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RussellA

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Wikipedia Homer notes If everything I know about Aristotle is false, how do I know that Aristotle actually existed, or is in fact a fiction. If Aristo...
December 22, 2025 at 10:05
Wikipedia Naming and Necessity has the comment For me, the Aristotle I know has a cluster of properties. Even though “Aristotle” is a rigid designator...
December 22, 2025 at 09:28
I have never been to Chicago, but I imagine what it could be like, and I imagine it as an actual concrete place. I can imagine that the inhabitants of...
December 21, 2025 at 14:29
At the end of the day, It would be logically impossible to describe something that has no causal, spatial or temporal connection to us. ==============...
December 21, 2025 at 13:45
As I understand Kripke’s theory of naming, my knowledge of Aristotle is not directly tied to the reality of Aristotle in 350 BCE, but is tied to where...
December 21, 2025 at 13:31
You are not describing this other concrete world, you are describing what this other world could be like as a concrete world. ========================...
December 21, 2025 at 12:41
The truth of a possibility in language cannot be established using a correspondence theory Using Donald Davidson’s truth-conditional semantics: “There...
December 21, 2025 at 11:46
Yes, there can be more than one valid performative utterance about a particular subject.
December 21, 2025 at 09:18
On the other hand, I can imagine a possible world that is as concrete as ours, where the Hobbits, Trolls and Orcs that inhabit this world believe them...
December 20, 2025 at 17:08
For Lewis’ Concretism, these possible worlds are concrete worlds. Perhaps that why the SEP article Possible Worlds wrote: Perhaps this is why the SEP ...
December 20, 2025 at 16:32
I agree, the propositions “the sun is shining” and “the sun is not shining” cannot both be true by the law of non-contradiction if referring to the sa...
December 20, 2025 at 14:41
For Lewis, possible worlds are absolutely separate, causally, temporally and spatially. No individual in one possible world has any kind of access to ...
December 20, 2025 at 14:26
A rich and interesting topic. In Kripke’s theory of naming, the same name refers to the same object through time because of a causal connection of tha...
December 20, 2025 at 14:11
There are two aspects, language and facts in the world. “The sun is shining” is true IFF the sun is shining. By the Law of Non-Contradiction, it is lo...
December 20, 2025 at 09:44
Your statement is incomplete as it needs to add “for whom”. For Lewis, it seems that between our world and possible worlds no world is especially favo...
December 20, 2025 at 09:27
Kripke’s solution in his Theory of Naming is that there is an historic causal chain from a something that has a name, such as Aristotle, to the initia...
December 20, 2025 at 09:04
I can imagine a possible world where aliens live. This imagined possible world may in fact be an actual world. I agree that if my perceived world was ...
December 19, 2025 at 19:19
The words actual and possible are still needed. In conversation, I might say “the sun might not be shining”, but would be confusing to a listener as i...
December 19, 2025 at 15:46
What does “water” mean? "Water" means different things to different people. To a scientist, "water" is necessarily H2O. To me, "water" is necessarily ...
December 19, 2025 at 15:36
True. But in our daily lives we don’t need to know what the representation is of, all we need to know is the representation. The SEP article Possible ...
December 19, 2025 at 11:04
:grin: IE, it is wrong to say that there are actual possible worlds. :grin: IE, there are different types of modal logic, and we always need to be cle...
December 19, 2025 at 09:53
For Kripke, that an object, an individual such as Aristotle, is the same object in all possible worlds, is a Rigid Designator, is a consequence of his...
December 19, 2025 at 09:34
Yes, agreeing what a word means is problematic. Perhaps it is standard practice in philosophy that only our world is the actual world, and possible wo...
December 19, 2025 at 09:26
There is a difference between “pain refers to everything” and “pain refers to everything that is painful.” ===========================================...
December 18, 2025 at 15:54
There is an escape. Essence does not play a part in Kripke’s Rigid Designator. As the Wikipedia article of Naming and Necessity writes: Hesperus is Ph...
December 18, 2025 at 09:49
That is like saying because there is no definitive definition of “pain” the concept of pain becomes meaningless. =====================================...
December 18, 2025 at 08:36
On the keyboard in front of you are several keys. The key “t” is an actual key on the keyboard. The key “k” is an actual key on the keyboard. Because ...
December 17, 2025 at 15:42
A thought: It seems that it is impossible to understand something from the inside. One has to step outside in order to understand something. For examp...
December 17, 2025 at 10:50
Davis Lewis in his Concretism presupposes an “actual world” that we live in and theorises about possible worlds where our counterparts live in. These ...
December 17, 2025 at 10:17
Even though quarks cannot be directly observed through the senses, they are accepted as being real because they explain so much and so economically. L...
December 16, 2025 at 17:01
As I understand it, for Lewis, it is not necessary to select one of the possible worlds as real, as all possible worlds are as real as each other. All...
December 16, 2025 at 16:47
Just a thought, but Lewis’s approach seems very similar to that of Direct Realism. Lewis argues that because the concept of concrete possible worlds e...
December 16, 2025 at 09:55
Rigid designation The person in PW 5 predicated by “is a man named Aristotle” is the same person as the person in PW 6 predicated by “is a man named A...
December 15, 2025 at 16:53
In possible world 5 - “Babe is a pig and pigs cannot fly” In possible world 6 - “Babe is a pig and pigs can fly” Assuming rigid designators, then as I...
December 15, 2025 at 16:06
:up:
December 15, 2025 at 15:01
My current understanding taken from various sources: Suppose in possible world 5 “pigs cannot fly” and in accessible possible world 6 “pigs can fly”. ...
December 15, 2025 at 14:59
Does my understanding make sense? Am I right that: 1 - An extensional definition must include everything that falls under the definition. 2 - An inten...
December 15, 2025 at 11:56
In our world, the proposition “pigs cannot fly” is true. This is an objective fact. My judgement that “pigs cannot fly” is not a subjective judgement....
December 14, 2025 at 15:02
I feel that there is some truth in the following, but cannot clearly see it. Hopefully it adds something. JL Austin’s performative and constative utte...
December 14, 2025 at 13:50
The truth tables are important in Tarski’s First Order Logic. For example, the material implication truth table, whereby: P.....Q.....if P then Q ====...
December 14, 2025 at 08:47
In possible world 5 Let the word “swan” have both the intension and extension {waterfowl, flighted, white} Let the word “frog” have both the intension...
December 13, 2025 at 18:21
How can one ever know what is essential to something. For example, what is essential to something being a “game”. What is essential to “a table”, “lov...
December 13, 2025 at 14:27
Hopefully summarising your posts correctly and adding my own understanding. In possible world 5 (England) Step one - First we start with many observat...
December 13, 2025 at 14:21
That’s the problem. What are the essential properties of a “swan”. This sounds like Aristotle’s essences. The web site - https://birdsology.com/25-fas...
December 13, 2025 at 12:49
At this exact moment in time, when I write “swan”, I know without doubt what my concept of a swan is. However, with time, as I learn new things about ...
December 13, 2025 at 11:41
As you say, an extensional definition is trapped by limited empirical observations. Suppose there is an extensional definition of S, where S = {two re...
December 13, 2025 at 09:12
On the other hand. Suppose you are given the extensional definition of the foreign word “livro”, where “livro” = {Pride and Prejudice, The Terminal Ma...
December 12, 2025 at 14:54
In my model, “swan” = {waterfowl, flighted, white} In John’s model, “swan” = {waterfowl, flighted, black} I agree that the matching of members of the ...
December 12, 2025 at 14:40
I am sure that truth in possible world semantics is not down to personal preference, though I am definitely no expert in modal logic. From SEP Possibl...
December 12, 2025 at 14:13
Continuing the quest for truth. The SEP article Possible Worlds writes: 1 - Modal logic, by contrast, is intensional. 2 - In an intensional logic, the...
December 12, 2025 at 11:39