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Snakes Alive

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The sheer illiteracy in this thread is actually starting to piss me off, so I think I'm going to duck out.
January 06, 2019 at 06:09
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...
January 06, 2019 at 06:00
Read. the. fucking. book. The arguments are given in Lecture I + II.
January 06, 2019 at 05:58
As I showed above, this is not the case. No, this is even worse. The denotation of Trump is Trump (this is an obvious point, which makes it interestin...
January 06, 2019 at 03:43
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...
January 06, 2019 at 02:38
We've been over this. They aren't. Read above. I don't think there is any one way in particular names get established, nor is it relevant to the quest...
January 06, 2019 at 02:00
Yes, that is the point. Minus the 'ostensive/descriptive' stuff, which I never said. There is no reason to think, IMO, that the initial fixing of the ...
January 06, 2019 at 01:33
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, i...
January 06, 2019 at 01:17
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 ...
January 06, 2019 at 01:03
What is contingent is that Trump is called Trump. He might have been called something else.
January 06, 2019 at 00:57
That looks to be the case. No. Kripke's point is that the semantic value of a name is not like that of a non-rigid definite description. The latter va...
January 06, 2019 at 00:39
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 c...
January 05, 2019 at 23:51
I see we've moved on to tone policing. That's a good sign.
January 05, 2019 at 21:34
What the fuck are you talking about
January 05, 2019 at 21:32
lol Because you said so?
January 05, 2019 at 21:31
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.
January 05, 2019 at 21:23
This doesn't work, because in your example, the description is still not rigid. We might imagine a counterfactual scenario where another man named Nix...
January 05, 2019 at 08:14
That is not how it works. Expressions are not rigid designators 'for' a particular sentence. Even if it were, having to specify for each sentence on a...
January 05, 2019 at 06:27
Yeah, so? That's a trivial fact. How does that mean the name isn't a rigid designator? No, it doesn't. If we say if the South successfully split from ...
January 05, 2019 at 00:14
Read the rest of the post. No. 'Donald Trump' picking out Donald Trump is not contingent on his being named so in another world. We can entertain coun...
January 04, 2019 at 23:35
As a matter of terminology, descriptions with an indefinite article like 'a' are called indefinite descriptions. Descriptions with a definite article ...
January 04, 2019 at 22:55
I doubt that equative constructions in natural language track the sort of numerical identity that must hold across worlds. Thus, Batman is Bruce Wayne...
January 04, 2019 at 22:45
Dude, no it's not. Accept this and move on.
January 04, 2019 at 22:26
smdh 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 inde...
January 04, 2019 at 07:50
Are you serious?
January 03, 2019 at 16:55
As I understand it, Mackie advocates moral error theory, according to which all moral claims are false. Moral claims are cognitivist – have truth cond...
January 03, 2019 at 09:03
I wouldn't mind reading Mackie's Inventing Right and Wrong.
January 03, 2019 at 08:56
Look at the distinction drawn between de jure and de facto rigidity in the Introduction.
December 29, 2018 at 05:24
Definite descriptions can be rigid designators, and Kripke acknowledges this. However, ordinary descriptions used in natural languages are typically n...
December 29, 2018 at 05:09
Necessity is not truth with respect to the actual world. It is truth with respect to all possible worlds (within some restricted domain).
December 28, 2018 at 23:47
In some modal logics, a world is set aside in the frame, to be the distinguished 'actual world,' sometimes symbolized @. An operator that means 'actua...
December 28, 2018 at 00:32
A description can be a rigid designator, if its descriptive material happens to pick out the same individual in every world. This can be done pending ...
December 27, 2018 at 23:33
Nope.
December 26, 2018 at 23:21
Thanks – I've actually read that paper, believe it or not (I used to be interested in the semantics of names). I'm sympathetic to the view that names ...
December 26, 2018 at 23:16
Not really. Are you talking about the domain of individuals? In a standard quantified modal logic, there is a domain of individuals, and a set of poss...
December 26, 2018 at 06:19
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 ...
December 26, 2018 at 04:08
The validity of the Barcan formulae follows independently from ordinary, independently plausible semantics for the universal quantifier and the box. I...
December 26, 2018 at 03:54
No it doesn't. The modal logic is a formal device, indifferent to metaphysical interpretations of modality. There is no modal logic that in principle ...
December 26, 2018 at 03:22
This paragraph just doesn't make sense. What do you mean by "measure" or "quantify" counterfactuals? There is no such thing as "an accessibility relat...
December 26, 2018 at 00:50
So far as I know, Quine isn't taken seriously on this matter.
December 26, 2018 at 00:46
Formally, there is no problem with it. I have never seen a philosophical criticism that was compelling either.
December 25, 2018 at 22:18
For a long time I thought that there was no convincing evidence one way or the other on this issue. The arguments of classical idealists are fallaciou...
December 21, 2018 at 23:12
I really don't think intellectuals should bother engaging the public.
December 20, 2018 at 12:23
No.
December 19, 2018 at 01:54
I'm not following. What does this have to do with the Barcan formulas? In your standard modal semantics, all formulae are evaluated with respect to a ...
December 18, 2018 at 04:29
Not that I remember or am invoking. It may be just that I have been exposed to NN too much (people return to it often, because analytic philosophy is ...
December 15, 2018 at 11:00
Do you think that Kripke does it well? I ask because andrewk's insistence that these are matters of taste is false – and I doubt this can be shown to ...
December 15, 2018 at 10:43
I don't really agree, but it doesn't matter. I think the intuitive glosses on these arguments just lead to interminable confusion. The 'telescope' the...
December 15, 2018 at 10:24
That article isn't addressing descriptivism about names. It's addressing the Russellian account of definite descriptions. The translation you provide ...
December 15, 2018 at 10:16
Do you know what the modal argument is? Can you restate it for me in your own words?
December 15, 2018 at 10:15