When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid.
One of the intuitive theses I will maintain in these talks is that names are rigid designators. Certainly they seem to satisfy the intuitive test mentioned above: although someone other than the u.s. President in 1970 might have been the U.S. President in 1970 (e.g., Humphrey might have), no one other than Nixon might have been Nixon. In the same way, a designator rigidly designates a certain object if it designates that object wherever the object exists; if, in addition, the object is a necessary existent, the designator can be called strongly rigid. For example, 'the President of the U.S. in 1970' designates a certain man, Nixon; but someone else (e.g., Humphrey) might have been the President in 1970, and Nixon might not have; so this designator is not rigid.
In these lectures, I will argue, intuitively, that proper names are rigid designators, for although the man (Nixon) might not have been the President, it is not the case that he might not have been Nixon (though he might not have been called 'Nixon'). Those who have argued that to make sense of the notion of rigid designator, we must antecedently make sense of 'criteria of transworld identity' have precisely reversed the cart and the horse; it is because we can refer (rigidly) to Nixon, and stipulate that we are speaking of what might have happened to him (under certain circumstances), that 'transworld identifications' are unproblematic in such cases.
So: the question of transworld identification makes some sense, in terms of asking about the identity of an object via questions about its component parts. But these parts are not qualities, and it is not an object resembling the given one which is in question. Theorists have often said that we identify objects across possible worlds as objects resembling the given one in the most important respects. On the contrary, Nixon, had he decided to act otherwise, might have avoided politics like the plague, though privately harboring radical opinions. Most important, even when we can replace questions about an object by questions about its parts, we need not do so. We can refer to the object and ask what might have happened to it. So, we do not begin with worlds (which are supposed somehow to be real, and whose qualities, but not whose objects, are perceptible to us), and then ask about criteria of transworld identification; on the contrary, we begin with the objects, which we have, and can identify, in the actual world. We can then ask whether certain things might have been true of the objects.
So while being president of the U.S. in 1970 designates Nixon, it is a nonrigid or accidental designator. — creativesoul
So while being president of the U.S. in 1970 designates Nixon, it is a nonrigid or accidental designator. — creativesoul
I hope the idea of fixing the reference as opposed to actually defining one term as meaning the other is somewhat clear. There is really not enough time to go into everything in great detail. I think, even in cases where the notion of rigidity versus accidentality of designation cannot be used to make out the difference in question, some things called definitions really intend to fix a reference rather than to give the meaning of a phrase, to give a synonym. Let me give an example. 7t' is supposed to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Now, it's something that I have nothing but a vague intuitive feeling to argue for: It seems to me that here this Greek letter is not being used as short for the phrase 'the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter' nor is it even used as short for a cluster of alternative definitions of 7t', whatever that might mean. It is used as a name for a real number, which in this case is necessarily the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Note that here both ' 7t" and 'the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter' are rigid designators, so the arguments given in the metric case are inapplicable. (Well, if someone doesn't see this, or thinks it's wrong, it doesn't matter.) — Kripke pg. 60
So while being president of the U.S. in 1970 designates Nixon, it is a nonrigid or accidental designator.
— creativesoul
I'm not quite sure. It seems to me that the rigid designator isn't the state of affairs here because those can be contingent... — Wallows
I think this goes back to your reply to my question about the "criteria of/for identity".
I'm currently on page 60 of the book. — Wallows
So while being president of the U.S. in 1970 designates Nixon, it is a nonrigid or accidental designator.
— creativesoul
You can, with the actual indexical, produce an necessary, a posterior identity statement, like:
"The actual 1970 US president was Nixon."
Don't worry that there are possible worlds in which that statement, if spoken in that world, would be false. It's still true with respect to that possible world.
Right, Banno? — frank
When you ask whether it is necessary or contingent that Nixon won the election, you are asking the intuitive question whether in some counterfactual situation, this man would in fact have lost the election. If someone thinks that the notion of a necessary or contingent property (forget whether there are any nontrivial necessary properties [and consider] just the meaningfulness of the notion) is a philosopher's notion with no intuitive content, he is wrong.
When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid.
p.49.Those who have argued that to make sense of the notion of rigid designator, we must antecedently make sense of 'criteria of transworld identity' have precisely reversed the cart and the horse; it is because we can refer (rigidly) to Nixon, and stipulate that we are speaking of what might have happened to him (under certain circumstances), that 'transworld identifications' are unproblematic in such cases.
There's a need for something like a suspension of critique to get at what is being said in a philosophical work. — Banno
Kripke showed the incoherency/self-contradiction that results from attempting to use particulars as a criterion for identity across possible worlds by showing that if we attribute different circumstances(possible worlds) to the same thing, we end up saying some thing both... was and was not... the thing that 'X'. — creativesoul
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