I don't see these responses helping much.

A metaphorical use is different to a literal use. Calling your ex an insect works becasue of the literal use. We could have a discussion of the best way to define 'literal', but that'd be yet another step away from Quine.

The extension of a predicate is the list of individuals to whom it applies. In your example, the set of animals having six legs is an insect, and it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect. That is, the set of animals that have six legs and the set of animals to which the word "insect" applies are the vey same. they are extensionally equivalent. (Part fo the problem here is the one mentioned much earlier, where it remains unclear what you think an essence is, especially in extensional terms).

We do not find out what an insect is by looking only at the use of the word, but finding out what an insect is, is the same as finding out how to use the word "insect" coherently. The example of "fish" is informative here. Whales were once called fish, but as we refined the use of that word it became clear that there were considerable differences between, say, teleosts and Cetacea; too great to justify the use of the common name. The word "fish" dropped out of use for Cetacea. More recently it has been suggested that there is nothing that is common to all and only fish; that there is no essence of "fishness". That's what prompted Stephen Jay Gould to joke that there was no such thing as a fish. If you insist that there must be an essence of fish in order to justify our use of the word "fish" you will be defying the science. Of course there are fish, which is to say nothing more than that it is useful to have that word at hand to talk about some of the animals that live in water and cook up nicely. It does nto imply, as you seem to think, that there must be an essence of fishness for us to be able to use the word at all.

I am not suggesting that word use determines what something is. Nor is it true that what something is determines word use. I said previously that such a juxtaposition is fraught. I am pointing to the interplay between word use and our interactions with the world. We divide the world up not on the basis of some prelinguistic ontology, but on the basis of what works for us.

This is not to "collapse the distinction between sign and referent" but as Davidson phrased it "In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false."

Well, yes, as I said, it's not a great example. We might get out our CRISPR and re-arrange the genetics of a fruit fly so that it has an extra body segment and two more pairs of legs. Is it still an insect?

I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.

...there is also nothing essential to insects? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect?

How are these questions distinct? Extensionally, they are identical.

And there is no such thing as a fish.

So you do think insects existed prior to anyone deciding what counts as an insect? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. I've argued similar points at length, elsewhere. There is gold in those hills, even if no one knows about it.

"What counts as an insect" is much the same question as "How should we use the word insect". There's books about that, if you are interested.

If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, it sure would be., Who says that?

Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. — Arcane Sandwich

Yep.

Tim seems to be advocating some form of species essentialism, in which species are static groups with inherent essences. See the conversation with @Apustimelogist.

Kripke advocates a modal essentialism, such that certain properties of object and kinds are essential. The properties he has in mind are those that the object or kind has in every possible world. So Gold has the property of having 79 protons in its nucleus, because that's what the word "gold" refers to. See the thread Kripke: Identity and Necessity. There's a fair bit involved.

Must we pretend? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Pretending isn't such a bad thing. This counts as a 'dog' - let's pretend. It gets us by.

Use is pretty ubiquitous - not just a "key use"; we don't just refer with word, we question, demand, command, name, promise.

Sheep are an "organic whole" only until they reach the abattoir. What counts as a whole depends on what you are doing.

Your essentialism is showing.

It doesn't say anything about it; it says that when a speaker's does use a description, the "speaker's reference" is that to which they think it applies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps that was his speaker's intent - that might explain the foux pas. But it would still be a mistake, as the example shows - and as Kripke argues - semantic meaning might well take priority. Sarah believes she is referring to Kripke when she is talking about Kaplan.

It will not do to reply that her speaker's reference is to Kripke, because the indicative picks out Kaplan.

Yeah, but I want to talk about meaning and reference :D — Moliere

Well, there's your problem, right there... :wink:

so why do you think. ...implies anything to the contrary? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't understand. The first says that Kripke does not think a description is needed in order to fix a referent. The second, that Kripke thinks the speaker has at hand a description in order to fix the referent.

What you talk'n 'bout?

Sure, some ways of divvying don't work.


We can juxtapose two views, that either the dog is an whole regardless of language, or it is a whole in virtue of language. Then we can pretend that the one must be true, at the expense of the other.

But perhaps the juxtaposition is fraught with problems. We might treat the trout as a whole while catching it, becasue that's what works. Then we filet it, treating it as a compound, then serve it along with spuds, greens and a béchamel as a part of a meal. What counts as whole or part is a result of what we are doing.

And language is a part of the stuff we do.


Meaning is not found, it's made. Or better, drop meaning and reference altogether and talk instead about use.

Tim apparently thinks that there is at most one correct way in which the world can be divvied up. God's way, presumably.

Others, perhaps you and I and maybe @Dawnstorm, think that there may be multiple ways to divvy up stuff, each of them capable of being coherent if not complete.

Does that help?

In any case is God compelled to fix our mistakes? This comes back to the obvious fact that he has no created a perfect world, not if a world, to be perfect involves no suffering for any creature. — Janus

For consistency god must have created the world of necessity. In modal logic (S5) if there is a necessary being then everything in every possible world is necessary. That is, god does not make choices.Whatever god does he is compelled to do out of necessity. The alternative, of course , is that there are no necessary beings.

The Best Possible World, But Not For Us is a curiosity rather than a serious proposal.

I almost agree with your critique of the causal chain theory of reference. It does not quite satisfy me, either. However I will say that it's advocates might not disagree with you that there is most likely a description involved at some point in the chain. But the success of the reference here and now is not dependent on that description. So at some stage Socrates was names "Socrates", perhaps using some description of the form "I name this baby before me'Socrates'". But now, given the ubiquity of the use of the name, there is a widespread agreement as to the referent of "Socrates" such that it is not dependent on that particular act.

Hence this from SEP:

2. On the causal model, words refer in virtue of being associated with chains of use leading back to an initiating use or ‘baptism’ of the referent. Extending this model beyond names has proven difficult, but one option is to insist that it is really the perceptual connection that underlies most baptismal events that runs the show. In that case, perceptually-grounded uses of demonstratives, deictic pronouns, and definite descriptions can be folded into the picture relatively easily, with anaphoric uses treated as something akin to links in a chain of reference-borrowing — Reference (SEP)

Notice "...leading back to an initiating use or ‘baptism’ of the referent".

Their target was the idea, from Russell and others, that a name refers in virtue of a description, and so that description must be at hand for a reference to be successful. This theory of reference is difficult to make work in a modal semantics.


Added:

Kripke’s entire argument in Naming and Necessity is that names refer via causal chains, not definite descriptions. — Banno

Actually, looking at that again, it's much too strong. The casual chain argument is not at all central to N&N. It is offered as an example of the sort of thing that might serve as an alternative. The main line of argument is against the necessity of a reference being associated with a description, and how possible world semantics shows this to be fraught with contradiction.

Compare and contrast

believes satisfies his description

against

believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.

See how one is about a description, and the other is about the referent?

Now Kripke rather famously showed that names do not refer in virtue of some associated description.

So it is an error to claim that Kripke thinks a description is needed in order to fix speaker's reference.

The example given shows that speaker's reference is not as clear-cut as might otherwise be supposed. It provides a direct counterexample. The key issue here is not just what Kripke’s general definition says, but whether it applies universally. The case of Sarah misidentifying Kaplan demonstrates that speaker’s reference can diverge from belief, precisely because reference is not determined solely by belief but also by contextual factors like pointing.

Klima assumes that 'conditions for being the semantic referent' must involve a descriptive element, but Kripke’s entire argument in Naming and Necessity is that names refer via causal chains, not definite descriptions. So Klima’s reading is not just mistaken—it contradicts Kripke’s core argument. Merely citing Kripke’s general definition does not refute the point. The question is whether all cases of speaker’s reference conform to this model, and the Kaplan/Kripke case shows they do not.

Is this important? Perhaps not, perhaps it was just a slip on Klima's part. Or perhaps it indicates some reservations he might have towards Kripke's semantics.

For me a far more telling argument would be that God should be able to create a perfect world but hasn't. That throws in doubt either omnibenevolence, omniscience or omnipotence. On that point it seems that the latter two must go together, or at least if Gord were omnipotent he must be omniscient, but neither require omnibenevolence. — Janus

Did you see the argument, from a recent Philosophy Now paper, proposing that this was the perfect world, but not for us?

The Best Possible World, But Not For Us

@Gnomon started a thread on it.

Sure. What do we make of this? If god sees what we have done, and so cannot change it, then there is something god cannot do. Or god does not know what we will choose, in which case there is stuff he doesn't know.

Not long ago we had a chap who insisted that god's omnipotence included his ability to perform paradoxical acts - make round squares and so on. I suppose one might go down that path.

Or one might choose Kierkegaard's approach, accepting the paradox as an act of faith.

There isn't an answer here. The dialogue is interminable.

I don't agree that the notions of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are logically incompatible per se. — Janus

Well, there is an argument from Broad to that conclusion. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a being with free will, but if he is omniscient, he should know what the being will do, which would take away the being's free will.

And we can take this a step further, pointing out that a being with any two of these characteristics might be consistent, but that a being with all three is inconsistent. And yet, a being with all three would be greater than a being with any two. Hence, the notion of a greatest being in inconsistent.

To be sure, these are not arguments to which one might attach much practicality, but they can be amusing.

no one seems to want to give an argument for their claims — Leontiskos

There's a difference between arguments unpresented and argument unacknowledged.

You really will do anything to avoid addressing the elephant sitting opposite you at the table.

Ok, I'll keep playing. Yes, the intentional theorist and the causal theorist may well agree that folk can talk about something despite not having a description that fixes the topic.

So what.

What is mistaken is the view that in the "Kripkean framework" the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

For anyone who wishes to check, here is a better link to Kripke's article: https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281977%29.pdf

(added: The crux is that Kripke argues that the semantic meaning of an act of reference can be maintained over the speaker's meaning. He uses this to defend Russell against Donnellen's view. Kripke's argument is that semantic reference is independent of speaker intent.)

Here's the footnote quoting Kripke:

“So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.”

This is in defence of:

In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

Notice that the quote does not mention descriptions at all. And notice also the use of the word "tentatively".

Speaker’s meaning depends on context and intent. But Kripke showed that proper names are rigid designators—they refer to the same entity in all possible worlds. Speaker’s meaning is intensional, or if you prefer, subjective. It varies between individuals, and so cannot account for multiple folk talking about the same thing, nor provide modal rigidity.

You and Klima both appear to have read "the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator" as implying the presence of a description. But the phrase is chosen so as to be neutral. The "conditions" can of course as well be those causal conditions that are the basis of Kripke's theory of reference.

Look, I can do bolding too!

~~

Language is not the only case of signification in the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep.

Notice Quine is concerned with language?

I'm not seeing how this addresses my post. I do not see where your diagrams take into consideration the fact of language as social phenomena, as the interaction of multiple people, doing things with words.

I think the actual real life interpretation can't complete until we add the third level of analysis: pragmatics. — Dawnstorm

I quite agree.

The diagram shows a relation between symbol and referent, linked by thought. Quine, Austin, Searle Grice and others showed this to be a somewhat keyhole version of what is going on. There is more to language than just reference, so a diagram that explains only reference will explain only a small part of language.

You have still not said what you think parasitic reference is.

And then this:
"But throughout this process, the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer, without knowing under what description or name the answerer identifies this thought object."
The issue here is clear enough: how could we know that "the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer"? And further, how can the "thought-object" in the mind of the saint be said to be the same as the "thought-object" in the head of the fool - and indeed, how could they be said to be different? — Banno

I don't see how this is at odds with what Klima has said. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who is the sentence "He did not write "Naming and Necessity" about? It is true of Kaplan, not of Kripke. Which is Sarah referring to? Her intent is to speak of that man she points to - Kaplan; and her description is true, he did not write Naming and Necessity. . Her semantic reference is to Kripke. Hence it is not true the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies her description. Kaplan satisfies her description, but is not the semantic reference of the statement. This brings out the issue of the opacity of the speaker's reference. It would be disingenuous to claim reference fails here, but the interplay between speaker's reference, the description and the demonstrative are not as direct as Klima supposes.

More generally, Kripke and Donnellan show that there need be no description in virtue of which a reference is made. The speaker's reference may succeed when description is not satisfied by the referent, or if the belief of the speaker is in error.

And this in turn brings out the fraught nature of what it is for a reference to succeed. In extensional situations, this is fairly simple - the reference succeeds if those in the discussion are talking about the very same thing. But in the non-extensional context of the beliefs of the participants, how are we to check that this is the case, that what each believes they are talking about is the same?

And so back to Quine, who asks if there can even be a fact of the matter here, while pointing out that the pragmatics can overrule the semantics and intent of the speakers in such a way that the issue of whether the reference is successful or not becomes moot.

If nothing else, this shows the poverty of any deep metaphysical theory that hopes to explain reference in every case. At the least, intent, semantics and pragmatics all play a part.

1. Is parasitic reference coherent? — Leontiskos

You might first explain what you think parasitic reference is. Do you agree that it is something like referring to the thought-object in someone else's mind?

The following appears mistaken:

For Saul Kripke this indicates that speaker’s reference may diverge from semantic reference. In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

Kripke showed that speaker's reference may differ from semantic reference. However, he also showed that a name may refer to it's referent regardless of any description, and indeed in the absence of any description.

Consider Sarah, a philosophy student who sees Kaplan at a conference and mistakes him for Kripke. She says, pointing to Kaplan, "Kripke is a great philosopher, but he did not write Naming and Necessity". The speaker's reference here is to the man pointed to - Kaplan. The semantic reference is to Kripke, in virtue of the name used. Sarah believes that she is referring to Kripke, but she is instead referring to Kaplan. Kaplan did not write Naming and Necessity, so her description is true.

The speaker's reference, given by pointing to Kaplan, is Kaplan. The intended reference, given by the name "Kripke", is Kripke. Hence it is not always the case that the speaker's reference is the one that satisfies the speaker's intent. Which is to make the obvious point that what someone is talking about does not always align with what they think they are talking about.

This is a generic problem with accounts of reference in terms of speaker's intent. Reference is a communal activity, and so not reliant simply on the intent of the speaker.

Collingwood viewed metaphysics as unearthing the foundational assumptions behind our scientific theories - behind our understanding of how things are. He viewed the Ontological argument as one such supposition, hence "A man who has a bent for metaphysics can hardly help seeing, even if he does not wholly understand it, that Anselm’s proof is the work of a man who is on the right lines" - that is, someone who agrees with Collingwood's view of metaphysics will see the argument as an expression of that seeking for foundational explanations.

They will not be put off by the fact that the argument fails.

Pretty much.

What happened in Canberra was the public servants who were dropped took on contract work to do the same job for more pay.

In the interests of efficiency, of course.

The result was that the folk doing the work have less incentive to gainsay their bosses. They will not get the next contract.

But the public service has changed, the occupants of the higher offices are on shaky ground and will acquiesce to poor policy.

Hence robodebt and so on.

Again, in the interests of efficiency, of course.

Something along these lines is perhaps the inevitable result of the sustained critique of the Argument - that it has an historical, "metaphysical" place or a place in devotion.

:wink:

Enjoy the melodrama.

Meh. You've squandered much of what good will I may have had towards you with your insults, but now that you have actually expressed your needs, I will do you the kindness of holding off on posting my thoughts on section five, and any concluding remarks, despite your plain rudeness.

I flagged your post for you, so no need for you to draw their attention.

You need not respond to my post if you do not wish to, and can proceed at whatever pace suits you. For my part, I've addressed the thread at length in detail and in sequence, and am preparing my comments on part five. That is were I am up to.

( I suspect it's only you and I who are paying this thread much attention, so the point is probably moot.)

So on to Part Four.

There's a description of the intentional theory of reference, allowing for successful references even when descriptions are inaccurate or fictional and so enables speakers to refer to objects based on shared intentions, even when the referent is not directly known or believed to be true. And then this:

But throughout this process, the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer, without knowing under what description or name the answerer identifies this thought object.

The issue here is clear enough: how could we know that "the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer"? And further, how can the "thought-object" in the mind of the saint be said to be the same as the "thought-object" in the head of the fool - and indeed, how could they be said to be different?

And here again we bump in to the lack of extensionality. Two sets are said to be extensionaly equivalent when they contain the very same members. But infamously, there is simple no way to verify that the thing in the mind of the saint is the same as the thing in the mind of the fool - and indeed, every reason to doubt it.

Now this is apparently recognised by Klima in the next paragraph. But rather than drop the very idea of thought-objects as a useful notion, as the fool might, he suggests:

Accordingly, if one mind entertains a thought object under some particular description, another mind may make what I would call parasitic reference to the same thought object, by merely intending to refer to the same thought object that the first conceives of, but not conceiving it under the same description, indeed, sometimes even denying that the description in question in fact applies to this thought object.

Intending to refer to the same thought-object but under a different description. "I'll have what she's having", involving some sort of telepathy, perhaps.

This is the sort of thing attributed to the fool. But of course there is a much simpler response that can be made, that the idea of reference to some imagined thought-objects is misguided. A better approach would be to reject the picture of reference as being about latching onto pre-existing "objects" in thought at all. Instead, reference is a practice embedded in linguistic and social interaction, where success isn't a matter of mental duplication but of communicative coherence. In that case, the fool's response is not just simpler but arguably the only coherent one.

And it avoids the lack of transparency that plagues talk of intensional references.

Notice that this is very much the approach taken by Quine and Davidson, amongst others.

So at the end of Part Four, the fool may on this account discuss the concept of god had by the saint, and see how this leads to the saint's belief that god exists, while consistently maintaining there own account of god in which god need not exist.

Does it? It seems neutral to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I supose it would.

One problem with the pictures is that there is only one signification/meaning/interpretant/dicible. Perhaps they are addressing a different issue to Davidson and Quine?

:wink:

The emphasis on "sign" is problematic, in that it supposes that the main purpose, or fundamental element, in language is the noun.

It isn't. Language is about getting things done as a group. Reference is incidental to that purpose.

Added: that, in a nutshell, is the difference between the Tractatus and the Investigations.

By who? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No one would admit to such a thing openly, of course.

Well, almost no one.

There is a lot of information exchanged in speech... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not.

Seems to me you are on the right track.

In response to this question the atheist now may claim that the way Anselm wishes to force him to think of God will not make him admit that God is even in the intellect, at least, in his intellect, despite the fact that he understands very well what Anselm means by his description, which may not be contradictory after all. For understanding this description does not require him to believe that it applies to anything, so understanding this description will not make him think of anything that he thinks to be such that nothing greater than it can be thought of. So, since he denies that the description applies to any thought object he can think of, he just does not have such a thought object in his mind, while he perfectly understands what is meant by this description.

Taking the example from the text, one can clearly conceive of a greatest prime, and then look to see if such a thing makes sense. One can proceed, as has been done, to show that it involves a contradiction, thereby showing that a greatest prime does not exist.

Let's use this analogy to look at one misunderstanding of what the fool is suggesting.

Supose the theist were claiming that they have a proof of the existence of a highest prime. The proof in part claims that since we can conceive of a highest prime, one must exist. The fool does not need to demonstrate that there is no highest prime in order to show that the theist is mistaken. They only need to show that it does not follow from our being able to conceive of a highest prime, that such a thing exists.

The fool does not need to show that god does not exist in order to show that the argument that he does exist is flawed. "...understanding this description does not require him to believe that it applies to anything".

But here the theist swoops down: of course, the atheist is just a fool! Indeed, a wicked fool, who, only because of his insistent denial, admits to be simply unable to think of the same thought object that I think of, that is, God. With this last move the atheist just revealed himself for the miserable fool he is, for in order to maintain his untenable position he simply gives up his otherwise natural human ability to think of God, that than which nothing greater can be thought of. As Saint Bonaventure put it: “the intellect has in itself [...] sufficient light to repel this doubt and to extricate itself from its folly. Whence the foolish mind voluntarily rather than by constraint considers the matter in a deficient manner, so that the defect is on the part of the intellect itself and not because of any deficiency on the part of the thing known.”18

And here, the fool is "simply unable to think of the same thought object" as the theist. The thought in the theists head is different to the thought in the fools's head, and never the twain; together with as much disparaging of the fool as can be mustered.

Part of what is going on here is a bit of theatre, an attempt to avoid considering the fool's account by simply denigrating it. Hence "But even without these moral implications..."; the fool is evil for not thinking in the same way as the theist.

This is not an argument, but a call to the faithful to pull together and reject anything Other. And the rejection of this painting of the fool as "other" occupies much of the remainder of the paper.

(I'm essentially setting out my own notes on the article for my own purposes, which is enough for me. If there is anyone apart form Leon reading on, which I doubt, I apologise for plodding.)