Weren't you considering majoring in philosophy? — Noah Te Stroete
It's been years since I've read it myself, and I don't remember his arguments any more, but I DO know that you would be well-served reading Kripke if you truly want an understanding of the topic. — Noah Te Stroete
analytic a posteriori truths. His famous example is the claim that 'water is H2O', which can't be known a priori but is analytic in the sense that what we mean by the conventional term "water" - what water is - is just the material identified scientifically as H20 and not any of the numerous possible descriptions of water (such as being "wet" or "clear" etc.) — Mentalusion
Examples of empty names are; Santa Claus, Harry Potter, and Pegasus. [...] Yet, those empty names don't refer to any person or object in the world. — Posty McPostface
I'm not sure the example gets to the difference between type/token and proper names. It seems to me that both speakers there are using proper names. the only possible type/token implication is that one could see the lexical entity 'john smith' as a type for the two token names "John Smith [1]" and "John Smith [2]" given the name is a homonym. I think the more nature description though would just be say there's any ambiguity in the name: they just sound alike but in fact reference two different things, like a river 'bank' vs. a financial 'bank'. — Mentalusion
Yes, I'm assuming a correspondence theory. I'm not sure how it side steps any questions though. — Mentalusion
3) In terms of the larger issue of empty names, the original question merely asked how supposed empty names can have meanings. One possible way they can have meanings is under a correspondence theory of truth, according to which, strictly speaking, the truth value of any such name will always be false because there is no such actual thing in the world like "Pegasus" or "santa claus". (I take it generally that a consequence of any correspondence theory is that there are really only two possible meanings for any proposition: true or false) — Mentalusion
I didn't say it was. It is uncontroversial that 'salt', which in common parlance refers to a crystal of many millions of molecules, or a collection of such crystals, is hard. The category error is to ask whether a molecule of NaCl, or a molecule of any compound, is hard.I also don't think asking whether salt is hard is a category error. — Mentalusion
I think so. It finds them to be non-problems. The problem is 'dissolved', to use a popular, but not inappropriate, term.Re, the last paragraph, does that simply sidestep the issues the correspondence theory of meaning has wrt. to empty names and instead advocate a contextualist/pragmatic approach to meaning? — Wallows
Generally I don't have an issue with your claims about how syntax can operate with proper names, and even think the type/token distinction could be useful for explaining the non-definite use of the proper name vs. the definite. I took my claim about the "lexical entity 'john smith'" to be basically consistent with that. However, my concern is exactly with what the actual context of the situation is here and the intentional state of the postal carrier. The package carrier not standing at the door wanting to give the package to anyone who happens to be named John Smith so he can happily walk off feeling like he did his job competently. Rather, he wants to give the package to the John Smith to whom the person who sent it addressed it to, he just doesn't know who that is. In other words, s/he isn't just looking for "a" John Smith, he's looking for "the" John Smith the package is addressed to. So, I just don't see that the syntactic distinctions you bring up - while legitimate in and of themselves - apply to this particular situation here since, in fact, given the context, it does not seem to me that either of the names are empty in the example given. — Mentalusion
Don't know, maybe it's inability to permeate other molecules? The point was only that it's not inherently non-sensical to ask the question in the same way it would be to ask whether, for example, numbers are hard. It might not be a scientifically interesting question to ask, but that doesn't make it a category error. Also, realize the issue isn't even whether molecules real are hard or not, but whether it even makes sense to ask the question about them. I don't see anything in the common understanding of either molecules or hardness that necessarily prevents them from having that quality however you define it. In fact, it's a typical question to ask about physical bodies (which I take molecules to be) whether they are hard, soft, extended, geometric, colored, etc. This is much different from asking "hey, are numbers hard?" To which the response is "uhhh..."
I'm actually a little unclear as to why people think molecules wouldn't, in fact, be hard in some relevant way in the first place. — Mentalusion
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