The "magic" involved simply is stipulation — Pierre-Normand
...the worries that motivate an appeal to stipulation still remain, in large part, to be accounted for, after we have provisionally set them aside by approving the appeal: the appeal to stipulation is more like a promissory note than the satisfaction of an explanatory obligation. The appeal to stipulation puts off for another occasion any attempt to resolve how we succeed at doing what we take for granted that we manage somehow to do: namely, how we succeed at referring to the right individual, by means of our stipulative effort. There has to be some “reason the stipulated situation, when we use a name, contains the object it does” (Sidelle 1995, p. 99n.4) rather than likely competitors. It is hardly obvious what that reason would be. To see why, consider that in order successfully to stipulate that a name is to follow just you, as a rigid and therefore transworld tracking device, our stipulative effort has to be able, across worlds, to allow us to distinguish what is you from what is not you but is instead your body (say: assume you are not your body). How is this to be done without specifying criteria, if you were with your body when your parents smiled in your direction and baptized you with a rigid designator, saying “We have decided on a name for the birth certificate: …,” thereby stipulating that you are to be called by the name they chose for you? “It is not by magic,” as Jackson (1998, p. 82) reminds us, that your name “picks out what it does pick out” rigidly—namely you—despite the competition against you presented by a different candidate for designation—your copresent body. — SEP (rigid designator)
Kripke side-stepped the issue. So, apparently, have you. — Mongrel
The reason why your name picks you up rather than your body is because it has been introduced in the language (when you were baptized, say) as the name of a living human being, and not the name of your body, — Pierre-Normand
If what you wrote there is true, there should be no issue with a speaker stipulating an object, France, which must have Paris as its capital. — Mongrel
Sure, and one might just as well stipulate that "France" is the mane of a turnip and therefore is essentially a vegetable. So what? If you make up essential properties and tag them on France arbitrarily, it's not France anymore that you are talking about. — Pierre-Normand
I baptize a turnip "France."
Pierre: "That's not France."
Me: "Well, it's not the country whose capital is Paris. That's true. But I'm calling it France."
Pierre: "But it's not France."
Me: "What do you mean by France? What picks it out of any world (including this one?"
Previously you responded with "It's stipulated." — Mongrel
Honestly, I think it would help if you read the SEP article I pointed you toward. The issue you're imagining as resolved is not. One solution (that you seem to lean toward every now and then) is that we link a proper name to an object in a possible world via a proposition.
Talk about "possible worlds" may obscure this very trivial fact if one has inchoate modal realist intuitions, maybe. — Pierre-Normand
3. I may tell you that: "France might have escaped invasion that year." From the context of the conversation, you know (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that I mean the France that actually existed in 1940. Since that particular France had Paris as its capital, considering a possible world in which France did not have Paris as its capital would be a mistake. The object I am considering must have Paris as its capital. — Mongrel
This hardly establishes that the country, France, that you are talking about, has Paris as its capital essentially. — Pierre-Normand
If we were to countenance France having a different capital, instead, then we would not be countenancing a different object, but rather a different (counterfactual) determination of this very same object — Pierre-Normand
Since the the object I'm talking about must have Paris as its capital, perhaps it's a moot point whether we call it essential or not. It's necessary. And it's aposteriori knowledge.
Agree? — Mongrel
The identity expressed (by us, in the actual world) by the sentence "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain" is necessary (i.e. it holds at *all* possible worlds) — Pierre-Normand
No it isn't. We covered this already. This sentence is necessarily true:
If Samuel Clemens exists, he is Mark Twain. — Mongrel
Of course they are identical in any world where they exist. — Pierre-Normand
Likewise,
If the France that I'm thinking of exists, it's capital is Paris.
That is a necessarily true statement if the France I'm thinking of must have Paris as its capital. — Mongrel
OK, so I think you're refusing to acknowledge something that should be very clear.
"Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain."
This is not a necessarily true statement. You should know why that is and you should know what you have to add to it to make it necessarily true. — Mongrel
co-referential terms — Pierre-Normand
When were they co-referential terms?
Consider the truth of the sentence when Clemens was a child. In case you don't know who we're talking about.... no, he was not Mark Twain at that time. — Mongrel
I think what you're doing is imagining some criteria for reference that holds in spite of a speaker's intentions. — Mongrel
Pierre.
Samuel Clemens didn't have to pick the pen-name Mark Twain. He could have picked something else. — Mongrel
Explain to me again how "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain" is necessarily true. — Mongrel
It is still truly said of the man named Samuel Clemens in the actual world (de re) that he necessarily is Mark Twain (albeit not necessarily named Mark Twain!) in all possible worlds, and vice versa. — Pierre-Normand
But what about worlds where this man does not exist? — Mongrel
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