I'm interested in your thoughts on my post, as I think the perspective of someone that is not committed to a materialist ontology (which (being uncommitted) is my position and, IIRC, yours), towards Kripke's designator notions, may be quite different from that of someone that is so committed. — andrewk
If Barack Obama were different he would not be Barack Obama. It's the law of identity: A=A. I can imagine somebody that is very similar to Barack Obama, but possessing one or more different properties, if that's what you are trying to say. — andrewk
I agree. I regard people, and objects more generally, as processes. So the event that is the human called BO doing POTUS things in 2016 is a part of the same process (which we could call a 'man') as the event that is a little boy called BO learning to read with his mother at the age of three.I don't think that Barack Obama being the president is a necessary part of his identity, though. Although in one sense we might say that he's not the same man he was before he became president, in another sense it's correct to say that he is the same man (i.e. that he isn't two different people). To say that the man who is the president once wasn't the president seems to be both sensible and true. — Michael
It's always risky to make statements about what others mean. So to soften that, let me say that what I mean by the previous paragraph is that, if when people say 'Imagine if BO could speak fluent Mandarin' they don't mean the interpretation I gave, then I have no idea what they mean. — andrewk
Where I seem to differ from the views of a number of people in this thread is that I believe that when people say 'Imagine if BO could speak fluent Mandarin', what they mean is 'Imagine if we lived in a different world that was the same as this in almost every respect, and had a POTUS called BO that was almost identical to the one in our world, except that that one could speak fluent Mandarin.'. — andrewk
It would not cause me to revise my theory of how the world works, or to conclude that I had misread the current state of the world (made faulty observations), if I were to win the lottery next Saturday — andrewk
It refers to me. It can be rendered without the conditional by saying 'I have bought a ticket in this week's lottery, and I am at this point in time unable to predict whether this week's lottery winner is me.'
Referring to last week's lottery, we can say 'I bought a ticket in last week's lottery and, prior to the draw, I was unable to predict whether that week's lottery winner would be me.'
It's only when this week I want to consider a counterfactual in which I did win last week's lottery, that I need to consider alternative worlds, and people like me in those worlds. — andrewk
The process that I (perhaps rigidly) refer to as 'me' did not win the lottery of date 7 December 2016, so if I wish to talk about a process that wins the lottery of date 7 December 2016, that must be some other process. It can be a process in an imaginary world that is similar to this in almost every respect except those relating to the lottery, but it cannot be this process. — andrewk
It's when it is applied to counterfactuals that it seems to become incoherent. The process that I (perhaps rigidly) refer to as 'me' did not win the lottery of date 7 December 2016, so if I wish to talk about a process that wins the lottery of date 7 December 2016, that must be some other process. It can be a process in an imaginary world that is similar to this in almost every respect except those relating to the lottery, but it cannot be this process. — andrewk
Whether or not I agree to that depends on what the 'could' in that sentence means.This is basically an assertion that nothing could be other than exactly as it actually is — The Great Whatever
It seems that way to me. That then leads us in the direction of Aristotelian essences. Under that approach Barack Obama is any process in any possible world that has the 'essential/necessary properties' of BO, but which need not have the nonessential/contingent ones.Perhaps it just comes down to a disagreement over which properties are necessary and which are contingent. And, I wonder, what makes it the case that being a planet or being the president is one or the other? — Michael
I just don't see why that's nonsensical. It seems to me the insistence on counterparts comes from thinking individuals are conglomerates of properties rather than just referential pegs to hang properties on. The latter point of view is much less complicated and gels much better with ordinary language, though of course our credulity stretches at its limits – we might ask, okay, then in what sense is it 'the same thing?' The answer is this is a dumb question: we stipulate that it's the same ex hypothesi, and such continuity is all it means for it to be the same thing. This may result in some odd consequences of haecceticism, but these are probably only odd because we have little need to imagine counterfactuals that differ so far from the actual situation and lose our grip on what the consequences of these far-reaching changes would be. — The Great Whatever
If an essentialist approach is not required, then the question remains: what does it mean to say that a human-like organism in another possible world, that shares many of the properties of the BO of this world, is Barack Obama? Or, more crudely, what is the difference between a BO-like organism in an alternative possible world that is BO, and one that is not? — andrewk
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