Is there some reason a speaker could not say "France" and mean a country that has Paris as its capital? — Mongrel

Whenever anyone speaks about France, one speaks about a country that indeed has Paris as its capital. It is generally understood that it doesn't have Paris as its capital essentially. That is, there are intelligible counterfactual circumstances in which France has (or would lave had) another city as its capital. It would still have been France. But you are rather meaning to say, it seems, that one could conjure up a new meaning for the word "France" such that the 'country' that answers to it has Paris as its capital essentially (which also requires an arbitrary modification of the ordinary concept of a country). I am unsure what the point of doing so would be. For whatever object X that has property P contingently, I can conjure up some concept X* such that X falls under X* and X* has property P essentially. This is a queer and artificial concept reminiscent of Quine's gavagai or Goodman's grue. It doesn't seem to have any bearing en the topic of a posteriori necessary truths, which are truths that we can investigate about, and are empirically falsifiable, rather than being modal truths that we stipulate by dint of arbitrary concept modification as you seemingly envision them to be. Stipulated truths aren't a posteriori.

And if a statement is necessarily true, it's true in all possible worlds. — Mongrel

Yes. That's what I am claiming. And that's what you seem to have been denying consistently:

It's relevant, and I would say critical to grasping the concept of aposteriori necessary truths that we're talking about statements that are true over a limited number of possible worlds as opposed to true over all possible worlds.

You appear, strangely, not to have realized that a posteriori necessary statements are... necessary.

This is a confusing statement. Necessary modifies true. I guess it could modify false... that could be managed. You seem to be thinking of some.... thing? as being contingent or necessary. Some thing that could have been otherwise if it's contingent. — Mongrel

Sorry, this was a shorthand. I means something being said; some proposition, or claim of de re necessity.

Having determined the meaning of a statement, one need not at any point abandon that meaning for some convention for the sake of predicating truth.

No philosopher I know of would disagree with that. Do you know of one? — Mongrel

You thought I was advancing something crazy and I merely clarified what I meant. Now you seem to agree. But in that case, once it is established what de re necessity it is someone is purporting to express, you haven't shown how this claim being a posteriori necessary could depend in any way on the intentions of the speaker (beyond specifying what she means to say), or -- what has been centrally at issue between us -- how it could depend on some arbitrarily restricted range of possible worlds being single out for special consideration by the speaker (e.g. worlds in which France has Paris as its capital city). You've merely muddled the issue with the insistence the the items under consideration must exist in those possible worlds, which is trivially accepted by everyone (see my earlier Kripke and Burgess references) and has nothing to do with the speaker's particular intentions. Worlds in which water or Samuel Clemens don't exist just don't have any relevance to the evaluation of the modal status of the claims of a posteriori necessity that we've been considering.

As it is, your position seems to leave you endorsing a contradiction. Intention matters when discerning meaning, but not when evaluating modal claims. That just seems crazy to me. — Mongrel

That seems rather trivial to me. If someone purports to make some statement of a posteriori necessity, then, in a first step, you may indeed have to pay attention of the circumstances of her utterance, and her communicative intentions, etc., in order to understand what it is that she is claiming to be a posteriori necessary. Then, in a second step, by dint of the fact that her claim can only be known to be true a posteriori, you have to investigate what it is, in the world, that makes it true (e.g. investigate the nature of water, or seek out, by means of investigative journalism, if Clark Kent and Superman really are the same person, as she claims them to be.

In short, it's one thing to assess what it is someone means to say, and another to evaluate if it is true. In the special case where the claim can be known to be true a priori, then, maybe, those two steps collapse into the first one, but it is precisely a distinctive feature of the a posteriori necessary that they do not so collapse.

It's relevant, and I would say critical to grasping the concept of aposteriori necessary truths that we're talking about statements that are true over a limited number of possible worlds as opposed to true over all possible worlds. — Mongrel

This is a puzzling remark that you would have to explain. That something is necessary rather than contingent just means that it could not have been otherwise in any circumstance, which is exactly how Kripke urges that the claim that there is no "possible world" where it is false be understood. If there were (per impossibile) a possible world where Samuel Clemens isn't Mark Twain, then this would mean that they aren't necessarily identical, and hence, a fortiori, that the claim of identity is not a posteriori necessary. Likewise, if there were a possible world where water isn't composed of H2O, that would mean that water isn't necessarily composed of H2O, and hence, a fortiori, that this claim of essence isn't a posteriori necessary either.

And this just to show that the analytic/ synthetic divide is not as clear cut as it is sometimes made out to be. — John

True, but then, if the division isn't clear cut, this means that many socially instituted facts (e.g. the values of currencies relative to the gold standard, of the legal/political/administrative functions of cities and institutions) also have an empirical character. Also, if some entity has an institutional status (e.g. some city being the capital of a sovereign state) as a result of the collective will of the people (or of the King, etc.), then if the determination of this human will is itself contingent, then so is the inherited status and official function of the entity.

I hold that in the case of any utterance, it will have to be sorted out somehow what it means. You can't just point to what you understand to be linguistic convention.

You apparently disagree with that as well. Again.. I think you're wrong. — Mongrel

I certainly don't disagree with this either. I am questioning the inferences that you are drawing from this. It is one thing to evaluate what is said by a speaker who makes use of a sentence, accounting for pragmatic considerations and contextual features of the utterance, and another to evaluate the modal status of the claim being made. You wish to make the latter rest entirely on the former, but questions of a posteriori necessity obviously outrun mere considerations of the utterer's intentions. If they would rest entirely on intention and/or convention then those modal claims would be a priori, stipulated by mere fiat.

I hold that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain can only be true at a possible world that contains an object picked out by Samuel Clemens.

If you disagree, we have an impasse, but all I can say is I think you're wrong. — Mongrel

I don't disagree. I quite agree. You misread me. I denied that the evaluation of this sentence at possible worlds where Samuel Clemens doesn't exist is relevant to the determination of the modal status of this sentence. Kripke agrees, since he restricts his attention to possible worlds where the relevant objects exist in his demonstration of the necessity of identity. See the first four pages of his paper Identity and Necessity, or the first few pages of John P. Burgess's paper On a Derivation of the Necessity of Identity.

Unless you are a modal realist, then you can simply hold, as does Kripke, that X is necessarily identical to Y if and only if there is no possibility that X not to be identical to Y, where X and Y are the objects designated by "X" and by "Y", respectively, in the actual world (*). It's not relevant to the evaluation of this claim that X's or Y's existence be contingent, and hence that there might be possible worlds where they don't exist. Likewise, to repeat myself, the evaluation of the a posteriori necessity of water being composed of H2O is insensitive to the mere possibility that the world might have been devoid of water (and thereby, of course, also devoid of H2O).

(*) See Kripke's Naming and Necessity p.14: "I will say something briefly about 'possible worlds'. (I hope to elaborate elsewhere.) In the present monograph I argued against those misuses of the concept that regard possible worlds as something like distant planets, like our own surroundings but somehow existing in a different dimension, or that lead to spurious problems of 'transworld identification'. Further, if one wishes to avoid the Weltangst and philosophical confusions that many philosophers have associated with the 'worlds' terminology, I recommended that 'possible state (or history) of the world', or 'counterfactual situation' might be better. One should even remind oneself that the 'worlds' terminology can often be replaced by modal talk—'It is possible that . . .'"

The difference you are still failing to see is that the fact that the sun is shining is directly observable; whereas the fact that Paris is the capital of France is not, The latter is a kind of secondary fact that can be known only by accepting what others have said; it is derivative on the fact that people say that they designate and consider Paris to be the capital. If people ceased to designate and consider Paris to be the capital tomorrow it would cease to be the capital. — John

Yes, of course, social-institutional facts aren't the sorts of facts that physicists and other natural scientists are interested in. Facts of the former kind are, in a sense, human dependent in a way that facts of the latter kind aren't; although I would resist attempts to inflate this common sense distinction into a sharp dichotomy. If human beings were wiped off the surface of the Earth, most objects left behind would lose most of their socially instituted determinations (for instance, monetary tokens would cease to have determinate monetary values, dogs would cease to be pets, etc.), but they would retain their natural-scientific determinations. I am not denying or ignoring this distinction but it seems to have little relevance to the a priori/ a posteriori or the necessary/contingent distinction that are being discussed in this thread. Both of those distinctions cut across the institutional/natural divide that you are appealing to. Many natural facts can be known a priori and/or are necessary, and many social/institutional facts can be known a posteriori and/or are contingent. So I don't see how you can expect to ground the distinctions that are the topic of this thread on the social-institutional/natural divide.

If the statement can't be evaluated at all at those worlds, then it certainly isn't true at them. — Mongrel

Not necessarily. If you analyse all singular terms as definite descriptions (as Russell does in the case of all singular referring expression except for private demonstrative reference to one's own sense data and one's use of the first personal pronoun) then all statements of the form "The X is F" would be evaluated false at possible worlds where nothing answers to the description "X". But proper names (or ordinary demonstratives) aren't like that. If a proper name NN is empty, then the statement "NN is red", say, is not false. It is meaningless. It purports but fails to express a singular thought. Nobody would say that NN isn't red (which would logically follow from "it is not true that NN is red") who knows NN not to exist.

In any case, I didn't want to get into modal philosophy at all. I was originally making a point about the differences between the kinds of knowledge exemplified by "Paris is the capital of France" and "the Sun is shining at such and such a location at such and such a time", and TGW and Jamalrob denied that there is any valid distinction in kind between those two propositions. That there is such a valid distinction is all I have been arguing for. — John

So far as I can see, that the Sun is shining at some place X at some time T is an empirical and contingent fact of geography/meteorology/astronomy, whereas that France has Paris as its capital city at some time T is an empirical and contingent fact of human history. The Sun would still be the Sun while hidden behind a thick cloud cover and France would still be France with its capital city established away from Paris. I don't see any categorical difference between those two cases in point of topic-neutral metaphysics.

To interject...there is a paper by Michael Weisberg called Water is not H20. I liked it. Distilled water, maybe, although I gather chemists would prefer greater precision even then. But this topic gets me into hot, erm water. Someone turned me down for a Master's course over a paper i wrote about it. Water just is H20, she exclaimed. How then can heavy water be a form of water? How can the polluted water in my local canal be water? — mcdoodle

Yes indeed. The crude identity statement is quite a simplification. Hilary Putnam himself was sensitive to some of those pragmatic consideration, even as early as his original The Meaning of "Meaning" paper, if I remember.

Which is why I rather like the loose phrasing "Water is essentially materially constituted by H2O", since "essentially" has the ordinary language connotation "almost but not quite exactly". It's got to have some fair amount of H2O in it, and heavy water is almost but not quite H2O, isn't it? (For deuterium and tritium also are hydrogen isotopes). Putnam was also, of course, sensitive to the fact that some stuff-names, such as jade, aren't "natural kind" terms at all. And some acceptions of "water" may also be like that.

So you're agreeing that we don't look at all possible worlds. We look at all relevant possible worlds... specifically where our rigid designators pick out an object that exists in that world. — Mongrel

Well, if we are evaluating the de re modal status of a true statement (i.e. inquiring about its being necessary of merely contingently true predication of some object) then we are looking for a possible world at which this statement might be evaluated false. If the object mentioned in the statement does't exist in some possible worlds, then the statement can't be evaluated at all, so those worlds aren't relevant. But when the statements at issue are purported a posteriori necessary statements, then it is not up to us (or up to "speaker's intentions") whether or not such a possible world W exists, or doesn't exists, such that the statement would be evaluated false.

Hence, I may know who Mark Twain is, and also have heard about some writer called Samuel Clemens, and not know that they are the same person. When I make this discovery (in the actual world, through historical investigation) then I can rule out that there is any possible world at which Mark Twain isn't Samuel Clemens. Possible worlds where Mark Twain never was born (whoever else might have been given the same name) aren't relevant to my discovery.

By the way, it seems to me that the reason why we speak of evaluating statements at possible worlds, rather than in possibles worlds, in the technical literature, might be in order preempt the confusion that the statements are to be evaluated in accordance with the alternative linguistic conventions that hold among our Doppelgangers "in" those worlds. This is a mistake that you (and John, if I remember) have a tendency to make. Evaluating a statements at a world means assessing its truth value in the hypothesized circumstances of this world while interpreting the statement in accordance with our own language. Hence, who Mark Twain refers to in some possible world W, at which we are evaluating the statement "Mark Twain is a featherless biped" is insensitive to whatever name Mark Twain goes by in that world. When those conventions are lost track of, endless confusion ensues.

But what about worlds where this man does not exist? — Mongrel

Possible worlds in which Mark Twain never was born aren't relevant to the evaluations of the necessity of the identity between the people that we call "Mark Twain" and "Samuel Clemens" in the actual world. I am unsure why you think there being such possible worlds is relevant. The positive claims of necessary identity between them is equivalent the claim that there isn't any possible world at which the men that we designate with those two different names both exist and aren't numerically identical, or at which one of them only would exist.

Likewise, the claims that water essentially is H2O is equivalent to the claim that there is no possible world at which both water and H2O-stuff would exist and they would not be the same stuff, or at which only one of those two stuffs would exist. It is irrelevant to this claim of metaphysical identity (or claim of metaphysically necessary material constitution, if you prefer) that there are possible worlds at which water doesn't exist at all. Also, that there are possible worlds where France never came about, historically, isn't relevant to nationhood being an essential property of France (if it is one).

Explain to me again how "Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain" is necessarily true. — Mongrel

Simply put, because, firstly, although "Samuel Clemens" and "Mark Twain" have different Fregean senses, they have the same references in all possible worlds (being rigid designators), and the truth of statements of identity between two items depend only on the references of the words used to refer to them. And, secondly, because Kripke and Ruth Barcan Marcus have argued convincingly that identity is a necessary relation.

By contrast, the de dicto necessity statement: 'necessarily, the man named "Samuel Clemens" is Mark Twain' is false because 'the man named "Samuel Clemens"' -- the first term of the identity relation -- isn't a rigid designator. It picks different items in different possible worlds, and in some of those, this man isn't Mark Twain (and neither is it Samuel Clemens! -- it's just someone else who was named "Samuel Clemens")

It is still truly said of the man named Samuel Clemens in the actual world (de re) that is Mark Twain (albeit not necessarily named Mark Twain!) in all possible worlds, and vice versa.

Pierre.

Samuel Clemens didn't have to pick the pen-name Mark Twain. He could have picked something else. — Mongrel

Yes, and he could also have been baptized some name other than Samuel? So what? You might just as well claim that "water is H2O" doesn't express an metaphysical necessity just because "water" has been used to name "iron" in some alternative history of the English language. When we are assessing the truth of a claim of de dicto necessity, we are interpreting the worlds in which the claim is made according to actual and present linguistic conventions, not the alternate conventions that hold at the different times or counterfactual situations that we are talking about.

When we say that "Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens" expresses a metaphysical necessity, we are not implying that "Mark Twain" always has been uses (if at all) with the reference that we are assigning to it now. What distinguishes a de dicto from a de re necessity is not the fact that linguistic expressions have arbitrary meanings. It is rather a matter of the scope of the modal operator relative to the scope of the existential statement (when the claim of necessity of made explicit in modal logic). The issue of the conventionality of linguistic meaning is entirely separate; it is unrelated to the de dicto/de re distinction.

I think what you're doing is imagining some criteria for reference that holds in spite of a speaker's intentions. — Mongrel

My claim is rather more narrow than that. I am merely denying your claim that when people think of France in some counterfactual scenario, they are thinking of "France" as referring to an object that has its envisioned determinations necessarily. That's just not part of the speaker's intention, and even if it were, it would have no bearing on the issue of a posteriori necessity being discussed in the literature. If you were right about the relationship between necessity and speaker's intentions, then there would be no a posteriori necessity, for there would be no way to inquire empirically about such metaphysical necessities. Whatever one would envision to be necessary for X to exist as we intend to represent it to be determined would be metaphysically necessary by fiat. Each and every speaker would have his own vacuous and tautological conception about how it is necessary that an object be determined in some merely stipulated situation. Hence, what would make it 'necessary' for France to have Paris as its capital is that someone is imagining it in some situation where it has Paris as its capital. That seems to be your account of a posteriori necessity in a nutshell.

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. — Mongrel

People don't come into existence when they are named. "Mark Twain was born in 1835" is a true statement in spite of the fact that he was actually baptized Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was indeed Mark Twain when he was born, he was just not going by that name. In fact he wasn't going by the name Samuel Clemens either, in all probability. "He was not Mark Twain at that time" isn't the true denial of an identity claim, it's just shorthand for the true claim that he wasn't going by that name at the time.

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. — Mongrel

Actually it is a necessary statement since the context is extensional and co-referential terms can be intersubstituted in it salva veritate. The sentence thus expresses the de re necessity, about Mark Twain, that he is identical with himself. It might not be necessary if it were embedded in some intensional context. Someone who ignores that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain would thus not realize that this sentence expresses a de re necessity, just as someone who would ignore that water essentially is H2O would not grasp that the demonstrative sentence "this water sample is composed of H2O" (in context) expresses a metaphysical necessity.

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. — Mongrel

You are making an invalid inference from one de re necessity statement to another unrelated de re necessity statement. Just because you are thinking about France in circumstances where it has Paris as its capital doesn't entail that the object you are thinking about, France, necessarily has Paris as its capital. It could possibly have some other capital. The first de re necessity is about you and your specific thought about France. That you are thinking about France having some specific determinations (either actual or counterfactual) may generate de re necessities about this very thought that you have, but it doesn't generate de re necessities about France. It would still be possible for you (counterfactually) to think intelligibly about France not having Paris as its capital. You would not thereby be thinking about a different country.

Also, the nominal phrase "France as it exists with Paris as its capital" is not the name of a Fregean object. It's just a device used to call attention to a possible determination of an object. Just because you can call attention to a possible determination of an object hardly make that determination metaphysically necessary.

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

If Samuel Clemens exists, he is Mark Twain. — Mongrel

Of course they are identical in any world where they exist. In possible worlds where Mark Twain never was born, the issue doesn't arise. My point it that they aren't identical just because you are arbitrarily restricting your attention only to some set of possible worlds where they are identical, as you are attempting to do with the case of France having Paris as its capital. In the latter case, you remain free to widen the scope of your consideration to possible worlds where France's capital moved, whereas in the former case there just aren't any possible worlds for you to consider where Samuel Clemens isn't Mark Twain. A posteriori metaphysical necessity isn't a mere matter of stipulation or the arbitrary restriction of the range of possible worlds being considered in some scenario.

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? — Mongrel

No it is not essential, neither is it necessary, logically or metaphysically. It just so happens that you are restricting you attention to counterfactual situations where France nevertheless still has Paris as its capital. That hardly makes it necessary that France has Paris as its capital. Likewise, I could restrict my attention to possible worlds where all water is liquid. This would not make it necessary that water is liquid in the same sense that water necessarily is composed of H2O. However, I am not free to posit possible worlds where water is composed of XYZ. This would be to misconstrue what water essentially is (if Kripke and Putnam are right).

Likewise, if Samuel Clemens is (numerically identical to) Mark Twain then they are the same person in all possible worlds where they exist; and that's not just because I've chosen to arbitrarily restrict my attention merely to possible worlds where this identity holds. 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) assuming only that it holds in the actual world and that both "Samuel Clemens" and "Mark Twain" are proper names (and not conventionally abbreviated definite descriptions, say). Here also, the necessity of identity doesn't depend on the speaker's intention in the way that you suggest. Is is not relative to the specific counterfactual situation that the speaker countenances.

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. — Mongrel

Yes, for sure, you are talking about a counterfactual situation where France still has Paris as its capital. This hardly establishes that the country, France, that you are talking about, has Paris as its capital essentially. You seem to be assuming without argument that "the France that actually existed in 1940" is an object that has all its actual properties essentially. But this is a confusion of categories. The object talked about just is France, while also talked about are all the essential and contingent determinations that this object is countenanced to have in the counterfactual situation. 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.

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." — Mongrel

This is an example where two different things of two different sorts (and hence that possess two distinct sets of essential properties), might both be named "France". If you are thus talking about counterfactual de re possibilities regarding some object that you are designating with the word "France", the context of your utterance may resolve whether it is France, the European country, or rather your favorite turnip that is at issue. When this ambiguity has been resolved then it is indeed your stipulation and nothing else that makes it the case that the objects that you mean to be talking about, in the counterfactual situation, is your turnip rather than France the country.

We are making use of established (or ah hoc) naming practices, and the associated conceptual apparatus, in order to secure reference both to objects as they are in the actual world and also to those objects (the very same objects) as we fancy them to possibly be (counterfactually). When I judge my turnip to be white, or countenance that it could possibly have ripened pink (counterfactually), it is the very same turnip (numerical identity) that I either perceive (and designate demonstratively, say) or predicate counterfactual determinations of. Talk about "possible worlds" may obscure this very trivial fact if one has inchoate modal realist intuitions, maybe. Then one may feel like one has first to posit a possible world, and then, in a second step, specify what specific counterpart (or Doppelganger) the "actual object" ought to be identified with in the possible world. But this is nonsense. The merely "possible world" wasn't dreamed up appart from the act of positing the "actual object" having, counterfactually, some different determinations.

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.

It would also help if you would be rather more specific than that. You yourself have raised very many different issues under the same label "the issue". This SEP article on Rigid Designators also raises very many issues that apply specifically to different theories or conceptions about singular reference. Some of the issues only are issues if you are a modal realist, others only are issues if you hold on to a purely descriptive theory of Fregean senses (and hence have trouble countenancing genuine singular reference), or, in the same vein, if you are holding on to some so called causal theory of reference (similar to what Franck Jackson seems to be targeting). If you aren't beholden to any one of those theories, then most of the issues drop. Kripke isn't beholden to any one of them, but he doesn't claim to have a positive theory of his own. His talk about the unbroken "causal" chain that a naming practice must retain to an initial naming event may invite (and has invited) non-conceptual "causal theories".

Gareth Evans and John McDowell have developed an alternative conceptions to such non-conceptual "causal" anchoring theories. (See Evan's chapter 11 (Proper Names) in The Varieties of Reference, or McDowell's paper Putnam on Mind and Meaning for primers.

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. — Mongrel

Sure, and one might just as well stipulate that "France" is the name 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.

Kripke side-stepped the issue. So, apparently, have you. — Mongrel

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, or the name of the set of molecules that make you up at a time, or whatever else might be copresent with you. Kripke's so called "causal theory of reference" (which he disown) creates that sort of problems for the initial anchoring of a proper name. Co-presence doesn't entail numerical identity, and sortal-concepts (such as the concept of a person) enable us to distinguish merely copresent items that have different individuation and persistance criteria. (See David Wiggins: Sameness and Substance Renewed)

I asked "so again what is it that makes an imagined purported alternative France numerically identical to the actual France? [/i] but you haven't answered the question. If I had an alternative history, given that I am a more or less self-contained biological organism; I would still be recognizable as myself. But in what sense could this be the case with a so-called France that had an alternative history. It simply wouldn't be France at all, because it wouldn't have had any of the same people, or the same configuration of villages, towns and cites, or occupy exactly the same territory or speak the same language. So on the basis of what could we think that it really is an alternative France? — John

It is not a "purported alternative France" that I was talking about; it is France. France would still be France if, counterfactually, at some point in time, its history had diverged from its actual history in some inessential respects. Likewise, if you actually went to work today, you would still be the same person if you had chosen to skip work instead. Your talk about "actual France" and "alternative France" -- as if those were distinct entities -- confuses you. There is just one France being considered in respect of its actual state (or history), or possible counterfactual states (or histories).

Maybe you are an actualist. Many of your comments point in that direction. Actualists believe that whatever P is actually true is necessarily true, and whatever Q is actually false is necessarily false. Hence, anything that is possible is necessary, on that view; there is no non-actualized possibilities. But that is a rather contentious metaphysical doctrine.

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. — Mongrel

The "magic" involved simply is stipulation. There may seem to arise a problem if you endorse some sort of modal realism (i.e. realism about possible worlds). But Kripke was quite opposed to modal realism. To talk about a possible world W such that A is red at W (while A is blue in the actual world) just is to talk about the way the world could possibly be if A were red rather than blue. Thus phrased, the question about trans-world identification doesn't arise.

Suppose you make the counterfactual claim that had your alarm clock not failed to wake you up, you would have arrived to your workplace in time (rather than being late, as was the case in the actual circumstances, let us assume). And someone asks you by what magic you know that this "you" who would have arrived at work in time would be you and not someone else. The question is nonsensical unless you are some sort of neo-Heraclitean who questions the persistence of substances through material and/or qualitative change. But that would be a different issue than the issue of trans-world identification.

So what exactly is it that determines this "numerical identity"? What is it, that is, other than some quality or other, that makes the scenario of the 'France' where humans didn't evolve a "misuse of language" and other alternative scenarios where humans are thought as present not misuses of language? — John

Numerical identity is a relation that holds between something and itself. If A and B are numerically identical, this means that "A" and "B" are two names (or definite descriptions, demonstratives or other singular referring expressions) that refer to the same thing. A country can't be numerically identical with the stretch of land that it occupies since this stretch of land existed before the country was founded (or built) and it can go on existing after the country has disappeared.

And the issue is not about whether the inhabitants of France call it a different name than we do, but that the inbabitants of the purported alternative 'France' call it by a different name, in a different language, than the actual inhabitants of the real France do. So again what is it that makes an imagined purported alternative France numerically identical to the actual France?

The question doesn't make sense. It just happens that we are talking about France as it would be in some counterfactual circumstances, and not some different country merely similar to it. Doing so makes sense inasmuch as the imagined counterfactual circumstances aren't such that France can't exist (or couldn't have existed) were they to obtain. France could still exist if its capital would move (or had moved, or had been different to begin with), but it could not exist if it never had had any inhabitants, just like a hockey team could not have existed without ever having had any player in it, although it could have remained in existence as the same team that it is while undergoing some player exchanges in the past, and just like you can remain in existence while many, or all, the molecules that make up your body are exchanged, etc.

So the meaning of a rigid designator can't be known in any other way than by attending to how it's being used in a particular speech act. You can't just say..." well it ordinarily means X." Agree? — Mongrel

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.

The two cases you outline here seem to be just the same kinds of cases, differing only in terms of degree. If Paris had never been the capital of some geographical region, then the entire history of that geographical region, including what that precise geographical region was called and even the language itself that was spoken there could not have been the same. So, that precise geographical region would not have been called France, and all the people born in that region would have been different than the people that have actually been born there. — John

It doesn't matter how very qualitatively different France might by in counterfactual scenarios that we imagine; It still will be numerically identical to the country that we call "France" in the actual world. Numerical identity and qualitative identity are two different concepts. It also is quite irrelevant what language French citizens would speak in the counterfactual scenarios that we imagine. We stipulate what country we are talking about, and we can imagine its citizens calling their own country whatever name they like without this making it into a different country. The Japanese don't call their country "Japan"; they call it "Nihon koku". It hardly follows that the country that they call "Nihon koku" is a different country from the country that we call "Japan". It's the same country that goes under two different names in two different languages.

Let's look at an example Soames considers. If Saul Kripke exists, he's human. We're going to see if this statement is necessarily true. The fact that the statement starts with "if" means we can judge it across all possible worlds. It works as necessary because we consider humanity to be essential to Kripke. — Mongrel

Sure. Kripke is necessarily human iff he's human in all the possible worlds in which he exists. The possible worlds in which Kripke doesn't exist aren't relevant to the evaluation of this de re modal claim.

Now look at:

Karen said Paris is the capital of France.

To understand any proposition, you must examine context of utterance. On examination, we determine that Karen is talking about the actual France. So Karen could be understood to be saying:

In all possible worlds that contain the actual France, the capital of France is Paris.

And that is necessarily true. Why not?

In that case you aren't evaluating the de re modal claim, regarding Paris (as we ordinarily talk about it), that it is necessarily the capital of France (as we ordinarily talk about it). Neither are you evaluating the different de re modal claim, regarding France (as we ordinarily talk about it), that it necessarily has Paris (as we ordinarily talk about it) as its capital. Under the ordinary meanings of "Paris" or "France", as those words are normally used in English, neither of those de re necessities hold. Karen is free, for sure, to conjure up new meanings for those words such that one or both of those sorts of de re necessities would be true regarding the different objects -- which may coincide in respect of all their actual properties with France and Paris in the actual world) -- that she means to designate with the words "France" and "Paris", respectively. If the objects A and B have different de re modal properties, then they are two different objects, as follows from Leibniz law of indiscernability of identicals, under Kripke's (or Ruth Barcan Marcus') quite reasonable modal interpretation of this law.

Nothing about this shows that the truth of modal propositions depends on the meaning of the terms that we use to designate the objects those propositions are propositions about. It rather illustrates the rather humdrum fact that what propositions are expressed by our linguistic utterances depends on the meanings (either usual, reasonably intended, or merely stipulated for the occasion) of the words that we use to express them. Hence, for instance it is true of Kurt Gödel, but merely contingent, that he has authored the incompleteness theorems. However, someone could utter the sentence "Kurt Gödel is the author of the incompleteness theorems" meaning it is such a way that it is necessarily true as she means it (which could be a misuse of language, where what is said doesn't coincide with what is meant). This could be the case is she meant to be using "Kurt Gödel" as a descriptive name (and made it clear that that is what she meant to be doing). She would thus express a de dicto necessity that has no bearing whatsoever on the de re necessity that we quite reasonably deny when we claim that it is (metaphysically) possible that Kurt Gödel would not have authored the incompleteness theorems.

Said still differently: proper names rigidly designate, but it is of course required in order that an expression normally used as a proper name (e.g. "Kurt Gödel") rigidly designate that whoever is using this expression indeed be using it as the proper name which it is (relying on its already established use in her linguistic community) and not as something else (e.g. as shorthand for a descriptive phrase)!

Isn't that the definition of necessity though-- that there is no other possibility in the context? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sure, something is necessarily true iff it can't possibly be false, and it is possibly true iff it isn't necessarily false. If "the context" defines the scope of generality, then this is just to say that generalized necessity is the dual of generalized possibility. 'Possibly' and 'necessarily' can thus be interdefined with the use of the negation operator. But if "the context" under consideration is the generalized conditions under which P is true, then saying that P is necessarily true in that context just is the tautological statement that P is true whenever P is true. That's not very philosophically interesting.

Consider the proposition: "In our world, the capital of France is Paris." Is this true of our world? If so, how exactly are other possible worlds relevant?

They are relevant to the evaluation of the modality of the statement, not to the evaluation of its truth. False propositions can not be necessary (since there is a possible world, namely the actual world, where they are false) but true propositions can be either necessarily true or contingently true. They are contingently true if there is a possible world where they are false, which is just to say that, while true, they possibly could have been false.

Why is Paris being true in all possible worlds a requirement if we are only talking about our own actual world?

Because when we are talking about the modality of the proposition -- its being necessary, possible or impossible -- and not just talking about its truth, then we are also talking about the world as it could or couldn't possibly be, and not just about the world as it is.

How would it even make sense to say necessity required the city of one possible world to be present in any possible world? Our Paris cannot be the Paris of another world.

'Possible worlds' aren't other worlds. It's just a fancy name for ways the world either is (actually) or could have been (counterfactually). It's a device for formalizing semantic theories of modal statements.

To say that Paris is necessarily the capital of France in our world, we only need the truth that Paris is the capital of France in our world.

Everything necessarily is, in the actual world, as it is in the actual world. This tautology says nothing about something being necessary or contingent simpliciter. Something isn't necessarily true if the world could have been such that it is false. This is what is meant when we say that there is a possible world in which (or at which, as it is usually expressed in the technical literature) it is false.

Try this:

I wonder what would have happened if Napolean hadn't lost at Waterloo.

In the process of pondering this, I have conjured up some number of possible worlds, one of which is the actual world. In every one of them, the capital of France is... which ever city is was when Napolean was alive. Let's say I'm not sure. I look it up. It was Paris.

In all of my possible worlds, Paris is always the capital of France. Over the range of these possibilities, Paris being the capital of France is necessary. But Napolean's victory isn't.

But then I wonder, what if Napolean had lost two weeks later than he did. Now Napolean's victory is necessary across all my worlds, but the timing of it isn't. — Mongrel

The possibility of Napoleon having won at Waterloo has little bearing on the possibility of Paris not being the capital of France at that time. Further, you can't make a contingent proposition necessary merely through restricting your attention to possible worlds where this proposition is true. A proposition is necessarily true iff it is true at all possible worlds. If you stipulate from the get go that you are restricting your attention to only those possible worlds where it is true, you hardly have shown that the proposition is necessarily true -- only that is is true wherever it is true!

If you are going to consider possible worlds in which Napoleon won at Waterloo, and restrict your attention to possible worlds where historical circumstances aren't so far off from actual circumstances that Paris wouldn't be France's capital, then, fine, you can do that, but you hardly would have shown (and not even stipulated) that France necessarily has Paris as its capital. You've merely stated that this far off historical possibility, and what other propositions can or can't be conjoined with this possible state of affairs, don't interest you.

More Pascal, Pierre. You're making up categories of possibility to cover over the underlying ambiguity. — Mongrel

It's not a different category. France could possibly have had another capital city than Paris just in the same sense (quite plain and uncontroversial) that Kurt Gödel could possibly not have been the author of the incompleteness theorems.

Paris being the capital of France is contingent IFF you stipulate it as such. — Mongrel

If you are going to stipulate that some accidental properties of France are essential to it, then it isn't France anymore that you are talking about, but, maybe, some other entity that you wish to call "France". It is true that, given the already established norms that govern the use of the word France, some of its (so called) essential properties (e.g. its being some sort of a nation state) being indeed essential to is is a matter of stipulation. Those stipulations fix (part of) the sense of the name. I don't see having Paris as its capital being any part of it.

More generally, the equation that you seem to be attempting between (1) some property P being essential to X and, (2) P being stipulated to be essential to X, doesn't hold for Kripke. It may be essential to X being a sample of water that it be composed of H2O, and this being a matter of empirical discovery rather than stipulation. Likewise with Joe being the son of Sue and Tom. Neither Joe, nor anyone, may know who Joe's natural parents are, and yet know that whoever they are, Joe having them as parents is necessary.

This seems to be raising a kind of 'Sorites' problem. If we wanted to say that there could be an alternative France in another possible world, exactly what characteristics would it need to have in order to qualify as being a France at all? — John

Mongrel is right that it is a matter of stipulation whether or not this alternative France is or isn't France. Actually, merely calling it an alternative France, as TGW suggested, give the game away, and reveals that it's still France that you are purportedly talking about, albeit France has it could have been, could be, or could become. This stipulation merely concerns the 'numerical identity' of the possible item that you are considering with the actual item. You are stipulating that it is indeed France that you purport to be talking about. It is an altogether different set of stipulations that we, as users of a shared language, are making when we specify the identity and individuation criteria that attach to the general concept that France necessarily falls under (i.e. the 'sortal concept'). Those two quite different stipulations can rub against each other. For instance if you are talking about France as it would be if mankind hadn't evolved from apes at all, then you purport to be talking about France, but you are identifying it with a geographical region, maybe, where the conditions of France's existence as a country aren't fulfilled. Hence you aren't talking about a genuine possibility at all, or you are misusing language. You are using "France" to denote a geographical area, something that isn't the same as the country that may occupy this area at some point in time. However, when you are talking about France not having Paris as its capital, you are contemplating a possibility, historical and/or metaphysical, that doesn't rub against any norm regarding the general concepts that France necessarily falls under. So this is a genuine and unproblematical possibility.

Think so? Let's ponder a possible world in which France is, in fact, a province of a nation known as the European Union. It's not a country any more than North Carolina is. Do you want to try again or do you already see where this is headed? — Mongrel

Yes, France could be swallowed up by the European Union in such a way that it would cease to be an independent nation state. Maybe this new province would go on being named "France". This would raise issues about the identification of the old France with this new (so called) "France" province. Under some conceptions (as a sovereign country), the old France would have ceased to exist, having been assimilated/dissolved into another entity. Under another, looser, conception it would still exist as the same ethnic cum historical cum geographical entity albeit now in a subordinated state. In any case, Paris being its capital (either the capital of the province or the capital of the country) would still be contingent.

If you disagree that the essence of France is matter of stipulation, then could you explain how you understand the essence of France (as something not stipulated) and how that fits in with N&N? — Mongrel

I have no idea what "the" (unique) essence of France is. It falls under the sortal concept 'country' or 'nation state'. So, maybe, falling under such a concept is an essential property France has. In any possible world where France exists, it is a country, and not, say, a turnip, a can opener, or a galaxy. It also likely has some historical roots necessarily, as TGW argued in a spirit similar to some Kripkean claims about necessity of origins for other sorts of items (e.g. human beings having the parents that they have, necessarily). However, to claim that having Paris as its capital is an essential property of France seems to do violence to our ordinary conception of what France is.