That defence is only relevant to the extent that the punishment is retributory. The main themes of punishment in modern law systems are restraint, deterrence, restitution and (heaven forbid!) virtue signalling, and that defence is not relevant to those considerations. So most crimes that caused serious harm to others would still result in a custodial sentence.

I would like retribution to be completely removed from consideration in sentencing, partly for the reasons you outline. But while it plays a relatively small role in most Western countries (perhaps not the US), there are unfortunately plenty of populist politicians that lobby to increase its influence.

Wasn't it Euclid that proved that not all that is real is rational, by manipulating the square root of two?

Oh hang on, do you mean .......

Never mind. :yikes:

Have you never failed to catch the gist of something said to you, misheard a name, or heard the name but thought the reference was to somebody else with the same name?

Are you claiming that you do not understand what "successful reference" means? — creativesoul

Yes! Of course I can guess at meanings, but there are more than one possible meaning, and I want to know which one you mean.

What do you mean by 'successfully refer'?

The example you've provided above is not a case of false description(false belief) being able to successfully refer. — creativesoul

What do you mean by 'successfully refer'? It's not a term used by Kripke in N&N, as I recall.
Yet it seems to have been used a lot in this thread, as if there were general agreement on what it means, yet I haven't seen anybody explain what it means in the bits I've read.

The natural interpretation might be that it means the listener knows who the speaker is talking about. But such an interpretation is hopelessly problematic, as people often don't know who others are talking about, even when they are both familiar with the referent.

If it has no practical, sensible interpretation, why should we care about it?

False description unaccompanied by proper name will not pick out the individual, will it - regardless of the speaker's belief? — creativesoul

Beth works in an office and occasionally sees a person that works on a different floor of the same company, That person has a disability that causes him to slur his words and need a walking stick to get about. Beth doesn't know about the speech disability and thinks the person is always drunk.

One day she sees him trip over in the lobby and goes to help him up. Later, talking to a workmate she says "You know that guy that walks with a stick and is always drunk? He fell over in the lobby today".

She has picked him out, despite the belief about him being drunk being false.

In practice, we have false items in our DDs of just about everybody. Usually they don't matter, because the item is redundant.

It matters when you go shopping. — unenlightened

Not if you take your tape measure with you :joke:

In many cases where we make measurements, we don't care how closely our tape measure relates to the official metre, as long as we use the same tape measure for everything.

For example, we measure a piano to see if it will fit through a door. As long as we use the same measure on the piano and the door, it doesn't matter what units it uses.

Similarly when we are building something from wood and cutting the pieces to size ourself. If we use the same measure for everything, the pieces will all fit.

Ditto hanging a picture.

When I think about it, there have been very few tasks where the relation of the measure I was using to the 'official metre', whatever that was at the time, mattered.

In DIY as with language, context is (usually) everything.

We were talking about a definite description associated with a proper name. — Pierre-Normand

Yes, where I differ from Kripke is that I require identification of the individual that does the associating. For a DD to be associated with a proper name, somebody has to associate it. In my view, the associater is the one speaking. When they use the proper name, they are referring to the object that is picked out for them, in their system of beliefs and experience, by the DD they associate with that proper name.

In a sense the belief that Gödel developed the incompleteness theorems is 'true for the speaker' if that's what they believe. In that sense, yes, the DD has to be true. But it may subsequently become untrue for the speaker if she later learns about the plagiarism of Schmidt's work. After that discovery, she would associate a different DD with the name Gödel, and would take care as to whether they used Gödel or Schmidt, according to whether she wanted to refer to Frau and Herr Gödel's son, or to the inventor of the Incompleteness Theorems.

Many people don't like the phrase 'true for person Y' but I find it very useful and almost impossible to do helpful philosophy without it.

I don't see what progress Kripke's account of the sentence "Gödel is the author of the incompleteness theorems" achieves. It concludes the sentence is false, but it was already false under a descriptivist account, when measured by the truth standards of somebody that knows about the plagiarism. It's not false according to the speaker, but that's to be expected, as she wouldn't say it if she knew it to be false.

As far as I can see, the sentence is true when analysed by the speaker and false when analysed by someone who knows of Schmidt, regardless of whether one takes a Kripkean or descriptivist approach.

Aren't all the earlier examples that you gave examples where the speaker not only believes the definite description that she is making use of but the definite description also happens to be true of the individual that she is thinking about?

Yes, but only because that's commonly the case and the question of false beliefs had not yet (to my notice) been raised. I don't think I said that the DD has to be true and if I implied that anywhere it was a mistake. My approach is that, in order not to be an insane rambling, a DD only has to be believed by the speaker, because the speech act only needs to make sense to the speaker in the first instance. Whether the speech act is intelligible to anybody else and the proper name used causes the listener to pick out the same individual as the speaker intended depends on a whole raft of other factors including context, language, elocution, volume, idiom and commonality of experience and knowledge.

I was responding to creativesoul, who was talking about 'successfully referring to someone'. Now 'successfully referring' has not been defined, but I imagine the intention is for it to mean that the person speaking not only knows the name but also knows to whom the name attaches. That 'to whom' bit is the DD. If the DD is 'that person I was introduced to in the corridor yesterday at 12:09pm' or 'my boss' or 'the person who sings pop songs on telly and people call Justin Bieber' then it's straightforward.

It gets murkier when the DD is "the person you appear to be talking about, who is called 'Nixon' and who I've never heard of before this conversation". We could even discuss whether that is a DD, but I am inclined to say it is. The person that has never heard of Nixon before could still refer to him by asking

"This Nixon of whom you've been speaking sounds dishonest. I suppose we're lucky he was caught and had to resign his job."

It would be trickier still if the listener had been unable to make out any details of the conversation other than the occasional use of the word 'Nixon', which seemed to be being used as a name. eg if the speakers were teenagers talking very fast, idiomatic French, I would not be able to follow but I know that Nixon is not a French word and so could safely assume it is a proper name.

I could then ask "Pardonnez moi, s'il vous plaît, Qui est-ce, cette Nixon de qui vous parlez?"

I have no opinion about whether I have 'successfully' referred to Nixon or not in that sentence. But I do know that I have asked a clear question, which is all that matters.

However, unless a proponent of descriptivism holds that descriptions must be true, I think that some of his remarks about that are off target. On second thought, I suppose that one would have to hold that descriptions be true... wouldn't they? If they were not, they most certainly could not pick out the individual unless they were accompanied by a name. — creativesoul

I think all that is required is that the speaker believes the DD to be true. The speaker uses a proper name P that she associates with an object that she believes to be part of the world and to satisfy the description D and to be the only object in the world that satisfies that description. If that is the case then the speaker has 'successfully referred to' the object. That is so even if P=Godel and D includes that Godel developed the Incompleteness Theorems and in fact those theorems were developed by Schmidt and only copied by Godel.

The listener will hear the name P and may or may not have heard it before and associated a DD with it. We may then wish to develop counterpart ideas about 'successfully interpreting a reference'. Only that gets more complicated because of possibilities such as mishearing.

Yes. However in its modern use 'apathy' usually carries additional connotations of 'neglectful', 'disengaged' and 'unhelpful'. Those would not have applied to Aurelius and not to any successful Stoic, because Duty is a major part of a Stoic's worldview. They will aim to fulfil their duty to their family, friends and society, even if they are not motivated by a passion for the task. Personally, I think the Stoic emphasis on duty is the only really meaningful distinction between Stoics and Epicureans (there is also the distinction that the Epicureans proposed we ignore the Gods whereas the Stoics thought we should respect them, but I see that as a superficial difference).

A Stoic that had overdone the 'detachment' thing would still be a helpful and generous citizen, unlike an apathetic stoner that cares about nothing other than his next stash of weed, or a yuppy that doesn't care about social issues and so doesn't bother to vote unless one party is promising lower taxes than the other, in which case they vote for that one out of self-interest.

Hmm, so basically the Stoics say to avoid attachment? — Waya

It's best to avoid using the word 'basically' in relation to anything Stoic. Their position is very nuanced. To completely avoid attachment can be to lose much of what is valuable in life. But to become too attached renders one fragile, and often unnecessarily miserable. I think its about avoiding excessive attachment, or perhaps dependent attachment. Ditto for Buddhists.

There are good examples of straying to extremes either side of that balance point. We all know the tropes of the excessively needy romantic partner who feels like they don't have any existence separate from their partner, and whose life falls to pieces when they split up. At the other extreme is what was sometimes said of Marcus Aurelius - that he distanced himself so far from his family and friends that he lost all zest for life.

Hume's observations on certainty are brilliant, but the most important thing he said about it is usually ignored.

"I cannot be certain that this dinner will not poison me
.....................
but I am going to eat it anyway"

In the second half of that sentence lies his distillation of the central wisdom of Stoicism, Buddhism, and other great worldviews and religions that help us to understand, accept and then maybe even rejoice in the uncertainty of the world.

The Stoic sages advise us to imagine each the day the loss of that which is dear to us. They suggest that it will both help prepare us for its eventual inevitable loss and help us to appreciate it (them) while it (they) are present.

Gil Fronsdal, a dharma teacher I admire, sums up the three key themes of Buddhism - Impermanence (Anitya), Suffering (Dukkha) and Non-self (Sunyata) as:

1. Nothing lasts forever
2. It hurts
3. But don't take it personally

Beatnik mystic Alan Watts compared our life to that of a person that has fallen off a cliff at the same time as a boulder has fallen. Our instinct is to cling to the boulder, and that is what most do. But the boulder offers no protection - there is no certainty to be had. He advocates ignoring the boulder and enjoying the flight, with all the freedom of movement and exhilaration it brings, whether it be long or short.

My own experience is that embracing uncertainty, rejoicing in it rather than desperately searching for ways to dispel it, is a route to liberation and loss of angst. One doesn't necessarily reach enlightenment (at least, a monkey-mind busyfish like me doesn't) but one learns to relax, and a certain degree of contentment arises.

My favourite sage of all on this topic is an imaginary one: a fictional priest, the Abbé something-or-other who wrote a philosophical book that the hero - Flora Poste - was reading. The book was said to be 'about the fundamental incomprehensibility of the universe'. I was struck by that notion and it has always stayed with me. It doesn't mean one should distrust science. In fact I am a total science nerd and spend much of my spare time doing physics and maths. It just suggests we acknowledge the limitations of science, and uncertainty is one of those.

The theorem is set out here. It is that homeomorphic manifolds have the same dimension.

I'm afraid your other two questions are not meaningful and have no answer. You are attempting to paraphrase something and losing its key features in the process. If you really want to grasp the meaning of all this, I suggest you study first topology, and then differential geometry. The study is well worth the effort. They are truly beautiful subjects - the Music of the Spheres.

It depends on what you mean by describe. We've already established that one can construct a one-to-one correspondence ('bijection') between points in n-dimensional space and points in 1-dimensional space. That means the two sets of points have the same 'cardinality'. It follows that n-dimensional and m-dimensional Euclidean space both have the same cardinality (the same 'order of infinity', one might say), for any two positive integers n and m.

But those one-to-one mappings are not useful for most purposes. A more meaningful question is 'can we embed an n-dimensional space in a m-dimensional space, where n>m, without the former losing some of its structure?' (eg embed a solid sphere in a plane, or embed a plane in a line). It is a proven theorem of topology that the answer to that is NO. This accords with our intuition that the larger-dimensional space 'would not fit' inside the smaller one. It would have to be 'flattened' in order to put it there.

I think your question needs clarifying. What are you trying to ask? I expect you are aware that when we want to include time as a dimension of our physical analysis we use four dimensions and call it spacetime.

how can we assert something as necessarily true in all possible worlds? — Wallows

My two cents' worth:

It depends on how we constrain the set of possible worlds. If the constraints include that that they must obey our laws of logic, say First Order Predicate Logic, then any tautology, such as "If Ben is a boy then Ben is a boy" is necessarily true in all possible worlds. I don't think anything other than tautologies would be necessarily true.

If logical consistency is not a constraint then I can't think of anything that would be necessarily true. Say the constraint is instead the limits of our imagination. I am not sure whether it is possible to imagine an illogical world, but if it is possible then tautology will not guarantee necessity. Perhaps what is necessarily true is that which is unimaginable. If something is unimaginable then it cannot happen in any of our possible worlds, as they are imagined, so it is necessarily not the case. But I then wonder whether in order for something to be unimaginable it must also be unexpressable, and if so we cannot formulate the existential proposition whose negation we say would be necessarily true.

The translation you provide of the sentence isn't one available to the Russellian, though — Snakes Alive

I disagree. It is not only available, but the precise one that the Russellian approach leads us to.

You've asked me that before. The answer is still the same.
Where is this amazing data?

That's an interesting article. Like every other example I've seen of philosophers believing they have found a fatal flaw in descriptivism, it relies on an uncharitable reading of what descriptivism would propose.

In particular, it claims that descriptivism would interpret the sentence:

"Hans wants the ghost in his attic to be quiet tonight."

as a sentence like:

"Hans wants there to be exactly one ghost in his attic and for it to be quiet tonight."

A correct descriptivist interpretation would instead interpret the sentence as:

"There is a single ghost in Hans' attic and Hans hopes that that ghost will be quiet tonight."

Those that, like me, believe there are no ghosts, would say that the sentence is false in exactly the same way that 'The present king of France is bald' is false, because the statement that there is a ghost in the attic is false.

That's why, when talking about the false beliefs of others, we prefix them with words like 'Hans believes that....', unless we are being facetious or sarcastic. If a child psychiatrist said a sentence like the above to a patient's parent the parent would have strong grounds for complaint to a medical tribunal that the psych was mocking their child.

A psychiatrist that was not recklessly unprofessional would say:

"Hans hears, or imagines he hears, sounds in the attic, which he believes to be caused by a ghost, and he hopes that he will not experience such sounds tonight".

The only DD in the sentence is 'the attic', and its interpretation is entirely unproblematic.

So, the fact that supplying her with a definite description of the person holding the name is sufficient for that purpose (i.e. understanding the story well enough) isn't sufficient for showing that the description determines the meaning of the proper name. — Pierre-Normand

No satisfactory definite description can be devised because there is no Lady Mondegreen. The mistaken belief that there is such a name and a person bearing that name stems from the eavesdropper misunderstanding what she has heard.

There's a body of data w.r.t. how counterfactuals behave, and a theory to capture them. — Snakes Alive

I have not heard of such a body of data. Where is it?

You don't have to know any definite description of Hitler to refer to him, as when you ask who he is. — frank

I wonder if one is referring to anything at all when one asks who somebody is. Such a question typically comes up when one has overheard a conversation that sounds like it is about someone. The temptation is to say that the eavesdropper is asking 'About whom are you talking?' (because while ignorant of history and current events, the eavesdropper is quite particular, in an old-fashioned way, about grammar).

I'm inclined to say 'not so fast'. I think what the eavesdropper really wants is to have the story explained to them in a way they can understand.

Consider the timeless mondegreen: The minstrel is overheard telling his fans about how when Robin Hood died, they took him to the forest and they laid him on the green.

The eavesdropper hears:

'They took him to the forest and the Lady Mondegreen'

and asks 'who is the Lady Mondegreen?'.

To whom is the eavesdropper referring? Are they referring to the non-existent Lady Mondegreen?

I say that question is the wrong question, and writing dissertations about it misses the point. The right question is 'what does the eavesdropper want?' The answer is that she wants to understand the story that was being told.

Yes, the encoding of coordinates in an n-dimensional space into a single real number X is actually easy to describe:

The first n digits of X are the first digits after the decimal place of the n coordinates.
The second n digits of X are the first digits before the decimal place of the n coordinates.
The third n digits of X are the second digits after the decimal place of the n coordinates.
The fourth n digits of X are the second digits before the decimal place of the n coordinates.
and so on...

The map is discontinuous and geometrically unintuitive. But its algebraic structure is very simple.

I've been feeling a bit bad that what started as a reading group is mostly debate, and I'm partly at fault for that. The debate has been so interesting that I have not been able to resist the temptation to jump in now and again, even though my better angel says I should stay out and let the people that are currently working through the book have clear air.

I wonder would it be better to create a new thread that discusses the book, and refers to the reading group thread, and leave the reading group thread itself for those that are currently working through the book. We used to have that approach with debates, where there was a formal debate thread for the two participants (in this case it would be the official participants in the reading group) and a discussion thread where anybody could discuss the debate and issues arising in it.

I think it would be way too difficult, given the length of the thread, to dissect the existing thread into reading group and debate. But we could decide that future debate between Kripke sceptics and Kripke enthusiasts (as opposed to debate between Kripke enthusiasts) should go in the other thread.

It's just a suggestion, and I'm sure that those of us that are Kripke sceptics would be happy to stay out of this one if that's what is preferred (although I'd still read it because I find it very engaging).

I'd be grateful if you could briefly outline what revoking Article 50 involves, and its likely consequences. As I understand it, that's something that's in the control of the EU, not of the UK, since it's an EU rule. If that's correct, doesn't that disqualify it from being an option in a UK poll?

The example that continually comes into my head, unbidden, in this discussion is Philip K Dick's novel 'The Man in the High Castle', which is a counterfactual in which the Axis powers won WW2. Note the neutral manner in which that sentence describes it.

If asked to tell somebody what the book is about I think I would say 'It imagines a world in which the Axis powers won WW2'. Based on recent posts above, it appears that Kripke might say 'It supposes that the Axis powers rather than the Allies won WW2'.

I can't identify a tangible difference between the two. To me they just look like different strings of words that gesture towards the same concept - a vague concept but one that has enough solidity in it for us to enjoy the novel (admiring Dick's imagination and doing our best to overlook his execrable dialogue).

Wittgenstein's approach to language is laid out in his later work 'Philosophical Investigations'. It's a bit like reading James Joyce - difficult and open to differing interpretations. I have to confess that I failed to understand most of it. But dazzling insights still shine through here and there. The dazzling insights that I see as relevant here are

1. language is not about reference and meaning but about what the speaker is trying to achieve with her speech act

2. many (possibly most) speech acts must be considered as a whole in order to discover their intention. Dividing them up into tiny bits and asking questions about reference and meaning of little components is often a hindrance to understanding.

The idea that when we suppose something were some other way, we are not really doing that but positing some 'counterpart' to it..... — Snakes Alive

'counterpart'

Quote signs play the same role as italics in word games like this. People reach for them when they are unable to express what they mean but want to believe and imply that the meaning is clear and obvious.

You appear to be trying to say that my interpretation of how people use counterfactuals is artificial and unnatural. Naturally I disagree. I have the same negative feelings about Kripke's interpretation as you have about mine. I feel that my approach is the most natural in the world. Although nobody can put themselves in another's head, my confident guess is that that's what counterfactual-using non-philosophers would say if they could be persuaded to spend half an hour discussing it.

If we can't get beyond italics and quotes to agree on some concrete definitions, this discussion will remain one about what 'feels natural' to different individuals. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that. It only becomes silly if people start to insist 'No, my way of looking at it is right and yours is wrong!'

The difference between us seems to be in how we interpret people's use of counterfactual statements. I interpret them as meaning imagining a world that is identical to ours up to a point, and then at a certain time starts to differ. Another way that's quite similar is to imagine it being the same world and then branching at the critical time, which is the way many people think of Everett's many-worlds hypothesis. Perhaps that's closer to your conception. Recently I have been debating with myself whether there's actually any difference between the two though, beyond the words in which they are expressed.

I suggest that if we were to interview a non-philosopher that has just used a counterfactual, exploring with them the question of what they were trying to convey, we would arrive at that sort of interpretation. I think that phrases like 'the very same cat' are unhelpful and confusing in that context. They hinder rather than help understanding, as the tendency to use italics when referring to them, as if that somehow makes the meaning clear, indicates. If it really were clear, surely we could provide a better explanation than just italicising the reference.

I'm interested in what you said in the first para that 'this is the sort of counterfactual consideration that we rely on when planning future actions or when we are gathering evidence for the existence of causal relations'. I would exclude considering future actions from that because that is usually a case not of imagining the past being different, but rather imagining more than one different possible future, neither of which contradicts current knowledge. Those are not counterfactuals but rather considerations of future possibilities - I call them 'Hypotheticals'. By 'gathering evidence of causal relations' I assume you are referring to the attempt to develop scientific theories. I agree that counterfactuals can play a key role in that but it seems to me that they work perfectly well with my interpretation of counterfactual, and don't require a Kripkean interpretation.

My view on these issues is set out in somewhat more detail in an essay I wrote a couple of years ago: Hypotheticals, Counterfactuals and Probability. Those are still my views.

BTW you asked above if I was seeking to defend descriptivism. I think I probably am, but that doesn't mean I think it's the best theory. I see Wittgenstein's language game approach as the best explanation of language, including proper names. But despite its faults (which I think are different from those that Kripke claims) I think there's a lot of valuable insight in Russell's theory of descriptions, and I am unable to find any such value in Kripke's theory.

Are you purporting to defend a form of descriptivism, then? What if the individual who we name "Aristotle" had not become a philosopher, and had become a carpenter instead (and he hadn't been Alexander's teacher, etc.) Are we talking about someone who isn't Aristotle, in that counterfactual scenario? And if we're still talking about Aristotle having had a different career, how it is that "Aristotle" picks up its referent in the couterfactual scenario? — Pierre-Normand

One has to be careful how one sets up counterfactuals, because they usually end up being nonsense, no matter what metaphysics or language philosophy one favours.

One way of describing a counterfactual about Aristotle would be as follows:

Imagine a world that was identical to ours in every salient respect up to five years after the birth of the person that in this world we call Aristotle. Since everything matches up to that point, we can pick out a person in the imaginary world that corresponds to our Aristotle by virtue of having exactly the same history up to age five, and we will call that person Aristotle-2 (although people in that imaginary world would call him Aristotle, as events at his naming were identical to those in the naming of our Aristotle). Now let us imagine that in that world Aristotle-2 became a carpenter and worked happily at that all his life until he died at the ripe old age of 83.

The picking out is done by matching the first five years of the lives of Aristotle and Aristotle-2, including the parents and other environmental features.

That works for me. It avoids using ill-specified notions like 'referent' or asking (IMHO) meaningless questions such as 'was Aristotle-2 Aristotle?'

I agree with this and would add my observation that - in my experience - nearly all sentences that use proper names use them in a way that is time independent or is tied to a specific time, thereby anchoring the implied definite description to that time.

Examples:

1. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great.

The DD implied by the Proper Name Aristotle must relate to properties that held around the time of Alexander the Great, whenever that was.

2. Hugh Grant is married to Liz Hurley.

Since this sentence uses the present tense, the definite descriptions it uses need to be true at the time of utterance. It doesn't matter if they were previously untrue or subsequently become untrue.

3. General Gaius Julius crossed the Rubicon with his army to challenge the leaders of the Roman republic.

This sentence is tied by historical reference to the epoch when a Roman general crossed the river Rubicon with his army to challenge the Roman government. Since there was only one such event in Earth history, that ties the time to somewhere near 50 BCE. So that's the time at which the DD used to crystallise the Proper Name Julius Caesar must be true.

4. The area of a circle is Pi times the square of the radius.

I want to say that this is time independent and that Pi is a Proper Name and a DD for it is something like 'the number that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius'. But I wonder what others think about whether Pi is a Proper Name and/or whether that is its definite description.

That both sides would end up worse off than they would otherwise be with an acceptable deal undermines your point about which of the two would be more worse off. — S

One can only reach that conclusion if one limits consideration to immediate consequences, and ignores longer term consequences.

The reason the EU would rather suffer a worse impact itself than make the deal better for the UK is that, the less penal the deal is for the UK, the greater the risk that other valued members may at some stage vote to leave. So it's in the interest of the EU to make the deal as bad as possible, even if it causes short term pain for the EU.

I expect the USA would take the same approach if California voted to leave the union - cause great pain on both California and, where unavoidable, itself as well, so as to discourage other states from following suit. [Disclaimer - I know nothing of the US constitution and whether it is possible for a state to leave]

Well, it seems that those statements amount to somewhat of an argument in favor of some form of essentialism. In addition, they also argue in favor of the idea that what is known a priori is a necessary truth. — creativesoul

Those six statements may do that. But I don't think those statements fairly represent a mature descriptivist position. For example statement 5 is something that is at most believed, not known, by the speaker. Further, I don't think descriptivism requires putting it in that If...Then... form. I think a fairer rendering is that 'The speaker believes there exists an individual with name X that has most of the properties'. I don't think there's any need for the 'a priori' bit either.

It seems to me that the essentialism is an artefact of Kripke's interpretation of descriptivism, rather than a feature of descriptivism itself. So far as I know, Russell was not an essentialist.

BTW those six statements are listed on this wiki page on Naming and Necessity, which will perhaps be a more accessible reference as the above post listing them recedes further into the past of this long, long thread.

My opinion is that Kripke's complaints about theories of definite descriptions, and the examples he believes point to flaws in those theories, are based on an uncharitable reading of what those theories say.

I also find the invocation of possible worlds semantics an unnecessarily complex solution to what I consider to be a simple question. It is also metaphysically troublesome and hugely confusing, as is evinced by the amount of debate as to what it means.

FWIW I agree with the dilemma you set up, and I too wonder whether there is a third option, and if so what it is.

But these are just my opinions and, since some philosophers get a great deal of pleasure from reading and discussing Kripke's lectures, I don't want to spoil that for them.

Since the UK voted to leave, and therefore not remain in the EU, then the option to remain in the EU has no rightful place being on that ballot, as it completely goes against the will of the people, as expressed by the majority who voted to leave in the referendum. It would be utterly wrong of you or anyone else to risk undoing or invalidating that result. What do you think gives you that right? — S

I understand that you think it would be utterly wrong. I am not convinced of your arguments for that.

My position is that the question asked in the plebiscite was inappropriate for a binding vote. The solution is to have a vote with options that are appropriate for a binding vote. That means options that clearly outline what would happen in each case, not just some airy-fairy magic word like 'leave'.

Australia had a plebiscite about becoming a republic in 1999. In opinion polls a large majority of respondents responded 'Yes' to the question 'Do you want Australia to become a republic'. But that question is inappropriate for a binding vote, because there are many different types of republic one could become. Quite rightly, the PM at the time insisted on the vote being on a specific concrete option. Quite wrongly - IMHO - he chose an option that he knew would be unpalatable to most republicans - essentially 'republic lite', like 'Brexit lite'. Quite rightly (IMHO again) the voters rejected that, even though most would say they wanted a republic.

A truly fair process would have been to have an optional preferential vote ('AV' for Poms) that listed the various models:

1. No change
2. Directly elected President
3. President elected by majority of both houses of parliament
4. President appointed by a committee that is appointed by parliament [the option that was put forward in the actual plebiscite]

But the PM was a devout monarchist so he didn't want to do that, as a republican option (either 2 or 3) would almost certainly have won.

But I still do agree with him that it would have been inappropriate to put the question 'Do you want a republic' to a referendum. And that's despite me being a staunch republican who still occasionally mourns that lost opportunity 19 years ago.

And what if this second referendum wasn't lost? — S

Plebiscites aren't won or lost. They choose between options. Since all three options in my proposal above are clear, concrete and possible without agreement from outside parties, it would be political suicide for a government to not implement the result, whatever it was.

This contrasts strictly with the 2016 plebiscite, which was purely aspirational, with no concrete options on the table, and no knowledge of what the consequences of the 'leave' option would be, since they would require agreement from the EU. It's like having a plebiscite question 'would you like to have lower tax', when there's no specification of what services would be cut, and which ones, or whether the fiscal deficit would be allowed to increase instead.

For a plebiscite to be credible it needs to have concrete options that can be implemented without requiring consent from extra-territorial parties.

Look at how bills are turned into acts in parliament. They are not voted or even formally debated until a bill is presented that spells out ALL the details.

BTW I use the term plebiscite here because referendums actually change the law directly, whereas plebiscites are an indication of preference, on which the government is expected to act. In Australia we have both referenda (on things like conscription and banning the communist party - both lost) and plebiscites (recently on marriage equality). My understanding is that the UK has no provision for referenda in its constitution, so only plebiscites are possible.

What a funny name for it. We just call it preferential voting, and it seems as natural as breathing. I can't think of a single reason why anybody that understands how it works would not want it.

Preferential voting is like having a two-round election like they have in many countries, such as the French Presidential election. Except by marking the preferences on a single ballot, you avoid all the cost and wasted time of having to conduct a second ballot, without losing any of its nuance and functionality. The elimination of less supported candidates and narrowing down to a final two happens automatically.

There must have been a lot of misinformation about for it to have been rejected in 2011. I suppose the Tories prefer first past the post because Labour and Lib Dem would direct preferences to one another, and thereby be elected much more often than at present.

There could be an optional preferential referendum, where people list their choices in order. Each of the options would have several paragraphs explaining what they entail. The options would be:

1. Hard Brexit, including hard borders between UK and Europe on movement of all people and goods, including a hard border around Northern Ireland.

2. The deal that was about to be voted on by Parliament.

3. Cancel Brexit and remain in the EU.

After the first round of counting, Ballots for the least popular option would be distributed to whatever option was indicated as 2, and not counted in the second round if no option was numbered 2.

That way people that prefer Hard Brexit but would rather stay in the EU than have the current deal could have their wishes respected, as would people that prefer to cancel Brexit but, if that's not popular enough, prefer Teresa May's deal to a hard border.