I guess what I mean then is how is it that the stipulation is constrained to "Sam" and not something else? — schopenhauer1

Well, "In some possible world, what if Sam were not X?" is a question about Sam...

Keep in mind that the casual theory of reference was a quick explanation for a possible alternative tot he descriptive theory of reference, and never filled out by Kripke.

I don't see a problem here. "Sam" refers to Sam, "Washington" to Washington, that's just what we do with those words. If there is a problem as to which Sam or which Washington is being named, that may be sorted to our mutual satisfaction by having a chat.

However, the convention doesn't convey where the rigid designation comes about. — schopenhauer1

Sorry, lets' try to be clear here - the rigid designation comes about as a result of the stipulation. That the name refers to the object might well be the result of a baptism and causal chain, but that plays no part in the name being treated as a rigid designator.

So you can say Sam := X; then ask "In some possible world, what if Sam were not X?" And still be referring to Sam.

"What" is causing this rigidity of the designator? And thus I brought up what I think is integral to Kripke- the causal theory of reference. Thus the foundation seems to me, to be causality that is the root of this rigidity. — schopenhauer1

Ok, so if the causal chain becomes unnecessary, what makes it still a rigid designator? — schopenhauer1

Rigid designators are not discovered, they are stipulated. When one asks what the world might be like if Thatcher had lost her first election, one is stipulating a world in which, if anything, Thatcher exists in order to lose the election. The stipulation is what makes it a rigid designation.

This is choosing amongst a set of grammars - semantics - that we might make use of. In other approaches, such as David Lewis' proposal, there is no rigid designation. Using rigid designation keeps stuff consistent and fairly intuitive. That's not to say that it doesn't have a few issues, but very few in comaprison to other approaches.

Yet watering your beans seems to be a necessary prerequisite for their growing in reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes - accessibility again. Beans are such that if we would be successful bean famers we ought consider only those possible worlds in which beans need water. This is an issue of practicality rather than ontology. Think of physical necessity as pruning the tree of logically possible worlds...

Technically, those are mathematical definitions which are not the same thing as the 'ontological' connecting tissue of the universe they refer to. — substantivalism

That there is an "ontological connective tissue" to be referred to remains undecided. What we have is an accurate description of what happens. What more could you want?

What makes it rigidly designated? In every possible world Venus is X. But what is X? That "essentialness" of Venus? It is the causal conditions for which the term "Venus" is picked out amongst other things in the world. — schopenhauer1

"Venus" rigidly designates Venus becasue we choose it to work in that way; nothing more. We are using the word "Venus" to mean that exact same thing in every possible world in which Venus exists. There may be a causal chain leading to a baptism in the actual world, but there need not be any such causal chain in every world in which Venus exists. Once it's "picked out", it is designated rigidly. I'm not sure if this is what you are saying, of if it disagrees with what you are saying. So Theseus' ship may change completely, and yet it continues to make sense to refer to it as the Ship of Theseus, using that name as a rigid designator.

is correct. I should have avoided the rock/window example, as it has lead to folk confusing physical and logical necessity. Quine is concerned here with logical necessity.

The question then is if we might want some notion of physical necessity (i.e., related to changing, mobile being) as an explanatory notion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not so much. Causation is a whole other topic.

You could consider "George Washington was the first President of the United States." Is it possible for this to become false? If not, then it seems it is in some sense necessary, although it also seems to be something that was contingent in the past. A way this might be explained is to say that it is not possible for any potency to have both come into act and not come into act. So if Washington was the first president (and he was) this is necessary de dicto (although not de re, since president is not predicated of Washington per se). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This mixes a few different notions of necessity. First, it is not a necessary fact that George Washington was your first president (Assuming you are 'Mercan?). We can stipulate a possible worlds in which he just sold apples. But you add "become", and here we can use accessibility. We can stipulate that from any world in which Washington became your first president, only those worlds in which he was the first president are accessible - we stipulate a rule of accessibility. If we do this then it follows that from that world, all accessible worlds have Washington as your first president - for those worlds, necessarily, Washington was your first president. Doing this puts limitations on the worlds that are under consideration - as it should. One of those is that in no world in which he was your first president, could he not be your first president. This should be obvious from considerations of consistency... And it is not true in every possible world, since that would be a different stipulation.

All this by way of showing how possible world semantics sets out what is problematic with

If "George Washington was the first US President" is true, and it is not possible for it to become false, it is in a sense necessary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's down to accessibility.

Nothing here so far involves essences.

Why must physical things be the only things to be rigidly designated? — schopenhauer1

They need not be. Anything that can be given a proper name can be rigidly designated. Kinds, such as gold or H₂O, can also be rigidly designated. But again, while causality may be the answer to how it is that a name refers to an individual, once that link is established, the causal chain becomes unnecessary. So Hesperus = Phosphorus even though the casual chains to their baptism differ.

Well, you could follow Quine and try to get rid of proper names... — Count Timothy von Icarus

But the problem then is that you have thrown the babe of rigid designation out with the bathwater of explaining reference.

Sheer "dubbing" runs into the absurdities of the "very same Socrates" who is alternatively Socrates, a fish, a coffee mug, Plato, a patch on my tire, or Donald Trump, in which case we might be perplexed as to how these can ever be "the very same" individual. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If someone were to misuse a term in this way, wouldn't that be apparent? Sure, someone could use "Socrates" to refer to some fish, but it would quickly become apparent that they were talking about something other than the philosopher. Doesn't "Deer" man whatever we choose it to? Note the collective "we".

Indeed, but what is this internal coherence? — schopenhauer1

Very much, yep. Essence remains unexplained, apart from the occasional hand wave to "x=x". So the best explanation we have is still from Kripke.

Odd, that folk might think one form of education, one type of schooling, one way of learning, will work for everyone.

Understanding, as a noun representing a specific cognitive faculty, has its function predicated on the conditions of time alone, at the exclusion of space, which logically cannot be given by that which uses it. — Mww

What an appalling sentence.

What could it mean, and why should it be given any credence?

Yesterday, upon the stair...

All of which makes explicit, the premises for this particular metaphysics being granted, events cannot be said to occur in temporal sequence, which implies experience thereof, unless the relative times of each are measured. — Mww

Again, they cannot be said to be in a sequence, but that simply does not imply that they are not in a sequence.

Of course, but irrelevant. — Mww

Not so much. It shows again the step too far, in Kant, in your post and in @Wayfarer's work.

The crux of the trouble with (30) is that a number z may be uniquely determined by each of two conditions, for example, (32) and (33), which are not necessarily, that is, analytically, equivalent to each other.

The error here is to think that analytic and necessary are the very same. So much for quantification.

if S is a statement containing a referential occurrence of a name of 2, and S’ is formed from S by substituting any different name of Z, then S and S’ not only must be alike in truth value as they stand, but must stay alike in truth value even when ‘necessarily’ or ‘possibly’ is prefixed.

The error here then is to supose any name may be substituted. What can be substituted salva veritate is a rigid designator. So much for singular terms.

As The Man says, without the “subjective constitution of our senses in general”, time is meaningless. — Mww

One needs minds in order to have meaning.

But that does not imply that there is no time without mind, or that time is mind-independent, or that events do not occur in temporal sequences unless measured.

Understanding time requires a mind. That does not imply that time requires a mind. That's a step too far.

Existence is not an existent, from which follows existence belongs to mind alone as a pure conception; existence is given iff there is that mind capable of its deduction, and, that in which such deduction resides. — Mww

Things might exist, unbeknown.

What a surprise, to discover ants under the floorboards. What a mistake, to have believed the tank contained enough fuel. How odd, that we agree on such things. Things tend to be thus-and-so despite our beliefs.

Perhaps existence is known "if there is a mind capable of its deduction, and in which the knowledge might reside". But existence doesn't care what you know, and happens anyway.

- there seems to be something — Tom Storm

So why not just go with that. After all, it works.

Someone like Kastrup would respond that genes (physicalism) is what consciousness looks like when viewed from a particular perspective. Which I’m sure you would regard as bullshit. — Tom Storm

Well, bullshit in the way that it is pretty much self-serving pop nonsense. If genes are explained by consciousness, then it is circular to then explain consciousness in terms of the evolution of genes.

It's dreadful stuff, really, that any undergrad ought be able to undermine. But critique is unfashionable.

Time itself is mind-dependent. — Wayfarer

Begging the question. Or better, how could we make sense of the sentence "Time is mind-dependent"?

We know time passed before humans evolved, before Earth even formed. So it could not be that time only passes in the presence of mind. Of course, that we know time passed before Earth was formed is indeed mind dependent. But that is not what you want to say, is it? You still insist on taking that step too far.

Saying that time is mind dependent is like saying the moon didn't exist before folk noticed it. It had to be there in order to get noticed.

If you wish to introduce and evil daemon, the level of scepticism required will remove any capacity for rational judgement. Sure, the world was created just before you read that sentence. If that's what you need in order to make your doctrine coherent, then your doctrine is feeble.

Again, 'before h.sapiens existed' is itself mind-dependent. That doesn't mean it is all in the mind. — Wayfarer

De re and de dicto. Believing that there was a time before humans is mind-dependent. There being a time before humans, isn't. You are making an error in scope. That our access to a fact is mediated by minds does not imply that the fact itself is mind-dependent.

your argument assumes that a shared biology requires a pre-existing external world. How do you rule out the possibility that biological commonalities emerge through evolutionary and developmental processes. — Tom Storm

What is the "evolutionary and developmental processes" apart from "a pre-existing external world"? What does evolution take place in, if not the world?

Couldn't they arise from genetic inheritance — Tom Storm

How could there be a genetic inheritance apart from the physical world? There being genes is that there is a physical world. I can't see what it is you are proposing, if it involves evolution both occurring in and bringing about, mind.

'The world' outside any mind has no structure or any features. — Wayfarer

You can't know that. that's the step too far. All you can say is that you do not know what that structure might be. At least until it is understood, by coming "inside" the mind.

But there is the false juxtaposition, of what is inside and outside the mind, what can be spoken of and what cannot.

And it's not a panpsychic undermind, but the mind - the mind that you and I and every other sentient being is an instance of. — Wayfarer

Hmm. The Claytons panpsychicism, the panpsychicism you have when your not having a panpsychicism. (Australia reference).

The point about time, again, and this is a thread about time, is simply that it cannot be said to be real, in the absence of an observer. — Wayfarer

Nothing can be believed without a mind. But that is different to nothing's being the case. You conclude that there is no time without an observer, but there is no observer to check your claim. That's your step too far, again. If someone counters that there is time, unobserved, how are we to decide which is correct? We cannot. Yet you do.

it's an act of faith.


(Added: and the next step is to move on to quantum hand waiving without the maths, and obtuse references to supposed authorities in physics who are outside of their area of specialisation... as Davies.)

...sandwiches... — Wayfarer

I prefer them to your waffles. :wink:

...mind as it structures our experience-of-the-world. — Wayfarer

Nothing odd about that, except that the world already has some structure apart from that mind, and hence novelty, error and agreement.

Your next step is usually to hint at some panpsychic undermind that permeats space and time...

just that there are arguments against evolution as providing a true picture of reality. — Tom Storm

Yep, and the common problem is that they suppose one description - usually that of the physisist- to be the "true picture". This, incidentally, is a point of agreement between @Wayfarer and I - the rejection of a physical hegemony.

I think Hoffman will tell you that the Tiger is still a risk to human survival, just not what we think it is. — Tom Storm

He seems to think that once it is described in quantum terms, it ceases to be a tiger. I'll point out that it is still a tiger. With big, sharp, pointy teeth.

Doesn't Husserl and later phenomenology argue that our sense of a common world is constituted through experience, communication, and mutual recognition - not discovered as something external. — Tom Storm

Perhaps, in which case the problem for them is to avoid solipsism. The answer here is that the world is not constituted by experience, communication, and mutual recognition, but sits independently of, yet is understood via, experience, communication, and mutual recognition. It's that problem of mistaking what one believes to be the case for what is the case. So

Our shared biology and cognitive capacities provide a foundation for commonalities in perception, — Tom Storm

...and therefore there is a shared biology that is "external" to our cognitive capacities. Biology will not work as an explanation of commonality unless there already is such a commonality - the shared world.

I say that without the mind, there can be neither existence nor non-existence.
— Wayfarer
yet
...you are obliged to agree that there is a world that is independent of what you or I believe.
— Banno

I never said otherwise!
— Wayfarer — Banno

Novelty emerges from new external data — Wayfarer

Error occurs when our interpretations fail to match that data. — Wayfarer

Consensus arises because we all operate with fundamentally similar mental structures. — Wayfarer

Each of these supposes a world, independent of our beliefs, in which there is "external data" that is novel, shared or at odds with those beliefs.

Yet you say that this too is created by mind.

You want your cake and to eat it.

That someone is wrong is a judgement. There is no necessary relation between a judgement of "wrong", and how the world is. — Metaphysician Undercover

IF you say the keys are in your pocket when they are in the door, then you are wrong.

Again, if you read carefully, you would have understood it was something I was not obliged to deny in the first place. — Wayfarer

I have read carefully. Repeatedly. For years.

And I do not see that you have answered these questions, but rather that you backtrack on your claims when i point out their problems. If you read carefully your own responses on error, consensus and novelty, you might notice that you are agreeing with what I have said. But then in your next post you will renege.

intersubjective agreement. — Tom Storm

How can there be intersubjective agreement without a shared word independent of each individual's beliefs? What is it that this "language, social practices, and culture" take place in, if not a shared world? Where is that "similar cognitive apparatus" if not in the world? What is a "shared bodily structure" if not something more than the mere creation of your mind?

Isn't the famous argument by Donald Hoffman and others that evolution does not favour seeing the world as it truly is, but rather seeing it in ways that enhance survival and reproduction. — Tom Storm

Hoffman. Fucksake.

His argument supposes that there is no tiger, only the booming and buzzing background quantum thingy.... and yet he still runs away from the tiger.

If you hold him down he happily admits that there is a world independent of mind, including tigers that he will run away from, but that saying there isn't sells more books.

There are two descriptions of how things are, one that involves quantum handwaving, another that involves tigers. One is useful for publishing books, the other for surviving in the Indian forest. Must only one be the only true depiction?

Added: That is, I disagree with his "the world as it truly is" as there being only one true account. The thing in the forrest is both a quantum thingy and a tiger.

It's not a yes/no question. — Wayfarer

Well, not for you. You need to conflate belief and truth. But to admit agreement, error and novelty, you have to admit that sometimes our beliefs can be incorrect - can be at odds with how things are.

The argument that we all operate with similar mental structures cannot explain more than the common ways in which we perceive and experience, it cannot explain the common content of our experience. I've lost count of how many times that point has remained unaddressed or glossed over. — Janus

Yep.

I say that without the mind, there can be neither existence nor non-existence. — Wayfarer

yet

...you are obliged to agree that there is a world that is independent of what you or I believe.
— Banno

I never said otherwise! It's only your continuous and tendentious misreading of what I'm saying that is at issue. — Wayfarer

So is there stuff that is independent of mind, or not?

This is the bit where you walk back your own claims, were you are obliged to agree that there is a world that is independent of what you or I believe, that is not created by mind alone.

This is the same game played by ideologues, would-be gurus and fundamentalists in all times and places. — Janus

I quite agree. It's no coincidence that Heidegger and Nietzsche are becoming again fashionable in a world that denies truth, that claims there is not a how things are but only what we choose, and so witlessly hands even more power over to the already powerful.

But how things are remains, regardless of what the oligarchs claim. The truth will out.

our mind - our particular cognitive apparatus, with its characteristics and limitations - 'creates' the world we experience from an undifferentiated reality. — Tom Storm

A pity you have fallen for this.

Before we go further, notice the collective here, the "Our" in "our particular cognitive apparatus".

With that in mind, there are three questions that I'd like answered. Firstly, how is it that there are novelties? How is it that we come across things that are unexpected? A novelty is something that was not imagined, that was not in one's "particular cognitive apparatus". If the world is a creation of the mind, whence something that is not a product of that mind?

Second, how is it that someone can be wrong? To be wrong is to have a belief that is different to how the world is, but if the world is their creation, that would require someone to create a world different to how they believe the world to be. How can we make sense of this?

Finally, How is it that if we each create the world with our particular cognitive apparatus, we happen to overwhelmingly agree as to what that construction is like? So much so that we can participate on a forum together, or buy cars made in Korea.

Far and away the simplest explanation is that there is a world that we share, and that world is as it is apart from what we might believe. Then those who create a world that differs too greatly from how the world is find themselves unable to make much progress.

The simplest explanation is that there is a world that is as it is, and that sometimes we believe things about it that are wrong. And sometimes we come across things in the world that are entirely novel and unexpected.

I think this can be a hard notion for people to grasp - it's hard enough to put into words. We're still faced with using words like 'reality' and 'world' when we mean something ineffable — Tom Storm

Perhaps it's hard because it is wrong. @Wayfarer and Kant and others invent a world that is beyond our keys and chairs and bodies, and then say that we cannot talk about it - the little man who wasn't there. They then go on to tell us that the "in-itself, the world as it would be outside any conception of it, is not anything, by definition" - to speak about that about which they cannot speak. It's not that their thinking has gone a step further than others, but that it hasn't taken the last step, to realise that if nothing can be said or done with the "in-itself", then it is an utterly void notion. The better approach is not to mumble about a mysterious unknown, but to acknowledge that what we have is only the shared world about which we can speak and in which we act.

There is an "our" only becasue there is a shared world.

'The many live each in their own private world', he said, 'while those who are awake have but one world in common.'

Indeed. I'm afraid Wayfarer's is a sleeping draught. We live in a shared world, more's the pity.

I’d like to differentiate myself from the thread owner. — Wayfarer

Sure. Your account is much more sophisticated and much more coherent. But there are similarities.

It is plainly impossible to consider any sense of time without a scale or units of duration in mind. — Wayfarer

Yep. And yet time might pass, unnoticed. (My emphasis. What we consider to be the case and what is indeed the case are not the very same.)

What time might be, or indeed anything might be, in the absence of any mind whatever, can a fortiori never be known. — Wayfarer

And yet some go a step further, as in this thread, and insist that time does not exist, when at most they can only conclude that they can say nothing.

Fair enough. What might be said is that our knowledge of time - indeed, our knowledge of anything - has a "subjective" component in that knowing requires a mind. The mistake is to supose that therefore time requires a mind. That's your step too far, yet again.

The confusion to which that view contributes is well shown in this thread.

There's very much to admire about Lord Russell's works (& logic-chopping) but his potted and unscholarly A History of ... is certainly not one of them. — 180 Proof

Yet it sufficiently impress the Swedish Academy that they awarded Russell the Nobel Prize for Literature .

Something that Zarathustra, with his swollen, distended prose, did not achieve.

I am trying to see good arguments on the existence of time. — Corvus

On the contrary, the arguments are before you, but your confusion forbids you recognising them.

Again, you post one reply after the other.

You confirmed that you don't know anything about time. — Corvus

You are being quite carelss. You asked:

Where did time come from then? — Corvus

To which I replied:

I don't know - indeed, the question may well be useless. — Banno

Not that we do not know anything about time. Others will understand that one might well knwo something of a topic, yet not everything.

Words themselves don't mean much. — Corvus

You have used this phrase several times. We are here making use of words in a context, with purposes; these are not words themselves, whatever that might mean. You do use "past", "present" and "future" correctly, so it is evident that despite your claims to the contrary you do understand what time is, and further your use of temporal language demonstrates that you believe time exists, despite your inconsistent assertions.

Only if you believe time is needed. Without knowing anything about time. movements still occurs, and movers move. — Corvus

You need time. It separates out each of your responses, one from the other. And again, movement, force, energy and the other physical concepts of which you make use each require that there be time in which they might occur. Movement still occurs without knowing anything about time, becasue time exists regardless of our knowing about it. It is somewhere in this that your confusion inheres. you somehow have convinced yourself that time requires mind, perhaps form misunderstanding Kant or @Wayfarer, and have worked your way into a right mess.

You seem to be denying the official historic facts here. The first record of time was 4241 BC in Egypt or Sumerian region. Are you saying, time was handed down by God or time crashed into the earth from the outer space? — Corvus

You claim that there was no time before time was measured. No 4242 BC. That's ridiculous. The reasons were given previously.

Your idea of time comes from idea of words. — Corvus

Not at all. You and I are both embedded in time, existing in time regardless of words or ideas or concepts. You show this by the very fact that you reply to these posts one after the other. Time exists. You will demonstrate this yet again when you reply to this post, after I post it.

I am not saying time exists or doesn't exist yet, as you seem to be imagining. — Corvus

You have expressed a most confused and contrary view of the nature of time, that is bellied by your actions as well as by your words. Makes for a fun thread. But perhaps not for you.

Then to say," time exists" and "movement requires time." are groundless claims. — Corvus

Rubbish. You know what time is, despite your claims to the contrary. And you know what movement is, despite your claims that it does not require time.

Only if you further clarify what you meant by it. A word itself doesn't mean anything, or it can mean many different things. — Corvus

"Past"? Or "Passed"? Either way, you are flummoxing. You know what both of these are. The time for saying otherwise has passed, and your OP is in the past.

It sounds like your counter argument is coming from your psychological state or appeal to authority. — Corvus

More rubbish. Movement requires that the object that moves is in one place at one time, and at another place at another time. Therefore it requires time. You haven't addressed this. And it has nothing to do with psychological states or authority. GO ahead and give a different definition, if you can, that does not presuppose time.

According to your counter arguments, all the cavemen before invention of time couldn't have moved to hunt, and no rocks fell down the river, and no rivers flowed due to no time. — Corvus

What twaddle. Again, time was not "invented". Nor does my argument imply any such thing. Present an argument, rather than making tangential assertions, if you can.

You never said what time is, and why time exists. You never explained what "existence" and "exists" means either. These concepts needs to be defined objectively and agreed for the validity, before you can assert "Time exists." — Corvus

Despite what you say here, you have shown that you understand "past", "passed", "future", "Later" and so on. In that very paragraph you make use of the notion of "never" in a temporal context. We use these words effectively, and understand their use. Your every post shows the inadequacy of your contention that time is not understood and does not exist. You will, in due time, reply to this post, and in that very act you will show that you are mistaken that time does not exist.

I asked you but you never answered. Where did time come from, if not invented? — Corvus

I did answer, quite directly:

I don't know... — Banno

It is just a word. It is meaningless on its own. You should know that, if you studied language. — Corvus

It has a sense, it has a use. You know that.

The OP is not about consistency or inconsistency, truth or falsity. — Corvus

Indeed.

I have explained to you with the examples why movements and movers don't need time, but still move.
Time only appears when you measure it. — Corvus

And i have given you counter arguments that show that movement requires time. The very notion of movement requires a different location at a different time. And I have shown that your conclusion "Time only appears when you measure it", does not follow from your argument.

You seem to think words and numbers are time. — Corvus

No.

You need to first explain what "existence" "exists" means, and then explain what time is, and why time exists. — Corvus

I've no idea what you might mean here by "existence" exists - sure the word "existence" exists... surely you are not suggesting otherwise? In the past I've given you many examples that show what time is. I can give you more, later. I just gave you another.