position you're critiquing.
Here's my problem though:
You claimed that that did not make sense to you.
Tell me, because I evidently missed the class of special kinds of qualification...
How does one validly critique that which does not make sense to one? I mean, charging another with having their 'head up their fundament' is a baseless rhetorical device if and when unaccompanied by understanding and/or valid refutation/objection...
So...
It pissed me off.
Did I refer to you in that particular post?
No!
I simply showed how careful punctuation can eliminate what otherwise looks like a contradiction.
No.
I claimed that nobody outside a philosophy of language discussion would be likely to use it. This is a philosophy of language discussion. Note also that nearly all instances of that word string in this thread are mentions not uses - a critical distinction in this subject area.
Quoting creativesoul That omission of the quotes on the second 'Nixon' has already been covered. Did you miss it? I said that my understanding of English usage is that quotes can be implied by the context in instances like that. If your experience leads you to conclude that is not common English usage, just mentally put quotes around the second 'Nixon', as that was my intent.
Quoting creativesoul
Saying that something does not make sense is a critique. The aim of the 'to me' part is to leave an open mind for a response that is able to make sense of it by explaining it better. Such a response did not occur.
Quoting creativesoul No you didn't. You showed how careful punctuation plus insertion of an extra word (the word was 'named') can eliminate what looks like a contradiction. Do you deny that the difference between the two sentences you wrote in that post is more than just punctuation?
Yes.
Quoting andrewk
That came first.
Nixon could have been called something else. Nixon could have had another name. It would have taken all sorts of different circumstances being different. All of that makes perfect sense to someone well-versed in such nuanced language use. Regular people would readily agree even if they did not recognize the consequences that may come to bear by virtue of asserting such a thing. Some folk will unreasonably demand complete knowledge of what that would take.
Those people pull the rug out from under themselves... We need not know every thing in order to know some things...
Stating that "Nixon could have been called something other than'Nixon'", says nothing out of the ordinary.
Thus, the only conclusion to draw is that those two expressions do not mean the same thing. They both pick out the same referent. Thus, it is also clear that having the same referent is not equivalent to meaning the same thing, or having the same meaning.
Tapir...
That has little to do with Nixon's namesake and more to do with how to sensibly talk about it's being different and what else that would take. Denying possible world discourse shuts the door on taking deliberate well thought action for improvement. It denies a better world by virtue of stifling the vison.
That is the name of a loosely defined subject of thought/belief. It requires pre-existing thought/belief, because they involve out thinking about what sorts of things are meaningful and what makes them so.
Semantics involves conceptual schemes/linguistic frameworks. Some have clearly defined terms. Others do not. All require language.
Meaning does not.
Reference requires shared meaning. Shared meaning requires a plurality of creatures draw the same correlations, associations, and/or connections between different things that exist in their entirety prior to becoming a part of the aforementioned correlations. Shared meaning does not require language. Semantics does.
Meaning is prior to semantics. Successful reference is prior to semantics.
Meh
Oh, and I do owe you an apology... Should have taken step or two backwards...
What do you mean taken a step or two backward?
That's fine.
Given that this thread is concluding, do you want to recap on the things you have learned from Kripke's Naming and Necessity?
Well, Kripke relies on actual practices, and it seems than nearly all who oppose what he's claiming here, which isn't some grand replacement theory but a better account of actual examples, work from logical fictions...
I don't really understand what you mean here. Can you expand?
The 'good' arguments against Kripke rest their laurels upon logical possibility and coherency alone. They work from (mis)conceptions.