Achieving almost complete incoherence! Is it the wanting that does not make these not your cornflakes or not your beard? Are possible worlds just a thought? We joke, but I'm serious. Semanticists can create any animal they feel they need for their ow purposes, but as with any errant creativity, their's is subject to disciplines and controls, and being kept in its cage. "Possibility" is possibility, not license. — tim wood

tim wood, queston: What do you suppose a statement is about gold that is synthetic a priori?

The limits of imagination are the limits of the knowable. — frank

One can imagine all sorts of things that are impossible.

One can imagine all sorts of things that are impossible. — Banno

Such as?

Water composed of helium and oxygen.

I hate to smuggle in words where they were not explicitly stated but to get your point across to those who don't get Kripke and his idea of natural kinds, you should just mention that he is arguing for what is "essential" to the natural kind before it is no longer "that" particular natural kind. That might solve some confusion on what Kripke is actually doing.

Edit: Oh and he is doing it through the idea of how "names" designate the referent in all possible worlds. I realize you might want his methodology too since I know you are keen on making that distinction that he is mainly doing a grammatical project rather than metaphysics.

Are you actually imagining that? Or just saying the words?

I agree, but we need to keep one eye on the difference between essence for Kant and for Kripke.

As I understand Kant, the essential predicates are those that are contained in the subject.

For Kripke, the essential predicates are those that are true of the subject in every possible world.

In both cases we might argue

for what is "essential" to the natural kind before it is no longer "that" particular natural kind. — schopenhauer1

The unfortunate example provided by Kant, and critiqued by Kripke, is that gold is a yellow metal. Now Kripke and Kant would presumably agree that old is a metal - that something purported to be gold but which is not a metal, is not gold. Kant seems to think that this is also true for being yellow; that something purported to be gold, but which is not yellow, would not be gold. Kripke disagrees; and given that colour is a secondary characteristic, Kripke's view seems to me to be the better.

AH. Good question. You had best explain the difference, if we are going to proceed.

AH. Good question. You had best explain the difference, if we are going to proceed. — Banno

On the way to explaining bundle theory, Hume asks us to imagine an object that has no properties. He finds that he is not able to imagine it. He obviously has no problem saying the words, though.

Do you need more of a dissection than that?

Have you ever witnessed something you can't imagine? IOW, do experience and imagination have the same boundaries? — frank

This is where we came in.

Are you actually imagining that? Or just saying the words? — frank

Hm. I cannot imagine the square root of -1. But I can bring the words together and then manipulate them to produce say a curve or an image of the Mandelbrot set.

Hm. I cannot imagine the square root of -1. But I can bring the words together and then manipulate them to produce say a curve or an image of the Mandelbrot set. — Banno

If you see no difference between imagining and "bringing words together," our experiences are too different to continue on.

Frank, I'm teasing the distinction Hume introduced to see if it can stand on it's own feet. Looks to me like it can't. (See me avoid the can't/Kant joke?)

Hume was copying Locke.

You didnt avoid the can't/Kant joke because you pointed out that you were avoiding it.

Since your hemisphere is hogging the sunshine, I'm out. :yawn:

It's too hot to go outside - well over 40ºC. I'd send you some sun if I could.

The unfortunate example provided by Kant, and critiqued by Kripke, is that gold is a yellow metal. Now Kripke and Kant would presumably agree that old is a metal - that something purported to be gold but which is not a metal, is not gold. Kant seems to think that this is also true for being yellow; that something purported to be gold, but which is not yellow, would not be gold. Kripke disagrees; and given that colour is a secondary characteristic, Kripke's view seems to me to be the better. — Banno

I would agree with Kripke's assessment. But, I think Kant just missapplied gold when judging with this own theory. Gold being yellow is a posteriori, as Kripke agrees, and synthetic, not analytic. Unlike bachelor's being unamarried males, there is nothing in gold that automatically makes its definition of being yellow logically necessary- it could have been a different color.

The more interesting question is "What would Kant think of gold's atomic number of 79?". This to me seems like a synthetic a priori judgement. That is to say, you need to experience it in the world to know it (experiment), but it is universally and necessarily seen as true once it is discovered. I could be misapplying his terms myself though, that is where others can try to correct me.

The difference between Kant's approach and Kripke's approach, which @csalisbury was trying to bring up is one of areas of interest (which may be incommensurable). Kant is looking at things from an epistemological point of view and Kripke from a grammatical point of view. From Kant's epistemological point of view, he considers the very universal conditions for even observing the world in the first place. Thus, the reason gold is 79 in all possible worlds, is because of the necessity set up by our brains (time/space,categories of understanding). There is no way the substance we call gold could not be 79.

Kripke, on the other hand, isn't interested in necessities of human understanding like Kant is. He is purely focused on how we use names. Names are inherently arbitrary as what the actual utterance is. What isn't arbitrary is how the name then becomes "attached" (or rigidly designated), in his view. Thus, though we don't need any universal laws of human understanding to have a substance be named "gold", once that substance is named gold, and used over and over from that original instance, it becomes fixed in all possible worlds. These two starting points for understanding the world are very different. That is to say, Kant wasn't worried about how grammar works with names- he was worried about how things could be universally true despite having been derived at empirically. He was worried that Hume was right in his "Problem of Induction".. By Kant saying that universal necessities are actually transcendental (in the very fabric of our understanding of our world), that universal truths can be derived from empirical evidence.

@Banno I'd be willing to append my first statement above that they are incommensurable if, we consider that Kripke's project was more than grammatical, that his conclusions were also epistemological. That is to say, in truth-statements judgements about the world, we have found a new category that Kant didn't consider. However, the reason Kant didn't consider it, was he was not using the approach of names and grammar, which can arguably make them incommensurable, being two lines of investigation that may not go together.

However, following Kripke's own line of reasoning perhaps, we can say that, IF Kant was to have used a grammatical method (and applying it to modal logic), he would have also included necessary a posteriori statements in his schema. He would notice that you can have contingent "words" apply necessarily to a person or a kind.

However, we may still state that these are incommensurable approaches as Kant was looking at propositions and Kripke was looking at grammar and these two approaches are mutually exclusive.

You like the word really - what is really going on; what the statement really tells us. I'm not so keen. I still do not see how your post explains anything. — Banno

Well, we'd need to check if you even understood my post, I suppose. How would you say what I said in your own words?

Let me try this: is gold a yellow metal? Is gold any other color? Assuming the answer to these are yes and no respectively, then it seems right to say that if there is gold, then it is a metal and it is yellow, and, if it is either not metal or not yellow, then it is not gold. — tim wood

So, when we're talking about this from the a priori context, the answer is "It depends on how you've formulated your concepts."

Hm. I cannot imagine the square root of -1. But I can bring the words together and then manipulate them to produce say a curve or an image of the Mandelbrot set. — Banno

Let's do a thought experiment and start by saying there are things we can't imagine (even in principle) and see where it leads.

I suppose it could be that much of what is entailed by that initial premise is beyond my imagining. Maybe the whole conclusion is. What's the point in trying to think it through when the truth is likely as not beyond my grasp?

And when the dust settles, I find that this skepticism is a deadend. The actual world is bounded by my imagination (for all practical purposes). What appears otherwise just hasn't been properly tackled yet.

If you look back, you'll see I said "for all practical purposes" the first time.

But there can be differences between worlds; so while my cat is all black in this world, in another possible world it might be all white; yet in no possible world is my cat both all black and all white. — Banno

How could your cat not be black in another possible world? I get how you might have adopted a white cat in this world had you so chosen, but I don't understand how you maintain your identity across worlds where you can have cats in each world of varying colors.

So being yellow is not a necessary characteristic of gold. — Banno

This strikes me as a slippery slope into essentialism, where you're going to have to now identify what is a necessary characteristic of gold, if not its color. I don't follow why its color cannot be part of its arbitrary definition if we so choose. Does gold cease being gold under a red lamp? Sure, if we say so.

In response to @MindForged you stated

That just looks like an invalid marriage to me. I don't see a philosophical issue here, just a legal one — Banno

It would seem he was getting at what I was saying above. Things are whatever we say they are.

At any rate, doesn't your acceptance of the the logical necessity of analytic truths jettison Quine's well known objections?. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction#Quine's_criticisms.

“....I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori....”
“....(Is there) a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori....”
“...But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough...”
“...By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up....”
“...The Human Intellect, even in an Unphilosophical State, is in Possession of Certain Cognitions "a priori"....”
A.) “...if we have a (judgement) which contains the idea of necessity in its very conception, moreover, it is not derived from any other proposition, unless from one equally involving the idea of necessity, it is absolutely priori....”
B.) “...an empirical judgement never exhibits strict and absolute, but only assumed and comparative universality (by induction); therefore, the most we can say is—so far as we have hitherto observed, there is no exception to this or that rule....”
C.) “...If, on the other hand, a cognition carries with it strict and absolute universality, that is, admits of no possible exception, it is not derived from experience, but is valid absolutely a priori....”
“....When strict universality characterizes a judgement, it necessarily indicates another peculiar source of knowledge, namely, a faculty of cognition a priori. Necessity and strict universality, therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure (that is, a priori) from empirical knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other....”
—————————————-

It doesn’t matter the objects in general we know about when considering knowledge itself, because such things are already given, or at least possibly given, by perception as appearances, but rather the theoretical, or indeed speculative, methodology under which human knowledge is possible. The old...knowledge *of* vs knowledge *that* dichotomy, so to speak, insofar as the judgements “gold is a yellow metal” and “water is a clear fluid” are understood empirically as immediate yet incomplete knowledge *of* gold and *of* water respectively. Reason wants it known under what conditions are we authorized to signify or designate gold and water.....and every other damn thing in the world....the way we do, such that knowledge *that* gold is a yellow metal and knowledge *that* water is a clear fluid, are derived from valid, that is, non-contradictory, cognitions.

Reason doesn’t want to know if any other immediate empirical intuition can be given to gold, but only that the intuition of, e.g., “yellow”, “metal”, actually does belong to it, not because perception, from which the empirical appearance comes, says so, but because understanding, from which such necessary justification alone comes, says so. But understanding does not intuit, it has no say in assigning “yellow” to “gold”, that having already been accomplished under the auspices of the faculty of intuition, which gives appearance to phenomena by means of imagination, and which then becomes rationally authorized as representation.

But we already know from experience what the intuitions of yellow and metal may represent, other than gold. We also know from experience the intuitions of clear and fluid may represent other than water. Therefore, we can say that the assignment of certain predicates to gold is an empirical cognition when gold is directly perceived, and, more importantly, we can thereafter cognize a priori, that gold is a yellow metal when no appearance of gold is given at all, because such appearance has already been represented and hence judged as non-contradictory. This is, of course, impure a priori knowledge, having it base in experience, no matter how remote. It is perhaps more easily considered as indirect, as opposed to direct, knowledge, although this qualification is not suggested as intrinsic to the transcendental philosophy of continental Enlightenment era epistemological theory.

Now of pure a priori knowledge, it must be admitted that whatever conditions, and therefore the principles which legislate those conditions, already explicit in impure and empirical knowledge cannot apply, for such is entirely circular and of no use whatsoever. That condition and principle being the logical law of non-contradiction, it follows that whatever legislation reason requires for pure a priori knowledge as its ends must have for its means some other fundamental ground. While it may be easy to dismiss the conditions given from experience, which the very idea of pure a priori requires, it is very far from easy to dismiss the cognitive operational procedure of human rationality. Therefore, a line must be drawn as to where and how we think objects, without there being objects to think about. If the line be drawn at the point where empirical influence stops, but the remainder of the cognitive system continues, such should be sufficient ground to establish the possibility of pure a priori knowledge. From the quotes above, they being taken in their respective order of print, it is clear knowledge works backwards, from itself, through cognition, through judgement, through understanding, through representation, through intuition. But all intuition is given from perception, which is always empirical, thus the line must be drawn before intuition when proceeding backwards, or that of which is a consequence of it. But if intuition is dismissed as a faculty for representation given to understanding, there must be some other source from which understanding may draw, in order to make its judgement, from which a cognition may follow and from that knowledge may follow.

This source resides in the understanding itself, they are the pure conceptions of the understanding, called noumena, and are, in effect, nothing more than the names of the properties or attributes a merely possible object, or, which is the same thing, an object as it will be represented upon the experience of it, must be given before any judgement whatsoever is possible of it. Because there are only these two sources of possible relations for the understanding to employ in its judgements, that is, intuitions and conceptions, and because intuitions, which have non-contradiction as their principle, have been dismissed in the determinations of pure a priori knowledge, the principle of necessity for the existence and the employment of the conceptions of the understanding, and furthermore the absolute universality of their application, serves as sufficient ground of pure a priori knowledge.
(Universality herein means only insofar as reason is investigating the realm of possibility; the pure conceptions of the understanding have no standing in what is called “transcendent”)

Does it matter if the pure conceptions of the understanding really exist? Does it matter they were incorporated post hoc ergo propter hoc as a means to inhibit infinite regress? No, not really, because we do not doubt we are in fact in possession of pure a priori knowledge, which makes explicit we must have pure a priori cognitions, which in its turn makes explicit we must have made pure a priori judgements, which in IT’S turn makes explicit we must have something purely a priori in our faculty of understanding. This is why it is said we do not and cannot know noumena as real objects of conception, even though we are permitted to name them because we think them as necessary, and if that is so, they are so much confused with the “thing-in-itself”, which we also know absolutely nothing about. Noumena, along with imagination and schemata, should be considered as a facilitators in the rational procedure of faculties, but not in themselves cognitive faculties.

All that remains, in the consideration of empirical, a priori and pure a priori understanding, judgement, cognition and knowledge, is whether or not the claim for the reality of pure a priori knowledge has something applicable to it. What can we know a priori? Simply put, anything we know that has no empirical content whatsoever is known a priori. Upon reduction of anything empirical or possibly empirical out from thought in general, all that remains is nothing but thought itself, the thought of something, and is purely a priori; that which exists as nothing more than a thought of something, is a proposition where the subject and predicate are connected by the pure conceptions of the understanding, whereby the predicate follows universally and necessarily from the subject. “Plurality is succession in time”, “No sum is less than its constituents”, “No cognition of three lines will ever allow cognition of a triangle” serve as examples of pure a priori knowledge. It should be noted, that because pure a priori knowledge has no empirical content, no truth value can be assigned to any pure a priori proposition, such truth coming from experience alone. These propositions serve only as the form this kind of knowledge must have.

These are the conditions for deriving the grounds of analytic and synthetic propositions, and the knowledge which follows from each of those kinds, and these from a particular epistemological theory. There is no reason to suppose this theory is better or worse than any other, even if it is logically consistent.

About that. i've no clear idea of what you are saying.

but which is not yellow, would not be gold. Kripke disagrees; and given that colour is a secondary characteristic, Kripke's view seems to me to be the better. — Banno

Secondary characteristic? Do you mean as per Locke? Small point: color as perceived must differ from color determined by the qualities of the thing itself, yes? So, gold is a yellow metal is to be taken as a statement about the gold, not about your eye, or viewing conditions. If the latter, then it is accurate to say that gold - absent light- is just no color at all.

Kant's remark about gold was intended to mean something that made sense with respect to Kant's criterium for making the remark - Kant was actually pretty good at that. Now everyone tries to score points by "correcting" Kant, while regretting his "error," when it's the case that they have not even engaged with his thought. It's a form of ignorant stupidity.

Now, to be sure, there are folks who measure Kant and depart from him, like Hegel. But as Kant had his purposes, so Hegel has his own; and they're pretty much irreconcilable. Maybe because Kant is merely difficult, fools imagine they can correct him, while Hegel, truly obscure, is immune to the stupids who cannot even get a grip anywhere on him, or any purchase (I one of these latter.)

But, I think Kant just missapplied gold when judging with this own theory. Gold being yellow is a posteriori, as Kripke agrees, and synthetic, not analytic. — schopenhauer1

As my post above, it depends on what "yellow" means. Perceived color depends on the observer, but intrinsic color....

So, when we're talking about this from the a priori context, the answer is "It depends on how you've formulated your concepts." — Terrapin Station

Which Kant was careful to make clear and document.

Back to possible worlds. Why cannot there be a possible world whose "existence" is such as to flummox every possible attempt to have anything true in all possible worlds?

I anticipate that the definition of "possible worlds" proscribes some possible worlds, yes?

An interesting approach. I like it.

Only, I'm going to follow Davidson and say that incommensurability is not an option. If two groups of ideas don't meet well, then one or both of them are wrong.

SO while I take Kripke as approaching forma grammatical point of view, it's apparent that the grammar has epistemological implications for Kant. The necessities of human understanding are present in the way we use words.

SO here again is my question: Can we reconcile Kant's a priori with Kripke's necessity?

Was it just a mistake to include "yellow" in the essence of gold? Perhaps if we remove that, we have some agreement between Kripke and Kant. .

there are things we can't imagine — frank

Give me an example...:razz:

Whereof we cannot speak, and so on. How does this part of the discussion relate back to Kant and Kripke?

An interesting approach. I like it. — Banno

Cool. Thank you.

Was it just a mistake to include "yellow" in the essence of gold? Perhaps if we remove that, we have some agreement between Kripke and Kant. . — Banno

I think it was, especially keeping in mind the definition of analyticity and with Kripke's further critique using modal logic.

However what would this approach look like if there was agreement when one is using propositions and the other is using purely grammar- when one is looking how we understand the world using propositions, and one is using how we understand names using modal logic?

@Hanover, I think we ought take transworld identity as read for the purposes of this thread. I'm quite comfortable with Kripke's account, in Naming and Necessity Lecture 1, and given the substantial thread on that topic already in this forum, I don't have more to say.

So unless you have a very specific criticism of Kripke's attitude to transworld identity, I'm not interested in that approach.