Yeah, I'm aware of those moves, but I'm still of the mind that 'free will' has been so compromised by hundreds of years of theological poison that it needs to be dropped altogether. It's not 'freedom' I have a problem with, so much as 'the will'. It's that connection - unnecessary, overdetermined and intellectually disabling - that is what needs to be broken forever. — StreetlightX

My main point was that the original sin that you ascribe to theology has been co-opted by modern (late-seventeenth to eighteenth century) metaphysics and the modern scientific conception of the natural world that co-evolved with this metaphysical shift. So, merely scrubbing dubious notions (such as the purely mental acts of 'volitions') because they are tainted by their theological origins will leave the roots that currently nourish the philosophical confusions on the topics surrounding rational agency and personal responsibility firmly in place.

Why yes I am aware of the prevalence of third-rate scholarship on the issue, cited frequently by philosophical dilettantes happy to anarchonisticly and omnivorously assimilate all discussions of freedom into the two-bit reductivism of 'free will'. — StreetlightX

Alas, the Augustinian predicament doesn't merely afflict significant parts of the philosophical scholarship about the conundra of freedom, determinism and responsibility. Many of the same issues that arise from problematizing the relations of the spirit to the flesh also arise from problematizing the relations of the mind to the material body. This is of course prevalent in the social and cognitive sciences. The latter issues stem from the modern shift from a metaphysics of natural substances, their powers, and the natural (and/or social-conventional) circumstances of exercise of those powers, to a metaphysics of universal laws and the events that are subsumed under those laws. Fortunately, some of the scholarship about the topics surrounding "free will" aren't beholden to the later reductionist view. They are rather committed to explaining how the alleged problems in accounting for agency and responsibility in a natural world tend to dissolve when our attempts at naturalizing those familiar phenomena appeal to rather more relaxed (embodied and situated) Aristotelian conceptions of nature, life, rational agency and causation.

I agree. To the people who promote free will, I would keep asking 'Why?' like my determined 2-year-old does. I think they would quickly determine that behind every will, there was a preceding way... — CasKev

Answers to stubborn "why?" questions need not lead to a regress when the events at issues are acts of the will or of the intellect such as the intentional actions or beliefs of a rational agent. When you ask someone why it is that she believes something to be true, she can give you her reasons for believing it. Those reasons may appeal to empirical facts. You may then ask why those empirical facts obtain, or how did it come about that she has the capacity to know them. But those followup "why?" question then would have shifted to a different topic and hence wouldn't lead to a troublesome regress. It would simply point back to to questioner's inexhaustible curiosity (or obnoxiousness).

And likewise in the case of actions: the agent may provide the reasons why she thought her action to be the right thing to do. She needs not be thereby straddled with the burden of explaining what justifies the premises which those reasons rest upon (or explain why the circumstances obtained in which this was the right thing to do). The burden may rather shift to the enquirer to explain why, according to her, the proposed reasons might be bad.

Trump just tweeted: "The Democrats are working hard to destroy a wonderful man, and a man who has the potential to be one of our greatest Supreme Court Justices ever, with an array of False Acquisitions the likes of which have never been seen before!"

Is an "Acquisition" somewhat of a cross between an inquisition and an accusation?

On edit: He now has deleted the tweet and reposted a corrected version.

Speculation is like creative writing. We are only limited by our imagination. — Hanover

You have moved the goalpost quite a bit, from arguing that Ford's allegations are implausible to arguing that it is possible that they are untrue. But I was merely countering your argument that they are implausible, which was grounded in part on the unjustified premise that the party was "filled with people".

So, could there have been a woman silently almost raped in the midst of a party filled with people, with the only witnesses being extremely loyal to the rapist and refusing to turn him in? — Hanover

There were only five people attending this party according to Ford. There was only one witness, Mark Judge, in the room where the incident allegedly occurred. It's possible Judge was also inebriated and didn't (or would rather not) make a big deal out of the incident. If neither Judge, Kavanaugh or Ford told what happened to the other two people who weren't in the room, then Judge remains the only potential witness. That neither Ford or Judge (let alone Kavanaugh) would have told anyone is nothing out of the ordinary.

In the wake of the new allegations, the shares for the question "Will Brett Kavanaugh be the next confirmed Supreme Court justice?" at the Predictit prediction market dropped from about 65 cents to about 35 cents. This translates into a probability of about 35% from the standpoint of the collective judgement of people who wage money on that sort of things.

But to your point, suffering a sexual assault is worse than suffering an accusation of sexual assault. I would be considerably angrier at someone who sexually assaulted my daughter than someone who falsely accused my son of sexual assault. — Baden

I think @Hanover's argument appears to derive some of its force from the considerations @Bitter Crank brought up regarding the societal consequences from having been convicted of sexual assault. But this is a consideration that ought to justify law reforms such that penalties aren't disproportionate to the crime, on the one hand, while the standard of proof remains that of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, on the other hand. As a result of such a system's fairness, women will regrettably continue to have the worse of it, in one respect, since the crimes at issue will remain difficult to prove and hence many perpetrators will continue to evade condemnation. This is a regrettable consequence that would need to be remedied by means other than law. But it's precisely because of this unavoidable imbalance that being falsely accused will be less consequential than being a victim of sexual assault. So long as the standard of proof remains suitably high, such that innocents will not be scapegoated, falsely accused individuals will seldom be condemned.

She says it happened and he says it didn't. They both have plenty of motivation to lie. — Hanover

The potential political motivations that Ford and Kavanaugh may have aren't the only ones that must be alluded to in order to make sense of their claims. While it is understandable why he could be lying, in case where the alleged incident took place, the converse scenario would require for a much more elaborate scheme for making sense of Ford's motivations. We would need to make sense of her motivation for having privately told of a made up incident to her therapist several years ago. Also, she only came out about the allegation following intense pressure as a result of the leaking of her story, and of her identity, which you conceivably can blame on the Democrats for, but not her.

Yes, in this case. But charges were not pressed and the statute of limitation on this event has expired — Bitter Crank

It's been reported that the State of Maryland doesn't have a statute of limitations for the crimes of rape and assault.

This was my point for the whole post. I am deeply sympathetic for people who have been sexually assaulted. It is her and her lawyers job to prove that she was assaulted in this way. They have no evidence whatsoever. — Questionall

This comment seems misguided in two respects. First, there is the issue of the standard of evidence. That the accused must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt is a standard that applies to criminal proceedings. It doesn't apply to Senate investigations, which are not criminal proceedings. The President as well as most GOP Senators are opposed to there being a criminal investigation, although I hear that there isn't a statute of limitations for this sort of crime in the relevant jurisdiction, so that it would still be possible for Mrs Ford to file a complaint with local authorities.

Secondly, even in the case where there is a criminal prosecution, the burden of proof doesn't belong to the victim of the alleged crime, or to her lawyers. In fact, most victims of crimes such as rape, robbery or murder don't have any need to hire a lawyer at all. They simply file a complaint (unless they've been murdered, of course). It is rather the law enforcement authorities who are tasked with investigating and, if they find sufficient ground, recommend the case to the prosecutor. If the prosecutor takes up the case, and files charges, they then have the burden of proving that the accused is guilty as charged. The victim may be called as a witness but doesn't personally have any kind of a burden of proof. Victims of crimes don't generally have the means, let alone the duty, to conduct a proper investigation.

It would go a long way towards making such discussions more worthwhile if participants were at least somewhat aware of the history of the subject; its relation to freedom, voluntary action, agency, autonomy, responsibility, control, determination; the role it plays in law, ethics, psychology, sociology. There is, of course, massive literature on free will in philosophy, including experimental philosophy (yes, that's a thing). — SophistiCat

:up:

@Ryan B Your discussion appears premised on the assumption that belief in the existence of free will precludes belief in determinism. However, among the several possible philosophical stances on the problem of free will, determinism and responsibility; compatibilism appears to be the most popular. See the question "Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?" in this PhilPapers survey. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible.

Of course, some philosophers (and many scientists) are hard-determinists who believe that determinism precludes free will, that the laws of nature are broadly deterministic (while quantum indeterminacies are deemed by them to be irrelevant to issue of free will), and therefore that free will is a illusion. And other philosophers are libertarians who also believe that free will is incompatible with determinism, that we have free will, and that, therefore, determinism is false.

But even among contemporary libertarians, few of them believe that mind/body interactionist-dualism is required in order to account for the possibility of free will. They rather endorse some forms of monist naturalistic accounts of emergence or downward-causation. Just like the compatibilists, those libertarians are focused on describing how mind and body are related as different features of the physical world, characterizing different levels of analysis or organisation of living rational animals, rather than conceiving of mind and body as separate substances in traditional Cartesian fashion.

I wrote Plantiga to that effect, but he declined to respond. — Dfpolis

Maybe Pantinga didn't reply to you at the actual world but I'm fairly sure he did at some other possible worlds.

It's not to provide a blueprint for use at all! — Snakes Alive

I agree. Which is why I said: "...It's rather to foster understanding..."

That a theory is bound to be incomplete is not an injunction against theorizing. That is a very silly thing to think. — Snakes Alive

Of course. I quite agree. The purpose of theorizing isn't to provide a blueprint for perfect use. It's rather to foster understanding. Hence, that theories about language use are bound to be incomplete means no more and no less than that our self-understanding, qua language users, is bound to be imperfect.

And a conjecture: given any group of rules for successfully using proper names, it is possible to find an instance of successfully use that is not accounted for by that set of rules. — Banno

I don't have the slightest doubt that this conjecture is true.

And there is a way of speaking that is not given in a grammar, but shown in conversation.

And there is a way of referring that is not given by definite descriptions or rigid designation; but is shown in what we do with words. — Banno

In all of those cases what is shown and what is said is the very same thing: the very same rules. When Wittgenstein commented in PI that 'there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases.' he didn't mean to refer to two different sorts of rules, I don't think, but rather to two different ways of grasping them, where the second one is primary in the sense that it is regress stopping. If there weren't a way to grasp a rule that doesn't rest on an ability to understand a linguistic expression of that rule, then there would be no way of learning the rules of language. But the fact that there is a way to learn those rules through being initiated (or trained) into the practice without the need of explicit instructions doesn't entail that one thereby is learning ineffable rules.

It's simply that children are able to use proper names without the advantage of being able to articulate a satisfactory explanation.

How can that be? — Banno

Some people can also play the piano "by ear" without being able to say anything about the rules of harmony. I am also reminded of Antonio de Nebrija, who authored and dedicated the first grammar of the Spanish language to Queen Isabella of Spain. She told him: "Why would I want a work like this? I already know the language."

Why should all reference have only one explanation? — Banno

Indeed. There is a reason why Evans's posthumously published masterpiece was titled The Varieties of Reference.

Presumably, what you say when you say that you love Shakespeare, is that you love Shakespeare. This is the most obvious and best hypothesis; why you find the alternative, that when you say you love Shakespeare you say that you love someone other than Shakespeare, is a bit mystifying. — Snakes Alive

I think you should allow that, in this imagined case, the conventional reference of "Shakespeare" might be construed to have shifted rather in the way the reference of "Madagascar" allegedly historically has shifted as a result of a widespread false belief. People who nowadays use "Madagascar" to refer to the island of Madagascar aren't thereby unwittingly making reference to something that isn't Madagascar just because "Madagascar" might have originally been used to name part of the African mainland; and something similar might be said about a shift in the use of "Shakespeare". None of this threatens in any way the thesis that proper names are rigid designators. The rigidity at issue is a rigidity across modal contexts, of course, and not a rigidity of conventional reference over time.

What about the real life version of this? Substitute Shakespeare for Godel and Francis Bacon for Schmidt. WHat do I mean when I say I love Shakespeare. Do I mean I love whoever wrote the plays attributed to S? — andrewk

This is tricky. (We are to assume that Francis Bacon is the author the plays being widely attributed to Shakespeare, right?) Your intention clearly is to convey your love for the plays being attributed to Shakespeare. Since you don't know that Shakespeare isn't the author of those plays, and you don't know that Bacon is, then you are making use of your false belief that Shakespeare wrote them in order to make reference to those plays. Thereby, what you are saying clearly presupposes the truth of this belief. It's unclear whether or not you actually said (regardless of your intention) that the plays that you love are those that have been authored by Shakespeare. But this sort of indeterminacy regarding the content of what you actually said stems from the abnormality of the situation, which messes up the conventional reference of "Shakespeare". See my discussion of Homer, above, for a related issue.

Maybe there were two Homers. Are we referring to the one who wrote the poem or the imposter who pretended? — Michael

This is a case similar to the case of Madagascar discussed by Gareth Evans. It makes trouble for Kripke's possibly excessively 'inflexible' causal theory of the reference of proper names, albeit not for his thesis that proper names function as rigid designators. If someone other than Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, then it's possible that the meaning of "Homer" has shifted over time from its function to refer to the impostor to a new function to refer to whoever actually wrote the poems. That is, there might have been a time when the sentence "Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey" was conveying a false information about the individual then known as "Homer", who wrongly claimed credit for the work. And then, over time, the "Homer" naming practice that was being used to refer to this impostor completely died off, and hence room has been made for a new practice to emerge whereby "Homer" came to refer, albeit still rigidly, to whoever actually wrote the poems.

And if I don’t or can’t do this? Perhaps it’s a historical figure who is only known for being the author of this book? — Michael

There is a special convention in the case of names of famous people or historical figures where public uses of their names can be assumed to uniquely refer to them just by dint of them being generally known. In that case, all that's required, in case you don't know who that is, is to ask around, or look it up into encyclopedias or proper name dictionaries. When someone is being asked who did something and replies that NN did it, and doesn't volunteer any further information about NN, then there might be a presumption that NN is a famous individual or, at any rate, someone who she expect the inquirer to already know.

How do your intentions fix the referants of the words I use, especially when I don’t know your intentions? — Michael

If you don't know how someone who uses a word intends to be using it, then you don't know what is being said by her. If someone tells you "Steve is the author of that book", it is reasonable to assume that she means to be using "Steve" as a proper name and that she knows who Steve is. (Or else, she might say that it is some guy named Steve but she doesn't know who that is.) If you further ask who Steve is, you expect that she will be able to point out to one specific "Steve" naming practice that distinguishes it from other "Steve" naming practices. For instance, she might say that Steve is her former roommate, and not her brother, say, who also happens to be named Steve.

In fact, if you wouldn't ask her the followup question, then you wouldn't be in a position to repeat to someone else that Steve is the author of the book. The best you could do is to say that the author of the book is someone named Steve, you know not who.

It is. You know it’s Adam but think wrongly that his pen name is Steve (just as “Mark Twain” was a pen name). Someone else thinks that it’s the author’s brother Steve. A third person thinks that it’s some unrelated Steve. You all say to me “Steve is the author”. When I repeat this to someone else, who am I referring to? — Michael

When you are repeating to someone else that the author of the book is Steve, you are intending to use "Steve" in the same way in which whoever informed you of the author's identity (though naming him, in this case) used the name "Steve". If several persons who purportedly provided you with that information were using the name "Steve" differently (e.g. to refer to different 'Steve's), or mistakenly (e.g. to refer to someone not actually named Steve), then it may be the case that there now is a failure of reference when you are using this name. But this has little bearing on what it is that normally determines the reference of proper names when everyone who is party to the conversation intends to use proper names as rigid designators (as people normally do), and nobody is confused or mistaken.

I wonder, is there a difference between "my friend's father authored the incompleteness theorems" and "the author of the incompleteness theorems is my friend's father"? — Michael

Yes, there is a difference because the second sentence harbors a potential ambiguity. In some communicative contexts, it could be meant to refer, as a definite description, to whoever is the author of those theorems, or, in other communicative contexts, if could be meant to refer to the man, Gödel, who is widely credited with this authorship, rightly or wrongly. (For instance, the second sentence might be used by someone who knows who Kurt Gödel is but who temporarily forgot his name).

I think this is an ambiguous description. By it do you mean that Sue believes that her friend's father is named "Kurt Gödel" or that her friend's father authored the incompleteness theorems? — Michael

You're right. I mean that she knows that there is a famous mathematician named Kurt Gödel who wrote some famous theorems about incompleteness, or whatever, and she doesn't know that this guy is dead.

If Schmidt wrote the theorems and the speaker doesn't know that and the only thing she knows about Godel is that (she believes) he wrote the theorems, then it makes no sense to me to suggest that the speaker is referring to the man named Kurt Godel rather than to the creator of the theorems. I'm sure if we outlined the situation in full to the speaker and asked her which she meant, she'd say it was the creator of the theorems. — andrewk

You do have a point, here, but that is a point that Kripke, and others who follow him (such as Soames, Sperry, Donnellan, Recanati, etc.) would readily acknowledge. There are many cases where (1) what the speaker intends to communicate and (2) what it is that the form of words that she is making use of (in context) is conventionally taken to convey, come appart. In view of that fact, one could dogmatically insist that the speaker's communicative intention always trumps what the conventional meaning of her claims are in determining the content of her speech act. Or one could dogmatically hold that it is always the conventional meaning that determines what it is that she said, regardless of her intentions. The later thesis isn't something that Kripke holds. The former thesis is equally implausible and it would do great injustice to Wittgenstein to ascribe it to him. @Snakes Alive rightfully called that thesis Humpty-Dumptyism.

Wittgensteinian pragmatism would rather recommend that one be more sensitive to the point of the communication in order to assess, for a given speech act, which of two 'meanings' (i.e. speaker's intention, or conventional meaning), if any, trumps the other one in assessing whether what the speaker said is true or not.

For instance, suppose Sue, for whatever reason, wrongly believes Kurt Gödel to be the father of her friend Joe. It's actually Schmidt who is the father of her friend Joe. Sue, Joe and Schmidt are having a beer at a bar. Sue knows that the man accompanying Joe is his father; she thus wrongly believes this man to be Kurt Gödel. At some point Schmidt stands up and goes to the restroom while Joe is ordering more beer. Joe then realizes that his father is gone and looks around to find him. Sue says: "Kurt Gödel has gone to the bathroom". Surely, what she said is rather infelicitous. Did she say something true about Schmidt while mistakenly referring to him with the wrong name, or did she say something false about Kurt Gödel? Given the pragmatic point of the communication, the former interpretation might be more apposite. Surely, there is a truth in the vicinity -- that Joe's father went to the bathroom -- and this is the truth Sue meant to express regardless of who the real bearer of the name "Kurt Gödel" is.

However, as a result of this confusion, (let us suppose that Joe took her to be joking and didn't correct her), Sue is now straddled with the belief that she has witnessed Kurt Gödel go to the bathroom. The following day, Sue meets her friend Anna who tells her that Kurt Gödel suffered from paruresis and hence never visited public restrooms once in his whole life. Sue tells her that this is false since she met Kurt Gödel the day before and witnessed him visit a restroom. Anna tells Sue that this is impossible since Kurt Gödel has been dead for years. After they eventually clear up the misunderstanding regarding the identity (and name) of Joe's father, might Sue be entitled to say that her belief about Gödel was corrects since she meant to be referring to Joe's father? That would mean that she never had a false belief about Gödel and that she never had any real disagreement with Anna. They were just talking past one another. That would be Humpty-Dumptyism.

@Snakes Alive :up:

I read the SEP page that was linked above about Causal Theories, Madagascar and Marco Polo and it just seemed to be so many words about a non-issue. From a Wittgensteinian perspective, the varying uses of the word 'Madagascar' by Polo and others is completely sensible and explicable, in a very simple way. — andrewk

Kripke was reasonably well acquainted with the late Wittgenstein. The only real book that Kripke wrote is titled Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. (Naming and Necessity is the transcript of a series of public lectures that he gave without making use of any notes). The works of Kripke, Putnam and Evans on reference and on semantic externalism are very much Wittgensteinian in spirit, it seems to me, since they emphasize public embodied and situated practices (i.e. language games), and their pragmatic point, rather than focus on alleged semantic connections between the mind and the world where the former is conceived in crypto-Cartesian fashion as a realm of privately and transparently accessible mental items.

Either a proper name can be assigned to an imagined object in light of some well-defined criteria, or it is assigned by a purely subjective fiat. If it is on the basis of well-defined criteria, the sense of the name is that set of criteria -- a description in your terms. If it is by subjective fiat, then any conclusion that follows from the assignment (such as the necessity of certain propositions) inherits that subjectivity and has no claim to being objective.

Either way, Kripke's analysis does not work. — Dfpolis

I am unsure why you would straddle Kripke with this binary choice. Kripke doesn't view proper names as devices that primarily elicit mental states, with or without objective purport, and with or without associated "well-defined criteria". Kripke rather views proper names as public handles into social practices. A proper name comes into being as an element of a social practice when some members of a community assign it, in an act of baptism, for instance, to an individual. The other members of this linguistic community, who aren't directly acquainted with the baptized individual, then are able to make use if this proper name to refer to the individual to whom it was initially assigned just by dint of sharing into this pre-existing practice. (Kripke fleshes out this account (in Naming and Necessity) by means of his so called "causal theory of reference"; but it has been elaborated by Garth Evans (in The Varieties of Reference) in terms of 'consumers' and 'producers' of the naming practice in a way that dispenses with contentious theses about causation).

In Kripke's account, whatever mental image you may have of the named individual, or whatever belief you may have about him or her, doesn't have any bearing on who it is that the proper name that you are using refer to. It is rather a matter of shared public practice who this individual is. It's not a matter of intersubjectivity either since all the members of the community may come to share the same false belief about the bearer of the proper name and even regarding who that individual is (Evans's discussion of the case of Madagascar notwithstanding).

I think I am attacking Kripke's claim directly.

Two things can be can be dependent on the same, singular object, but still depend on different aspects of that object. If so, then what they depend on may be physically inseparable, but logically distinct. We can't physically separate Clark Kent from Superman, or Hesperus from Phosphorus, but we can see that being a reporter is not being a man of steel, and that appearing in the evening is not appearing in the morning.

So being dependent on the same singular object is insufficient to establish conceptual identity. — Dfpolis

You are thus treating "Clark Kent" and "Superman" roughly as definite descriptions: as singular referring expressions that express, roughly, the general concepts under which "Clark Kent" and "Superman" are generally understood to describe their references as the objects that uniquely fall under them (or, as you say, describe "different aspects of their objects"). In that case, "Clark Kent" and "Superman" do not function in the way Kripke understands proper names to function and hence they aren't rigid designators. You have not criticized Kripke's account of proper names. You have rather changed the subject and you are making claims that Kripke would not disagree with.

Yes. My point is that judging is not an attitude. It intends a real state in a way that the attitudes you enumerate need not. — Dfpolis

I'm unsure what work the word "intends" does here. If I judge that it is raining outside (because I looked though the window and saw that it is raining) then I am holding the proposition that it is raining outside to be true. That's one possible attitude that I can have towards that proposition. Other attitudes would be to judge it to be false, or to hope that it is true (in case I don't know it to be true). In any case, my attitude is intentionally directed towards the proposition that it is raining outside, and so the proposition is being "intended" in that sense. It's the intentional content of the attitude.

To judge <A is B> is to think that the source of concept <A> is identically the source of concept <B>, so the cupola(sic) in the proposition expressing a judgement expresses identity, not between A and B, but in the source of A and B. Similarly, to judge <A is not B> is to think that the source of concept <A> is not identically the source of concept <B>. — Dfpolis

Here I would only object to your use of the term 'copula'. The 'is' of identity isn't the copula. The 'is' in the sentence "The apples is green" is the copula since its function isn't to signify the numerical identity between the references of "the apple" and of "green" but rather to predicate the general concept signified by "green" of the apple.

Regarding the main point, I can grant you that the proper names "A" and "B" can be construed as concepts of their objects and hence that when one asserts the identity of their objects by means of the expression "A is B" one is thereby identifying the "sources" (better: the references) of those concepts. The main issue is this: are the concepts A and B essentially dependent on the identity of their objects or aren't they? If they aren't, then they are better construed as something like definite descriptions and hence aren't rigid designators. But if they are object dependent, as Kripke argue is the case for proper names, then they are rigid designators and the identity expressed by "A is B" is necessary. So, you haven't even begun to argue against Kripke's thesis if you are construing the concepts A and B to be object independent. Kripke agrees that identity propositions of the form "A is B", where "A" and B" are general concepts (such as definite descriptions), are contingently true when true.

In this account p, the hope that p, the fear that P, etc. are all equally in the category of attitudes. Have I misunderstood, or have you changed your position? — Dfpolis

The proposition P is the content of those various propositional attitudes (here expressed by means of a subordinate "that"-clause), so it's not in the same category as the attitudes themselves. If Sue hopes that P, Bob fears that P, and Joe believes that P, then what it is that Sue hopes, that Bob fears, and that Joe believes is that P. P is the content of those attitudes. Those three attitudes share the same content, but they have difference "forces", as Frege would say. Fearing something isn't the same as hoping for it, and both are different from judging it to be true. But it can be the very same thing (that P) that is being feared, hoped or judged.

Putting, "the hope that p" in the same category as p is surely an error. Why? Because <the hope that p> is a concept, while <p> is a judgement. Judgements make assertions about states of affairs and so can be true or false, but concepts make no assertions and can be neither true nor false, only instantiated or not. Thus, the judgement <p> has a very different logical status than the concept <the hope that p>. — Dfpolis

I am not subsuming the hope that P under the same category as P. The hope that P is an intentional attitude, as is the belief that P. P is the proposition that is the shared content of those two distinct intentional attitudes. For instance, if I hope that it will rain tomorrow and you believe, or, equivalently, judge, that it will rain tomorrow, then what it is that I am hoping for, and what it is that you believe will happen, are the very same thing: namely that it will rain tomorrow. That it will rain tomorrow is a proposition that I am hoping to be true and that you believe (or judge) to be true. Judgements don't make assertions. People make judgements and assertions, and they can assert the contents of the judgements that they are making. They can also assert the negation of a judgement that they are making, in which case they are lying.

I have no doubt that the two readings express different judgements (intentional existents). Still I have several questions/

Can one distinguish two identically written propositions without reference to the intentional states they express? If one can't, isn't linguistic analysis (formal or informal) derivative on intentional analysis?

Alternately, to what does "proposition" refer, if not to judgements? — Dfpolis

I was thinking of propositions as Fregean propositions: or as ways the world (or aspects of the world) might conceivably be thought to be. Judgements are intentional attitudes that can have as their intentional contents the very same contents being expressed by sentences. Those contents are (Fregean) propositions. Of course, the very same proposition P can be the content of different sorts attitudes other than judgements, such as the hope that P, the fear that P, the conjecture that P, the antecedent of the conditional judgement that if P then Q, etc.

I think that the underlying problem here is the assumption that proper names refer to things, rather than to intelligible aspects of reality. "Clark Kent" refers to Jorel's son in his guise of newspaper reporter, not to Jorel's son simpliciter. "Superman" refers to Jorel's son in his guise of the man of steel. By ignoring the aspect under which Jorel's son is designated, the notion of rigid designator distorts the intent of the designating agents.

It seems to me that proper names (and every other sort of singular referring expression or device, such as demonstratives, indexicals, definite descriptions, etc.) can be construed both as referring to particulars and to intelligible aspects of reality. There is no way, on my view, to refer to any empirical object other than referring to it as an intelligible aspect of reality. So, when we "carve up" reality, as it were, into distinct persisting individuals (e.g. the substances of traditional metaphysics), it is always to intelligible aspect of reality that we are referring to. As I suggested in an earlier post, we can't refer to (or think of) a determinate object without subsuming it under some determinate sortal concept that expresses this object's specific criteria of persistence and individuation.

It is not even true that Jorel's son in the guise of newspaper reporter is Jorel's son in the guise of the man of steel -- even though both designate Jorel's son. In other words, when one learns that Clark Kent is superman, the conditions of designation of each term change. What "Clark Kent" means to the speaker after leaning that Clark Kent is superman is more than what it meant before.

That's true, but we could say, following Frege, that although the references of both names don't change (and still remain numerically identical to each other), the user of those names, who previously was using them with distinct senses, now comes to be able to (and indeed becomes rationally obligated) to use them both with the same Fregean sense since she can no longer rationally judge something to be truly predicated of one without her also judging it to be truly predicated of the other.

So, while "Clark Kent" is materially the same before and after the revelation, it is formally different. This is seen by examining its scope of application. Before the revelation, the speaker would not apply "Clark Kent" to Jorel's son in the guise of the man of steel, but would after the revelation.

It seems to me that you are using "materially the same" and "formally the same" roughly in the same way in which a Fregean would use "having the same reference" and "having the same sense", respectively.

I conclude that the analysis of rigid designation is defective because it it mischaracterizes what proper names refer to. They do not refer to objects, but to intelligible aspects of objects.

I am unsure how this follows since I don't hold the world (or objects) to be something other than the intelligible world (or intelligible objects). We don't have empirical or cognitive access to pure noumena.

It seems to me that this analysis is incomplete. It's surely true that Donald Trump is Donald Trump, no matter what you call him. So, if you read the terms in "Donald is Mr. Trump" formally (as referring to the person), this is simply an instance of the Principle of Identity and so necessarily true. The problem is that is not the only reading. One could read it as "The name 'Donald' refers to the same person as the name 'Mr. Trump.'" In that case, it speaks of a contingent reality, for naming conventions are contingent -- this person could well have another name, like "John Smith" -- or even "David Dennison." — Dfpolis

That's right, but the two readings of the sentence correspond to two distinct propositions. Let us suppose that Superman exists. In the office where he works, he is known as Clark Kent; and only a few people know that Superman is Clark Kent. Someone, such a Lois Lane, who knows to whom the names "Superman" and "Clark Kent" refer to, may still ignore that Superman is Clark Kent. When she is being informed (or personally figures out) that Clark Kent is Superman, she thereby comes to know that both of the sentences (1) "Clark Kent is Superman" and (2) '"Superman" and "Clark Kent" are proper names for the same person' express true propositions. However, those two sentences still express two different propositions.

One easy way to see why the two propositions are distinct is to consider the range of counterfactual conditions in which those propositions would be false. Those ranges aren't the same. (One of them is empty, if Kripke is right, but I need not even assume this here). Clearly, it might have been the case that the proper names "Superman" and "Clark Kent" conventionally refer to two different people while the person who we actually know as "Superman" would still be the person who we actually know as "Clark Kent". In other words, it might have been that Superman would have been known by different proper names, in both his public and private personae (e.g. "The Man of Steel" and "John Doe", respectively), and that "Superman" and "Clark Kent" would have been the names of two different individuals, while the person called "The Man of Steel" still would have been the same person whom many people also know, in the actual world, either as Clark Kent or as Superman (or both).

Best I can tell, a particular member is appearing under multiple screen names? Is that possible? — Jake

Only if it's true in some possible world.

Is it allowed?

Only if they share both sense and reference.