Sure, the actual world is a possible world. — Banno
Of course common naming of kinds and attributes is necessary for description, but proper naming is not. — Janus
And as for proper names being rigid designators 'The man who was president of the US at such and such a time and date' is as much a rigid designator as 'Donald Trump' because the latter must be shorthand for ' The man who was named 'Donald Trump' at such and such a time and date.' There could be many other individuals named 'Donald Trump', so the name alone would not seem to be a rigid designator. — Janus
Because there are better fish to fry in the third lecture. — Banno
You say that they were, in this possible world, cutting up cats. On what basis are you able to say that it was cats that they were cutting up? Is it because they called what they were cutting up 'cats'? Or was it because what they were cutting up looked identical to cats? Or something else? — Janus
And again you want to go off on a fucking tangent. Answer the question for yourself. — Banno
I do not think that you're keeping that much in mind. — creativesoul
The important - dare I say crucial - consideration here(by my lights anyway) is that that part of Kripke's account is not about hypothetical scenarios. Rather, it's about actual world scenarios and what's going on within them. Thus, a valid objection to that can only be showing otherwise. Kripke uses what's going on in this world when we posit possible world scenarios with proper nouns as justificatory ground. The only objection capable of diminishing the brute strength of Kripke's justificatory ground would be one providing a possible world scenario using a proper noun that shows his account to be in error. — creativesoul
Definite descriptions can be rigid designators, and Kripke acknowledges this. However, ordinary descriptions used in natural languages are typically not. — Snakes Alive
At least in the early part of the lectures, Kripke doesn't appear to address hypotheticals, which are events that, for all we know, may happen in the future of this world. Indeed, Kripke tends to only use the word 'hypothetical' in relation to 'hypothetical languages', which is something different altogether. Rather, Kripke is concerned with counterfactuals, which are events that we believe did not happen in this world, such as the loss of the 1968 election by Nixon.Kripke begins these lectures(ignoring the introduction) by pointing out what we're doing when positing possible world scenarios(hypotheticals) while using proper nouns — creativesoul
"The man who was president at such and such a time and date" picks a unique individual out of this world just as well as "Nixon" does. However, the reason your criticism falls flat on it's face here is due to the fact that "the man who was president and such and such a time and date" is not an example of a possible world scenario using a proper noun. That is precisely what grounds Kripke's discourse here. — creativesoul
Kripke begins these lectures(ignoring the introduction) by pointing out what we're doing when positing possible world scenarios(hypotheticals) while using proper nouns
— creativesoul
At least in the early part of the lectures, Kripke doesn't appear to address hypotheticals, which are events that, for all we know, may happen in the future of this world. Indeed, Kripke tends to only use the word 'hypothetical' in relation to 'hypothetical languages', which is something different altogether. Rather, Kripke is concerned with counterfactuals.. — andrewk
I've told you I don't agree with what you wrote... — Janus
You're being a twit. — creativesoul
'if a material object has its origin from a certain hunk of matter, it could not have had its origin in any other matter.'(p. 114)
Hence there is a sort of inheritance of individuality...
If B is made from A, and C from D, in no possible world is B the very same as C. SO part of the grammar Kripke is proposing is that if two things have distinct beginnings, then they are distinct in every possible world.
That seems intuitively pretty obvious from the extensional nature of his approach to modality. — Banno
"In addition to the principle that the origill of an object is essential to it,
another principle suggested is that the substance of which it is made is essential."(p. 114)
If B is made from A, then in every possible world B is made from A; To propose that B might have been made from D would be contradictory; yet instead one might propose that some B might never have existed, but that instead there was another individual - B' - which was made from D. — Banno
That we're not inside the actual world? The actual world is like a history book. Napoleon isn't really in there. — frank
...counterfactuals, which are events that we believe did not happen in this world... — andrewk
Instead B may have never existed(the B made from A), but rather there is another individual with the same namesake made from something other than A. — creativesoul
So in saying that the "actual world", as used in modal discussion, is not the world around us, he is pointing out that "actual world" here is used as a piece in modal games, no different to any other possible world. Hence when he says "the possible but not actual worlds are not phantom duplicates of the 'world' in this other sense", the other sense is that of a world of "the enormous scattered object that surrounds us".
He's saying that we ought not overcook the cake.
So after that I will maintain two things. Firstly, that the modal world in which we live is no different in ontology to any other modal world. And secondly, that the modal world in which we live is one of many possible worlds; to think otherwise would be to imply that our world is not possible. — Banno
That is, to play modal games we just pretend that our world is one of many possible worlds.
It follows from that that we've the strongest possible justificatory ground for concluding that description is not necessary for successful reference within possible world discourse involving both proper names and descriptions. — creativesoul
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