/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14624285]

What's /lit/'s opinion on Saul Kripke?

Has anyone read about his take on Wittgenstein?

[Anonymous No.14624290]

>>14624285
Overrated. Only his early work on modal logic is of much value.

[Anonymous No.14624317]

it's basically the beetle in the box argument using math, but if you actually read Wittgenstein on math he doesn't present the same doubts, because math is clearly not a beetle in a box and the rules can be clearly enumerated (to an extent). so it's shit.

[Anonymous No.14624331]

>>14624285
>Kripke
I assume he's a formalist bugman. That tells you all you need to know.

[Anonymous No.14624387]

>>14624331
^ has never read a book.

[Anonymous No.14624400]

>>14624285
he’s a jew so he’s bad

[Anonymous No.14624401]

>>14624387
Indeed, friend. I do not read; I write; I think.

[Anonymous No.14624403]

>>14624285
Who cares

[DoctorGreen !DRgReeNusk No.14624405]

>>14624285
he is a idiot. he is as retarded as >>14624444

[Anonymous No.14624419]

>>14624285
Yes. Regardless of what Wittgenstein meant, Kripke definitely uncovers a paradox at the heart of his thought and it is devastating. On the other hand, a posteriori necessity makes so much sense it's a wonder that nobody had thought of it before

[Anonymous No.14624502]

>>14624419
He treats linguistic conventions as deep metaphysical insights, it makes so much sense MY ASS

[Anonymous No.14624630]

>>14624285
>a posteriori necessity
So let me get this straight: Hesperus and Phosphorous both turn out to refer to Venus, and this is supposed to be drawn from experience and therefore a posteriori, but also necessary, since it is true in all possible worlds? Let us imagine that my neighbor's house (which I have given the name Saul) is green (and when it is green I call it Ludwig), but paints it red while I am away on sabbatical. When I see the new paint, I immediately designate it with a new nickname (Claude). Now, upon my return, according to Kripke, I am soon the fortuitous possessor of a posteriori necessary knowledge, namely, that Claude is Ludwig (since both are Saul).

Is this what qualifies for philosophy these days? or even logic? It is obvious that I neither know with certainty that Claude is Ludwig, nor that Claude is Saul or that Saul is Ludwig. I have no reason to doubt any of this information, but it cannot be necessarily true. The syllogism: Ludwig is Saul, Saul is Claude, therefore Ludwig is Claude, is formally (logically) true, but this does not give me any certainty as to the content of the judgments themselves, which are not analytical but a posteriori synthetical.

[Anonymous No.14624636]

>>14624285
Analytical bugman "philosopher". Mere austistic masturbation.

[Anonymous No.14625059]

>>14624630
Your level of certainty is irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.14625366]

>>14624630
but he's saying it is necessary that claude is ludwig, but not that either are saul.

the issue you're pointing out though is that the whole thing turns on this stupid idea of a rigid designator which he came up with. I see no reason to assume any such relation exists. Unless you are physically tied with a string to the thing you are naming, I don't see why one name would be more rigid than another, as you are saying. without the "necessity" from "rigidity" the whole thing falls apart.

[Anonymous No.14625374]

>>14624285
cuckface

[Anonymous No.14625381]

>>14625366
can you please explain kripke, rigid designation, and sense/reference as it is employed in this context, in layman's terms?

[Anonymous No.14625420]

>>14625366
*All* names are rigid designators.

[Anonymous No.14625425]

>>14624285
Who the fuck is /lit/?

[Anonymous No.14625466]

>>14625420
more like none are

[Anonymous No.14625467]

>>14624285
I keep internalising his name as Kripkike

[Anonymous No.14625494]

>>14625466
How so?

[Anonymous No.14625502]

I wish Kant could get revived and BTFO all of these analytic cucks. Literally they don't know what they are talking about.

[Anonymous No.14625648]

>>14624419
Are you talking about the rule-following paradox? I think Kripke's right that Wittgenstein's response to the paradox is "skeptical" but it seems like the entire point of PI is that paradoxes like this are hardly "devastating." Also Hume already figured all of this out a long time ago.

The argument for a posteriori necessity is stupid, because for there to be a difference between necessary a posteriori facts and non-necessary a posteriori you need some words to designate rigidly, which requires a theory of language as reference, which Wittgenstein destroys in PI.

[Anonymous No.14625743]

>>14625648
>Wittgenstein destroys in PI
Wittgenstein didn't really 'destroy' anything in PI.

[Anonymous No.14625759]

>>14624285
Remember when he chopped that guys head off in 'Hell On Wheels'? Great character, only second to the Swede.

[Anonymous No.14625776]

>>14625381
The name "Richard Nixon" contingently (unrigidly) denotes the 37th president of USA (because it might as well have been somebody else), but, on the other hand, the name "Richard Nixon" necessarily (i.e. rigidly, i.e. in all possible worlds) denotes the man Richard Nixon (because Nixon is necessarily himself and nobody else).

And why is Nixon necessarily himself, i.e. why does the name "Nixon" necessarily denote the person Nixon? Because Richard Nixon has the essential property of being-Richard-Nixon-and-nobody-else; in other words, Richard Nixon's necessary property is that he is the son of parents X and Y.

Yes, this banal nonsense is what philosophy undergraduates get bombarded with for years. Don't even bother, you'd be better off reading a good novel or something.

[Anonymous No.14625811]

>>14625776
so wait, it's not a phenomenological thing, like "we evidently have a concept Richard-Nixon-and-nobody-else, which we can posit and apparently do posit when we predicate about it; but we say nothing about the reality of such a concept," it IS actually a metaphysical thing?

i don't quite understand how the (metaphysical?) theory of reference is being established. when you say the "necessary property" is that he's the son of etc., you don't mean that kripke actually offloads the problem of how concepts get their referents/definitions/essences to some kind of empirical/realist process of determination?

honestly i don't get it. if it's semantical, then what is its utility as a theory? logicians in the 1800s already talked about how we can make anything into the subject of a predicate, whether it's richard-nixon-and-nobody-else, or a nonexistent galaxy, or the current king of france etc. but if it's a metaphysical theory, how the fuck is it not just a naive realism?

why did this interest anybody?

[Anonymous No.14625880]

>>14625811
You are overthinking it.

A mother in Ancient Greece gives birth to a baby boy and names him Aristotle. This is the initial act of naming that renders the name "Aristotle" rigid; i.e. the name "Aristotle" will refer to Aristotle in all possible worlds because the name refers to an unique object whose essential property is to be the son of Phaestis and Nicomachus; Aristotle could not have been Aristotle had his parents no been Nichomachus and Phaestis. There is nothing else to it.

Kripke also posits the causal theory of reference, i.e. we today refer to the very same Aristotle because there has been an unbroken chain of reference ever since his birth in ca. 384 until now.

[Anonymous No.14625899]

>>14625880
>There is nothing else to it.

i don't understand, if i'm reading you correctly then he's literally not saying anything at all. the only way he could be saying anything at all is if he has some kind of rationalist metaphysics OR an epistemology implied in the terms "unique object" and "essential properties." but you're saying that's not true. so he's just giving a vague description of how language works that isn't even accurate or interesting?

[Anonymous No.14625941]

>>14624285
>Kripke is Jewish, and he takes this seriously. He is not a nominal Jew and he is careful keeping the Sabbath, for instance he doesn't use public transportation on Saturdays.

[Anonymous No.14625961]

>>14625776
This seems like a really long-winded explanation of language games with unnecessary additions.

[Anonymous No.14626028]

>>14625961
No.

[Anonymous No.14626049]

>>14625899
I don't know what else to say, perhaps one more example from Kripke that ought to clarify his notion of essential properties.

The dining table at your home is made out of wood. If it were magically replaced with a dining table made out of ice that looks the same as the original desk, you would be compelled to admit that the two dining tables are not the same object: the former is made out of wood, whereas the latter is made out of ice. The point of the example is to illustrate the existence of essential properties: a dining table made out of wood is necessarily made out of wood, otherwise it would not be itself.

For any further inquiries. I strongly advise you to find the around 40 pages long paper (in fact a transcript of a Kripke's lecture) where he employs the very examples I have provided (Richard Nixon, a table made out of ice). There you will find not only the explanation of (un)rigid designation, but much else.

[Anonymous No.14626050]

>>14625880
>>14625899
Yes, but the essential properties of any empirical concept (known through experience) cannot ever be perfectly determined. All empirical concepts (including proper names) include characteristics which are thrown under the concepts based on an experience and are merely provisional. Or if we say that a proper name refers to a singular individual (by definition), that this individual must have some essential characteristics which distinguish them from every other singular individual, this still does not tell us any of the actual characteristics which constitute the essence of this person. Even that a person was born from such and such parents, may be a statement as probable as can possibly be, it still cannot be asserted without any doubt. That he must have had some parents and that those parents must have been singular indivduals, this is all quite probable, according to known laws of origination, but even these latter are not deducible from the laws of experience in general, even though they must conform to them. Now we certainly possess a wealth of experience in regards to certain objects, and are certain that the referred to object is a singular one (which is a transcendental law); but both the name and the characteristics drawn from those experiences are provisional (i.e. imperfect but useful insofar as they refer to the real object), by no means exhaustive of the actual circumstances (you do not remember, for instance, every single item of clothing which your friend was wearing every day of his or her life). No absolute connections can be draw between any proper name and any circumstance or characteristic, or between characteristics themselves, since they are all tethered to an object of experience (which is not itself a concept) which serves as the basis for their being lumped together under a particular concept.

[Anonymous No.14626140]

>>14625961
i'm watching a video on it now, and it does seem a bit like it. here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM2XviTFNis

but around 24min he goes over to "direct reference," i.e. how these names of things are in fact NOT concepts, but direct relationships with things in the world, and i'm lost. hopefully watching more will clarify it. but to me it certainly sounded a lot like a constructivist, associationist epistemology at first too.

>>14626049
i guess so, but for example, consider the famous ship of theseus problem. at what point is something no longer what it is? when we ask that, we have to come up with a way of determining what something is, of how things become what they are (or at least come to be said that they are what they are). a constructivist/associationist epistemology is one way to do that, because it's essentially nominalist, and involves something like a phenomenology of association. so it would be confusing if this is what kripke is doing, because this is all already elaborated very well within phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatism, etc.

but if you're making it into a rationalist and/or realist metaphysical system, which the video i linked above (nb: which i haven't finished watching) seems to do, then i still don't understand. then the problem is even more serious, because we AREN'T talking about what WE think the table is (and how we get there - which is where a phenomenology of association/constitution would come in), but with what it REALLY IS. and then you invoke all the classical paradoxes of realism: what are the ultimate "really real" things? is everything which we designate by a name a "thing," so that every table is a thing? is every leg of the table a thing? is "this hypothetical parallelogram planar slice of the table as viewed from above, as opposed to an infinite number of other possible such slices" a thing? etc.

so like i said, there seem to be two options: either he's opening a can of worms that has been opened and managed much better by others, or he's opening a pandora's box and doing absolutely nothing to stop the chaos this causes. what is the third option i'm missing?

[Anonymous No.14626142]

>>14626050
I understand what you are saying but I do not mean to engage in a debate, I was merely making an attempt to clarify Kripke's notion of rigid designation to the anon who asked for it.

Anyways, Kripke would tell you that essential properties of empirical objects can indeed be determined. Water rigidly designates h2o (i.e. water=h2o); the essential property of water is its chemical composition, and on the basis of its essential property with the name "water" we refer to h2o in all possible words.

Kripke maintains that the above given example with water is equivalent to the example with Richard Nixon: his genetic composition (otherwise expressed as "being the son of X and Y") is a constant, i.e. an essential property.

[Anonymous No.14626147]

>>14626050
>Even that a person was born from such and such parents, may be a statement as probable as can possibly be, it still cannot be asserted without any doubt.
Certainty is an epistemic matter. Necessity is a metaphysical one. Kripke is purely focused on the latter.

[Anonymous No.14626151]

(continued from >>14626140)
>>14626050
now this sounds perfectly reasonable to me, if i'm understanding it. it sounds like a constitutive/associationist phenomenology, roughly something like
>people begin to designate an object (let's say aristotle) with a name ("aristotle"), because this makes sense to them to do
>other people follow suit because it makes sense to them to do it too
>we still do it because it makes sense to us, although obviously it makes different sorts of sense (e.g. we are referring to or "picturing" a famous philosopher, but his mom was presumably thinking of her little boy)
>along the way, the "hand-off" between different "ways of making sense of referring to aristotle as 'aristotle'" took place procedurally, changing slightly but remaining relatively stable with each usage, so that we are in fact participating in a sort of polythetic "language game" that has gone on for centuries
>certain aspects of the way we play the "game" differ from how aristotle's mom or friends or immediate successors played it but they differed slowly enough for a kind of meta-stability in the term's usage to persist down through the centuries (for example, we would probably share with aristotle's mom something like "biological, mortal, male" as part of aristotle's essential definition, along with "generally wears clothing" etc.; although we might subtly disagree about, or picture differently, the meaning of something like "biological," "mortal," etc.; but there is enough stability in THESE concepts [i.e. designators] to allow them to stabilize aristotle's concept [designator], so that the soup of mutually-constituting meanings we use daily is holistically inter-implicated)
>beyond this point (i.e. beyond a constitutive phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis), one could posit metaphysical theories if one really wanted (like saying "well, the real nature of a 'biological being' is that it's made of squiggly atoms" and so on), but this is not necessary; that's why language/logic is at least provisionally indifferent to real metaphysics

but this would make kripke a pretty ho-hum language philosopher and it basically makes >>14625961 correct. and this guy said >>14626028 no. so where am i going wrong?

[Anonymous No.14626159]

>>14626147
>>14626142
so he does have a metaphysics? how does he involve all the fucking fifty billion paradoxes of scientific positivism then? it's not like you can non-trivially hold that "water IS essentially h2o" these days, you'll just get asked by a thousand philosophers of science how you define "h2o" without invoking a whole metaphysical schema

[Anonymous No.14626179]

>>14626151
>and it basically makes >>14625961 correct
No.

[Anonymous No.14626189]

>>14626142
yes, but whether i say something is an **essential** characteristic of a concept is (if it is empirical) entirely a formality and not at all something determined from reality.

>>14626151
Test the definition of any concept by taking away characteristics and seeing if the thing remains. You will slowly approach a singularity, which is the individuality of the thing, which was thought in the concept, not as a characteristic, but as a condition for its use.

Take your friend, for instance. Would he remain that singular individual if he lost a limb? Yes. If he lost a vital organ? Yes. If a part of his brain shut down? Well, at least you would not on that account believe that your friend had either vanished into nothingness or had not existed in the first place. But if your friend died, and his body slowly decayed, so that you lost, over time every tangible characteristic you had previously used to locate and produce in thought that idea of that singular individual (and even this is not totally possible, since the matter would remain in some form, as ashes, as some infinitesimal morsel which previously constituted his body), you are left with the conclusion that something singular, intangible, evasive, was the central point, the nexus for all those characteristics and all those memories which were glued to that singularity and that you called by a name, and thought of as your friend, unique to all other persons. You certainly never spoke to mere characteristics, merely to the eyes, or to the understanding, or to the reason, but to an individual, the essence of which you will never be able to bring forth in thought, for then it would constitute a sum of parts, and not the whole. And neither does the mere name, which stands for the whole, actually contain the whole (but only those parts which you have been fortunate enough to collect), even though it refers to the whole, which you spoke to but never brought into cognition for analysis. That all those experiences refer to the same individual, you can never know with absolute certainty, though you may believe it, nor is it quite necessary that you know, but only that you believe. And you will never know with complete certainty that that individual was essentially the same all their life long, and the name which you used to call them by actually referred to them every time you used it.

[Anonymous No.14626196]

>>14626140
As Putnam would put it, "meanings just ain't in the head". Read Putnam's twin earth thought experient for the sake of clarifying Kripke's epistemological background. In short, meanings of words are externally determined so to speak, regardless of what one thinks. Anyway, the paper is short and the only way to explain it would be to paraphrase the entire thing which would take me more time than for you to simply read it.

[Anonymous No.14626248]

>>14626189
>Test the definition of any concept by taking away characteristics and seeing if the thing remains. You will slowly approach a singularity, which is the individuality of the thing, which was thought in the concept, not as a characteristic, but as a condition for its use.
the problem i'm having with this is that it's been done already by logicians and phenomenologists. for example husserl's analysis of intentional acts is entirely concerned with giving a transcendental, phenomenological account (i.e. not an explanatory metaphysics of consciousness, but a DESCRIPTIVE, immanent, transcendental account) of intending predicates. it has to be a robust account because it has to account for, like i said, all those seemingly paradoxical referents of meanings and intentions: "the present king of france," "the time i was on mars," etc.

>you are left with the conclusion that something singular, intangible, evasive, was the central point, the nexus for all those characteristics and all those memories which were glued to that singularity and that you called by a name
this is certainly true, but the question is whether the name is a metaphysically real thing (some kind of "tag"), somehow tethered to a metaphysically real thing in the real world. to me, this invokes all the usual paradoxes of realism. these are precisely what wittgenstein, along with the pragmatists and many others, like husserl who i just talked about, are trying to AVOID by saying "we know that language allows us to do these things, but we don't know the ground of this ability." if you try to ground the ability in some kind of actual metaphysics, well, you're doing metaphysics, and good luck to you. especially if you're trying to do some kind of scientific empiricism mixed with naive realism, like "h2o is really real," which is torn to shreds often.

tldr: the status quo among pragmatists, phenomenologists, etc. regarding the fact that i can intend a single "essence" underlying objects is that this says more about consciousness/language (we intend and can predicate about X's, as distinct from considerations of the concrete correlates or definitions or explanations of the existence of X's, whatever X may be in any given context) than it does about the world.

even more tldr: nominalism reigns for a reason at this point. how does kripke escape from it? i am not being glib, i am trying to see what i'm missing, because it seems like you're saying that he's saying "well, presumably SOMETHING out there is the real essence of a chair or human!," which seems meaningless without actually positing such an essence or scheme for determining it?

>>14626179
if you'll actually read my post before replying to it, or even skim it, you would notice that the thing you're quoting is posited as just one of many possible options, not as a flat statement of "x is correct." i said "if x, then y" (while considering many other options), and you replied "no" to "y." that makes no sense. why bother?

[Anonymous No.14626256]

>>14626248
>i said "if x, then y" (while considering many other options), and you replied "no" to "y."
No, I didn't. I said No to "if x, then y".

[Anonymous No.14626263]

>>14626196
ok, i'll try reading the putnam. i would agree that meanings are "externally determined" in a very restricted sense, for example it's pretty fucking difficult to argue that the real world is not out there, that the moon is not there, etc.

assuming that the real world is out there, that it has the properties of what fichte called for the sake of maximum generality the "Anstoß," basically "the thing which opposes, holds firm, or pushes back" (i.e. when we try to push against it, conceptually), then yes, there is some external check to my conceptualization in the barest possible sense. but all that gets you is the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of an undifferentiated manifold whose only characteristic is that it IS external - it gets you "there is a world, out there, independent of me." it doesn't get you "...and that world is divvied up into the following things, upon which we have a general theory of 'things'," at least not without a lot of extra work which i'd be surprised to find any modern logician is willing to undertake.

>>14626256
ah ok my mistake, thanks.

[Anonymous No.14626283]

>>14626248
I’m mostly ranting incoherently. Moreover I am stating my own opinion, not trying to explain kripke who I think confused essence with what is in my estimation merely a provisional definition, necessarily subject to change. Metaphysical essence is not knowable in cognition, which only presents us with an empirical reality, nor through mere concepts as I have shown. Nonetheless it is a condition I must take for granted for certain actions like my having a reply to you as a person right now, since I would not reply if I thought I was talking to a jumble of physical phenomena or to my own concept.

[Anonymous No.14626305]

>>14626263
>ah ok my mistake, thanks
If what you're saying is that Kripke's thesis seem more relevant to the philosophy of language and linguistics than to metaphysics, then I would agree. But it is not in any way just a restatement of Wittgenstein's theory of language games, as the other poster alleged. Two entirely different subjects.

[Anonymous No.14626311]

>>14626283
>confused essence with what is in my estimation merely a provisional definition, necessarily subject to change
You are confusing epistemology with metaphysics again.

[Anonymous No.14626318]

>>14626283
yeah likewise i apologise if i seem like i'm trying to browbeat you or the other guy (?), i am honestly just curious about this and earnestly trying to understand it, whether or not i ultimately disagree with it.

i think i get what you mean - would you say you agree with something like a quinean pragmatism with regard to the natural world then? and something like a wittgensteinian theory of language?

>>14626305
i guess so, i think i and that guy are just being intentionally broad in our definition of "language game," when we really mean something more like "how does this say anything that wittgenstein didn't say better?" or "how does this get beyond basic bitch philosophy of language?"

[Anonymous No.14626327]

>>14626318
>how does this say anything that wittgenstein didn't say better?
Wittgenstein never even addressed this subject.

[Anonymous No.14626333]

>>14626327
what subject?

[Anonymous No.14626350]

>>14626333
The theses of Naming & Necessity.

[Anonymous No.14626355]

>>14626350
what are those?

[Anonymous No.14626360]

>>14626311
I know what you mean—I should have made a distinction between real essence and logical essence. Yet it is true, as I said, that the latter is merely formal and has only a coincidental relation to the former. In any case, no truth is acquired by means of logic alone.

[Anonymous No.14626364]

>>14626318
I am a kantian I have not read Quine or witty.

[Anonymous No.14626372]

>>14626360
The point is, a statement like 'Water = H20" is necessarily true if it is true at all. Kripke is not a chemist. He is saying, on the assumption that H20 is the correct chemical composition of water, then that is its essence. Since science is always subject to revision, so is our understanding of specific essences.

[Anonymous No.14626393]

>>14626372
Yes and such provisional concepts allow us to generate sciences like chemistry, I understand. But I do not know what is meant by the phrase: necessarily true if it is true at all. We are trying to arrive at perfect definitions of all concepts, but if the concepts themselves are subject to revision, how can you say that any definition of an empirical concept is necessarily true, i.e. perfectly agrees with the object (which in this case is real water)?

[Anonymous No.14626399]

>>14626393
>necessarily true, i.e. perfectly agrees with the object
Not sure what you mean by that. Necessity in philosophy and modal logic has a specific technical definition.

[Anonymous No.14626426]

>>14626399
If by the statement “water is h2o is necessarily true” you mean that the definition of water is no longer subject to change, and that the real essence of water has been discovered, then you miss the meaning of an empirical concept, the real essence and therefore the complete definition of which cannot be known.

[Anonymous No.14626450]

>>14626426
That's not the statement that Kripke is asserting. Rather, it's:

"If Water = H2O then it is necessary that Water = H2O."

That's due to: the definition of identity ('='), the definition of necessity, and the fact that both sides of the identity are rigid designators (names). Identities between rigid designators that are true in any possible world are true in all possible worlds.

[Anonymous No.14626471]

>This article provides a good summary:

Kripke famously argues that because a rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds, an identity statement in which both designators are rigid must be necessarily true if it is true at all, even if the statement is not a priori. His classic example is the identity statement ‘Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus’, which is true, but which was discovered a posteriori to be true. ‘Hesperus’ is a name that was given to a heavenly body seen in the evening, and ‘Phosphorus’ is a name that was, unknown to the first users of the name, given to that same heavenly body seen in the morning. The heavenly body is Venus.

One might initially suppose that since the statement ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ was only discovered empirically to be true, it must be contingently true. But, says Kripke, it is necessarily true. The only respect in which it might have turned out false is not metaphysical but epistemic: thus, one could as well say of a geometrical theorem before it is proven that it might or might not turn out to be true or that it might or might not be provable without the parallels postulate. But if it is true and is provable without the parallels postulate, that is a matter of metaphysical necessity. In the same way, if the statement ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is true, that is a matter of metaphysical necessity.

‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is necessarily true if true at all because ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are proper names for the same object. Like other names, Kripke maintains, they are rigid: each designates just the object it actually designates in all possible worlds in which that object exists, and it designates nothing else in any possible world. The object that ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ name in all possible worlds is Venus. Since ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ both name Venus in all possible worlds, and since Venus = Venus in all possible worlds, ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is true in all possible worlds.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/

[Anonymous No.14626509]

>>14626450
The statement “water is h2o” is assertoric. I do not see how necessity can be wrangled from this, which would require some grounds which are not provided in any a posteriori assertion.

[Anonymous No.14626535]

>>14626509
>The statement “water is h2o” is assertoric. I do not see how necessity can be wrangled from this
The statement "2+2=2^2" is also assertoric. And yet, if it is true in any possible world (which it is: viz., ours), then it is true in every possible world. The terminology of Aristotelian logic was adequate for its time, but mathematics and logic have progressed exponentially since then.

[Anonymous No.14627924]

>>14626535
Not so. Mathematical statements are apodictic, which is to say that one does not need recourse to experience because the definitions of the concepts are already given prior to experience. For example, any large number has never been an experience for you, but its meaning is completely determined. On the other hand, assertoric statements require recourse to experience for the very definitions, as with the statement <Water is H2O>. Otherwise, we would expect the rules of chemistry to have been discovered as easily (relatively speaking) as those of geometry. No apodictic statement can be made about empirical concepts (e.g. water or its molecular constitution) for the very reason that its essence (unlike mathematical concepts) is never definitively determined before the facts, and it is the facts or real experiences which condition our judgments (assertoric) in this case, whereas such real experiences are unnecessary in mathematical judgments.

But let me address a complication. In the assertoric statement <Aristotle is alive>, I obviously need recourse experience to verify it. On the other hand, <Water is H2O>, also requires experience, but seems to be asserted in a different sense. You will have to ask me, in the first case, whether I mean that "being alive" is an essential predicate of Aristotle (by the mere form of the statement you could not tell), or that I mean that Aristotle is right now alive, and that the predicate is not essential. But if I say that I meant that "being alive" was an essential characteristic of the man, this gives it no more certainty than is given in the judgment as to the constitution of water. In a perfect world, I could know the conditions for both Aristotle and water, and so exactly determine what was essential to each and what was not. But instead I am reliant upon an incomplete knowledge of such conditions and do not know with any necessity the truth of any assertoric statement.

Now, when I look at the statement <Water is H2O>, with a view to the development of a science of chemistry, then I indeed act as though it is a statement of essence, because a science aims at a model of a given phenomenon as if the objects themselves were being constructed from a set of conditions and elements. But again, the fact that we have only a model which approximates to the real thing, is just what differentiates the science of chemistry from mathematics, since in the latter we do not rely upon experience to determine the concepts, because they are already exactly known. If pure sciences like mathematics were not unique in this respect, then to pair it with any other science (by which the latter inherits its rigor) would be like pairing chemistry with biology, which, it is easy to see, would be a highly conjectural affair.

[Anonymous No.14629323]

Blessed thread of knowledge. I don't remember the last time I witnessed a both civil and knowledgeable discussion on the internet.

[Anonymous No.14629431]

>>14626509
"Water is H2O" is knowledge. Imagine you know everything you know now except the fact that water is H2O. You know what you know about water, which is that clear liquid that comes out of your sink that starts to bubble when hot and hardens when cold. But let's say you chemistry teacher was a real stickler and he ran his class a bit like a full-immersion foreign language course and he refused to use any commonplace names for things. He just started with the elements and explained things from the electrons up. At no point was the fact that two hydrogens and one oxygen is also the same thing as what we call water! Then one day someone tells you that the symbol in the chemical equation you are working on actually names the same thing as the stuff sitting your cup and it dawns on you. This is new knowledge. This one sentence "water is H2O" is a new JUDGEMENT which you are now able to make. But wait, do you just believe this person? No the only way to really know is to take some oxygen and hydrogen and put it together and then see what happens. Maybe take a drink to see. So we can only JUSTIFY this knowledge a posteriori, that is, through experience. But now that we have a JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF we can ask if it was necessary or contingent. Could you, in some other world, have run the experiment and discovered that, wait, this stuff doesn't taste like water? Kripke is saying NO. Because when you started running the experiment you were ALREADY referring to [2 hydrogen + 1 oxygen] and when you drink water you were already referring to [clear liquid that boils and freezes at a certain temperature and pressure]. Those were ALREADY things you knew, namely: that the names you gave the things you gave actually referred. So when you get your new knowledge, the knowledge that they are the same thing, it was IMPOSSIBLE that those two could ever be different. Only if you fucked up BEFOREHAND and drank vodka like water would those two be different.

It's actually quite a subtle point. I have more to say about why it's actually wrong, but we'll save that for another day.

[Anonymous No.14629525]

>>14629431
Nothing new is being added to the object... only two concepts are found to be identical. If I already knew of the constitution of water (and even had names for what you call hydrogen and oxygen, even if I don't use these terms) then I would only have discovered that you call something by a different name than I, but my knowledge of the object is still the same. The only new thing I know is the name which you use to refer to it. This means that what takes place is no a posteriori judgment as concerns the object itself... but only the empirical and contingent judgment <you and I call a certain object by two different names>. What I change in my own cognition is merely the name which resides over a certain description (of the properties of water). But if you gave me your definition of H2O and it already fit my definition of water, then I could have found this out analytically and did not need to go through the process of making sure that we are referring to the same thing (and as I have repeatedly said, we can compare our concepts only formally, since we do not know the conditions by which water as a particular object is made possible). But if I require recourse to experience to verify that we are actually speaking of the same thing, then my judgment is entirely dependent upon experience and never unfalsifiable (necessary).

The "possible worlds" trick is quite clever but I think very confusing. We do not know anything a priori about the world except how it is conditioned by the form of our own experience. As for the laws of phenomenon, insofar as they deal with particular objects, these are attained merely by reflection and are by no means determinative of anything real. So if you say that <water could not have not been H2O> this is to pretend that we know something absolute about the conditions which lead to the composition of *particular* substances (for generally we only know that they must be substances); but we can say nothing definitive about what is really possible in the world as concerns the characteristics of empirical concepts...

If therefore two empirical concepts are found to be identical in their characteristics, any necessity attached to this judgment is strictly logical, which is to say it does not require recourse to experience and is therefore NOT a posteriori. It is as if to say, <this particular object is this particular object> or <whatever names are used as designations for this particular object are interchangeable>. What about any of this concerns any change as to actual objects and therefore constitutes a *real* addition to our knowledge, and not merely a formality?

[Anonymous No.14629765]

based thread this is why I go on lit

the causal theory of reference states that 'aristotle' is a rigid designator because of a long chain of connection from the original naming or "baptism" of aristotle to the present day usage.

But what if aristotle in fact didn't exist and was an amalgam of various greek thinkers synthesized into a fictional character? What would the designator refer to? Would it fail to refer?

[Anonymous No.14629884]

>>14629525
I think you're missing it. I'm just going to re-write my last post clearer. Then show me where I went wrong if I'm wrong.

First, you have to think of your knowledge as a finite list of judgements which you can subtract or add to. Take the list of judgements you have in your head. Subtract the one that says "water is H2O". Delete it from your mind (--in reality, it would be a whole family of judgements regarding your familiarity with the stuff coming out of your sink and what you learned in chemistry class). Keep the rest of your list exactly the same. Now, what does it take to get that judgement back?
>Find something that you definitely know is water. (1)
>Find something that you definitely know is H2O. (2)
>Test those two things in all kinds of ways until you are convinced they are identical. (3)
Okay, now we can finally add back "water is H2O" to our list of knowledge.
>Water is H2O. (4)
The crucial point is this: only AFTER this empirical process could you add "water is H2O" back to your list. You did not simply derive that fact analytically. If I present you with a clear liquid in a cup, you cannot tell me the atomic structure of whats inside. By contrast, you can tell me that it must be liquid since it's sloshing around and that it is clear and therefore will let light through. Those are all things that are more or less analytically derived from the concept of water that the earliest cavemen knew. On the other hand, you can have full mastery of the periodic table and how atoms come together and not tell me what any of these molecules look like when there is a cup of the stuff sitting on the table. Therefore, a posteriori.

Now we ask about the necessity of the statement. Couldn't it be that we did (1), (2), and (3) perfectly and got a different result? Conceivable right? Wrong. If it turns out that water is not H2O, or ~(4), that is because at some point BEFORE (4) we fucked up. We either fucked up at (1), at (2), or at (3) but we did fuck up. We either didn't actually have water, had contaminated our H2O so it wasn't H2O, or botched the test. But all those things would've taken place BEFORE (4). I didn't say do ~(1) and ~(3) but do (2) correctly. I said do them all correctly.

So, what Kripke is saying is that assuming we did (1), (2), and (3) CORRECTLY, we could not possibly have gotten a different result! It is IMPOSSIBLE that if we correctly identified water and correctly identified H2O and correctly did our tests that the result could have gone any other way. We would have had to have fucked up at some point beforehand. Therefore, the judgement which we have carefully singled out as (4) is NECESSARY.

In relation to the text, the only thing I really did here was simplify his idea rigid designation to not "fucking up". Don't fuck up, and you are GUARANTEED a result. But you still have to RUN THE EXPERIMENT.

[Anonymous No.14630152]

>>14629884
I will try to hit the critical point: <Water is H2O> is a synthetical, a posteriori judgment and therefore not made on any necessary grounds. It is not, as you know, deduced according to a logical or mathematical rule, otherwise we could say that it is a necessary judgment according to certain rules. Naturally, the only option left is to have recourse to experience, the rules of which we do not know a priori, and never with absolute certainty. There is no basis for necessity in any synthetic a posteriori judgment. To try to contrive this necessity after the fact by saying, well, we couldn't have reached any other conclusion, is (and this is I believe where Kripke loses his way) to pretend that we know the conditions for what happened, which we certainly do not, which is why we had to rely on experience.

[Anonymous No.14630812]

>>14630152
You're not actually making an argument here. You are just repeating the definition of synthetic and a posteriori. Kripke's point is that necessary truths and analytic truths are not the same set of truths. There are analytic truths that are not necessary, and there are necessary truths that are not analytic.

[Anonymous No.14630877]

>>14630152
one of kripke's points is that western philosophy has not properly distinguished several different distinctions, namely:

the analytic/synthetic distinction
the a priori/a posteriori distinction
the certain/uncertain distinction
the necessary/contingent distinction

most western philosophers run these together but they are different. analytic/synthetic is a matter primarily of language and the meaning of words. a priori/a posteriori are matters of how we come to know something. certainty/uncertainty is a psychological or epistemological distinction concerning our levels of confidence and doubt. necessity and contingency are metaphysical categories: something is necessarily true if it is not possible for it to be false.

your post begs the question against kripke by failing to distinguish these categories. for kripke, a metaphysically necessary truth needn't be made on epistemologically certain or a priori or analytic grounds

[Anonymous No.14630886]

>>14630812
Not that anon but how do you explain the kind of necessity Kripke and you accept in ontological terms, what kind of entities or properties do you have to postulate to back up the claim eg. Water is necessarily H2O.

[Anonymous No.14630892]

>>14624630
As someone who only reads Kant and never touched analytic philosophy the phrase "a posteriori necessity" triggers me.

[Anonymous No.14630894]

>>14625776
This is gay

[Anonymous No.14630926]

>>14630886
no fancy ontology is required. the basic idea is very simple:

1.necessarily, everything is identical to itself
2.necessarily, water is water (or, it is impossible for water to exist and not be water)
3.assume that water is H2O (this seems to be an empirical discovery we have made)
4.given 1, 2, and 3, necessarily, water is H2O

when the "is" in all these statements is read as the "is" of identity, not predication, the basic idea is obvious and simple. you only need the coherence of the concepts of necessity and identity

[Anonymous No.14630930]

>>14624285
I think I'd rather do math with math than try and do math with language.

[Anonymous No.14630982]

>>14630926
>1.necessarily, everything is identical to itself
I think that in order for your argument to work this premise shouldn't be interpreted as analytic, because if all you said is that we call water what we call water, your conclusion that water is H2O would just be an analytical necessity, a matter of definitions. In order for your argument to work, your first premise should be interpreted as making the stronger claim that there is such a thing as "waterness" which is identical with itself, which requires a version of essentialism, or realism about universals to back it up. Would you say this is a fair point?

[Anonymous No.14630995]

>>14630926
1.necessarily, everything is identical to itself
I think that in order for your argument to work this premise shouldn't be interpreted as analytic, because if all you said is that we call water what we call water, your conclusion that water is H2O would just be an analytical necessity, a matter of definitions. In order for your argument to work, your first premise should be interpreted as making the stronger claim that there is such a thing as "waterness" which is always the same, which requires a version of essentialism, or realism about universals to back it up. Would you say this is a fair point?

[Anonymous No.14630997]

>>14630926
So if I say </lit/ is a Christian board> this is supposed to be a necessary truth? As long as I have the word 'is' I can make anything a necessary truth? Is that what you're really saying?

Let me try:
1. Necessarily, everything is identical to itself.
2. Necessarily, your post is your post.
3. Assume that your post is false (this is an empirical discovery I seem to have made).
4. Given 1, 2, and 3, necessarily, your post is false.

[Anonymous No.14631027]

>>14630995
yes, the first premise is not a matter of language, it is a claim about things not words. you do need to assume that water exists (really exists, not just that we have a word "water") and is identical to itself. that doesn't presuppose realism about universals because plenty of nominalists agree that water exists. it doesn't even really require realism or materialism; Berkeley agrees that water exists, he just thinks its an idea in the mind of God. the argument also doesn't presuppose essentialism, it is an argument for essentalism. one standard history of analytic philosophy is that kripke revived essentialism and after it hametaphysics d been rejected by the positivists and quineans.

[Anonymous No.14631064]

>>14630997
>/lit/ is a Christian board
>your post is false
in both of these claims. the "is" is the "is" of predication, not identity. compare: "this apple is this apple" vs "this apple is red." compare "2 is 1 + 1" vs "2 is even." compare "mark twain is samuel clemens" vs "mark twain is a writer"

when kripke says "water is water" and "water is H2O" he means these as identity statements not predications

kripke's claim is that all true identity statements are necessarily true, not that all truths containing the word "is" are necessarily true, because sometimes "is" is used for predication not identity

[Anonymous No.14631079]

>>14631064
But this just invokes the problem of what the true identity of any "thing" is, and whether there even is an identity of any thing. How is this not naive rationalism?

[Anonymous No.14631080]

>>14625648
There is absolutely nothing skeptical about the Philosophical Investigations. Fucking hell, most of his >1930 thought had to do with destroying skeptical doubts (see On Certainty).

[Anonymous No.14631089]

>>14630926
>1.necessarily, everything is identical to itself

Did Wittgenstein retroactively got Kripe BTFO?

>216. "A thing is identical with itself."—There is no finer example of a useless proposition, which yet is connected with a certain play of the imagination. It is as if in imagination we put a thing into its own shape and saw that it fitted.

[Anonymous No.14631098]

>>14631064
But I have tested your post in all kinds of ways, and am convinced that your post is essentially false. Falseness and your post appear to be interchangeable.

[Anonymous No.14631114]

>>14631079
the concept of identity doesn't belong exclusively to naive rationalism. it's difficult to find any philosophers who reject it completely (there are disagreements about cases, but i can't think of any school of philosophy that discards the concept of identity completely; maybe deleuze but i'm not really sure). whether you agree that "water is H2O" is both true and an identity statement is a more controversial topic, but ultimately it's just an example and not really essential to kripke's point.

[Anonymous No.14631123]

>>14631098
you don't understand the difference between identity and predication. when i say "this apple is red" and "this fire hydrant is red" it doesn't follow that "this apple is this fire hydrant". the apple and the fire hydrant share a color, they aren't literally the same thing as that color. if my post is false and some other post is false, those posts do not become the same post. they just share a property. my post and falseness are not "interchangeable" in the sense of identity.

the difference between identity and predication is pretty basic and if you can't grasp it then you don't really have the linguistic competence to evaluate what kripke and really any philosophers are trying to say

[Anonymous No.14631141]

>>14631114
Plenty of philosophers reject identity as long as what you mean is that they reject the independent ontological status of identity. For example, any nominalist would say that there is no thing "water," no category or essence or whatever, that corresponds to our concept "water." A pragmatist would similarly say that all concepts are not just relative, but provisional.

Likewise anybody with a particular ontological theory, for example an ancient Greek who thinks that the only truly real thing is Parmenides' primordial "being" or Democritus' atoms, would say that "water" is not even real but ultimately an epiphenomenon of being or of atoms. They would thus be a nominalist at least with regard to all the things they think aren't primary, so for instance there would be no table, no car, no Socrates, because all these things are really mere epiphenomena of being or confluences of atoms.

As was noted above, the logical formalist approach retains the utility of talking about identity by simply saying it's only concerned with formal logical systems, not with what any given identity actually refers to (which is then handled pragmatically). Somewhat similarly the phenomenological approach says that we tend to think in terms of persistent logical identities, but it likewise brackets the question of whether those identities refer to anything in the real world.

What people are confused by is where Kripke falls in all this. I've just enumerated all the plausible positions I'm aware of that aren't simply naive rationalism, done in a more interesting and more self-conscious way by Leibniz.

[Anonymous No.14631145]

>>14631027
I think your argument very much presupposes some ontologically strong claims. I would argue that the concept of something being identical with itself (in a non-analytical, ontologically substantial sense) requires the acceptance of substances, if it is applied to particulars, and the notion of essences, if it is applied to universals. For example the idea that a drop of water is always identical with itself requires it having a "hidden core" that remains unchanged in spite of the empirical transformations it may go through (the drop of water may evaporate etc.). Similarly, the claim that waterness is always identical with itself requires the existence of the an unchangeable essence of water. If you don't accept these then your ontology can't support any notion of identity stronger than logical necessity.

[Anonymous No.14631202]

>>14631141
nominalism is not committed to the claim that water does not exist. nominalists reject the existence of the Platonic form of water, the universal waterness, abstract things like that, but water itself--the wet stuff in the oceans, the stuff that comes out of your tap--they absolutely believe that that stuff exists and is identical to itself.

a pragmatist might say that "all concepts are relative and provisional" but water isn't a concept, it's something in the world.

maybe Parmenides would say that water doesn't exist, but the One exists and is identical to itself, so he still accepts the concept of identity.

i think atomists like democritus believe that water is real, they just think it is a certain compound of atoms (even the claim that water is H2O can be understood as a distant relative of atomism). but if we accept your interpretation, they still believe in identity: each atom exists and is identical to itself. the idea that only atoms (and not the things they compose) are real (i.e. mereological nihilism) has some defenders (peter unger at one time, trenton merricks, sort of van inwagen), but it's not a rejection of identity, it's a rejection of composition

so far, none of these positions provides any reason to reject kripke's general claim that all true identity statements are necessarily true, they just disagree about what the true identity statements are

[Anonymous No.14631220]

>>14631123
Your water argument follows the same steps...

Water has such and such characteristics
H2O has such and such characteristics
Therefore Water = H2O is necessarily true

How is your argument different than:
>"this apple is red" and "this fire hydrant is red" therefore "this apple is this fire hydrant"

[Anonymous No.14631260]

>>14631202
There are different kinds of nominalists but yeah, I'll grant you that a nominalist might have all kinds of beliefs about what real things "really are." The basic issue is just whether our concepts (literally, our "names," hence nominalism) correspond to them in any one-to-one way, as if our minds are just mirrors of real essences out in reality.

>so far, none of these positions provides any reason to reject kripke's general claim that all true identity statements are necessarily true, they just disagree about what the true identity statements are
I'm not rejecting Kripke's position, I'm asking what it even is in the first place. All the stuff you said doesn't get around the basic issue that all of the thinkers I mentioned are SCEPTICAL WITH REGARD TO THE IDENTITIES OF THINGS OUTSIDE THE MIND (WHICH POSITS IDENTITIES). Parmenides has only ONE valid identity statement in his entire, ultra-rationalist philosophy ("being is"), and everything else is illusory. Is that what Kripke is doing? I doubt it, so what the fuck is he doing?

The reason I enumerated the examples above wasn't to get into some side debate about whether Democritus is sceptical with regard to water's wetness or whatever. I am simply making the point: all of these people take a stand on what the real metaphysical simples that make up reality actually are. They all have reasons for why they can say "there is no real identity in nature corresponding to your mental concept of a dog; a dog is just atoms" or "there is no real identity corresponding to Richard Nixon; Nixon is just an illusory epiphenomenon of the Absolute."

But Kripke seems to want to defend a fairly conventional account of logical realism in which "Richard Nixon" is a valid essence. That's why I enumerated the other positions under which this is actually possible:
- formalism (which is indifferent to Richard Nixon's REAL metaphysical make-up)
- pragmatism (there's something like a Nixon, but language only "points at" him and lets us get along in the world)
- nominalism (see above)
- phenomenology (there's something like a Nixon, but we're not interested in what he "really" is; we're simply interested in how our mind seems to operate by means of concepts like "Nixon")

So you're saying Kripke is neither a formalist, nor a pragmatist nor a nominalist, nor a phenomenologist. So concepts aren't just in the mind for him. Fine. Then where are they? What is the ONTOLOGICAL status of the concept "Richard Nixon"? "Where" is it, metaphysically? I don't understand why people are being so evasive about this.

[Anonymous No.14631342]

>>14631220
>Water has such and such characteristics
>H2O has such and such characteristics

these are not reasonable paraphrases of the premises in the argument because, again, they confuse identity and predication.

when i say "this apple is red and shiny" i am attributing to the apple various characteristics, namely its being red and shiny. this is predication. when, instead, i utter the phrase "this apple is this apple" i am not attributing to it a characteristic, i am making a claim about its identity. for instance "mark twain is samuel clemens" is not predicating a property to mark twain. it is, instead, like the claim "mark twain and samuel clemens are the same person" or "the names 'mark twain' and 'samuel clemens' refer to the same person" or "there is one person named both 'mark twain' and 'samuel clemens'"

"water is H2O" is not a predication, it is the identity claim. you can replace it with "water and H2O are the same thing" or "there is one thing that is named both 'water' and 'H2O'." when i say "this apple is red" you cannot replace that with "this apple and red are the same thing" or "there is one thing that is named both 'this apple' and 'red'" this apple and the color red are obviously not the same thing

you have trouble with the idea that the english word "is" functions in different ways in different sentences and if you still don't understand then i'm not sure how it can be explained to you

[Anonymous No.14631364]

>>14631342
I'm asking, what is the basis for this unique identity claim <Water is H2O>? You said that we determine their identity on the basis of common characteristics, no? And not on any determination a priori that the one must be identical with the other.

[Anonymous No.14631366]

>>14631342
>i utter the phrase "this apple is this apple" i am not attributing to it a characteristic, i am making a claim about its identity. for instance "mark twain is samuel clemens" is not predicating a property to mark twain. it is, instead, like the claim "mark twain and samuel clemens are the same person" or "the names 'mark twain' and 'samuel clemens' refer to the same person" or "there is one person named both 'mark twain' and 'samuel clemens'"

That's all fine and good, but where is Kripke claiming that this "shared" identity takes place? Is he saying that a formal logical system can use any name (William, Bill, Billy, and Willy are all the same person, so pick whichever you like)? Or is he saying that the mind is capable of attributing multiple names to a single "thing" (the phenomenological point)? Both of these are uninteresting, so it can't be either.

And if he's saying that "the North Star" is the same identity as "Venus" he's just wrong, because that relies on a metaphysics of truth-reference that might as well be medieval for how simplistic it is. So it can't be this either.

[Anonymous No.14631384]

Never got too into krippy. I lost interest in that style of philosophy years ago. The concept of a "rigid designator" is neat though.

[Anonymous No.14631388]

>>14631260
>They all have reasons for why they can say "there is no real identity in nature corresponding to your mental concept of a dog; a dog is just atoms"

here's another way to understand atomism "there IS a real identity in nature corresponding to your mental concept of a dog; a dog is just atoms." in other words, atomists don't accept the claim that there are no dogs or that the concept of identity doesn't apply to dogs. they believe that dogs exist and are self-identical, but they have a theory about their nature: dogs are collections of atoms. each dog is identical to some collection of atoms. since those collections of atoms are real and exist, so do dogs.

kripke is doing two things. first, he is making the general point that all true identity statements are necessarily true. this point is neutral on what the true identity statements are and on the various ontological questions you are asking. second, he thinks that when it comes to observable things like water, empirical science provides the best account of their nature. so, if chemistry delivers the result that water is H2O, then kripke agrees. combining this with the first move, you get the result that necessarily, water is H2O.

so far i don't think either claim takes a stand on the ontological questions you are asking. if you're curious about kripke's larger commitments, he seems to a realist and a dualist of some kind, roughly like aristotle or descartes

[Anonymous No.14631403]

>>14631141
It really reminds me of Scholastic Metaphysics, if you accept Substances and Essences Kripkean necessities suddenly make perfect sense.

[Anonymous No.14631432]

>>14631388
I don't understand the sense in which you think the atomist would think that dogs have independent reality. Everything that isn't an atom would be epiphenomenal, "holisms" (differentiated collections of atoms) have no independent ontological status, and their differentiaton is merely heuristic, i.e. it is nominalist. For the record, I think this is dumb. But it's what a classical atomist would say.

The whole point is that an atomist would say "sure, from a certain point of view, that's a dog; but really, it's just a blur of atoms connected to other atoms. It's completely arbitrary where you draw the boundary of 'self-identity'. We have conventional reasons for wanting to regard the dog as a sort of physically discrete unit of some kind, separate from the ground it stands on and the air it breathes and lives in. But those are convention only."

What Kripke seems to be doing according to you is saying "that dog over there is a 'dog', in a meaningful ontological sense; and this resolves down into atoms." But that's just what he can't do, if he's a consistent atomist. That would be giving independent ontological status (without justifying it or defining its boundaries!) to the holism, "that dog over there, as a discrete physical fuzzy thing distinct from the air and earth and so on."

So I keep coming back to: is he a nominalist or a realist? If he's a nominalist, he has no problem. He can offload "whence the concept 'dog'?" to the pragmatists and to natural science, and simply deal with "well, either way, we seem to have the concept 'dog', so let's do some logic with it (and let the pragmatist check the results)." If he's a realist, he has to be a pretty strong and systematic one for any of this to make sense, but I see no system.

This is brought out well in your reference to Descartes and Aristotle. I can hardly think of more opposed forms of realism. Descartes thinks non-mental, non-conceptual "matter" is pure extension. In a sense he's the most radical atomist and radical nominalist ever: external reality is simply abstract, quantified force, and mind (with all its concepts and affects) merely bumps up against it. But Aristotle is (at least on most readings) a hylomorphic realist who thinks there really IS a "dog" out there, that there are organizing essence-substance-concepts IN THE WORLD ITSELF. Descartes hated the Aristotelians for this reason (among others).

>>14631403
Yes I agree with that entirely. That's the point I and the other guy (you?) seem to be getting at, especially in his/your post here >>14631145

But the problem with this is obvious. Scholastic metaphysics rests on a whole Aristotelian (and actually neo-Platonist as well) substance-ontological, foundationalist framework that we would no longer accept.

If he's a more Cartesian style dualist, he ends up with the phenomenalism of Newton and Kant: "who knows what the real world is? I just know it's out there; I'm locked in here with my concepts."

[Anonymous No.14631454]

>>14631364
>what is the basis for this unique identity claim <Water is H2O>?
empirical observations of the kind performed in chemistry and physics

>>14631366
>where is Kripke claiming that this "shared" identity takes place?
not sure what this means. do identities take place? is there a place where they do so? i don't think kripke makes any claims about this

he is saying: all true identity statements are necessarily true. then he is saying: "Venus is the North Star" is a true identity statement, one that was discovered by doing astronomy. it then follows that "Venus is the North Star" is a necessary truth. it's true that the words "venus" and "the north star" are not the same, and that our psychological concepts of venus and the north star are not the same. despite that, unbeknownst to us, we named one and the same planet both "Venus" and "the North Star," so it's true that venus is the north star. you might think that this is obvious and boring but it is interesting because other philosophers (hume, kant, quine, etc.) thought that it was impossible for there to a posteriori necessities

[Anonymous No.14631457]

>>14631145
>I would argue that the concept of something being identical with itself
Jumping in here, haven't been following the thread so I'm partly bullshitting.

Isn't that a tautology that a thing is identical with itself? What about the identity of indiscernibles? A thing cannot be discerned from itself. Also any empirical definition of identity must account for stateful identity. Your example of water is inadequate because the drop of water is merely a phase of its constituent H20 molecules. The droplet is a perceptual illusion, as the droplet itself has no coherent boundaries. As it drips it fragments as its surface tension is broken by the air. It never has a singular unity if examined at the molecular level. From the perspective of fluid dynamics it is the molecular level which is ontologically valid.

A single h20 particle does not have the properties of wetness. Water is a designator for collections of particles which themselves do not have the properties of water, an emergent phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.14631482]

>>14631454
"the north star" here should really be "the morning star" or "the evening star" but whatever

[Anonymous No.14631537]

>>14631432
i think you attribute a lot of extra assumptions to atomists that they are not committed to just in virtue of their atomism. various claims about language and concepts. atomism is just a claim about what exists (atoms and void and things composed thereof). it's not a claim about how language and concepts map on to what exists. lucretius makes plenty of claims about people and animals and he is still an atomist. there are various more or less natural ways to distinguish the collection of atoms that make up a dog from the atoms that compose its environment that could justify a pretty robust realism about dogs even if you're an atomist. you could read peter van inwagen's "material beings" for one such example

anyway, kripke is coming at things from a different direction. his methodology is different. he doesn't start with an ontology. he was a logician before he was a metaphysician. he starts with a fairly neutral claim that all identities are necessary. he then looks to see what are the true identities and it looks like the natural sciences have delivered a few: water is H2O, Hesperus is Phosphorus, Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens and so on. whatever ontology he then might go on to endorse would be constrained by his acceptance of these necessary identities. this is why, for example, he is a dualist, because he thinks he is not necessarily identical to his body, in which case he is not actually identical to his body, etc. similarly, he would not accept any view on which being necessary and being a priori are the same thing.

i'm not sure where this need to fit him into some already existing ontological framework that you understand and are comfortable with comes from, or why it's a problem for his views if you cannot do so

[Anonymous No.14631548]

>>14631454
>do identities take place?
What Kripke's answer to this is, is precisely what's unclear to several people I think.

Kripke is saying "identity is such and such" or "the nature of identity is such and such." OK, then the natural question I want to ask Kripke is: "What do you mean? In the real, rational scheme of nature? Or in our minds? Or just in language? Or in some formal system you're coming up with, with linguistically-given axioms that don't need to be proved?"

>he is saying: all true identity statements are necessarily true.
Necessarily according to what? What is this logical necessity? Again, is this an epistemology ("this is necessarily true as a built-in part of how our minds process reality)", or a metaphysical rationalism ("this is necessarily true in nature itself")?

>despite that, unbeknownst to us, we named one and the same planet both "Venus" and "the North Star," so it's true that venus is the north star.
So it is a nominalism, and has nothing to do with what Venus actually is? It has to do with how our naming conventions (on the one hand for Venus, on the other for "the North Star") coincided, not with them being the same "object" for realsies in nature (independent of us making this determination).

>you might think that this is obvious and boring but it is interesting because other philosophers (hume, kant, quine, etc.) thought that it was impossible for there to a posteriori necessities
This only seems to be interesting if you have a very weird, logicist definition of a posteriority and of necessity. Something becomes "necessarily true" after the fact of its having been decided (culturally, pragmatically, "grammatically," that is behind the scenes of logic) that it is true. But there was still a historical moment at which people began meaning the same thing by two different terms, although they maybe didn't realize it. That doesn't tell us anything new about necessity derived from empirical observation, which is what the whole contingency of a posteriori judgments thing was really about.

[Anonymous No.14631566]

>>14631548
> is this an epistemology ("this is necessarily true as a built-in part of how our minds process reality)", or a metaphysical rationalism ("this is necessarily true in nature itself")?
metaphysics, not epistemology. there is no possible world where water is something other than H2O, in every world where Venus exists the Morning Star also exists, etc. but not rationalism either; these identities were discovered empirically not a priori.

>So it is a nominalism, and has nothing to do with what Venus actually is? It has to do with how our naming conventions (on the one hand for Venus, on the other for "the North Star") coincided, not with them being the same "object" for realsies in nature (independent of us making this determination).
it's neutral on the nominailsm question. it concerns both the word "Venus" and the planet Venus, namely the word "Venus" names the same planet that the phrase "the Evening star" refers to. our naming conventions determine the meaning of those words, but they do not determine the reality, nature and identity of the planet that those words name; that planet would exist regardless of what we call it. he is describing the interaction between language and the world, not just one or the other.

[Anonymous No.14631581]

>>14631537
It is a claim about those things if we're talking about classical, thoroughgoing atomists, because they were explicitly anti-realist with regard to anything other than atoms. It's like saying I'm importing extra assumptions into my discussion of radical nondualists, who are extremely explicit about the fact that nothing is ultimately real except the One, when I say that everything that isn't the One, every discursive definition or conceptual differentiation, is necessarily maya, doxa, illusion, opinion. I'm sure there are nuanced versions of these ideas, but fundamentally that is pretty much nondualism. Atomists in general would NOT allow that a dog's "dogness" has ontological status other than in convention (the "language and concepts" you refer to).

>he doesn't start with an ontology. he was a logician before he was a metaphysician.
>fit him into some already existing ontological framework
This is what is weirding the non-logicists out. You can't "start with logic, absent an ontology." Logic entails ontology, if you are talking about what "is" in the world, let alone what "is" of necessity. If you say that the "nature of identity simply is that it does the following things," you are ontologically committed to some kind of thing called identity, some kind of way of being like substance or essence (in order to define identity), etc.

You, other logicists ITT, and Kripke presumably, are all doing this weird (to others) thing where you say that you have no ontology whatsoever, but then go right ahead and legislate "what" "is" "rational," all loaded terms that require interpretive frameworks (built of further, nested assumptions about what "is") in order to mean anything.

As was said mentioned a little bit, the scholastics can do this just fine, because they at least have a metaphysics. If I ask them "what is this rational definition of rationality, exactly? Where does it come from? How do you know it?" they can say "God" or "nature's innate rational structure." Kripke can't do that, and just gestures to "logic," apparently? But the question in the first place is "whence logic?"

>>14631566
But then we come back to the same problem, originally asked by someone (not me) way above: How is this not just a really shit version of something Wittgenstein, pragmatists, and dozens of others did way way better? It's just nominalism + some kind of weak scientific empiricist realism. As I said in a recent post, this doesn't reveal anything about the logical structure of our minds or of the world. All it reveals is that definitions change over time, and make sense to us. Wittgenstein expresses this "a posteriori necessity" thing much more subtly, simply by saying that "concepts" are actually intersubjectively stabilized fuzzy designators, porous to conceptual change or drift, and capable of being equated with or differentiated from other concepts based on different contexts.

[Anonymous No.14631662]

>>14631457
>Isn't that a tautology that a thing is identical with itself?
It can be a tautology or it can be a substantial ontological proposition, as evidenced from your attempt to argue against it in your post. You can't argue against tautologies.
>Your example of water is inadequate because the drop of water is merely a phase of its constituent H20 molecules. The droplet is a perceptual illusion, as the droplet itself has no coherent boundaries. As it drips it fragments as its surface tension is broken by the air. It never has a singular unity if examined at the molecular level. From the perspective of fluid dynamics it is the molecular level which is ontologically valid.
The paragraph you are responding to isn't me stating my own position, I am just describing the kind of ontological commitments you need to have to believe in supralinguistic identities ("real" identities, not just tautologies).

[Anonymous No.14631689]

>>14631581
I guess there are some pretty basic questions about philosophical methodology here but it is by no means obvious that logic presupposes ontology more than ontology presupposes logic (the law of non-contradiction seems more fundamental than most ontological claims). maybe its useful to boil your disagreement with kripke down to this level. you would probably understand him better in the context of his tradition (frege, russell, carnap, quine, wittgenstein) than by importing assumptions about the metastructure and methodology of philosophy that are foreign to his thinking, or maybe this is, for you, his fundamental error

good discussion but too much time wasted for me, I’m going to bow out

[Anonymous No.14631712]

>>14631537
>kripke is coming at things from a different direction. his methodology is different. he doesn't start with an ontology. he was a logician before he was a metaphysician. he starts with a fairly neutral claim that all identities are necessary.
But this has nothing to do with logic, you said it yourself that Kripkean identities are synthetical, not analytical. You are saying that there are things that are by their nature identical with themselves, you are doing ontology.

[Anonymous No.14631736]

>>14631689
Yeah I won't natter you if you want to cut it off, but I will say as a concluding statement that we definitely disagree, and this is exactly what Wittgenstein was trying to explode in his own work. Logic can't be self-standing unless you're some kind of really committed platonist.

For the record though:
>frege, russell, carnap, quine, wittgenstein
Frege is the only one here who fits the bill as a "logic is logic is logic, now fuck off!" guy, and he didn't fare well. Russell was already considering intuitionism in 1894, and has a proto-grammatical understanding of logic by his mature period. Carnap is a self-conscious formalist who wants to save Frege, partly by ridding him of the problematic platonist assumptions of "logic is just logic!" Quine is a pragmatist, and Wittgenstein is the ultimate destroyer of the "logic is logic" worldview. Half of the words ever written by Wittgenstein are imaginary responses by logicist interlocutors going "But surely...!," to which Wittgenstein replies "nope, think about it nigga."

Boole wasn't a logicist in this vein either, he was a formalist. There are VERY few logicists of the kind that you want. Most of the Vienna positivists weren't even logicists like this. It's basically Frege, a few self-conscious platonists in the 19th century (Herbart? idk), and generations of unreflective analytic philosophy undergraduates who simply never think about the grounds of their ideas.

Honestly though it is hermeneutically fucking fascinating to me how common this view is. I always read later Wittgenstein with this feeling of "why does this even need to be said??? Who the fuck is this not obvious to???" and I have to be reminded that there ARE Fregean logicists out there who think logic simply IS, but that this is NOT a metaphysical position. Blows my fucking mind. I am not even trying to be a douche here, it really is just like one of the moments Wittgenstein talks about in On Certainty: "this person is simply an enigma to me."

>>14631712
Yeah exactly.

[Anonymous No.14632906]

Wow. Is this the first actual philosophy thread on /lit/ to receive more than 10 posts?

[Anonymous No.14633134]

>>14624331
All of his books are transcripts of lectures he gave spontaneously

[Anonymous No.14633262]

>>14625776
>The name "Richard Nixon" contingently (unrigidly) denotes the 37th president of USA (because it might as well have been somebody else), but, on the other hand, the name "Richard Nixon" necessarily (i.e. rigidly, i.e. in all possible worlds) denotes the man Richard Nixon (because Nixon is necessarily himself and nobody else).

You’ve got it backwards if you’re trying to explain Kripke’s view.

Kripke thinks all proper names rigidly designate. So “Richard Nixon” refers to Richard Nixon in every possible world.

But he thinks definite descriptions, like “the 37th president of USA”, aren’t rigid because although that refers to Richard Nixon in the actual world, there are possible worlds where “the 37th president of USA” refers to someone else.

A referring term can’t sometimes designate rigidly and sometimes not, as you suggest is the case with “Richard Nixon”.

He also argues that proper names can’t just be disguised definite descriptions for modal reasons.

[Anonymous No.14634219]

>>14633262
wtf didnt you just repeat what he wrote?

[Anonymous No.14634587]

>>14634219
No

>The name "Richard Nixon" contingently (unrigidly) denotes
>but, on the other hand, the name "Richard Nixon" necessarily (i.e. rigidly, i.e. in all possible worlds) denotes

This is wrong. The name refers/denotes rigidly only.

"the 37th president of USA" also refers (in the actual world to the same thing as "Richard Nixon" refers/denotes) but unrigidly because it could refer to different people in different possible worlds.

[Anonymous No.14634611]

I had to read some of his shit for uni. It's boring as fuck nigga

[Anonymous No.14634620]

>>14633262
>So “Richard Nixon” refers to Richard Nixon in every possible world.

can YOU explain why/how this happens? what is the locus of this reference? a formal system, a transcendental comportment, or the logico-rational scheme of reality?

[Anonymous No.14634750]

>>14634620
What do you mean by "locus"? Are you asking for an explanation of why proper names are rigid designators (refer to the same thing in every possible world)? It's nothing to do with formal systems (not sure what those other two disjuncts you suggest are even supposed to mean).

You need to understand Kripke's notion of rigid designation as part of a project that really started with Frege and Russell. We want a theory of meaning that models how language and communication work. Part of this larger theory of meaning is a theory of reference: how words/phrases refer to (or denote) parts of the world.

The dominant theory of reference for proper names was Fregean descriptivism: names refer to things by being shorthand for descriptions. For example, "Aristotle" = "the teacher of Plato". The man Aristotle attached to the name "Aristotle" because the man satisfies the description "the teacher of Plato". A name JUST IS a definite description in disguise. Kripke argues that this can't be right because when we talk in modal terms (about necessity/possibility), names and definite descriptions can refer differently.

So to use the Nixon example, "the 37th president of the USA" refers to whoever is the 37th president in whatever possible world under discussion. In our actul world it refers to Nixon, but it would refer to someone else if they were president in the possible world under discussion.

But we have a way to refer to Nixon which would still refer to him even if in the possible world under discussion he didn't become president and was just a farmer. Kripke thinks this is coherent: we can talk about the same person, even if their history were completely different in another possible world, because he's an essentialist. When we say the name "Richard Nixon" in our world we refer to the man who could have become a farmer, who could have died at age 10, but who actually became president.

So Kripke just thinks its absolutely coherent and fine to talk about a particular person even their history was different (we do this all the time, just as I did above, and it makes sense). He's trying to model and understand how that use of language is working, and he uses the apparatus of rigid designation to try and clarify what's going on. There are obviously metaphysical commitments, but it's not overly dependent on any concept of "reality" as think you're suggesting.

[Anonymous No.14634762]

>>14634620
>>14634750
stanford encyclopedia is quite good on this too. Hopefully this helps:

>How about essentialism? Whether we want to say that rigidity or transworld identity is committed on that score might well depend on the form of essentialism in question. Not many philosophers would dispute Cartwright's observation that “‘Shakespeare’ is rigid only if the man Shakespeare could not have existed without being Shakespeare—or as we might equally well say, only if it is essential to Shakespeare that he is Shakespeare” (Cartwright 1998, p. 69). So if Shakespeare could have been Obama instead of Shakespeare, ‘Shakespeare’ would not be rigid.

>But even if appeals to the rigidity of a name like ‘Shakespeare’ (or related appeals to the transworld identity of Shakespeare) cannot be divorced from essentialist commitments like the forgoing, such appeals will not commit us to much at all about what a designatum is essentially like with respect to the various possible worlds in which it exists to serve as the designatum: whether Shakespeare could have been a brute, say, or had different parents (matters over which Kripke tellingly disagrees with, say, Plantinga: Kripke 1980, pp. 110ff; Plantinga 1974, pp. 65ff).

>It is far from clear then, that transworld identity and the rigidity that depends on it come attached to substantive essentialism of a sort that settles salient disputes in philosophy about which of your properties are essential to you.