The Great Whatever

Are you under the impression that you cannot 'just go look' and see that Paris is the capital of France? Being a capital comes with certain empirical ...

No, this is not decided, not even according to Kripke. Kripke has certain controversial and strong views about which properties are essential to objec...

Paris is not the capital of France according to any definition. It is the capital as a matter of fact.

I'm sorry, I can't follow you. I don't see any difference between the two. Both talk about contingent facts that can be verified or falsified empirica...

Dictionaries often provide supplementary information about individuals outside of their definitions, and the definition of Paris is a certain city; to...

Read Kripke's remarks about Nixon in NN. They make the same point I'm making here, contradict what you're saying, and are integral to the point he's m...

There is no 'alternate France.' When we say 'if France had a different capital...' We are talking about France. We are not talking about some other th...

No it isn't. If it were, then it would be impossible for anywhere else to be the capital, which it isn't. Paris is not defined as the capital of Franc...

Yes, it can. That is Kripke's whole point, and the point of rigid designation, that the name denotes the same individual across possible worlds. If we...

You seem to be under the impression that's it's impossible to check whether a certain city is the capital of a nation, or else this question makes no ...

Sorry, I messed up, being synthetic doesn't have to do with relying on experience, that's a posteriori. It has to do with conceptual analysis, of a pr...

Paris is not defined as the capital of France in any way. It is the capital of France, but that is not the same thing. Whether Paris is the capital of...

'Synthetic' means requiring the use of experience, rather than mere analysis of linguistic expressions and the internal structure of the language, to ...

Okay, but that has nothing to do with the present topic or whether a proposition is empirical. You're talking about epistemic modality.

Of course i'm talking about modal possibility. That's what we're all talking about. That's what I was just pointing out. Whether a proposition is synt...

I don't know what would possess someone to think that Paris being the capital of France is one of France's essential properties: this would commit you...

If you think math is learned synthetically, then you're going to deny this. This was more or less the default position in philosophy prior to the rise...

But it quite clearly isn't. France could change its capital in the future. It seems bewildering because it's clearly false, and you're defending it ap...

Then you're not talking about it being metaphysically possible or impossible, but about it being actual or factual. To say a proposition is contingent...

There is no elaborate argumentation here. When we say something's an empirical proposition, we mean roughly it pertains to some contingent matter of f...

I'm not sure why taking several primitive deductive steps to get from one thing to another means that the meaning isn't so in virtue of the words. And...

I've read Naming and Necessity. I'm actually pretty familiar with it. The thing we rigidly designated 'France,' is France, which is depending on how y...

Sure there is. For example, the world in which the capital is Cannes instead. No, it's not. The necessary a posteriori applies to things like identity...

...Yes?

...If France had a capital other than Paris? I don't understand what you're asking.

No, that sounds like a plain old empirical proposition to me.

My views are roughly hedonist, but I've come to think hedonism itself can't be rationally defended, only understood through Socratic inquiry to be the...

My predictions for the majority on the questions, before looking at this: a priori knowledge: yes abstract objects: platonism aesthetic value: subject...

The Liar's Paradox carries an unusual amount of weight in philosophy of language. Even people who aren't talking about it explicitly feel obliged to s...

That would be interesting if true. A lot of papers I've read both in philosophy and out seem to throw out moral anti-realism by the way and very casua...

Yeah, I don't know of any philosopher who defends the existence of the analytic a posteriori. I suppose it could be possible if you hold a view such t...

Analytic is a conceptual term, meaning roughly that the rules of a language, or of its interpretation, guarantee that a certain sentence or thought is...

The weird logical properties of language might somehow be biologically encoded, and many linguists seem to think they are. I'm just saying that much o...

Interesting discussion. On the one hand I think it's inevitable that language as used by people has to be grounded bodily somehow, but there's also no...

It's not time wasting. You're not above it. It's a serious and interesting question and if you don't like it go somewhere else where your valuable tim...

I don't think there are any purely academic issues in philosophy. Questions like this have deep consequences in the way you view language, identity, a...

This falls to the Euthyphro problem as well. I want an experience to continue because it's pleasant, not vice-versa. It also seems that I can have ple...

The article isn't very clear on how the adverbial position differs from the 'hedonic tone' position described at the beginning of the article, and ind...

Agreed. Correct. Yes. But from this it does not follow that the way we use the word 'planet' influences which individuals are planets. Your conclusion...

I didn't mean that to be rude, I really think this is fascinating, utterly wrong but wrong in a fascinating way.

What the word 'horse' means depends on how the word 'horse' is used. This is not the same as saying that what it is to be a horse depends on how the w...

There is actually one reading of that sentence where you are saying that, but it's not the relevant reading. Definite descriptions are subject to de r...

That is correct. That is not correct. Extensionally, these two things happen to coincide because of linguistic practice. Intensionally, they come apar...

I don't know what you mean by, 'a thing's identity.' Do you mean, whether it is a planet or not? But this is just not so; things were planets before a...

Okay, I deny your starting point, so it looks like we aren't making any progress. I cannot make sense of the idea that something could be a planet, th...

But, since a planet is a celestial body, you can't change something into a planet without changing it into a celestial body. But you seem to be claimi...

To be a planet is not to be a stove, regardless of what word we use to refer to stoves. If we refer to stoves using 'planet,' they're simply stoves we...

But you are saying it can become a planet if everyone uses the word 'planet' to refer to it? But wait, didn't you just describe a planet? Something do...

Do you assent to, or are you proposing, the following? For all x, x is a planet iff x is called a planet

Yes. To be a planet is to be a planet; not to be called a planet. I do not think that at any point in human history Pluto became, or ceased being, a p...