The Great Whatever

But that's wrong, because you can say 'Imagine if Barack Obama weren't president,' or 'Imagine if Barack Obama had a different name.' So the meaning y...

I know it is the wrong meaning only in the sense that there is an obvious difference between 'Barack Obama could have spoken Mandarin' and 'Someone li...

Let me put it this way. If I am obligated to explain to you what a sentence of English means, why are you allowed to say another, longer sentence of E...

I don't know, I just don't understand your demand. The idea that I should take a sentence of my native language and provide an elaborate paraphrase fo...

The question of whether an individual in another world is really the same as one in this world (the 'trans-world identity problem') has its roots in a...

I really wish people would read about things before criticizing them. IDK, this discussion is pointless if you don't know what a rigid designator is, ...

I think it means what it says, which is different from what you seem to think it means. I'm just puzzled as to why.

I don't see why this follows.

I don't really understand your modus operandi, which seems to consist of taking sentences and insist that they mean, or are to be translated into, oth...

This is basically an assertion that nothing could be other than exactly as it actually is, which is not going to be a helpful metaphysical thesis for ...

I just don't see why that's nonsensical. It seems to me the insistence on counterparts comes from thinking individuals are conglomerates of properties...

Also, notice it again becomes nonsense to say things like 'If Barack Obama had a different name...'

Why would people mean something so at odds with what they say? That seems like a really bizarre reconstruction. Surely, if I say to imagine something ...

You can't tell the difference between imagining Barack Obama is somehow different from imagining that someone else is named 'Barack Obama?' Really? An...

I didn't say it amounted to a proof, but if true it'd give me the impression you lack some basic cognitive capacity or linguistic competence, which ma...

No, per how the community uses the term. This is not the same thing: most people don't even think about words much if at all, or understand how they'r...

Not really. Words mean certain things in linguistic communities, and you can use them wrong. You can't just make up whatever meanings you want and hav...

I don't know how to answer this. Words have conventional meanings, and it's possible to use them wrong. If you deny this, I literally don't know what ...

'Barack Obama' is a name that refers to Barack Obama (a man, not an element in your model of the world).

There is a difference between imagining Barack Obama was different, and imagining that a different person was named 'Barack Obama.' I have a hard time...

No it's not. It's a matter of a complex behavioral pattern. An individual having something in mind isn't enough to override this. If I say 'tree' to m...

I don't see how that's true. A name refers to a certain individual by convention. It doesn't matter what you're thinking about. And the semantic conse...

If you like, you can think of rigid designation as reference that's not mediated by a property determining what the referent is (whether this is an 'o...

Maybe put it quasi-formally would help? Say that the denotation of a term x relative to a world w is (w). So for example, say x is 'the winner.' Then ...

I don't understand why you're hung up on this temporal thing. That has nothing to do with what a rigid designator is. This hits on the distinction bet...

I don't understand why this matters.

No, one proposition can be sensitive to any number of possibilities. That John might be home just means there's some possibility he is. But notice if ...

Any number. Suppose you say 'John might be home.' This means there's a possibility he's home (say, given what we know to be true), not that he actuall...

Counterparts aren't necessary for a possible world semantics, and even if they were, I don't see how it's relevant. Again, the point is not how the wo...

It doesn't matter. The question of rigid designation is an empirical semantic one, independent of these metaphysical claims. Rigid designation can be ...

Again, the point is not what the word would mean in a different possible world. The point is that given what the word means as it's used now, the refe...

What's rigid is that their referent doesn't change with respect to world of evaluation. See the attitude report example above.

It's not relevant to what a rigid designator is. Calling something a rigid designator isn't a claim that it can't change in meaning over time. That ha...

OK, I don't agree with that, but I'm not sure what the point is anyway. Is the point that the meaning of words can change over time? I agree, but that...

I don't know what you mean by 'to person S.' Generally we talk about what a word means, not what it means to someone.

All claims about what a word means are claims about what it means at a certain time. I'm not sure what you're getting at. For example, if I say that '...

Again, a claim that something is a rigid designator is not a claim that it must mean something or couldn't have meant something else. It's a claim abo...

For reference, the technical notion of rigid designation makes no sense outside of an intensional semantics and typically is cast in terms of possible...

Yeah, the value of a proposition relative to a world is a truth value. The value of a name inside the sentence expressing that proposition relative to...

Rigid designation is about the evaluation of a proposition at a world, given the way that it's used. That names could mean something else, or refer to...

dun't matter what you're modeling.

You can define entailment model-theoretically. For any model, if if A is true relative to that model, then B is true relative to that model, then A en...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GRLVPyEBYQ

I don't know, I think women are just more interested in social cohesion and taking part in social institutions. Men tend to have slight asocial (anti-...

Alright, man.

Why would I engage with you if you're going to be disingenuous?

Are you aware of the origins of the experience machine thought experiment? If so, is there something you want to use it for?

Maybe I'm not making myself clear. I don't deny that there's a substantive ethical question to entering the machine. What I deny is that it can have t...

The point of experience machine thought experiments is that it is supposed to cause a problem for positions that rely for some consideration, ethical ...

Yes, but then the thought experiment has no teeth.