I think that if we try to pick out certain essential properties we might end up just where Quine warned: that essence is just a matter of how we describe a thing.

I could try to lay out Quine versus Kripke on the issue.

I'm not at all comfortable with this reemergence of essences.

SO water was first identified by a bunch of "phenomenological" characteristics. Then it was found that water was Hydrogen Dioxide. This chemical structure is an a posteriori necessity.

Should we come across a substance with the same phenomenological characteristics, and find that it has a different chemical structure, then the correct grammar according to Kripke is to say that we have a different substance, one that is not water but looks and feels the same. PArt of the essence of water is being hydrogen dioxide.

One the face of it, this is fine.

Quine rejected essentialism and necessity because they clouded other philosophical issues. Has Kripke's grammar removed the clouding?

Quine rejected essentialism and necessity because they clouded other philosophical issues. Has Kripke's grammar removed the clouding? — Banno

Could you say more about "clouded other philosophical issues"?

Hm. I'm no expert on Quine. Given that he went so far as to deny individuals that were anything more than clumps of properties, while Kripke made the individual central, there may be a large gap here.

Then we add Davidson.

There's a lot here.

Kripke discusses heat.

The phenomenology and the science are not so clear...

Just saying.

He says that it is not the case that cats could turn out to be robots. That if it turned out that cats were automata, we should say that what we had thought to be cats were not cats, but robots.

TO be a cat is necessarily to be an animal.

SO if it turned out that the fellow we thought to be Nixon was actually an automata, then we were wrong to think he was Nixon — Banno

This seems quite wrong...

P.125...

So, how is it wrong?

I can quite believe that cats are little demons...

If it turns out the fellow we thought was Nixon was an automata, then we weren't wrong to think he was Nixon. Rather, we were quite wrong to think Nixon was anything other than an automata. He wasn't a fellow at all, unless automatas can be fellows. They can certainly be Nixon if that was the case.

SO you claim that Kripke is wrong?

A description can be a rigid designator, right? The man who won the election can be a rigid designator.

There's a joke among biblical scholars about whether Paul actually wrote all those letters and the answer is: no, it was some other guy named Paul.

Point is, for a Biblical scholar, Paul is shorthand for a description: the guy who wrote those letters. This is an on-going issue in the ancient world where writers frequently present their work as if it was of someone famous. The name is linked to a description whereas for a fundamentalist, the name picks out an individual possibly unbound from any definite description.

This is one of the many reasons that context will help determine if there really are some properties we should think of as essential to the entity spoken of.

Is Kripke wanting to discover essential properties without consideration of context? If so, I don't think that will work. He's right that we cant dispense with the concept of essence because we're clearly using it in ordinary speech. That intuition should direct us toward the intricacies if ordinary speech, though.

So, if it turns out that the celestial body we thought to be Pluto is not a planet, then we were wrong to think it was Pluto?

Yeah, something is most certainly amiss with that accounting practice.

SO you claim that Kripke is wrong? — Banno

I'm claiming that that bit is wrong. If we have called someone or something "X", and we later come to learn that X is not what we thought it was, it's still X. It's just that X is not what we thought it was.

We are not wrong to call a specific celestial body in the evening "Hesperus". We are wrong to think Hesperus is a star.

I don't have much time, so I'll keep it short. I haven't thought this through extensively; but it occurred to me that there are three ways in which we can refer to things: by descriptions, even though that referring may not be precise. The imprecision may occur, more often not in my own idea about what I refer to, but in what is conveyed to others.

We can refer to things by pointing at them. I am thinking of referring in general as (my) attending to and my drawing (other's) attention to things (in cases where I am referring to things).

Then apart from pointing to and describing, we have referring to (attending to and drawing attention to) things (mostly people and places, but also pets and even houses and so on) by designating (properly naming) them. Kripke refers to this by describing it as baptizing.

In order to know what entity is being referred to by a proper name, the entity must be either pointed out to me (in its presence or by photograph or drawing or voice recording or whatever), or described to me in such a way that I am able to single it out from all others. The latter could be achieved by a false description if that description is believed by a sufficient number of other members of the linguistic community to which I belong; this is the case with historical figures, where there is no longer any possibility of meeting them.



Another interesting point that occurred to me is that general terms for things are really proper names for generalities; for example 'tree'. 'person', 'dog' and so on, and there is usually no problem determining the reference in these cases of naming, but when there are problems (as in the 'Thylacine/ dog' example given by Banno) the problems are on account of definite descriptions (the Thylacine is a marsupial so it can't be a dog or a tiger and so on).

He says that it is not the case that cats could turn out to be robots. That if it turned out that cats were automata, we should say that what we had thought to be cats were not cats, but robots.

TO be a cat is necessarily to be an animal.

SO if it turned out that the fellow we thought to be Nixon was actually an automata, then we were wrong to think he was Nixon — Banno

This conflates proper names for particular entities with names for general types of things. We would only be wrong to think that he was Nixon, if we stipulated that it is wrong in general to give automata proper names. What we would have been wrong about in this case is in thinking that the name 'Nixon' designated a person.

Not conflate... but they are treated in much the same way. Kripke openly says this.

A description can be a rigid designator, right? The man who won the election can be a rigid designator. — frank

Not as I understand it. A rigid designator picks out the very same individual in all possible worlds. But a description might change from world to world.

A description can be a rigid designator, right? The man who won the election can be a rigid designator. — frank

That's actually a good question. Does anyone want to address it?

As Banno pointed out, a different person might have won the election. So the man who won the election is a rigid designator only in the actual world...but then that's not how Kripke wants to define 'rigid designator', it seems.

On the other hand, Nixon might not have been called 'Nixon'. So, Nixon is the man who in this world is called Nixon, and also won the election. Personally, I don't think possible world semantics is of much help at all.

So the man who won the election is a rigid designator only in the actual world... — Janus

Yeah; but, quantification can occur across possible words, so meta-logically you could even have states of affairs as obtaining (not instantiating) for all possible worlds. This is where I think, the cart has been placed in front of the horse. We should treat possible states of affairs and descriptions as ontologically above particulars (clumps of things) and individuals.

We should treat possible states of affairs and descriptions as ontologically above particulars (clumps of things) and individuals. — Wallows

Yes, but we can only imagine possible or counterfactual states of affairs as involving actual particulars and individuals. 'What if that house had burned down' is not the same as 'what if that house had never existed'. There must be some minimum of actuality in our counterfactual imaginings or it just becomes 'what if everything had been different' and then the whole notion of counterfactuality is without any reference to actuality, and hence becomes meaningless.

How much does "much the same way" have to be before it becomes the same way, and hence and example of conflation, or subsumption?

Yes, but we can only imagine possible or counterfactual states of affairs as involving actual particulars and individuals. — Janus

This isn't necessarily so. Or is it, according to Kripke?

'What if that house had burned down' is not the same as 'what if that house had never existed'. — Janus

Well, I tend to take quantification of particulars (like the house) as representative of assigning them a name in the structure of the world through adhering to treating circumstances and states of affairs in logical space.

There must be some minimum of actuality in our counterfactual imaginings or it just becomes 'what if everything had been different' and then the whole notion of counterfactuality is without any reference to actuality, and hence becomes meaningless. — Janus

So, we're getting into metaphysics. I think, that we can treat any state of affairs, as tantamount to a 'name'. Just, that the de-re/de-dicto assertion crops up when speaking about existential quantification from a birds-eye perspective or from a particular individual.

Can't see why that's a problem, considered extensionally. Which is what Kripke is doing.

Seems to me you are missing this.

Can you explain why you don't think it is a problem?

A description can be a rigid designator, if its descriptive material happens to pick out the same individual in every world. This can be done pending your view on the necessity of numbers, for example, using a description like "the successor of 2," which rigidly picks out the number 3, or by using a technical device like a modal actualizer, so that "the actual, current president of the US" picks out Trump in all worlds.

For the most part, descriptions made use of in natural languages are not rigid designators. But this is a contingent, and so interesting, fact about language. In constructing an artificial language, there is no problem with constructing rigid descriptions.

A description can be a rigid designator, if its descriptive material happens to pick out the same individual in every world. — Snakes Alive

Yeah, so my point seems to be that descriptions or more aptly states of affairs are as important as individuals, as individuals cannot exist without descriptions of their states of affairs. I don't like the hard line being drawn between the two. You can have both co-existing, and drawing a hard line tends to make people confused about what's being talked about.

using a technical device like a modal actualizer, so that "the actual, current president of the US" picks out Trump in all worlds. — Snakes Alive

Can you expand on this "modal actualizer" thing?

For the most part, descriptions made use of in natural languages are not rigid designators. But this is a contingent, and so interesting, fact about language. In constructing an artificial language, there is no problem with constructing rigid descriptions. — Snakes Alive

Interesting. I have no idea what a language with contingent properties being rigid designators would even look like. Do you have an example in mind?

Well, it seems to work. What's the problem?

(Edit: Indeed, I'm not too sure what it is we are talking about here. But that's been the case for most of the discussion. The objections seem based on misreadings or misapprehensions.)