Snakes Alive

Have you read NN?

Not no one, but many of the objections are clearly confused, in a way that it would be unproductive to respond to. The notion of rigid designation, an...

Kripke invented the notion of accessibility relations in modal semantics. I think reading NN without knowing about modal logic is pointless, as eviden...

Russell's theory is probably not right. It makes a number of wrong predictions as to the behavior of definite descriptions in embedded environments. h...

That's not really relevant. There's a body of data w.r.t. how counterfactuals behave, and a theory to capture them. What you feel about the naturalnes...

This is really not a good sign. Counterfactuals are ordinary tools of reasoning, and in many cases their meanings, and even truth conditions, aren't d...

Syntactically, the subject is 'it.' Semantically, there is no subject. The subject is not the rain, because 'the rain is raining' makes no sense. Like...

It shouldn't, no. But David Lewis remained puzzled, I think, to the day he died.

I'm not sure in what sense the examples I gave are 'improper.' I'd rather say that a definite description has a certain semantic function, which in so...

Nope. "Rigid designator" applies to terms, or words. The definition is on p. 48. You can say that a name rigidly designates an object.

A terminological thing here: a name doesn't have a rigid designator according to Kripke, it is a rigid designator. A rigid designator is a kind of ter...

Sometimes. Definite descriptions also have covarying readings with no single referent: "Every author who writes a story shows the story to an editor."...

I'll do it.

But you said the argument had nothing to do with interest, and the argument in the first post very explicitly does. In order to address the issue, you...

Which posts are you referring to? Would you rather people address the argument in this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/220479 ...

Here's a bad way to argue: We're trying to decide between two positions, A and B. You present an argument that A is true, because of fact X. Your inte...

No, not really. If you begin with the neutral position, it is the one making the argument that begs the question. It doesn't matter if you're a Platon...

So? The argument straightforwardly conflates mathematical objects with mathematical practices developed using, or developed to describe, those objects...

No, he understands the word, without impediment. Yet his use of it is restricted. Hence, your original claim, that to understand a word is to be able ...

No, but being able to say it is a huge part of it. Lacking the ability to say it hugely hampers your ability to use it; it does not hamper your abilit...

This cannot be right. We know from many medical conditions that some people can understand words without being able to make use of them. Broca's aphas...

One of my favorite strands in metal lyrics is the paranoia over immanent nuclear destruction. It's died down in recent years, but it was great. https:...

OK, I see. I agree, that is very much at odds with Chomsky. If I understand correctly, Chomsky does see language as an individual, biologically ingrai...

I haven't read the book, but I'm confused in what sense this is a new approach. Hasn't this idea been the stock view since at least Aristotle?

With all due respect, this quote belies the first claim: There is no way even a cursory reading of the book (or a summary of it!) could give you anyth...

Don't "apologize" to me – read the book, or else inquire in good faith, when discussing a topic in the future. The advice is for your benefit, not min...

Nobody is going to stop you from having whatever opinion you want, but your opinion is ill-informed, and it's frustrating that when confronted with th...

Ah, I see. I mistook you as meaning that the point was to 'foster understanding' in the sense of a linguistic community coming into some kind of self-...

It's not to provide a blueprint for use at all! It isn't as if we are trying to teach people how to use language 'right.' Language is a natural phenom...

That a theory is bound to be incomplete is not an injunction against theorizing. That is a very silly thing to think.

Do you think there is some sort of opposition between describing language as it's used, and describing it using notions like rigid designation? As if ...

I'm not seeing the point. This is precisely what we're talking about anyway.

The same way they're able to digest food without being able to offer one. Theory about how something that humans do works has nothing to do with wheth...

Whether you know it is a mistake or not has nothing to do with whether it is. Your view of language is solipsistic. The fact is, it is a mistake. That...

It depends on what you mean by 'refer to.' Clearly we can reconstruct who a person means to refer to using a word, and so in that colloquial sense, si...

Of course their intention is to praise the person who wrote the theorems. That is why they pick a name that refers to a person who wrote them. The poi...

If you think that Adam's pen name is 'Steve,' and you try to refer to Adam using 'Steve,' then you have tried to refer to Adam, but messed up. Anyone ...

It is not. Would you like to discuss, instead, the issue of how to determine, when using a name, which bearer of that name is meant?

The position that, when you say Steve is the author, you are referring to someone other than Steve, is ludicrous. You may, of course, have meant to re...

Do you want to talk about this now instead? This is an orthogonal issue.

The one you posited in the very example you gave. No, "Steve" refers to Steve. This really is not hard. There's no transmissions of intention-fixing. ...

Because you referred to Steve, who isn't the author of the book. Because "Steve" refers to Steve, who isn't the author of the book. In that sort of si...

Steve, obviously. You have a mistaken idea about who wrote the book, and so said something about the wrong guy. You intended to say something about th...

Is your claim that if someone says 'Gödel was a brilliant mathematician,' but if it turns out that Schmidt came up with the theorems, then what they s...

The point is that 'Gödel' refers to Gödel, not to Schmidt. It doesn't matter who did the completeness theorems.

Have you read Naming and Necessity?

I wish!

This simply doesn't follow. There is no inference from 'meaning depends on context' to 'there is no answer to the question of what words mean.' Yes, o...

What do you not understand? I can't help unless you pinpoint some area of difficulty. You asked, and I performed; if you are not arguing in bad faith,...

See this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/211811 Kripke's hypothesis explains the behavior of proper names in a wide variety of...