Comments

  • Analytic and a priori
    Pierre.

    Samuel Clemens didn't have to pick the pen-name Mark Twain. He could have picked something else.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Come on, Pierre. Are we really sorting this kind of thing out?????
  • Analytic and a priori
    co-referential terms — Pierre-Normand

    When were they co-referential terms?

    Consider the truth of the sentence when Clemens was a child. In case you don't know who we're talking about.... no, he was not Mark Twain at that time.

    And obviously, the statement is not truth-apt where there is no Samuel Clemens (which is the vast majority of possible worlds...)
  • Analytic and a priori
    Try the sentence out on a possible world where Samuel Clemens is 5 years old.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Maybe the better question would be: why isn't it necessarily true?
  • Analytic and a priori
    Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain.

    This is not a necessarily true statement.

    What would you have to add to make it necessarily true?
  • Analytic and a priori
    Of course they are identical in any world where they exist. — Pierre-Normand

    OK, so I think you're refusing to acknowledge something that should be very clear.

    "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain."

    This is not a necessarily true statement. You should know why that is and you should know what you have to add to it to make it necessarily true.
  • Analytic and a priori
    I think what you're doing is imagining some criteria for reference that holds in spite of a speaker's intentions.

    I don't think that's going to work. We aren't talking about artificial languages here. It's ordinary language use.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Likewise,

    If the France that I'm thinking of exists, it's capital is Paris.

    That is a necessarily true statement if the France I'm thinking of must have Paris as its capital.

    I actually tried to explain to the Great Whatever twice that that's what I meant. Its not explicitly laid out by Kripke that the rigid designator can be used in this way to mark out necessary aposteriori knowledge, but I think it follows.
  • Analytic and a priori
    The identity expressed (by us, in the actual world) by the sentence "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain" is necessary (i.e. it holds at *all* possible worlds) — Pierre-Normand

    No it isn't. We covered this already. This sentence is necessarily true:

    If Samuel Clemens exists, he is Mark Twain.
  • What breaks your heart?
    And despite ongoing efforts, the situation is still dire. — Sapientia

    I know that. And I grieve for the people of Syria and the surrounding area. I hope peace comes soon.
  • What breaks your heart?
    Obviously not, so I've WON! — Mayor of Simpleton

    You didn't bring up Hitler. So... no. You didn't win.
  • Analytic and a priori
    This hardly establishes that the country, France, that you are talking about, has Paris as its capital essentially. — Pierre-Normand

    Since the the object I'm talking about must have Paris as its capital, perhaps it's a moot point whether we call it essential or not. It's necessary. And it's aposteriori knowledge.

    Agree?

    If we were to countenance France having a different capital, instead, then we would not be countenancing a different object, but rather a different (counterfactual) determination of this very same object — Pierre-Normand

    If I am talking about an object that must have Paris as its capital, you can either acknowledge that necessity or fail understand me, in which case we are not communicating and certainly not in the domain of situations Kripke was interested in.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Talk about "possible worlds" may obscure this very trivial fact if one has inchoate modal realist intuitions, maybe. — Pierre-Normand

    No realism necessary.

    1. When considering ordinary language use, it is necessary to attend to context of utterance to gain an understanding of the meaning of an utterance.

    2. One can baptize any object with any name one chooses. The language community for that sort of thing need not extend beyond two people.

    3. I may tell you that: "France might have escaped invasion that year." From the context of the conversation, you know (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that I mean the France that actually existed in 1940. Since that particular France had Paris as its capital, considering a possible world in which France did not have Paris as its capital would be a mistake. The object I am considering must have Paris as its capital.

    4. In this case, over the range of possible worlds we're considering (all of which are abstract objects), it is necessary that Paris is the capital of France (although this is not apriori knowledge.) Though this is not a strict expression of Kripke's intentions, it fits well enough.

    It might clear things up if you could tell me which of these points you disagree with.

    If you still want to talk about the mechanics of reference in regard to rigid designators, we can. I thought originally that talking about that would help with a meeting of the minds between us, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
  • Political Affiliation (Discussion)
    Well, marriage shouldn't be something the govt. should be defining or legitimizing. It's personal and private — Harry Hindu

    Historically it was a religious sacrament. I don't know the history of how the government got involved.
  • What breaks your heart?
    ↪Sapientia
    Lighten up, dude.
  • What breaks your heart?
    ↪Sapientia
    I was riffing on the emotion behind the emergence of American isolationism. The last line of the post was meant to explain that. The idea is that the US needs to back down from any pretense of leading the world... because... leading it where? There are no allies out there. It's just people who are really good at taking advantage of a bunch of idiots and the US has signed up for that over and over. It's time to stop. Does it have legs? From where I'm standing.. it does.

    Don't like my poetic style? Who cares?

    I guess the point I was trying to make to you was this: Life is a bloody mess sometimes. Sometimes you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. The only way to really avoid that is to become a pacifist. But in that state, we might indict you for a different kind of crime... that you stood by and did nothing. Sometimes it's not a choice between perfection and a messy solution. It's a choice between two bloody messes.

    You can deny all of that obviously. It's just the perspective of one of your earthly cohorts.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪Michael
    Thanks!
  • Political Affiliation (Discussion)
    Gay marriage:Unnecessary. — Harry Hindu

    What marriage is necessary? :)

    Hi Harry!
  • Naming and identity - was Pluto ever a planet?
    I'm not saying that nothing is similar in the objects we call "planets". I'm saying that it might be that there isn't anything that all things named by some common noun have in common. — Michael
    And that's one reason semantic holism is attractive. Is that how you look at meaning?
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪Wosret
    Where is that from?
  • What breaks your heart?
    ↪Baden
    Baden. A feature of the present is that Trump declared that he has no problem with Russia's recent acquisitions. A few years back that would have been next door to treason. Now... the reaction was... "Hmm."

    He has repeatedly claimed that it's in the interest of the US to have a close relationship with Russia.

    And you're talking about the security of Eastern Europe?

    Blank stare.

    I note that I've had the same experience Throngil had (and our views aren't identical). You and I aren't communicating.

    And... I'm... officially done trying to explain anything to a European.
  • What breaks your heart?
    Britain and France have nuclear weapons, Mongrel. Europe is not helpless. The only potential major threat is Russia, which is extremely unlikely to risk a nuclear war by invading Western Europe. So, we don't need the US as badly as you seem to suggest. Also, it's in America's strategic interest to keep NATO going as a bulwark against Russia, which keeps Eastern Europe safe. So, they won't be going anywhere in the forseeable future. — Baden

    Thanks for the history lesson Baden. LOL.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Sure, and one might just as well stipulate that "France" is the mane of a turnip and therefore is essentially a vegetable. So what? If you make up essential properties and tag them on France arbitrarily, it's not France anymore that you are talking about. — Pierre-Normand

    I baptize a turnip "France."

    Pierre: "That's not France."
    Me: "Well, it's not the country whose capital is Paris. That's true. But I'm calling it France."
    Pierre: "But it's not France."
    Me: "What do you mean by France? What picks it out of any world (including this one?"

    Previously you responded with "It's stipulated."

    Honestly, I think it would help if you read the SEP article I pointed you toward. The issue you're imagining as resolved is not. One solution (that you seem to lean toward every now and then) is that we link a proper name to an object in a possible world via a proposition.
  • What breaks your heart?
    ↪Baden
    Well.. they don't love us enough. But that wasn't what I've been trying to get across to you and Sapientia.

    Why do you think Obama is struggling to get the US into the TPP before he leaves office? It's because Hilary Clinton had to abandon her typical moderate views in order to get the nomination. The discussion in the US now is not liberal vs conservative. Its extremist vs moderate. And there are similarities between hard left and hard right concerns and proposed solutions. Where the two extreme sides are coming together amounts to a collection of isolationist attitudes.

    I was trying to explain to you that all the mental masturbation you guys are doing about the evil American Empire and some shit about blame is going to be obsolete pretty soon. The US isn't going to be intervening in the Middle East (especially toward the end of this century when the petroleum will be gone). It won't be trying to help anybody including you.

    Meanwhile you folks sit there apparently not even comprehending what the word "defense" means (that appears to be true of Benkie anyway.)
  • What breaks your heart?
    ↪Baden
    I don't know what you're talking about there, Baden. But I'm more than happy to exit the conversation. Peace out.
  • Analytic and a priori
    The reason why your name picks you up rather than your body is because it has been introduced in the language (when you were baptized, say) as the name of a living human being, and not the name of your body, — Pierre-Normand

    So we covered this before. Kripke was talking about ordinary language use, so we have to attend to the intentions of the speaker.

    If what you wrote there is true, there should be no issue with a speaker stipulating an object, France, which must have Paris as its capital. Any other "France" is not the object the speaker is talking about. Call it a baptism of this France-Paris object as "France."

    Apparently you object to that scenario. I have no idea why.
  • What breaks your heart?
    It's not about valour. It's about doing the right thing, and it's about understanding context and extenuating circumstances, and it's about understanding the slippery slope fallacy, and it's about rightly attributing or apportioning blame - which clearly plays a key role in ethics, and has nothing to do with big nonexistent Mommy and Daddy in the sky. — Sapientia

    Suppose the roles were reversed in 1941. The US is struggling. It could use help. Would the British government act to help the US? Yes. It would see what it could do to help the US cease to exist. We can guess that by its actions just a few decades earlier when it supplied the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It did that for one reason: to undermine the US and fragment North America.

    But the US government says, "No, let's risk life and limb to bring food to Britain." So obviously this quest we've been on to see just how big a bunch of chumps we can be has been going on for a while now.

    This is isolationist talk. One of the reasons I think it's going to grow is that to some extent... it's based on the truth.
  • Analytic and a priori
    The "magic" involved simply is stipulation — Pierre-Normand

    If you mean that a possible world is conjured and it's just stipulated that someone named X is there, yes that's what Kripke proposed. The SEP explains the associated concerns (and no, the problem is not possible world realism.)

    ...the worries that motivate an appeal to stipulation still remain, in large part, to be accounted for, after we have provisionally set them aside by approving the appeal: the appeal to stipulation is more like a promissory note than the satisfaction of an explanatory obligation. The appeal to stipulation puts off for another occasion any attempt to resolve how we succeed at doing what we take for granted that we manage somehow to do: namely, how we succeed at referring to the right individual, by means of our stipulative effort. There has to be some “reason the stipulated situation, when we use a name, contains the object it does” (Sidelle 1995, p. 99n.4) rather than likely competitors. It is hardly obvious what that reason would be. To see why, consider that in order successfully to stipulate that a name is to follow just you, as a rigid and therefore transworld tracking device, our stipulative effort has to be able, across worlds, to allow us to distinguish what is you from what is not you but is instead your body (say: assume you are not your body). How is this to be done without specifying criteria, if you were with your body when your parents smiled in your direction and baptized you with a rigid designator, saying “We have decided on a name for the birth certificate: …,” thereby stipulating that you are to be called by the name they chose for you? “It is not by magic,” as Jackson (1998, p. 82) reminds us, that your name “picks out what it does pick out” rigidly—namely you—despite the competition against you presented by a different candidate for designation—your copresent body. — SEP (rigid designator)

    Kripke side-stepped the issue. So, apparently, have you.
  • What breaks your heart?
    That would seem to misdirect responsibility. If I do the right thing by helping someone in need and someone attacks me for it, who is to blame? — Sapientia

    Blame? There's no big Mommy and Daddy in the sky to do anything with blame.

    By the time you need valor, you've already seriously screwed up.
  • What breaks your heart?
    Smuggling food and supplies is one thing, dropping atomic bombs is another. It's not like the one necessarily lead to the other — Sapientia

    Well, there's one way to be sure. Don't smuggle the food.
  • What breaks your heart?
    We've (the world) had exactly one since the concept was introduced — Benkei

    I assume you mean Don Quixote. Yep. He was awesome.
  • What breaks your heart?
    Perhaps there is humanitarian intent, but this is coupled with recklessness, incompetence, and a lack of foresight. Is that included in your notion of humanitarian military intervention? Based on your examples, I think it must be. — Sapientia

    Eh... Why so preachy Sapientia? You are indirectly the recipient of humanitarian military intervention. Yep.. About a year prior to entry into WW2, the US was smuggling food and supplies to your little ancestors. That ended the American pretense of neutrality and precipitated American entry into the war. Believe it or don't. Idiot Americans were trying to help somebody.

    Was there collateral damage? Oh yea.
  • What breaks your heart?
    Mongrel assumes she/he knows me well enough not to want to waste time on trying to understand me. Or, read charitably, knows himself well enough to know it won't amount to anything. — Benkei

    Uh... The back story on that is that I had just been through a little discussion with Baden about his trepidation about "humanitarian military intervention." Was it the concept? The use of the terminology? I wanted to know. I walked away from the conversation pretty sure I don't understand Baden's viewpoint . Several times through the conversation it occurred to me that the gulf between us was wider than I realized.

    When you asked why it would seem odd that a person is concerned about the health and welfare of people elsewhere, when that person is not contributing to his own defense... honestly my first response was: "How could you not know the answer to that?"

    It seemed obvious to me that short-circuiting the conversation was a good idea.

    And.. the Red Cross is awesome.
  • Disproportionate rates of police violence against blacks: Racism?
    So yea, I think racism is all around us, and we don't see it because we breath it, it is institutionalized. — Cavacava

    We don't share the same world as much as logic might suggest. Sometimes within the same geographic space multiple worlds rub shoulder without seeing each other... "From the penthouse apartment to the knife on the A-train... it's not that far." That's from a song that sums up my experience travelling around from one world to another and I know there are many I don't know about... possibly right beside me now.

    I'm a woman who worked in electronic engineering for 10 years. I'm a white person (I can pass for that) who grew up in an area where the black population was pretty high. I specifically remember becoming aware of the concept that there are only two races. I remember how weird that seemed considering that people are all different colors. Most black people aren't black. Patrick, a little boy I grew up with... his skin was actually black. Patrick's deal was he thought going around kissing girls right in the mouth was awesome. Looking back... it was a really good way to pass on viruses. All the girls in my first grade class would run from him when they saw him coming. Not because he was black. We all knew he was black. We didn't understand that he was black. The notion that racism is innate is bullshit. It's not. For some people, the information just isn't there in the little world they inhabit to let them know that.

    I say the issue of sexism, sexual harassment, racism, racial intolerance.. it's all very complicated when we get past real discrimination regarding employment and housing. I could go on for some time explaining why it's so complicated. Racism is different from sexism (obviously). The only people I've talked to about that were black females. I don't know a black-male perspective (which...let's be honest.. it is black males that this thread is mostly about). The perspective that has the ring of in-depth examination is Bitter Cranks. I've noticed that before.
  • Analytic and a priori
    Pragmatics makes a distinction between speaker meaning and conventional meaning ("Utterer's meaning" and "timeless meaning" in Grice). For Kripke it doesn't matter. We are either considering timeless sentences that contain proper names or utterances where the speaker makes use of proper names as they are normally understood. Else you are simply changing the subject away from the use of proper names. — Pierre-Normand

    Generally, when dealing with ordinary language use, one would look at an utterer's intention. And of course, pronouns can stand as rigid designators. There is no "normally understood" meaning to "you." It has to be gathered from the circumstances of utterance.

    It appears to me to be blatantly obvious and unmistakable that Kripke is talking about ordinary language use in N+N.

    But that's not the issue I was pointing to. It's sketched out well in the SEP article on rigid designators. What is the magic that attaches a rigid designator to a particular object in a possiible world? Though this may be unproblematic for you, the SEP article makes clear that it is an unresolved issue. Scott Soames follows a route involving propositions that makes a lot of intuitive sense to me.

    And.. I'm not quite sure how with your having read it twice and the tons of secondary literature that you're blind to that issue. Maybe it's just a language barrier issue?
  • Disproportionate rates of police violence against blacks: Racism?
    I quite understand that white folks don't see it and don't want to see it. — unenlightened
    Some people are just so convinced that they know everything that they aren't able to listen and gain something from the experiences of others.
  • Moral facts vs other facts?
    I maintain that it is reasonable for a person to maintain that mathematical facts are not queer, — Moliere

    I assume you don't mean that they're straight. But... philosophy of math is most definitely queer... I mean... really bizarre.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    With each moment the world is made and moral value is it's expression. — TheWillowOfDarkness
  • Moral facts vs other facts?
    If morality is objective, then we definitely don't make it up as we go. We are discovering or beginnig to understand what is the case about morality, in a way that is similar to the way man gradually began to understand math- that is my theory. Not sure if it holds water. — anonymous66

    Sorry, I didn't mean that morality is something we make up as we go. It's that question, "How do we know what is true?" There's a lot of on-going negotiating there no matter what sort of assertion we're struggling with.

    The court of law could be seen as a symbol of the attempt to know truth in regard to morality.

    There's a prosecutor and a defendant. They make their cases. The judge is a symbol of the heart, or emotion, which, having been stalled by the trial, makes a judgment tempered by the calm of that closed sanctum and informed by the facts, and guided by the Law.

    In a real court room, the law is a constitution or some statutes. What is the Law symbolically? Don't know.
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