, , if there is interest, we might move on to Donellan's article after this.

Cheers .

Happy New Year!

Nice job managing these threads lately! I'm taking notes on that for months down the road when I'll have more time. :wink:

For now, I'll just read... time permitting.

Happy New Year! — creativesoul

And you.

See . You might be interested.

Cheers.

OK, I'm assuming you think we can use names correctly even when we don't know what they refer to; and I think that although that might be true, it seems useless and without any interesting implications.

Using a name without knowing what it refers to is not intelligent usage; it would be as significant as a parrot being able to use a name.

Would it help you….. — Banno

Not particularly. I’ll just do my own thing, try to keep up.

Well, as I said, we might best save that discussion for Doneallan's party - see Proper Names And Identifying Descriptions, Keith S. Donnellan, Synthese 21 (1970) 335-358.

OK, later then. Happy New Year!

You, too.

It's a good read, if you can get a hold of it.

, ,
I might set replying to as the assignment for this unit...

Looking forward to that one. I don't have much to say hereabouts.

Wait a minute. You didn't understand Kripke when we started. Why are you trying to assign shit?

:lol:

Oooo…always wanted to be in a unit.

You said unit.

Sorry, Frank. Dunno what that means.

I’m a virgoyankeebabyboomer with no sense of humor.

Anyway, moving on quickly...

The next bit is about heat, so we finally get to 's post.

We might have had the sensation of heat without the motion of molecules...?

Seems to me a shame that the focus here is an the sensation.

Thanks Banno, but that doesn't really solve the problems.

The way I see it, Kripke has no respect for the difference between a logical subject and a physical object. The former can exist in many possible worlds, the latter, by the law of identity cannot. So a rigid designator (designating the same thing in every possible world) could refer to a logical subject, but it cannot refer to a physical object. Treating the logical subject as if it were an object is Platonism. And once Platonist principles are employed, failing to distinguish between the material object and the immaterial object results in ontological confusion, as well as a compromised epistemology.

Anyone?

Sorry, Frank. Dunno what that means.

I’m a virgoyankeebabyboomer with no sense of humor. — Mww

I'm a virgoaussiebabyboomer, with some kind of sense of humour, and I don't know what it means either...

edit: (dirty, perverse and/or absurdist)

Ahhh…another one of the cool kids.

Best I could do was a Beavis and Butthead reference.

Ahhh…another one of the cool kids. — Mww

Indeed it could be said...

I'll see your Beavis and Butthead and raise you a Rick and Morty. :nerd:

@Banno, it's a great thread until the teacher leaves the classroom.

Pass. MU’s mindset is closer to mine than Kripke’s.

Still, Kripke does say he’s not considering the ontological side of existences in possible worlds. Which, to me, just says a possible world is this one under a completely different set of conditions. But then, the setters of those designators wouldn’t be here to set them, and there’s no warrant to say that possible world would have the means to set its own designators, so…..vicious circle.

But, I’ve recently discovered…there’s a logic for that.

"Heat is the motion fo molecules" is an a posteriori judgement; scientific investigation might have turned out otherwise. — p. 185

Well, mightn't it?

Does temperature equate to molecular kinetic energy?

well,


Temperature is a physical phenomena; in a gas it's directly related to the RMS average velocity of the molecules involved (contra ).

So yes, it is necessarily the case that temperature equates to molecular kinetic energy.

But does temperature equate to (the sensation of) heat?

Kripke gives a few examples to the contrary. If I have understood aright, he is arguing that, that we feel molecular kinetic energy as heat is a contingent fact about us, and might have been otherwise. He provokes the difficult argument that it is necessary that heat is molecular kinetic energy, but contingent that we happen to feel this as the sensation we call heat.

I highly doubt that "molecular movement" is a rigid designator — Moliere

Well, I think it is. That is, I'm now reading Kripke as suggesting that heat and the sensation of heat are somehow different things. Not too sure about that.

But does temperature equate to (the sensation of) heat? — Banno

Cannot. Sensation consists - in part at least - of biological machinery, whereas temperature needs none.

So we use the description, 'that which causes such and such sensations, or that which we sense in such and such a way', to identify heat. But in using this fact we use a contingent property of heat, just as we use the contingent property of Cicero as having written such and such works to identify him. — pp. 187-8

Seems so.

I would recommend reading Norman Malcolm’s paper on “Kripke on Heat and Sensations of Heat”. Taking a later Wittgenstein approach, Malcolm shows Kripke’s views are not coherent which he also believes sheds doubt on the correctness of his theory. One of the issues Malcolm raises is Kripke’s confusing with the distinction between feeling heat and feeling hot. Also, Malcolm shows how Kripke incorrectly describes how people originally identified heat, specifically, somehow picking out a ‘certain sensation’ instead of learn it from a community of people. Lastly, Malcolm does an forceful job of showing the ‘Martian’ example as incoherent.

Rings a bell. Do you have a convenient link for we non-subscribers? That's the direction I was headed.

Saul Kripke obituary

Temperature is a physical phenomena; in a gas it's directly related to the RMS average velocity of the molecules involved (contra ↪Metaphysician Undercover ). — Banno

Not contra MU, you mean exactly as I said. We "relate numbers to the physical world", and come up with what you say here, "average velocity". Temperature is a measurement, the result of applying a scale, it is not the thing measured.

What I asked is how you support your claim that the value of 100℃ is fixed to something called "the temperature", without invoking Platonism. That we move on, from fixing "100℃" to the boiling point of water, to fixing it to some other physical activity like the average velocity of molecules in some substance, does not support your claim that 100℃ is fixed to "the temperature".

So yes, it is necessarily the case that temperature equates to molecular kinetic energy. — Banno

So you continue with a misrepresentation, in the attempt to reify "temperature". Temperature is the number assigned, based on a scale of measurement, it is not the activity itself, which is more properly called heat. So we cannot say that one is equivalent to the other. That would be a category error, like saying two chairs are equivalent to the number two.

Molecular motion is an example of heat, as is infrared radiation, but neither can be said to be equivalent to temperature, because the temperature scale must be capable of measuring all forms of heat. The temperature of something is a number produced by measurement, the application of a scale. And "temperature" in general may refer to that scale, but it does not refer to the property which is measured, heat and lack of it (cold).

This is a good place for the analogy of the map and the terrain. When we take the temperature of something and say that it has a temperature of 100℃, it might be the activity of molecules which is being measured, but the temperature,100℃, is the measurement. One is the terrain, the other the representation (map). To interpret the representation "100℃" we must refer to some rules, just like we have to refer to the legend when interpreting the map.