I don't believe so. The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

Nice summary of Kripke's view. Let me see if I can make sense of it.

Going back to my example of human beings able to distinguish between fresh water and sea water, you could also say humans have the ability to "pick out" a liquid that is fresh water and "pick out" a liquid that is sea water. As I indicated, this is with their biological machinery. From this perspective, humans do not need "names" or "descriptions" to perform this very act, it is a matter of survival. Again, there may be error along the way, due to sickness or injury (but to understand this notion of error, we need a notion of success). Additionally, we could use "names" and "descriptions" to describe this human act of picking out fresh water which in turn can be used to teach other humans. Nevertheless, if a human successfully "picks out" the fresh water, hydrates themselves, and survives to see another day, don't we want to say he knows how to "pick out" fresh water? If the answer is "yes", in this scenario, what sense can we make that this human could later discover "that everything we knew about it was false"? Seems we are flirting with radical skepticism.

I am reminded what Wittgenstein said in "On Certainty",

"If I now say "I know that the water in the kettle on the gas-flame will not freeze but boil", I seem to be justified in this "I know" as I am in any. 'If I know anything I know this',- Or do I know with still greater certainty that the person opposite me is my old friend so-and-so? And how does that compare with the proposition that I am seeing with two eyes and shall see them if I look in the glass? - I don't know confidently what I am to answer here.-But still there is a difference between the cases. If the water over the gas freezes, of course I shall be astonished as can be, but I shall assume some factor I don't know of, and perhaps leave the matter to physicists to judge. But what could make me doubt whether this person here is N.N. whom I have known for years? Here a doubt would seem to drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos."

If we did find out that everything we knew about tigers were mistaken or in error, that would nevertheless be a discovery about tigers. It follows that "tiger" does not refer to tigers in virtue of some description that sets out their characteristics. — Banno

The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here? — Ludwig V

if a human successfully "picks out" the fresh water, hydrates themselves, and survives to see another day, don't we want to say he knows how to "pick out" fresh water? If the answer is "yes", in this scenario, what sense can we make that this human could later discover "that everything we knew about it was false"? Seems we are flirting with radical skepticism. — Richard B

Depends what counts as part of "everything we know" about X. Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? If it does, then no, we can't discover that this was false. In such a case, we'd discover we were talking about something different. But if "everything we know" is limited to properties of X, then yes, we could even discover, of a tiger, that it was translucent and incorporeal, and only gave the appearance of being the sort of thing we've come to reference as "tiger". This startling result would be described as being about the tiger.

The fresh water example seems trickier, because we're using a property,"freshness," to name the item in question, which gives the illusion of an essence. To make matters worse, we're associating that property with what we believe is an inductively necessary effect on humans. But I think the principle is the same: Change the name to "lala." If we then discover that lala sometimes makes us sick, what would we say? We'd say we were wrong about lala always producing a certain effect on us. The question of freshness would be handled separately, and differently: Now we also need to say that being fresh doesn't necessarily prevent us from getting sick. It's the little cause-effect story that's been proved false, not anything about lala.

Or to put it another way, by giving a different answer to Richard's question: No, we mustn't say that humans know how to pick out fresh water. We know how to pick out lala on the basis of whether it harms us -- or we did, until the hypothetical counterexample arrived. Now we're not sure how to do it.
And notice that the "biological machinery" can remain intact. That's because we can say that the hypothetical counterexample happens(ed) so rarely that it didn't affect evolution.

PS -- I let all this age for a while, and upon rereading, I have some doubts about the fresh water example. But rather than launch into the counter-arguments, I'll just wait and see how others respond.

Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? — J

Well, I guess your argument would work, provided we can fix the reference of X without appealing to any of the properties of X. But most people would say that "tiger" refers to large striped cats that live in parts of Asia. How would you fix the reference without relying on any of the known properties of tigers?
I don't know the actual history of the discovery of black swans, but I find that case easier to think about. It is possible that the discoverers found these birds floating around on a lake somewhere and said "Oh, there's some black swans - who'd have thought it?" But they might well have asked themselves whether these black, swan-like birds were really swans at all. They would have made more detailed comparisons and come to their conclusion.
I am not arguing that there are some sacred descriptions that cannot be overturned. I am arguing that it would not be possible to overturn all the known descriptions at the same time. That is like trying to saw off the branch you are sitting on - success would be catastrophic.

I am not arguing that there are some sacred descriptions that cannot be overturned. — Ludwig V

No, that's clear. The relevant question is:

. . . provided we can fix the reference of X without appealing to any of the properties of X. But most people would say that "tiger" refers to large striped cats that live in parts of Asia. How would you fix the reference without relying on any of the known properties of tigers? — Ludwig V

We can do it by talking about how tigers seem, and how we use that seeming to fix the reference. It's a kind of austerity or agnosticism about whether what appears to us is also in fact the case about the object. So yes, "large striped cats that live in parts of Asia" is exactly how tigers seem, and if they didn't seem that way, we wouldn't have been able to fix the reference. But, in the unlikely event that some part of this description turned out to be only a seeming -- that is, factually inaccurate -- we would say we had learned something about tigers. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that wasn't a tiger after all." This is Kripke's basic argument.

In the formalisation, there are letters - "a", "b" and so on - that stand for individuals in possible worlds. The standard interpretation is that each rigidly designates that individual in each possible world in which that individual exists. So "a" designates a in world one, and also in world two, and so on. Now in each of these different worlds, a and b can have different properties - f(a) in one world, ~f(a) in another. And that there need be no properties that a has in all possible worlds.

The question Kripke and others were asking is, to what do these letters match in a natural language? And what are the consequences of that matching?

And the answer, speaking roughly, is that "a" and "b" are proper names for a and b and so on.

And the conclusion seems to be that there need be no properties that are had by a thing names, in every possible world in which it exists. Naming and Necessity is at it's core an attempt to fill out the consequences of this idea in a way that is consistent.

I think of it this way. We know that the formal system is consistent. We can look at a natural language such as English and match the bits of that language to the formal description, and perhaps in doing so learn how to treat modality in a natural language in a consistent fashion.

So we say that "a" and "b" are like proper names, and since "a" and "b" are rigid designators, we say that proper names are also rigid designators. And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world

But then we run into the problem that the then most popular theory of how proper names work is that the name matches a description. And a description is just a bunch of properties. So we have the problem that if proper names are rigid designators, then they are not descriptions.

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here? — Ludwig V

Yep, that's the issue.

Here's a rough solution. We might well learn how to use the name - what it designates - by using a description. But thereafter, we are not reliant on that description for the name to work. We learn who "Charles Mountbatten-Windsor" is by watching his coronation on TV, perhaps. But if it turned out that they had put an actor in to take his place, perhaps for security reasons, that would be something we learned about Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, despite his not being the chap on the TV.

It gets more complicated, of course, wich is why Naming and Necessity is a book, and not an essay.

Try a different example. Homer. I'm sure you know about him, and that there are good grounds for thinking that he never existed. But those stories exist; someone must have written them - or perhaps they are folk tales with no author in the sense that we apply the term. So our expectations when we learn the Homer wrote those epics are disappointed. But not everything that we learnt when we learnt the name is false. — Ludwig V

There's a few different ways this could pan out. We might supose that there was a bloke names Homer, and indeed he wrote the Odyssey. But possibly, it was Kostas, his acquaintance, who did the writing, and Homer stole the text and took the credit. Now if what we mean by "Homer" is just the person answering the description "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", when we say "Homer", we'd be referring to Kostas.

Indeed, if the referent of "Homer" is fixed only by "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", we could not coherently claim that homer did not write the Odyssey, becasue that would amount to saying that the bloke who wrote the Odyssey did not write the odyssey.

And what we can conclude is that, contrary to both Russell and Quine, proper names are not just shorthand for descriptions, but work even in the absence of a description. They do function s rigid designators.

Good posts on your part, by the away. Fine analytic stuff.

Scribbles are just scribbles unless they refer to something. — Harry Hindu

We've been over this previously, and it's a bit of a side issue, but I don't agree with your theory that words are all proper names, that all they do is refer.

Another time.

For me, things are real if they possess causal power. — Harry Hindu

I don't find this very useful, since "causal power" is not as clear a concept as "real". Indeed, I doubt that the idea of causation can be made all that clear. But there is a clear use of "real", which I've explained previously - it is used in opposition to some other term, that carries the explanatory weight - it's real, and not a counterfeit, not an illusion, and so on.

It doesn't help us if we explain one unclear idea by using another idea that is even less clear.

Nice summary of Kripke's view. — Richard B

Thank you.

It's curious that I don't think Kripke would disagree with what you have to say - and if he did, I'd be disagreeing with him!

He's not - at least here - proposing a radical skepticism. He does that elsewhere, and in a very different context.

Adding to that, I don't think he anywhere suggests that we might discover that everything we know about water might be wrong. That would be a long bow to pull, as you point out. Am I mistaken?

letters — Banno

In my reply to , I gave an account of the strategy and argument I think he is adopting in setting out these arguments. His target is not knowledge generally, and he is not advocating radical skepticism. He's arguing against a once-common view of reference, and extending that from proper names and individuals to kinds.

So that's why the odd examples, tigers and such. Let's look at a bit where he sums up what he is doing wioht tigers:

Now tigers, as I argue in the third lecture, cannot be defined simply in terms of their appearance; it is possible that there should have been a different species with all the external appearances of tigers but which had a different internal structure and therefore was not the species of
tigers. We may be misled into thinking otherwise by the fact that actually no such 'fool's tigers' exist, so that in practice external appearance is sufficient to identify the species. — N & N p.156

Note well "...and there fore was not the species of tigers". The conclusion isn't that there could be a tiger with different internal structure, but that if it had a different internal structure, it would not be a tiger.

And the conclusion with regard to discovering that some stuff we thought was water had a radically different structure to our water would similarly be, it's not water.

He's not in the end all that far from your own view.

His account is dependent on the idea of a chain from name to referent, a chain he says is "causal", but I think that's a stretch, since "causal' covers a multitude of other sins. I've my own thoughts.

,
,

q,v.

I am arguing that it would not be possible to overturn all the known descriptions at the same time. That is like trying to saw off the branch you are sitting on - success would be catastrophic. — Ludwig V

Yep. And yet, from the examples given, it seems that even when we saw off the branch, the reference succeeds. And the quest becomes, how can this be?

Yep.

We've been over this previously, and it's a bit of a side issue, but I don't agree with your theory that words are all proper names, that all they do is refer. — Banno

The fact that you can co-opt something for a different purpose is trivial and does not mean that the original and primary use no longer exists or is useful. When communicating you are using scribbles and sounds to refer to things that are not scribbles and sounds.

I don't find this very useful, since "causal power" is not as clear a concept as "real". Indeed, I doubt that the idea of causation can be made all that clear. But there is a clear use of "real", which I've explained previously - it is used in opposition to some other term, that carries the explanatory weight - it's real, and not a counterfeit, not an illusion, and so on.

It doesn't help us if we explain one unclear idea by using another idea that is even less clear. — Banno

But is it a real counterfeit bill or a real dollar bill? Is it a real illusion or a real observation? The fact is that a counterfeit bill and illusions can make you behave as if they are "real" until you have more information as to the causes that preceded their existence. If you don't understand causation then I don't see how you can claim a difference between a counterfeit bill or a dollar bill as different processes went into creating them (causation).

Going by what you have said, counterfeit bills appear randomly without counterfeiters creating them and there would be no crime in creating counterfeit bills.

You're moving the goal posts and also failing to understand how translation works. Sure letters can represent a sound, but I was talking about words and sentences. One could say the reverse could be true as well.

What is the relationship between some scribble, "sand" and the sounds you make when saying the word, if not what they refer to, which is neither a sound or a scribble. "Sand" is a scribble and a sound. Sand is not.

How do you translate the scribble in one language to another if not by learning what that scribble refers to so that you can know which scribble in another language it translates to?

Think about being in the same vicinity as me and being able to see, hear, smell, and touch everything in the same vicinity as me. If I were to describe the area we are in, wouldn't it be redundant because you are already here with me experiencing the same things? Why would it be redundant if scribbles and sounds don't refer to the things in the vicinity that you can experience for yourself? If you can see I have a pet black and white cat, why would I say, "I have a pet black and white cat"? Language is used to relay information to others when their senses cannot access what it is we want them to know.

So we say that "a" and "b" are like proper names, and since "a" and "b" are rigid designators, we say that proper names are also rigid designators. And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world — Banno

Yes, but let's not forget indexicals. These are rigid designators as well. This seems a little puzzling. Do we want to consider "the fact that I am 'I'" -- or, if you prefer, "the fact that 'I' designates me" -- to be a property of me? I can't remember if Kripke goes into this. If it is a property, then it would appear to be a property that must be true in every possible world -- I am always the person in question. But if it is not a property, then it must be strictly a "seeming" or "pointing" by which we fix reference. I suppose we could take this latter course and, when switching perspectives, just go ahead and switch pronouns too, but then don't we have the same problem? "The fact that you are 'you' . . ." etc.?

I think this is pointing to the question we've tossed around already -- whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way. Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)?

Weird similarities with the "existence [is/is not] a predicate" problem too.

Kaplan is the go-to for this sort of stuff.

That "I" designates me is not a property belonging to me. It's a grammatical function of the use of "I". It's a bit of semantics, not a bit of metaphysics.

It's a bit like the novices who come to the forum with what they take as a profound question - how is it that I am me and not you? They haven't noticed that even if they were me, they could ask the same question.

When these assumptions lead to paradox, we get "skeptical solutions" that learn to live with paradox, but I'd be more inclined to challenge the premises that lead to paradox. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that with @J the problem is much deeper than that. Note that when he spoke of “true sentences” J was just borrowing a word out of Banno’s mouth. Banno would probably be willing to argue for the thesis that truth is the property of sentences, but J would not.

Pared down, J’s philosophical vice is that he won’t argue for any thesis at all. He will only stand on the sidelines and watch others philosophize as he comments from afar. For example, the closest he will get to arguing for “Stance Voluntarism” is to cite a paper by Chakravartty and a paper by Pincock and then critique Pincock (who argues against stance voluntarism). The idea that J himself believes in stance voluntarism and therefore should offer arguments in its favor would not occur to him.

The skepticism about truth and falsity is part of it, and that has been duly noted, but perhaps deeper is the methodological approach where one is unwilling to take upon themselves the burden of an argument for some real and substantial conclusion. Strange as it may seem, you will not find anything in any of J’s threads or posts akin to, “I believe X is true and here are my arguments for it.” And it is extremely odd to constantly cast doubt and contradict others without ever offering a stance of your own.

There are many facets to this. One is that people who believe only in intersubjective agreement don’t know how real arguments work, given that “truth” is in that case only about persuasion and then a majority vote. Thus rhetoric and the casting of doubt become the highest intellectual feats. But for most people these various facets and symptoms can be remedied by a desire to offer arguments for their beliefs and to be transparent about those arguments.

If one has the desire to provide arguments for their beliefs then they will in time move beyond mere doubt-casting and rhetoric, and begin to learn the art of reason. They will try to give arguments for their beliefs, they will stumble, they will revise their approach and/or their beliefs, and they will improve. But the person who is not even trying to give arguments for their beliefs is in quite the pickle, in that they deprive themselves of not only success, but also failure and improvement. Perhaps they even come to convince themselves that they have no beliefs at all, and neither should anyone else. Misology is the danger here, and in a surprisingly developed form. The remedy is to look at the discussion, recognize the beliefs one holds which are at stake in that discussion, and then to be willing to offer reasons and arguments in favor of those beliefs. To engage in discussions without possessing that willingness is deeply problematic.

But, in the unlikely event that some part of this description turned out to be only a seeming -- that is, factually inaccurate -- we would say we had learned something about tigers. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that wasn't a tiger after all." — J

Yes, that's true - provided we have established that the animal in question is a tiger. But perhaps it only seems to be a tiger and the seeming we discover might amount to the discovery of that fact. For example, if we think we have discovered gold and then discover that it's specific gravity is far too low, we would say "that's not gold".

I think this is pointing to the question we've tossed around already -- whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way. Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)? — J

You don't need to include the reference-fixing story. But you do need to know how to refer to X. If you get that wrong, the rest collapses.

We might supose that there was a bloke names Homer, and indeed he wrote the Odyssey. But possibly, it was Kostas, his acquaintance, who did the writing, and Homer stole the text and took the credit. Now if what we mean by "Homer" is just the person answering the description "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", when we say "Homer", we'd be referring to Kostas. Indeed, if the referent of "Homer" is fixed only by "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", we could not coherently claim that homer did not write the Odyssey, becasue that would amount to saying that the bloke who wrote the Odyssey did not write the odyssey. — Banno

This is all playing games between the context of what we know and the context of God's view. If the only description of Homer is that he wrote the Odyssey, then this story just establishes that Homer is Kostas. But you have presupposed that there are facts about Homer and Kostas that establish them as different people. You couldn't discover that Homer stole the text and the credit unless you had already discovered that Homer and Kostas were different people.

The standard interpretation is that each rigidly designates that individual in each possible world in which that individual exists. So "a" designates a in world one, and also in world two, and so on. — Banno

And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world — Banno

Does this work the other way round? I mean if "a" designates an object in all possible worlds in which that object exists, is it also true that that object is designated by "a" in all possible worlds in which "a" exists. Then is there a possible world in which that object exists, but the Roman alphabet was not invented?
Similarly, if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"?

Doesn't Wittgenstein's account of family resemblances dispose of this supposed problem?

Good posts on your part, by the away. Fine analytic stuff. — Banno

I'm flattered. Thank you.

"What is real? How do we know what is real?"

This is one of those questions that can’t be answered in the way most people expect. It’s not that there’s no answer, but rather that the question itself rests on a misunderstanding; it assumes we need a justification or proof for what we already take for granted in our actions.

We don’t know reality in the same way we know facts; instead, we act with a certain conviction that things are real. This acting isn’t based on reasoning or evidence; it’s the foundation upon which reasoning and evidence even make sense. Doubt and knowledge only function because we already move through the world with an unquestioned trust in its reality. In this sense, the question "How do we know what is real?" is like asking, "How do we know that the ground holds us up?"—it’s not something we know in the usual sense; it’s the condition that allows knowing to exist at all.

So, the question isn’t meaningful, it’s misguided. It treats certainty as something that needs to be justified, when in truth, certainty is what makes justification possible in the first place.

So, the question isn’t meaningful, it’s misguided. It treats certainty as something that needs to be justified, when in truth, certainty is what makes justification possible in the first place. — Sam26

I disagree that it's misguided. It's true that one tends to live with unquestioning certainty, but doubt about foundations also arises spontaneously at times, although perhaps not for everyone.

What you can say is the question has no point for you personally.

I've only made a few posts, always saying the letters represent the sounds of words, and the written words represent spoken words. Not sure how I've moved the goalposts. Certainly not my intention. I suspect we are talking about different things. Let me try putting it this way...

Suppose there was no written language. And let's say the idea occurred to me. Why can't we represent the things we talk about visually, instead of audibly? No alphabets exist. How would I go about it? It's possible I would make symbols that represent the things I want to communicate to the reader (not that the word "reader" would exist yet). Simple drawings when possible. Likely also many symbols whose resemblance to what they are supposed to represent is not always terribly obvious.

These drawings would not have anything to do with the spoken words that mean the same things. They are an entirely unrelated representation of the same thing being communicated. Just as the English and Japanese words for "sand" are unrelated to each other, but mean the same thing. Looking at my hypothetical symbol for sand would not give any information about the spoken word. There would be no way of knowing what language the inventor of the symbol speaks, or even that the writer, or writer's culture, speaks any language at all.

Our writing is very different from that scenario. It was intended to represent the spoken words. Sure, so we could communicate visually the things we were communicating audibly. But the approach was entirely different. I took a year of German in college. I remember very few words. But the written language is very phonetic, and I remember the rules of how to pronounce what I see, despite not knowing the meaning. And that was the goal. Of course, there would be no point in written language if it didn't let us communicate the things it and its spoken language are not. But it does so by representing the spoken language. It is useless without knowledge of three spoken languages. At least in my hypothetical scenario you might get an idea of what I'm trying to communicate, because, to the best of my ability, I've made as the symbols resemble what represent.

On rigid designators, what does it mean for an object in one possible world to be the same object as an object in a different possible world? Is it simply a stipulation?

The question is especially relevant if we claim that the same object can have different properties in different possible worlds. Does it make sense to say that there's a possible world where I'm a black man named "Barack Obama" and who served as the 44th President of the United States? What does it mean for this person to be a possible version of me rather than a possible version of you or a possible version of the actual Barack Obama?

if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"? — Ludwig V

Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. (I'm going to stick with X rather than a because the lower-case "a" can be confusing.). I asked:

Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)? — J

and you replied:

You don't need to include the reference-fixing story. But you do need to know how to refer to X. If you get that wrong, the rest collapses. — Ludwig V

I'm inclined to agree, but it opens a messy subject: What is the difference between fixing the reference of an individual versus a generic? In the gold example, we can indeed be wrong about whether sample G is gold, but what about "gold" as a substance? Don't we have two items whose references have been fixed -- sample G and "gold"? How these are fixed is quite distinct. If we both can recognize sample G out of a dozen other samples, that's because of a reference-fixing story that is local and specific. It really has nothing to do with understanding what "gold" refers to, if you see what I mean.

On rigid designators, what does it mean for an object in one possible world to be the same object as an object in a different possible world? Is it simply a stipulation? — Michael

Rigid designation is just about capturing the way that we think, especially about alternate histories. Imagine I tell you that if Hitler had been accepted to art school, he wouldn't have become a dictator. If you insist that anyone who didn't become a dictator couldn't be Hitler, then you're going to be missing the point of my assertion. If you agree that there are all kinds of things Hitler could have become, then you're using rigid designation, which means you're using the name Hitler as a sort of nexus of possibility. The name picks out a certain person, but does not specify a complete set of properties.

You can, on the other hand, pick out a thing and identify it by a certain property or history. I'll discern your intention by the context, or if I'm uncertain, I'll ask you.

The question is especially relevant if we claim that the same object can have different properties in different possible worlds. Does it make sense to say that there's a possible world where I'm a black man named "Barack Obama" and who served as the 44th President of the United States? What does it mean for this person to be a possible version of me rather than a possible version of you or a possible version of the actual Barack Obama? — Michael

All of that is sorted out by a specific statement. For instance, if you say, "If I were Barack Obama, I would have told the Syrian rebels to calm down."

Suppose there was no written language. And let's say the idea occurred to me. Why can't we represent the things we talk about visually, instead of audibly? No alphabets exist. How would I go about it? It's possible I would make symbols that represent the things I want to communicate to the reader (not that the word "reader" would exist yet). Simple drawings when possible. Likely also many symbols whose resemblance to what they are supposed to represent is not always terribly obvious. — Patterner

Why would you feel the need to represent things that you already observe and if some reader/listener doesn't exist yet? The whole point of representing things in the world is to communicate with others. If there are no others, then why would you feel the need to represent things - for who, or for what purpose?

You raise an important point, doubt does arise spontaneously, and not everyone experiences certainty in the same way. I agree that the question "What is real?" can feel meaningful in moments of existential or philosophical reflection. But the insight I'm making isn’t that doubt never happens; it’s that doubt itself depends on a deeper, unquestioned framework of certainty.

When we doubt, we don’t doubt everything; we doubt within a system of beliefs that remain fixed. For example, suppose I wonder whether I’m dreaming. In such a case, I’m still assuming that dreams are a real phenomenon, that "I" exist to have experiences, and that there’s a difference between illusion and reality. Even radical doubt presupposes some hinges. So, while the question may feel urgent, I say it dissolves when we see that the very act of questioning relies on unstated certainties.

You’re right that the question might have "no point for me personally"—but I’d go further: it’s not just a personal stance, but a grammatical observation about how language and thought work. The question isn’t wrong, but it’s like trying to lift yourself by your own bootstraps. The search for a justification of reality is a category mistake because justification itself depends on reality being the unquestioned background.

the name . . . as a sort of nexus of possibility — frank

That's a very good way of putting it.

All of that is sorted out by a specific statement. For instance, if you say, "If I were Barack Obama, I would have told the Syrian rebels to calm down. — frank

Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a possible world. For me, this is loose talk for "Barack Obama should have. . . " If we insist on pressing this hypothetical, we run up against Kripke: "You can't be Obama; he was born of different parents." And I think this is right. "If I were Obama . . . " etc. reads like a meaningful sentence but that's an illusion.

But there's another issue as well. Let's compare to "If I were a rock, I would have been happy in 2015." I suppose the "different parents" argument could be said to apply, but the problem seems deeper than that. We've crossed over from loose talk into nonsense. Why, and how? Can we say that being a rock is even less possible? Someone can be Obama -- namely, Obama himself -- but no one can be a rock. That sounds a little ad hoc, but I don't know.

Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a possible world. For me, this is loose talk for "Barack Obama should have. . . " — J

Could be.

If we insist on pressing this hypothetical, we run up against Kripke: "You can't be Obama; he was born of different parents." And I think this is right. "If I were Obama . . . " etc. reads like a meaningful sentence but that's an illusion. — J

I think I could define myself Cartesian style, so I'm just conscious of various things. Combine that with a very fluid sense of identity and strong sense of empathy, and I can honestly imagine being in your shoes to some extent. If you reject that line of thought, then yes, such talk couldn't reflect the way you actually think.

We've crossed over from loose talk into nonsense. — J

Again, I think this probably comes down to temperament. I can't tolerate being pigeon-holed. I need to see through other people's eyes, so I can imagine possible worlds where I'm somebody else, or a rock. I'd love being a rock.

On rigid designators, what does it mean for an object in one possible world to be the same object as an object in a different possible world? Is it simply a stipulation? — Michael

I guess it depends on what one means by "world". If it's not a known world (or universe or dimension if that is what they mean by "world"), then it must be imaginary. All the other worlds we know of in our Solar System possess many of the same characteristics as our world. They have mountains, rocks, atmospheres, moons, etc. - these things exist on our world and other worlds in the same way. A mountain is a mountain on both Earth and Mars. Both worlds have things that match the description of a mountain.

That doesn't really address my point.

Perhaps it's better explained if we consider the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Some might say that if the many-worlds interpretation is correct then there is a parallel universe in which I measured a different spin. And I would counter by saying that none of the people who exist in these parallel universes are me. I just am the person who exists in this universe, and any person who exists in a parallel universe and who superficially resembles me – in appearance and name and background – only resembles me and shouldn't be thought of as being me.

So does this same reasoning apply when we talk about possible worlds in modal logic? Does it make sense to say that a single object exists in multiple possible worlds?

Perhaps it's better explained if we consider the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Some might say that if the many-worlds interpretation is correct then there is a world in which I won the lottery. And I would counter by saying that none of the people who exist in these parallel universes are me. I just am the person who exists in this universe, and any person from a parallel universe who superficially resembles me – in appearance and name and background – only resembles me and shouldn't be thought of as being me. — Michael

This is the issue Kripke was addressing, yes.

I can honestly imagine being in your shoes to some extent. If you reject that line of thought, then yes, such talk couldn't reflect the way you actually think. — frank

I don't reject it, in fact such empathy is very important. I just believe it doesn't count as a genuine possible world for philosophical purposes.

I can imagine possible worlds where I'm somebody else, or a rock. I'd love being a rock. — frank

Looooooosely, yes. :smile: Do you know this song?

:grin: