Comments

  • The Economic Pie
    (3) Who decides (1) and (2)? — Mikie

    (1) and (2) are decided by class, I think. It's not an individual which makes a labor market. Markets and profits and money are made possible by the modern nation state. And nations are ruled by class interests, first and foremost. Once those are satisfied then other projects can be taken on, and are taken on (usually as a way to demonstrate how one's nation is superior to another), but the ruling class will get theirs first (or the nation will collapse).

    "Theirs", from my vantage, is however much they are able to get away with taking. So, in a backwards way, it's also up to the under-class as well as the over-class, because the under-class can push back and demand more (since the over-class depends on the under-class). But here "decision" and "fair" and "should" stop being efficacious, or at least honest if they are efficacious words. Seeing the labor market as a balance of power between classes changes it from a moral problem to a political one.
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    Logic has changed. Whether it has advanced, is questionable. All the basic conceptions of modern modal logic are already contained in Kantian metaphysics, and have been classified as such since Aristotle. — Mww

    Hrmm... I think I'd say logic has changed considerably since Kant, and I'd say that it's for the better too. While Kant has the modalities as categories I'd say that's a problem with his logic -- Camus even makes a joke about that in The Myth of Sisyphus, so I always presumed it was understood that the modal categories are kind of funny in that they don't really spell out either a relation between objects (causality) or properties of objects (quality and quantity), but rather pick out judgments of a certain kind.

    Modal logic is more specific than Kant's.

    Furthermore, the categories are part of a transcendental logic, right? So we can easily see Kripke as contributing to logic, as such, to use Kant's distinctions. This is a pure logic rather than a transcendental logic. At least, this is how I'd put things. (The difference between logic as such and transcendental logic is... not easy to spell out. If this doesn't click, then this is probably as clear as I can be without more work.)
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪frank
    I paged through The Conscious Mind and found what you're saying about re-arranging neural circuits (while asleep or something) so when you wake up you experience the inverted spectrum.

    I guess I don't think whether you phrase it with one or two people it matters too much. But that probably goes some way to explain why I don't believe experience is private, ala the private language argument.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪frank
    I guess I'd say the inverted spectrum argument fits with your rendition here, from the way I think of things.

    What you're saying is experience causes neural activity.

    The inverted spectrum argument is meant to show how experience can be different between persons, and so it's a legitimate reference. When talking about "my blue", I am making a public distinction. "blue" after all, and "my" for that matter, are public meanings. And I'm noting how our experience of the world could be somewhat different, from a functional perspective. Would it really matter that my orgasm is the same as your orgasm, from the Darwinian perspective? No, it'd just have to be good enough to keep the species alive. And some people's orgasms might be somewhat sub-par, and hence that might be why they aren't as motivated by them.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪frank
    Ach, sorry. Didn't hit the Reply, but the above is what I meant to reply to you.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    I have an understanding of the hard problem.

    I just didn't know how to answer your question.

    I thought I set out my best understanding of the hard problem in my opening post. But you're saying you're not convinced I understand. And your rephrasing of my position was just confusing to me -- that's what I meant.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪frank
    I think? I'm fine with being quizzed, but I don't have a firm answer to your first question.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪bert1
    There's a series of icons above the top of a reply screen. The one on the furthest left is a "B" for Bold. Then "I" for italics. As you go along one of them is an " @ " . If you click it a window will pop up with a field to enter a person's name. When I typed "180" @180 Proof immediately populated as an option.

    This is also the case with @Banno or anyone -- just start typing the person's name in the field, and eventually you'll have an option to click on them.

    So, would you believe me? I'm certain @Banno understands.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    Free-for-all anarchy is my philosophy, so why not?

    Where's the metaphysics of humor angle. :D
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪Banno
    Heh, yeah fair.

    Might as well note that Marxism can lazily take care of this problem through the dialectic. But the solution might be considered worse than the original problem. (still makes me giggle though, even though I shouldn't)
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪bert1


    Would you believe me in saying @Banno and @180 Proof understand the problem?

    At least, such is my belief. I think their contentions come from another philosophical perspective, is all. Both worth considering in thinking about consciousness philosophically.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪bert1


    I think that this is an odd tactic.

    You can state what the hard problem is. And others find it unsatisfying. What are you hoping to get out of these repeated questions?
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪fdrake
    Yes, there is! I mean, the P-zombie argument has an obvious modal angle too, right? And for Chalmer's, again in memory and all that, the very conceivability of P-zombies demonstrates his point. (Actually, this gets to why I'm somewhat suspicious now... notice how close that looks to ye olde ontological argument?)

    But, in terms of being more specific than "yes, there's a modal angle" -- I'd have to actually commit to something. :D

    I just noticed the conversation kinda got into a lull and was still thinking about the hard problem so I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪Banno
    Public/Private, though, are distinctions from a way of doing philosophy that is not the target of the hard problem -- the functionalist account of the mind.

    They are public distinctions, of course. But I'm not sure that the inverted spectrum argument attempts to argue they are private.

    Different between people, perhaps. But we both understand this, so it's not private.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪Banno
    In this case I think even one example might be enough. It's not that all of our feels will be different, it's that it's possible, in a functional, physicalist sense, for them to be so.

    It's that sense which is under attack in Chalmer's set up, at least as I remember understanding it.

    When I imagine applying the notion to the other sense, I'll admit the loud-quiet one doesn't seem to fit (except in a mundane sense). The others I could see, though that probably says more about what I'm willing to entertain than reality.

    Either way, though, I hope the above makes sense: the attack is on the set up of a functionalist, physicalist account of all reality, or whatever, and noting how here's a phenomena -- the feeliness of the world -- that doesn't really seem to fit into that picture.

    Or would you say that this still falls to the philosopher's habit of overgeneralizing?
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    I read The Conscious Mind over 10 years ago just to figure out what the hullabaloo was. For awhile I was persuaded by Chalmer's property-dualism.

    These days I'm not as confident as I once was in such claims, but not because of the problem or how its stated but more general concerns.

    I think I have a coherent notion of Chalmer's description of the hard problem. I'd say the inverted spectrum argument is probably my favorite because it demonstrates how while it's surely advantageous in a functional sense to be able to "feel" the world around you, it doesn't really matter that my red is your red -- the old "my red could be your blue" line of thought. As long as we are able to distinguish the world similarly enough to use language together that's all that's functionally needed. Yet I have a fairly clear idea about what it would mean for my red to be your blue. So, whatever that is -- why my red is my red -- that's what the hard problem of consciousness is about. It's the feeliness of the world. And the thought, so my memory of what I was lead to believe at least, is that there is as yet no scientific explanation for why my red is my red (or, perhaps another way to put it, there's no scientific way to tell what my red is -- whether it is your blue or not -- yet I certainly see red)
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    ↪Banno
    Right! I think he's more replying to the mind-brain identity theorists there. And, since it's a talk, it's more of a comment to a way of thinking that notes how his approach poses problems for that very particular philosophical theory.
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪ArguingWAristotleTiff
    I remember mayor at least being on this sight....

    and hyena occasionally pops by?


    .... yeah, it was still a shame.
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    Truthfulness -- I favor any skepsis to which I may reply: "Let us try it!" But I no longer wish to hear anything of all those things and questions that do not permit any experiment. This is the limit of my "truthfulness"; for there courage has lost its right — The Gay Science, B1 aphorism 51
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪Banno
    That just makes it a real religion, by all descriptions at least.
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪Baden
    :lol: lmao,

    and thus baden beget shoutbox 2
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪Banno
    In the dreaming there was the void

    and in the void there was the paul

    a memory within a dreaming of a dream...
  • The ineffable
    ↪Banno
    Sometimes fence-sitting is helpful, though.

    Not always. And I think there's definitely the temptation to become Buridan's ass in the wrong circumstances.

    Only sometimes. So, if that applies to conceptual relativism at least, then it can be useful. (say, if your nethers are at risk in hopping one way or the other)
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪Baden
    I, for one, would not want anyone to be out of the loop. Especially @alan1000
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪Baden
    Really, if we're going to put pig stuff in the shoutbox, then it ought to be in both. ;)
  • The Shoutbox should be abolished
    ↪SophistiCat
    It would be a delicious sort of irony if this thread became the new shoutbox
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    One of the things about the thermometer definition is it explicitly states how to pick out temperature without telling you anything about temperature. I think that's a feature. However, if we're talking in terms of ordinary usage, mine is definitely a specialized definition meant for scientific purposes of theorizing about temperature and heat, or really more specifically, meant to allow people to work together to create knowledge which utilizes those notions which come from that basic theorizing. It's not the ordinary sort of thing that we mean by "Bob" or "that" or, as it's purposefully trying to leave out a description so that multiple descriptions can work, certainly not a definite description. Neither is it quite a pronoun, or even a generic noun like "table", which picks out objects (where heat is harder to think of as an object, except in the logical sense, but that's already set to the side because we're talking about ordinary names)

    I don't want to say that it's specialized, because I really doubt that, I'm just noting that I think it's still worth looking at those examples with some suspicion, upon thinking it through.

    In the case of counter-factuals, when we're talking about "heat is the motion of molecules" vs. "heat is a caloric substance that goes from one object to the other", then I think both must be picking out the same things in the case of the first part, but I'm not sure about the latter part still. Unless I allow strange things like "the belief that "the motion of molecules" means any physical object that cannot be perceived by our bodily senses because of how small it is which is in fact moving somehow" to be picking out objects between participants in a conversation. Maybe! But it's worth noting that we're getting into strange territory here.

    So I agree with your conclusion here for sure:

    I've suggested that this is a misapplication of Kripke's argument, since that argument relies on fairly clear individuation - objects and individuals; but that after Wittgenstein it's not so clear that sensations and states of mind are the requisite sorts of individuals.

    Further, the sensation of cold does not correspond to temperature, as shown in the video, and particular brain states do not correspond to particular states of mind, as shown by the irregularity of neural networks.

    There's much plumbing to be sorted here, it seems.     — Banno

    I think that in his audience those examples were good to bring up because of the popularity, but that they are confusing to me, at least, for all the reasons we've already talked about and that you mention here.
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    But I wonder what you make of the last arguments of the article, concerning the sensation of heat and states of mind — Banno

    Honestly I have to rethink it now. I'm not sure anymore.

    There's a long tradition of examining the ways we're bound to think. I think all philosophers make some use of that kind of exploration, but Hume and Kant are particularly notable for asking about the things we can and can't imagine. Kripke joins them in this for the purpose of showing that if we insist that all necessarily true statements are known a priori, this conflicts with the way we think about counterfactuals.

    So there's no recipe here for speaking in a certain way. We're not identifying elements of grammar. We're analyzing a historic philosophical bias with the scalpel of...

    the way we think. :grin:     — frank

    Okiedokie, if we're talking Hume/Kant then I'm on familiar ground.

    So, compactly maybe: the historical philosophical use of imagination as a sort of ground for thinking about ordinary language's treatment of counter-factuals and contrasting that with the philosophic bias that all necessary and true statements are necessarily also known a priori.

    So we can imagine this lectern is made of metal or in the next room, but we cannot imagine that this lectern was made from ice from the Thames. That's not plausible.

    So, also, it seems that to make sense of this we have to accept Kripke's notion of "possible worlds" too. That, at least ordinarily, we can and do speak of possible worlds that pick out the same objects as the actual world, and so while this is a loose sense of "necessity" it's also one that people use.
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    Keep in mind that Kripke is focusing on ordinary language use. This is not an examination of a logical language, so meaning is truly use here.

    In a case where "this lectern" is a rigid designator, the baptism is likely to have just happened. It's as if I named the lectern "Bob" but Bob equals this lectern.

    The wooden lectern example is pointing to the way we think about objects. Note Kripke's emphasis on what we can and can't imagine. What he's saying should be very intuitive to you.     — frank

    Heh, if so then I'm not understanding it because it is not very intuitive to me. :D

    The bits on what we can and cannot imagine are somewhat opaque to me. Not that imagination isn't involved in thinking philosophically, but I'm naturally hesitant to say that imagination is the limit of philosophical thinking.

    "This lectern" functions rigidly in the paper, I agree. It picks out the same object across possible-worlds/plausible-circumstances. I can see how that's not a name, but I don't think it matters either too much to this part of the argument if I'm reading it right at least.

    Reading over it again now... I think the lectern example is where Kripke is showing how we can derive an a posteriori necessity.

    So we have

    P -> [] P

    From a priori analysis of the lectern we can conclude that insofar that any particular lectern is made of wood, then it necessarily is not made of ice.

    Then, from a posteriori investigation, we infer

    P

    That is, though we could be wrong, the lectern is made of wood.

    Therefore, it is necessarily not made of ice

    So we get a necessary conclusion from a proposition believed due to a posteriori methods.

    So he's talking about, I gather, the distinction he wants to make between a posteriori/a priori, and contingent/necessary -- so that we can have necessary, a posteriori truths. (at least, as you note, within the way we normally use language rather than in some purified logical form)
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    ↪Banno
    I didn't, but I knew about the phenomena. It's why I prefer the thermometer as a basis for theorizing heat :) -- whatever is being picked out by the measuring of thermometers is at least related to heat. And, perhaps in this way, we might say that "heat" is a rigid designator -- we're picking out the same phenomena across different instruments, at least, and seem to be trying to talk about the same phenomena even in positing different descriptions of that phenomena.

    I think that's where my thoughts are coalescing at the moment -- to be able to even talk about a counter-factual, if all names were were descriptions, then by positing a different description of a named object we'd be picking out something different. Counter-factuals would actually just be us talking about different objects no matter what. That's why using "this" (though I'm picking up what you mean by "this" not being a name, now, ala Kripke -- since that's what he's speaking against, is Russel's theory of "this" counting as a name) with the lectern sunk home with me -- if descriptions are really all there are to names, then "this lectern is made of ice" is already picking out another lectern. That's why he's focusing on negative predicates, since the lectern he's talking about is necessarily itself, and it is a wooden lectern. And then the description is not picking out another lectern (another "name"), but the same one, even by the description.
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    ↪god must be atheist
    Eh, no worries, it's not necessary to the point anyways. I was just being shmancy ;)
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    ↪god must be atheist

    Heh. I'm not being clear. I do not agree with Thrasymachus. I was attempting a reductio of your position -- if what is good is just what is good for someone, then for a prince that wants to be a king killing the king is good for them. So, by your definition, at least some of the time, killing for the purpose of obtaining a better social position is good.

    The allusion to Thrasymachus was just to draw an analogy that what you're saying is similar to what he said in The Republic -- not exactly so, but given the above scenario, can you see the parallels?
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    Because it wasn't used that way in the analogy of the identity theorists Kripke was responding to in making an analogy between heat-molecules and mind-body to assert that there are contingent identity statements.
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    ↪god must be atheist
    Good stuff.

    I prefer not to go into gory detail in talking about ethics -- it seems to defeat the point? -- but can you imagine a person who makes a law for themself? So, in the case of the lawmaker, the law is most likely promoting something which the lawmaker considers good. So it fits your definition. However, at the same time, the rule-breaker made a law for themself -- not institutionally, but just chose it all on their own -- that said the lawmaker was breaking their law.

    Now, realizing that the lawmaker would punish them, being a clever sort, they just decided that they'd become the lawmaker themselves. Say the one who disagreed with the lawmaker (a king in a previous time) was a prince, and they could kill the king. Then --

    . Therefore justice is good, because it reduces the number of breaches of law. And that is good for the law-maker. It is advantageous, helpful and accommodating for the law-maker. — god must be atheist

    As Thrasymachus pointed out, what is just is what the powerful say. To even have an opinion on the matter, one must first be powerful.
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    I think we again are not in disagreement.

    The wooden lectern is ipso facto necessarily wooden, yet that is understood only empirically. Unfortunately it's an example that is prone to misunderstanding, as in various posts in this thread.     — Banno

    We almost got to disagreement. Maybe next time. :)

    Thanks for pursuing the thread. The explanations from different people finally got me to wrap my head around the baby idea.

    This is perhaps the key concept, and the article is an articulation of how we can use this approach to talk consistently about counterfactuals. At the time of writing, under the influence of Quine, counterfactuals were generally thought senseless. After this article, and Kripke's other work, they became an important part of the analytic toolkit. — Banno

    Cool. Nice that it finally clicked, in its own terms.

    I'll say again, perhaps more explicitly, that I do not think the examples of heat and pain work to Kripke's advantage. This because heat and pain are not treated well when treated as objects. But while rejecting these last few arguments I am in agreement with much of the remainder of the article.

    Yeah, I was definitely getting stuck on the examples. The mere "details" ;)
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    Just out of curiosity, how could we account for radiant heat with this type of definition? Radiant heat is a real form of heat which we feel. Yet in that case, heat moves from object A to object B without the medium of molecules in between. So how would that heat get from A to B without moving through molecules in between? — Metaphysician Undercover

    I think we'd interpret radiant heat as molecules. (and, truthfully, that's how I understand Newton's notion of light -- they are little light particles)

    In that case there would not be a necessary identity. And I think this gets to why I was so confused up front, too -- heat is not easy to define, especially in physical terms. We all basically get what it means in a generic sense, but that's it. So it doesn't seem like something I'd call a rigid designator, even in the normal sense of a proper name (unlike, say, Nixon).

    It's the form of "NAME is NAME" -- heat and motion taken as names, where in the counter-factual we are able to refer to both heat and motion and say motion is not heat (because we are able to refer to the very same thing, whatever it is we were talking about) -- and refer to the same thing in both cases so that we can assert that these things are false. (else, to get transcendental, how else you know that "heat" refers to the same thing in the counter-factual than in the factual?)
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    This is the aspect of the good which survives changes in values systems, it’s formal rather than specific structure. This aspect of the good we all can agree on. Since eventually any good within a particular value system will stop working for us as we move beyond that system, the philosophers I mentioned above agree that it is universally ‘better’ to keep oneself mobile , to celebrate the movement from one value system to one that replaces it rather than getting stuck in any one system for too long. So you see that for these thinkers the universal , formal aspect of goodness as efficacy of relational change ( usefulness) is more significant that the contingent and relative aspect that you highlight. It is this understanding of the universal aspect of the good that allows us to honor an endless plurality of value systems, and along with them an endless variety of qualitative senses of the good, rather than looking for the correct one. We understand that each sense of the good works within its system, and is valid for that reason and within that context. — Joshs

    So I gather what you're wanting to emphasize is how any value we posit will be valid within a system-context, where system-context is always changing and so the validity of a posited value will always be questionable. On one side of the reflection we might say what you say -- that all goods have their own specific place, and we should honor them all rather than compete over which of them is good.

    I think I'd say this just moves the question one step back -- on the other side of the reflection now, rather than arguing over what is good, we're going to argue over which system-context is valid (and, at least for myself, I'd pick the system-context which validates what I believe to be good)

    So the open-question argument would work still, I believe. It'd just be saying "Is it a good time to change values?" -- that element of choice that I've been emphasizing would still be there.
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    You lost me. How exactly are you understanding ‘proper functioning’ and what does it have to do with the normatively oriented organizational dynamics of living systems? — Joshs

    It's how William Casebeer likes to translate Aristotle's eudaimonia in Natural Ethical Facts.

    Normatively oriented organization dynamics of living systems sounds a lot to me like what Casebeer was proposing in making a science of ethics loosely based on Aristotle's ethics, which is similarly natural and biological. So it's just where my mind went.

    I have a feeling you are conflating ‘proper’ with a specific qualitative content of meaning, which places you squarely back within the circular defining of ‘good’( my qualitative meaning of good differs from your qualitative meaning of it). — Joshs

    Even if that's not the mistake I'm making, I'm probably making a mistake somewhere. If we're lost we're probably beginning from different places entirely.

    I'm a meta-ethical nihilist of the error-theory variety. I don't think there's really a way to define good in some natural or factual way. I think the argument from difference is what persuades me of this, in the end -- people simply do disagree over what is most important and make choices between goods, and in those cases people have good reasons in spite of contradicting one another in a matter of choice, so to say one is good or the other is good is to make a similar choice. I think we make choices between competing goods, and "goods" is itself something which we define for ourselves. So, contra Aristotle, who believes there are proper functions of an organism, I'd say there are no such functions or teleologies or natural facts.
  • Is "good", indefinable?
    What a mess. So far every contribution to this thread has used circular terms to ‘define’ the good. — Joshs

    That is consistent, at least, with Moore's notion as I understand it.

    Even fairness implies a moral notion of equivalence or balance. Fair refers to a ‘good’ sort of balance. Justice may not be pleasant but it is ‘good’. Hmm, so there is no ‘pleasantness’ associated with aim of justice? What’s needed is a definition of good , pleasant , happy , absence of suffering, that breaks out of the circle and shatters Moore’s contention. We have a number of options to choose from here. We could look at biologically-based thinking that grounds affective valuation in the organizational principles of living systems.



    So if you say justice implies a moral notion of equivelence or balance -- where fairness is the good sort of balance -- I understand what you mean by the good sort of justice vs. the bad sort of justice. Hence, justice is not goodness, because I can understand justice in both the good and the bad way.

    I used justice because I think it's the sort of moral value that tends go against values that put happiness and comfort as the sum of all that is good, which I took @god must be atheist to be proposing.

    But there is no sum of all that is good. There is no reducing goodness to some other thing. It's all those things, but then we find that some goods conflict with one another.

    "Proper functioning" was the original position that I thought made sense of ethics in a naturalistic way, which is what counts against Moore. However, I think the open-question argument works against proper functioning just as well as any other definition proposed of goodness -- and not because it's a priori, but because "proper functioning" leads to contradictory goods that we must choose between. Even if there are natural, ethical facts -- people choose against proper functioning and call it good.
  • Kripke: Identity and Necessity
    And, Kripke supposes, this goes for any equivalence between heat and the motion of molecules. If "heat" is a rigid designator for that sensation, and "the motion of molecules" is a rigid designator for molecules in motion, then if heat is the motion of molecules, it is necessarily so. — Banno

    I'm starting to see what he's getting at, I think.

    For me, I'm hesitant to call "the motion of molecules" rigid because it doesn't pick out the same individuals in all possible circumstances. I'm hesitant about the relationship between names, aggregates, and whether or not aggregates are objects. The mereological problem is what I keep thinking of.

    But if it's just a way of talking, and not mereology, then the truth/falsity of a particular proposition isn't what's at issue. I'm getting stuck on the ontology when he's talking epistemology. What's at issue is the necessity of identity statements, which at this time seems to me just to be anything of the form "x is y", where x and y pick out the same object.

    So "heat is the motion of molecules" fits the form, and thereby are objects in terms of the logic. Kripke isn't even taking a stand on the truth/falsity of that statement as much as he's using it because identity theorists of the mind-body use it as an analogy to say "there are contingent identity statements", which is the belief Kripke is arguing against -- that if these be identity statements at all, then they are necessary.

    I'm seeing this in the lectern example, where he states at p 179/pdf-18:

    So, it would seem, if an example like this is correct -- and this is what advocates of essentialism have held -- that this lectern could not have been made of ice, that is in any counterfactual situation of which we would say that this lectern existed at all, we would have to say also that it was not made from water from the Thames frozen into ice. Some have rejected, of course, any such notion of essential property as meaningless. usually, it is because (and I think this is what Quine, for example, would say) they have held that it depends on the notion of identity across possible worlds, and that this is itself meaningless. Since I have rejected this view already, I will not deal with it again

    Especially at the beginning it goes along with his other examples where he doesn't assert the truth as much as suppose the propositions are true in order to demonstrate necessary identity across possible worlds, since possible worlds are just counter-factual circumstances that are plausible (hence why, in the circumstances which Kripke was talking, the wooden lectern was necessarily not-ice, and since it was not-ice, it was necessarily not made of the Thames from the beginning of time)

    It's the use of the counter-factual "world" (circumstances) that he's taking issue with -- in the counter-factual circumstances, the names pick out the same individual, and so -- given that every object is necessarily self-identical -- the object picked out in both the actual and the possible circumstance are necessarily the same individual, whatever the truth of the statements made.
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