Mongrel

I used to think that too. It's more complicated than that. Black people in the South were making progress entering into politics, starting businesses,...

Sometimes we look at things deterministically. Sometimes we don't. Modal logic can be used to examine both modes of experience and expression.

Yes. Determinism is an interesting viewpoint. No living analytic philosopher has proven determinism to be true or false. And I'm pretty sure you misun...

This is where your fascination with jargon is letting you down. Determinism is a concept that predates analytic philosophy. And yes.. it most certainl...

Nope. It's deterministic.

If you notice, my view is deterministic. Any statement about actuality that is true is necessarily true. It's fun to think about how that works out in...

it was scary.

Ok.

I disagree. The actual France exists in a particular possible world.. the actual world.

If I'm thinking of the actual France, it has Paris as its capital in all possible worlds where the actual France exists (which is exactly how many?) A...

Calvin Klein is coming out with a burkini for men. It has extra padding.

Of coarse not. The speaker I mentioned doesn't know apriori what the capital of France is. And the question being evaluated wouldn't be about what the...

How about I write out my position and you add yours?

I wouldn't ask Scott Soames to read this thread. I'll write it out and give it to you for approval. OK? And if you have any philosophers you want on t...

It's only in the light of aposteriori necessity that we limit our assessment. Traditionally, there was no limitation. There is no possible world where...

True. I don't believe there is anything that precludes a person talking about an object, France, for which it is essential (to that object) that its c...

Point to where I denied that. Think about why necessity was once (and by some still is) thought to entirely overlap apriori and analytic. If you do th...

Is there some reason a speaker could not say "France" and mean a country that has Paris as its capital? This is the state of this conversation... I re...

Having determined the meaning of a statement, one need not at any point abandon that meaning for some convention for the sake of predicating truth. No...

This is a confusing statement. Necessary modifies true. I guess it could modify false... that could be managed. You seem to be thinking of some.... th...

I'm watching it now... not finished yet. Insanity used to be my biggest fear. I used to be unable to make it all the way through watching the Shining....

I understand the concern you're raising, but I think if you followed the line of thought, you'd see that it's not the problem you're envisioning it to...

It's relevant, and I would say critical to grasping the concept of aposteriori necessary truths that we're talking about statements that are true over...

I think our discussion fell off the rails. I hold that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain can only be true at a possible world that contains an object picke...

If the statement can't be evaluated at all at those worlds, then it certainly isn't true at them. The statement is only true at worlds in which Samuel...

So you're agreeing that we don't look at all possible worlds. We look at all relevant possible worlds... specifically where our rigid designators pick...

But what about worlds where this man does not exist? Is the extension of the statement true there as well? It doesn't look like it would be truth-apt.

So let's go back to this issue of how Samuel Clemens didn't have to pick Mark Twain as his pen name. Explain to me again how "Samuel Clemens is Mark T...

Pierre. Samuel Clemens didn't have to pick the pen-name Mark Twain. He could have picked something else.

Come on, Pierre. Are we really sorting this kind of thing out?????

When were they co-referential terms? Consider the truth of the sentence when Clemens was a child. In case you don't know who we're talking about.... n...

Try the sentence out on a possible world where Samuel Clemens is 5 years old.

Maybe the better question would be: why isn't it necessarily true?

Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain. This is not a necessarily true statement. What would you have to add to make it necessarily true?

OK, so I think you're refusing to acknowledge something that should be very clear. "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain." This is not a necessarily true stat...

I think what you're doing is imagining some criteria for reference that holds in spite of a speaker's intentions. I don't think that's going to work. ...

Likewise, If the France that I'm thinking of exists, it's capital is Paris. That is a necessarily true statement if the France I'm thinking of must ha...

No it isn't. We covered this already. This sentence is necessarily true: If Samuel Clemens exists, he is Mark Twain.

I know that. And I grieve for the people of Syria and the surrounding area. I hope peace comes soon.

You didn't bring up Hitler. So... no. You didn't win.

Since the the object I'm talking about must have Paris as its capital, perhaps it's a moot point whether we call it essential or not. It's necessary. ...

No realism necessary. 1. When considering ordinary language use, it is necessary to attend to context of utterance to gain an understanding of the mea...

Don't lie, Baden. You thought God created the heavens and the earth and then He created the United States of America to defend Eastern Europe from the...

Historically it was a religious sacrament. I don't know the history of how the government got involved.

Sorry MoS. Now that I've discovered that all I have to do to make Baden and Sapientia lose their composure is talk about American isolationism... you'...

Lighten up, dude.

I was riffing on the emotion behind the emergence of American isolationism. The last line of the post was meant to explain that. The idea is that the ...

Thanks!

Houdini was a Jew. By the way.

What marriage is necessary? :) Hi Harry!