Before the primaries were over there frequently were heads up polls between possible nominee matchups. Trump against Hillary were usually evenly match...
I'm not so sure about that. One must distinguish two different albeit overlapping populations: those who make up Trump's hardcore base, and those who ...
@"apokrisis" Thanks! That's likely the paper I remembered. Here is a reference, in case someone again faces a broken link in the future: Phillips, Rob...
Maybe one or two years ago you had provided a reference to a quite accessible paper (or two such papers), possibly published in a popular journal such...
Actually, Denis Noble recently made a fairly convincing case that the genetic code isn't very much of a code for anything either. See the 'code' secti...
On the contrary, I was puzzled by your suggestion that the DD associated with a proper name does not need to be true, so long as the speaker believes ...
Aren't all the earlier examples that you gave examples where the speaker not only believes the definite description that she is making use of but the ...
I can't make sense of this. You are saying that in order that a speaker be able to refer to an individual when she uses this individual's proper name,...
Maybe the most relevant place is De Anima 433a27-28 (Translated by J. A. Smith, in The Complete Work of Aristotle - The Revised Oxford Translation Vol...
I don't think that's quite right. According to Aristotle, desires are appearances of the good. They thus are directed outwardly to what appears good. ...
Just to supplement what @"Banno" already said, remember that the claim that a name is a rigid designator doesn't mean that there are no possible world...
It logically follows from them being rigid designators that the identity statement is necessary. Per definition, a statement is necessary if and only ...
Yes, there is no metaphysically possible world in which Hesperus isn't Phosphorus, provided only that they are numerically identical in the actual wor...
I think the reason why this might appear puzzling is because when we are thinking about what might possibly, for all we know, be the case, we are thin...
The Fregean account is externalist rather than internalist. Oftentimes, when the cases of Hesperus and Phosphorus are being discussed, the (quasi-)des...
Kripke purports to distinguish his account from descriptivist theories of proper names and also from Frege's account of the sense ('Sinn') of a proper...
Yes, they are. But even in the case where an individual who gets initiated into the practice of naming a historical figure NN only is being told false...
Indeed. Kripke would agree since it's a core feature of his externalist account of proper names that many (and oftentimes most) individuals who partic...
Kripke does provide an alternative account of the referential function of proper names. Their being rigid designators isn't a theory but rather a feat...
Sorry, I hadn't read your post carefully enough. I agree. I am unsure how this case bears on the issue of descriptivism about proper names that refer ...
That may be the case, but then the eavesdropper could understand the story (well enough) without knowing who the person talked about is. So, the fact ...
Quite right. As I said, Russell thought we could only be acquainted with sense data and with our own thinking 'selves'. Everything else, including the...
Myself, I think Russell's theory of definite descriptions is basically right. But the correctness of this analysis doesn't entail descriptivism, unles...
It's true that in the course of practical reasoning one usually restricts the consideration of options to those that one has the power and opportunity...
I am usure what it is that you mean with the phrase "elemental constituent". Also, could you explain in which way knowledge of the elemental constitue...
If one imagines a possible world at which the Axis powers won WW2, then one can imagine it such that Hitler lived to be 72. But when one evaluates the...
Yes. That was a follow up on a tangential line of inquiry that had been initiated by @"fdrake". Of course, I agree that what is actually true at all t...
But I didn't ask any meaningless question, neither did I postulate any imaginary worlds. Counterfactual conditionals are judgement forms that we routi...
Are what you call "elemental constituents" something akin to essential properties? In that case, the item being descriptively referred to could not pe...
Are you purporting to defend a form of descriptivism, then? What if the individual who we name "Aristotle" had not become a philosopher, and had becom...
Yes, this really was my only point. I agree with this, and with the rest of your post. Of course, one of Kripke's main objections to descriptivism is ...
There is much for me to agree with in your long post, and a few issues that I could quibble with, but I am unsure how it connects with the previous li...
"Born on April 28, 1906..." is a predicate. According to descriptivism, proper names have the same sense (meaning) as definite descriptions written as...
You might also want to check sections 10.5 (The Causal Theory of Reference) and 10.6 (The Social Character of Sense) in Luntley's Comtemporary Philoso...
Yes, I agree with your general account. It's the main aim of Kripke's "causal theory of reference" to explain how language users institute and hook up...
Singular reference is a function of the conjunction of both, actually. In order to secure reference, generally, you must think of the object properly ...
Yes, it is true at all times that Gödel was born on April 28, 1906, for instance. Of course, the sentence now being used to express this truth uses th...
In that paragraph, you offered a general description of Bob. To turn in into a definite description, you would have to rephrase it as: "The especially...
Agreed about your first sentence. Regarding the second sentence: I don't think is makes sense to say that a definite description changes with time. Su...
It seems to me like you are attempting to raise for descriptivist theories of proper names (or of their Fregean senses) an objection that isn't tradit...
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