andrewk

@"Janus" has suggested, and I currently agree with him about this, that there is no apparent logical difference between the use of a name like 'Richar...

I tried it today on IE on Windows 10. The Quote button is always at top right. When I select from top to bottom, the Quote works and when I select fro...

It appears our positions are irreconcilable on that particular point.

I can't see grounds for your objection here. The toddler will understand a concept that we would express as 'that thing over there' from the gesture a...

How do you account for a reference to 'The man next to the window with champagne in his glass', which appears to be a DD that does not use proper name...

I don't see why not. The toddler would not have those specific words, but they would have thoughts that roughly equate to those words or to something ...

When you select text, where does the 'Quote' button appear? I ask because I have a new observation. On one of my computers (Linux Mint), on both Firef...

This is in accordance with what seems to be the usual way to characterise things, which is that ostension is different from DD. But recently I've been...

Santa Claus is mentioned on pages 93 and 97. But it's just a hit-and-run reference. Nothing of any depth is said about what connotations 'Santa Claus'...

I think he does both. Consider the following: The italics on 'him' show that the additional stipulation to which Kripke is referring is that the prota...

My understanding of Kripke's position is that he believes we use stipulation. We mentally point at an individual in the alternate world and stipulate ...

Whatever he thinks about them, he didn't say in N&N. See footnote on first page of lecture 1 where he specifically says he won't cover them, and also ...

We look at this world and see whether X identifies a unique individual in it. But that tells us nothing to do with whether X would pick out a unique i...

Could you elaborate on why you think that? Consider the following: let us suppose that in this world Nixon was the only Republican politician that was...

The name 'Jesus' is not generally regarded as meaning the Son of God. Christians use the name 'Christ' to refer to the (believed to be) Son of God. 'J...

I've never really got transcendental arguments. It may be my attention span. They tend to take so long that I just lose track and then at the end it s...

For me this is a key difficulty with Kripke - possibly the main one. I am dubious about whether it makes sense to say that somebody that differs from ...

Perhaps a counterfactual about Nixon can be characterised in this way: We focus on what things we wish to consider being different about Nixon, with e...

Kripke agrees that the individual must have some shared attributes: These are necessary properties under Kripke's approach. Where he departs from the ...

If you had read my post, you would have seen that it was specifically about my experience from reading the book. If you have a different experience, t...

I think part of the confusion that emanates from N&N is that, so far as I have been able to see, Kripke fails to specify an accessibility relation for...

Did you have a particular part in mind? The concept of necessity is used in most parts of the book except some passages in lectures 2 and 3. It is use...

Hmm, Quote is not working again. It's so intermittent. Do you have a ref for that? A problem with N&N is that it's very verbose and lacks clear, conci...

In what way?

If you have a coherent, polite question to ask I will be happy to answer it.

No, because that's how possible worlds work

If you mean the Rep candidate was a different Richard Milhouse Nixon, then that world is not accessible in this counterfactual because the change occu...

I think DDs in hypotheticals are covered by the same method as DDs in counterfactuals, and the splitting time for the possible worlds becomes the pres...

No, because the referent of the DD was the Republican candidate. If the Dem candidate was named Peter Nixon, or even Richard Milhouse Nixon, that pers...

Fair enough. And thank you. I like a stimulating challenge. Perhaps my last post was a little lazy. Let's see then. How about this: A DD is a rigid de...

Yes, I think that, rather than 'all refs in counterfactuals are fixed in this world' it is 'all refs in counterfactuals that are rigid designators acr...

Yes, I would like to move on to that too.

I don't agree. But if that is your view then rebutting assertions of his claim that descriptivism fails are squarely on topic and belong in this threa...

Take what to a different thread? Did you not read my last sentence?

No, I am straying from the claims that Kripke attributes to descriptivists. Kripke doesn't get to rule on what those claims are. I have said from the ...

I can only speak for myself, but it's been valuable for me. My prior impression, based only really on the text and secondary sources, was that Kripke'...

It is necessary in the collection of possible worlds being considered, which is those that split from this at time T2 that is between the naming of th...

I covered that issue in this post. I'll expand on it here in the hope of bridging the gap. A DD is applicable at a point in time. To include 'was POTU...

What would be an example of such a statement?

Really? More honorable than a commercial airline pilot that holds the lives of up to 500 people in her hands as she brings a plane in to land? More ho...

I suspect that may be correct. But judging actions is not the same as judging a person. I don't think we all go on to judge other people and think our...

If you know it's true, should be able to prove that. You cannot, so it makes no sense to say "It's also true" unless you prefix it by "I believe that....

With that correction in italics, your post appears very reasonable.

That seems strange to me, to say that all the propositions in a DD must be necessarily true, in order for it to be a DD. That would make a DD the same...

I used to be very interested in Albania, because it was closed off from the world throughout my youth - mysterious! All I knew about it was that it wa...

I can't add anything to Janus's response re Albania. My position seems to be the same as his on that. On Frege and the Hesperus/Phosphorus example: wh...

Science is forward-looking. It would not matter one whit if Einstein's theory of relativity were irrelevant to Newton's theories of motion and gravita...

What does it mean for a belief to be 'false' if there is no absolute truth?

Good. Then what does 'mistaken' mean to you, if it is neither 'can be proven to be wrong' nor 'is in contradiction with absolute truth'?

It is possible that there is such a thing as absolute truth, whereby something can be the case even if nobody can ever know it. I tend not to believe ...