Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron W.
as you continue to explore these ideas,
That's all I'm trying to do:
4. Objections to Rigidity
(A rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designates anything else. This technical concept in the philosophy of language has critical consequences felt throughout philosophy. In their fullest generality, the consequences are metaphysical and epistemological. Whether a statement's designators are rigid or non-rigid may determine whether it is necessarily true, necessarily false, or contingent.)
Various objections to the coherence or usefulness of rigidity have been put forward by specialists in the philosophy of language, though the objections do not seem to have done much to damage the widespread appeal of rigidity, which is commonly taken for granted in mainstream literature from various areas of philosophy. (Whether your typical philosopher is entitled to embrace rigidity is another matter: so there is a case for saying, on grounds independent from the foregoing objections, that rigidity and the necessity accompanying it stand or fall with a robust version of the analytic-synthetic distinction (see note 6). If that case is solid, then either popular Quinean antagonism toward analyticity should prompt the rejection of rigidity or else the appeal of rigidity should prompt the rejection of the familiar antagonism toward analyticity.) What resistance to rigidity there is may be addressed in general terms first, in order to save for its own subsection (§4.2) treatment of objections specifically directed at the application of rigidity to terms for properties, which are especially contended.
Kripke’s Category Error: Why There Are No Necessary A Posteriori Propositions
I will continue Quine’s, Stalnaker’s, and Chalmers’s line of attack using the “argument from propositional ambiguity.” While related, my argument is that single sentence can frame a proposition about a thing-in- itself and also frame a proposition about a mental construct of that thing.
Against the Contingent A Priori
Since Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, the view that there are contingent a priori truths has been surprisingly widespread. In this paper, I argue against that view. My first point is that in general, occurrences of predicates “a priori” and “contingent” are implicitly relativized to some circumstance, involving an agent, a time, a location. My second point is that a priority entails necessity, whenever the two are relativized to the same circumstance. In other words, what is known to be the case a priori (by an agent in a circumstance) could not fail to be the case (in the same circumstance), hence is necessary.
A Posteriori Necessity: Misled by Language?
Kripke's discovery of a posteriori necessity is often invoked as a great discovery in 20th Century Analytic Philosophy. I think it was an important discovery--just not what some seem to have thought it to be. Allow me to explain. Recently, I have been arguing--along with people like Avner Baz and Mark Balaguer--that it is important not to confuse conceptual analysis with metaphysics. The traditional story of Kripke's discovery, if I have it right (and I may not), is that Kripke made a metaphysical discovery: that he discovered really interesting modal metaphysical facts (e.g. water is necessarily H2O) that we come to grasp through empirical discovery (i.e. water's molecular structure). I want to suggest that this is not quite right.
Against the Necessity of Identity Statements
Initially in this essay, I will provide an account of Kripke's claim regarding the necessity of identity statements. I will give a systematic analysis of the structure of Kripke's argument, facilitating an examination of the mechanics of the argument and my critique thereof. My criticism lies in the challenge to Kripke's intuitive claim that proper names are rigid designators, and that therefore the relation expressed in an identity statement between a name and the object it picks out is a necessmy one. I will argue that identity statements (employing descriptions, in names, and in statements in science) are contingent, not necessary, undermining Kripke's notion of the a posteriori identity.
Last edited by John21; 11-09-2018 at 11:54 PM.