creativesoul

Yes. I could definitely agree with the idea that there are often times that we point to and/or otherwise fix a reference with ostension, initial bapti...

If - in the actual world - positing hypotheticals, counterfactuals, and/or possible world scenarios is itself an activity that is existentially depend...

I'm done with this side issue Janus... It amounts to differences in our frameworks.

No. Motion detectors do not see something as distinct but they make use of spatiotemporal distinction nonetheless.

Because they do.

Well, I would be more than willing to admit that spatiotemporal distinction is required for pointing at something, naming something, and referring to ...

Ok. I don't see why. Toddlers point to things all the time as a means to ask "What's that?"... Sometimes they do so(point and ask) simultaneously. Do ...

That would be the thing I'm pointing at in your presence while naming it.

I know that that is what I'm calling 'X'. There's no need for anything else I believe about that to be true. I do not see how this disagrees with what...

I know that that is called 'X'. Does it matter if it is just I or others? I think not. The first time a name is coined it is by one person. It refers ...

All you need to know is that that is called 'X'.

Hmmmm... I do not think so. We could have nothing but false belief about 'X'. We would still be referring to 'X'.

Yeah, you and I largely agree on that much. It seems that it is only as a result of that that we can later talk about setting descriptions aside. We'v...

We cannot successfully describe something with falsehood. We can say false things about something though. We can successfully refer to Hitler even whe...

Facts aren't determined on my view. That makes no sense to me. Facts are events; states of affairs; what has happened. So, I took the question to be a...

Well, I've no use for classic notions of necessity/contingency. Understanding my position will not help you to make sense of their use. All possible w...

A description is determined to be about the thing because it is something said about the thing. An erroneous description does not successfully describ...

I'm just trying to answer your questions, which seem irrelevant by my lights. I'm trying anyway... Prior to these questions... The point is that a def...

Prior to acquiring knowledge that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, we first focus upon the thing we're calling water.

I do not call them "atomic constituents", and no, they are not self-evident. If they were, there would be no need for first focusing upon the composit...

Parts that a thing is made of, all of which are necessary for that thing to exist, and none of which are existentially dependent upon being a part of ...

Ah now... Do me a favor, and begin with the last post of mine prior to this one of yours... Start at the top and explain to me where it goes wrong. Wh...

No. It's putting knowledge of elemental constituents to good use. It's about existential dependency.

So... What happens when we put this knowledge to good use? We know that A consists of B and C. We know that no other thing consists of B and C. We kno...

If a thing consists of other things, then it is only by virtue of definite description that we can know that. Our knowledge of composites requires des...

No.

I'm pointing out that it is the case that some things are composites. That is, they consist of other things. We can state otherwise. According to poss...

Do they just pop into existence all by themselves?

Of course.

I'm pointing at inherently inadequate frameworks...

Think about this for a moment or three...

It's about existential dependency.

Are those the only two choices?

Why would we need to be able to pick out an individual water molecule in order for a definite description to pick up all water molecules, and nothing ...

If being necessarily true requires being true in all imaginable possible world scenarios, and being actually true requires being true in this world(re...

This misses the point. Indeed, all of those particular items cannot exist without their elemental constituents. We can state otherwise.

Then definite descriptions do not always take account of elemental constituents.

Then it would only follow that the retention of that particular property is not necessary for us to pick it out at other times. Those particular prope...

Alright. It's becoming more and more obvious to me that we're working from entirely different conceptual schemes(linguistic frameworks). Most everyone...

Well, I differ here wrt predictions being true at the time of utterance. Bt my lights, they are not able to be. "Godel was born on April 28, 1906" is ...

"Falls under it"... Does that mean that the description always applies to it, even when it is no longer true of the object? Time stamps take care of t...

This just points out that once identity is established(by virtue of using definite descriptions) the name alone can sometimes suffice to retain the id...

Seems to me that if one holds that the meaning of a name is cashed out by a definite description, then that person would also require that "the man wh...

:razz: Good to know. With my limited knowledge of philosophical history, it's difficult for me to ascertain which parts of Kripke's lectures are grant...

Arrrggh. More bullshit. Kripke's whole point is based upon bullshit. Anyone who utters the sentence "Godel proved the incompleteness of arithmetic" is...

Ah bullshit... He said we need not believe what we say in order to be sincerely say it. Read it again! If we sincerely say 'X', it most certainly foll...

It does not follow from the fact that we can pick something out of this world and say stuff about it that is contrary to what we believe about it that...

(emphasis mine) Yeah, no shit Sherlock! Doesn't matter if you're speaking sincerely or not. Why swap back and forth between examples here? They are no...

There's something odd about Kripke's remarks about Peano's axioms. If we believe that person A did such and such, but that belief is false, then when ...

I think the entire debate here is missing something very important. fdrake just offered a perfectly understandable scenario in which the same name is ...