This seems to be raising a kind of 'Sorites' problem. If we wanted to say that there could be an alternative France in another possible world, exactly what characteristics would it need to have in order to qualify as being a France at all? — John
However, when you are talking about France not having Paris as its capital, you are contemplating a possibility, historical and/or metaphysical, that doesn't rub against any norm regarding the general concepts that France necessarily falls under. So this is a genuine and unproblematical possibility. — Pierre-Normand
Paris being the capital of France is contingent IFF you stipulate it as such. — Mongrel
More Pascal, Pierre. You're making up categories of possibility to cover over the underlying ambiguity. — Mongrel
If you are going to stipulate that some accidental properties of France are essential to it, then it isn't France anymore that you are talking about, but, maybe, some other entity that you wish to call "France". — Pierre-Normand
The idea that whether a property of an individual is essential or not is stipulated is not found in Kripke's works. — The Great Whatever
Try this:
I wonder what would have happened if Napolean hadn't lost at Waterloo.
In the process of pondering this, I have conjured up some number of possible worlds, one of which is the actual world. In every one of them, the capital of France is... which ever city is was when Napolean was alive. Let's say I'm not sure. I look it up. It was Paris.
In all of my possible worlds, Paris is always the capital of France. Over the range of these possibilities, Paris being the capital of France is necessary. But Napolean's victory isn't.
But then I wonder, what if Napolean had lost two weeks later than he did. Now Napolean's victory is necessary across all my worlds, but the timing of it isn't. — Mongrel
A proposition is necessarily true iff it is true at all possible worlds. If you stipulate from the get go that you are restricting your attention to only those possible worlds where it is true, you hardly have shown that the proposition is necessarily true -- only that is is true wherever it is true! — Pierre-Normand
Isn't that the definition of necessity though-- that there is no other possibility in the context? — TheWillowOfDarkness
Consider the proposition: "In our world, the capital of France is Paris." Is this true of our world? If so, how exactly are other possible worlds relevant?
Why is Paris being true in all possible worlds a requirement if we are only talking about our own actual world?
How would it even make sense to say necessity required the city of one possible world to be present in any possible world? Our Paris cannot be the Paris of another world.
To say that Paris is necessarily the capital of France in our world, we only need the truth that Paris is the capital of France in our world.
Further, you can't make a contingent proposition necessary merely through restricting your attention to possible worlds where this proposition is true. A proposition is necessarily true iff it is true at all possible worlds. If you stipulate from the get go that you are restricting your attention to only those possible worlds where it is true, you hardly have shown that the proposition is necessarily true -- only that is is true wherever it is true! — Pierre-Normand
Because when we are talking about the modality of the proposition -- its being necessary, possible or impossible -- and not just talking about its truth, then we are also talking about the world as it could or couldn't possibly be, and not just about the world as it is. — Pierre-Normand
Because when we are talking about the modality of the proposition -- its being necessary, possible or impossible -- and not just talking about its truth, then we are also talking about the world as it could or couldn't possibly be, and not just about the world as it is. — Pierre-Normand
Yes. They're all a logical construction-- even the possibility of our own world. In our world, it is true the Paris may or may not be the Capital of France. This possible world is not actual. It's only a logical concept which indicates which states might be actual.'Possible worlds' aren't other worlds. It's just a fancy name for ways the world either is (actually) or could have been (counterfactually). It's a device for formalizing semantic theories of modal statements. — Pierre-Normand
Everything necessarily is, in the actual world, as it is in the actual world. This tautology says nothing about something being necessary or contingent simpliciter. Something isn't necessarily true if the world could have been such that it is false. This is what is meant when we say that there is a possible world in which (or at which, as it is usually expressed in the technical literature) it is false. — Pierre-Normand
That's not very philosophically interesting. — Pierre-Normand
I agree.To imagine either "Obama" and "Willow" as blank slates names is to miss the entire point of both statements and what each person is talking about. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Let's look at an example Soames considers. If Saul Kripke exists, he's human. We're going to see if this statement is necessarily true. The fact that the statement starts with "if" means we can judge it across all possible worlds. It works as necessary because we consider humanity to be essential to Kripke. — Mongrel
Now look at:
Karen said Paris is the capital of France.
To understand any proposition, you must examine context of utterance. On examination, we determine that Karen is talking about the actual France. So Karen could be understood to be saying:
In all possible worlds that contain the actual France, the capital of France is Paris.
And that is necessarily true. Why not?
Karen is free, for sure, to conjure up new meanings for those words such that one or both of those sorts of de re necessities would be true regarding the different objects -- which may coincide in respect of all their actual properties with France and Paris in the actual world) -- that she means to designate with the words "France" and "Paris", respectively. — Pierre-Normand
For instance if you are talking about France as it would be if mankind hadn't evolved from apes at all, then you purport to be talking about France, but you are identifying it with a geographical region, maybe, where the conditions of France's existence as a country aren't fulfilled. Hence you aren't talking about a genuine possibility at all, or you are misusing language. You are using "France" to denote a geographical area, something that isn't the same as the country that may occupy this area at some point in time. However, when you are talking about France not having Paris as its capital, you are contemplating a possibility, historical and/or metaphysical, that doesn't rub against any norm regarding the general concepts that France necessarily falls under. So this is a genuine and unproblematical possibility. — Pierre-Normand
The two cases you outline here seem to be just the same kinds of cases, differing only in terms of degree. If Paris had never been the capital of some geographical region, then the entire history of that geographical region, including what that precise geographical region was called and even the language itself that was spoken there could not have been the same. So, that precise geographical region would not have been called France, and all the people born in that region would have been different than the people that have actually been born there. — John
So the meaning of a rigid designator can't be known in any other way than by attending to how it's being used in a particular speech act. You can't just say..." well it ordinarily means X." Agree? — Mongrel
Pragmatics makes a distinction between speaker meaning and conventional meaning ("Utterer's meaning" and "timeless meaning" in Grice). For Kripke it doesn't matter. We are either considering timeless sentences that contain proper names or utterances where the speaker makes use of proper names as they are normally understood. Else you are simply changing the subject away from the use of proper names. — Pierre-Normand
So what exactly is it that determines this "numerical identity"? What is it, that is, other than some quality or other, that makes the scenario of the 'France' where humans didn't evolve a "misuse of language" and other alternative scenarios where humans are thought as present not misuses of language? — John
And the issue is not about whether the inhabitants of France call it a different name than we do, but that the inbabitants of the purported alternative 'France' call it by a different name, in a different language, than the actual inhabitants of the real France do. So again what is it that makes an imagined purported alternative France numerically identical to the actual France?
But that's not the issue I was pointing to. It's sketched out well in the SEP article on rigid designators. What is the magic that attaches a rigid designator to a particular object in a possiible world? Though this may be unproblematic for you, the SEP article makes clear that it is an unresolved issue. Scott Soames follows a route involving propositions that makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. — Mongrel
Numerical identity is a relation that holds between something and itself. If A and B are numerically identical, this means that "A" and "B" are two names (or definite descriptions, demonstratives or other singular referring expressions) that refer to the same thing. A country can't be numerically identical with the stretch of land that it occupies since this stretch of land existed before the country was funded (or built) and it can go on existing after the country has disappeared. — Pierre-Normand
The question doesn't make sense. It just happens that we are talking about France as it would be in some counterfactual circumstances, and not some different country merely similar to it. Doing so makes sense inasmuch as the imagined counterfactual circumstances aren't such that France can't exist (or couldn't have existed) were they to obtain. France could still exist if its capital would move (or had moved, or had been different to begin with), but it could not exist if it never had had any inhabitants, just like a hockey team could not have existed without ever having had any player in it, although it could have remained in existence as the same team that it is while undergoing some player exchanges in the past, and just like you can remain in existence while many, or all, the molecules that make up your body are exchanged, etc.
I asked "so again what is it that makes an imagined purported alternative France numerically identical to the actual France? [/i] but you haven't answered the question. If I had an alternative history, given that I am a more or less self-contained biological organism; I would still be recognizable as myself. But in what sense could this be the case with a so-called France that had an alternative history. It simply wouldn't be France at all, because it wouldn't have had any of the same people, or the same configuration of villages, towns and cites, or occupy exactly the same territory or speak the same language. So on the basis of what could we think that it really is an alternative France? — John
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