You can say it, but you're speaking nonsense. — Michael

Clearly not, since in due time the White House might become something other than a building due to gradual changes. Yet it would still have the continuity of a single individual. I'm not speaking nonsense; you lack imagination.

So are you saying that in some respect it's the same building but in some other respect it's a different building? — Michael

All uses of "same" mean "same in some respect." That's how the word is actually used.

Clearly not, since in due time the White House might become something other than a building due to gradual changes. Yet it would still have the continuity of a single individual. I'm not speaking nonsense; you lack imagination. — The Great Whatever

I was referring to the claim that in some hypothetical situation my mother could have given birth to the White House. It's nonsense.

All uses of "same" mean "same in some respect." That's how the word is actually used. — The Great Whatever

So you agree that in some respect it's not the same building?

And we do use the word "same" to refer to something being the same in every respect. For example, my father and my brother's father are the same person.

I was referring to the claim that in some hypothetical situation my mother could have given birth to the White House. It's nonsense. — Michael

How exactly is that nonsense?

And we do use the word "same" to refer to something being the same in every respect. For example, my father and my brother's father are the same person. — Michael

No, here you used "person" as a sortal. We might say, for example, that Bruce Wayne and Terry McGinnis are the same superhero (Batman), but not the same person. Or we might say that conjoined twins at certain points are the same body but not the same person.

No, here you used "person" as a sortal. — The Great Whatever

Sortals usually have to do with essences and counting. I'm not sure how his usage of "person" amounts to either.

He's simply saying that two different designations in this case refer to something logically identical, a la Hesperus and Phosphorus. "Same" is often used to denote logical identity, not just aspects of something but that two different designations refer to "one and the same thing," logically identical in every aspect, at least extensionally.

Sorry about delayed reply; this one slipped through the cracks somehow. The logical problem I see with thinking that Obama signifies a whole process form birth to death rather than the one that undergoes the process; is that it would then not be possible to be Obama in the properly full sense until the very last instant before Obama ceases to be altogether.

So. I am not too sure about Kripke, but I would not define Obama as the Obama process at all but as the one who undergoes the process and is fully present at every stage of the process as the entity that undergoes it.

Rigid designators are about the criticism of the theory of descriptions. "Aristotle is the author of Metaphysics" is contingent. Aristotle could not have written Metaphysics. This implies that descriptions might not be the contents of names. "Aristotle is Aristotle" is necessary. Aristotle could not have failed to be Aristotle himself. This implies that the contents of names are the referents themselves.
The title of the book written by Kripke is 'Naming and Necessity'. It's about naming and necessity. Suppose that I name someone as 'Fred'. Then, subsequent uses of the name by me continuously refer to the same person in every possible world. The first is naming, and the second is necessity.

I would not define Obama as the Obama process at all but as the one who undergoes the process and is fully present at every stage of the process as the entity that undergoes it. — John

The question is what is this 'the one' to which the sentence refers. It sounds like the elusive 'persistent self'. Hume searched but couldn't find it. Nagarjuna denied it existed. I find myself currently persuaded by their arguments, so to me the definition of a person as a process is far more intuitive and less problematic than as a metaphysical object called a self.

I agree though that for somebody whose metaphysics does include a notion of a persistent self - a 'soul' perhaps - it would make sense to define a person that way.

Rigid designators are about the criticism of the theory of descriptions. "Aristotle is the author of Metaphysics" is contingent. Aristotle could not have written Metaphysics. This implies that descriptions might not be the contents of names. "Aristotle is Aristotle" is necessary. Aristotle could not have failed to be Aristotle himself. — mosesquine

I agree with that, hence why I view RDs simply as signifiers or signposts in terms of law of identity (LOI) claims like "Aristotle is Aristotle".

This implies that the contents of names are the referents themselves. — mosesquine

I don't think so. The "content of names" is different than the referent of names. In my view, the content of a name is just the connotations one assigns to a name. A name is not identical with a referent or external object (and a name doesn't have to refer to any external object either in order to be a name: it can just have connotations about the formal structure of the symbols that make up a name, for instance. The name "Rhonda" or "thc$^&gian", for example, can be used just as a visual and/or auditory image unto which I assign a colour, a type of sound, a texture, and so on. In that sense, the name "Rhonda" both holds said connotations and is the referent of those connotations, i.e. it's self-referential as a symbol that doesn't refer to objects external to my thinking about the name "Rhonda" or "thc$^&gian").

The title of the book written by Kripke is 'Naming and Necessity'. It's about naming and necessity. Suppose that I name someone as 'Fred'. Then, subsequent uses of the name by me continuously refer to the same person in every possible world. The first is naming, and the second is necessity. — mosesquine

Again, I generally agree that that's all RDs seem to be doing: people using proper names to posit LOI claims relative to non-LOI claims. And you could change the name "Fred" to "Jo" to refer to the same person, with both "Fred" and "Jo" either having the "same" connotations or different connotations. So "Fred" and "Jo" and any other name you use to refer to the "same" person are useful signifiers or signposts that imply the LOI.

Rigid designators are about the criticism of the theory of descriptions. — mosesquine

Which is a good motivation--I've always felt that the theory of descriptions was ridiculous, but unfortunately, rigid designators are no better.

"Aristotle is Aristotle" is necessary. — mosesquine

I'd say that's metaphysically necessary, but there's nothing necessary about it linguistically.

Suppose that I name someone as 'Fred'. Then, subsequent uses of the name by me continuously refer to the same person in every possible world. — mosesquine

There's nothing necessary about that, though. It's a contingent matter whether you continue to use the name a particular way.

I missed this before, but I just feel like this should be preserved as an example of bad philosophy.

Obviously the scenarios are not physically the same, since there's more to physicality than the material components making something up – there is also how they are exchanged, their origin and dissolution, and their causal histories. Aside form this, there is more to differentiating one thing from another than its physical instantiation, unless we construe the latter so widely as to rob it of significance. There are social an conventional facts as well. And of course, the notion that linguistic and physical (in the crude sense of 'material makeup'; but apparently being in a different place doesn't count as a physical difference? Is there no physical difference in a chemical reaction, whose parts are the same before and afterward, but rearranged?) changes exhaust the possibilities is also ridiculous.

Finally, the notion that this hinges on the way it's 'phrased' is just plain wrong: the reason your situations are phrased differently is because they describe different situations, on a plausible reading: no one competent in English would at first blush imagine an identical scenario reading read 1 and 4.

Sorry Michael, I think this just sucks. Not that your posts usually do.