Property Identities and Modal Arguments
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Dualism Vs. Materialism: a Response to Paul Churchland
Dualism vs. Materialism: A Response to Paul Churchland by M. D. Robertson Paul M. Churchland, in his book, Matter and Consciousness, provides a survey of the issues and positions associated with the mind-body problem. This problem has many facets, and Churchland addresses several of them, including the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and methodological aspects of the debate. Churchland, of course, has very strong views on the subject, and does not hide his biases on the matter. In this paper I shall reexamine the metaphysical aspect of the mind-body problem. The metaphysical question concerns the existential status of the mind and the body, and the nature of the relationship between them. Like Churchland, I shall not hide my biases on the matter. What follows may be thought of as a rewriting of the second chapter of Churchland's book ("The Ontological Issue") from a non-naturalistic perspective. Substance Dualism René Descartes argued that the defining characteristic of minds was cogitation in a broad 2 sense, while that of bodies was spatial extension. Descartes also claimed that minds were not spatially extended, nor did bodies as such think. Thus minds and bodies were separate substances. This view has come to be called substance dualism. Descartes's argument for substance dualism can be summarized as follows: (1) Minds exist. (2) Bodies exist. (3) The defining feature of minds is cogitation. (4) The defining feature of bodies is extension. (5) That which cogitates is not extended. (6) That which is extended does not cogitate. Therefore, (7) Minds are not bodies, and bodies are not minds. -
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: l The Semantics and Metaphysics of Rigid Designators by Parvaneh Ghazineghad A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy Memorial University of Newfoundland June 2010 St.John's Newfoundland Abstract The aim of this research is to evaluate the relationship between Kripke' s semantical doctrines about proper names and his metaphysical doctrines about essence . Throughout Naming and Necessity, Kripke claims that his semantical doctrines have substantive metaphysical consequences. The assessment of this relationship is important, since the metaphysical consequences of semantics and vice versa are often regarded with suspicion. Semantics concerns the relationship between language and the world, and metaphysics is about the world itself. The claim that the way we picture the world imposes some constraints on the world i odd enough to deserve suspicion. My aim in thi work i try to how how the relationship between semantics and the metaphysics of essence can be explained by the concept of a rigid designator. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 I. RIGID DESIGN A TORS AND PROPER NAMES 1.1. Definition 8 1.2. Some Primary Remarks 10 1.3. Different Kinds of Rigid Designators 11 1.3.1. Strong and Weak Rigidity 11 1.3.2. De jure and de facto Rigidity 11 1.3.3. Obstinate and Persistent Rigidity 12 1.4. Rigidity and Proper Names 13 1.4.1. The basis of Kripke's Claim on the Rigidity of Proper Names 15 1.5. Intuitive Test for Rigidity 17 1.6. -
DESIGNATION and IDENTITY* If an Object Can Be Identified in One Set Of
DESIGNATION AND IDENTITY* MARIO F. DEL CARRIL Georgetown University Washington, D. C. If an object can be identified in one set of circumstances according to one criterion of identity, for example, spatio- temporal continuity, and it can be identified in another set of circumstances according to another criterion of identity, for example having the same parts in the same relative place, can a proper name that designates that object designate the same object in all possible worlds in which it designates? It has been suggested that this is not possihle," largue in this paper that this suggestion is wrong. Context sensitive criteria of identity do not generate hypothetical situ- ations that are incompatible with Saul Kripke's semantical account of proper names, However, the suggestion I am con- testing is based on an intuition as to how we would use proper names in hypothetical circumstances that involve dominant and recessive criteria of identity. I try to explain the basis of this intuition, and I also try to show why it should lead us to accept a "referential" or "quasidemostrative" account of some uses of a proper name. An account which is similar in some respects to Keith Donnellan's concept of a referential use of a definite description. I According to Kripke definite descriptions and proper names designate in different ways. In the case of definite descrip- • 1 am grateful to Howard Rolston for his helpful criticisms of this papero 1 Hugh S. Chandler, "Rigid Designation", The Iournal 01 Philo&ophy, No. 13, JuIy 1975. 57 tions truth conditions both establish and maintain the relation of designation," Not so in the case of proper names. -
Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not The
PUTNAM’S THEORY OF NATURAL KINDS AND THEIR NAMES IS NOT THE SAME AS KRIPKE’S IAN HACKING Collège de France Abstract Philosophers have been referring to the “Kripke–Putnam” theory of natural- kind terms for over 30 years. Although there is one common starting point, the two philosophers began with different motivations and presuppositions, and developed in different ways. Putnam’s publications on the topic evolved over the decades, certainly clarifying and probably modifying his analysis, while Kripke published nothing after 1980. The result is two very different theories about natural kinds and their names. Both accept that the meaning of a natural- kind term is not given by a description or defining properties, but is specified by its referents. From then on, Putnam rejected even the label, causal theory of reference, preferring to say historical, or collective. He called his own approach indexical. His account of substance identity stops short a number of objections that were later raised, such as what is called the qua problem. He came to reject the thought that water is necessarily H2O, and to denounce the idea of metaphysical necessity that goes beyond physical necessity. Essences never had a role in his analysis; there is no sense in which he was an essentialist. He thought of hidden structures as the usual determinant of natural kinds, but always insisted that what counts as a natural kind is relative to interests. “Natural kind” itself is itself an importantly theoretical concept, he argued. The paper also notes that Putnam says a great deal about what natural kinds are, while Kripke did not. -
Why Rigid Designation Cannot Stand on Scientific Ground
Why Rigid Designation Cannot Stand on Scientific Ground Erik Curiel ABSTRACT I do not think the notion of rigidity in designation can be correct, at least not in any way that can serve to ground a semantics that purports both to be fundamental in a semiotical sense and to respect the best science of the day. A careful examination of both the content and the character of our best scientific knowledge not only cannot support anything like what the notion of rigidity requires, but actually shows the notion to be, at bottom, incoherent. In particular, the scientific meaning of natural kind terms can be determined only within the context of a fixed scientific framework and not sub specie æternitatis. Along the way, I provide grounds for the rejection of essentialist views of the ontology of natural kinds, and discuss the dangers of the casual deployment of thought experiments in philosophy. Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Rigidity 3 3 Water and H2O 4 3.1 What Is Water?.......................................4 3.2 What Is H2O?........................................6 4 Water Is Not H2O; H2O Is Not H2O 7 4.1 Twin Earth Is Not Possible................................8 4.2 An Embarrassment of Theories.............................. 11 4.3 Earth Is Silicates, Calcites, Carbonates and Nitrates.................. 15 4.4 A Place for Natural Kinds................................. 18 5 The Scientific Taha¯fut al-Fala¯sifa; Or, The Perfidy of Examples 19 1 Why Rigid Designation Cannot Stand Rationalists, wearing square hats, Think, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves To right-angled triangles. -
The Mystery of David Chalmers
Daniel C. Dennett The Mystery of David Chalmers 1. Sounding the Alarm ‘The Singularity’ is a remarkable text, in ways that many readers may not appreciate. It is written in an admirably forthright and clear style, and is beautifully organized, gradually introducing its readers to the issues, sorting them carefully, dealing with them all fairly and with impressive scholarship, and presenting the whole as an exercise of sweet reasonableness, which in fact it is. But it is also a mystery story of sorts, a cunningly devised intellectual trap, a baffling puzzle that yields its solution — if that is what it is (and that is part of the mystery) — only at the very end. It is like a ‘well made play’ in which every word by every character counts, retrospectively, for something. Agatha Christie never concocted a tighter funnel of implications and suggestions. Bravo, Dave. Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2013 So what is going on in this essay? It purports to be about the pros- pects of the Singularity, and since I can count on readers of my essay For personal use only -- not for reproduction to have read Chalmers, I needn’t waste so much as a sentence on what that is or might be. See Chalmers (2010). I confess that I was initially repelled by the prospect of writing a commentary on this essay since I have heretofore viewed the Singularity as a dismal topic, involving reflections on a technological fantasy so far removed from actuality as to be an indulgence best resisted. Life is short, and there are many serious problems to think about. -
Richard Swinburne's Arguments for Substance Dualism
Richard Swinburne’s arguments for substance dualism. MA by Research in Theology and Religion David Horner September 2018 Richard Swinburne’s arguments for substance dualism. Submitted by David Horner to the University of Exeter as a dissertation for the degree of MA by Research in Theology and Religion in September 2018 This dissertation is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the dissertation may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this dissertation which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. 1 Acknowledgements. I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Jonathan Hill and Dr Joel Krueger for their support and encouragement in the writing of this dissertation and for their patience in trying to keep me on the straight and narrow. I want to acknowledge the many conversations, on this and other topics, I have had with my friend and philosopher, Dr Chris Boyne, who sadly died in June of this year. I thank all my other chums at The Bull, Ditchling, for listening to my metaphysical ramblings. And finally, I thank my wife, Linda, for once more putting up with this kind of thing. 2 Abstract This dissertation is a contribution to debates in the philosophy of mind and of personal identity. It presents a critical account of arguments for substance dualism to be found in Richard Swinburne’s Mind, Brain, and Free Will (2013). -
Rigidity and Direct Reference
FRANCOIS RECANATI RIGIDITY AND DIRECT REFERENCE (Received in revised form 18 November, 1986) What is it for a singular term, or for a use of a singular term, to be referential in the strong sense, i.e. "purely" or "directly" referential? This is the question I will try to answer in this paper. The intuitive (and largely metaphorical) notion of referentiality that is current in the philosophical literature emerges from the following set of statements: A referential term is a term that serves simply to refer. It is devoid of descriptive content, in the sense at least that what it contributes to the proposition expressed by the sentence where it occurs is not a concept, but an object. Such a sentence is used to assert of the object referred to that it falls under the concept expressed by the predicate expression in the sentence. Proper names and demonstrative expressions are supposed to be referential in this sense; and although definite descriptions are not intrinsically referential, they have a referential use. That such a notion exists in contemporary philosophy is beyond question. But many philosophers do not like it. I suspect that there are two reasons why this is so. First, it is thought that the intuitive notion of referentiality is too vague and metaphorical to be of any use; and second, assuming that a definite view does emerge from the set of statements above, it is thought that there are serious objections to this view. I do not share this pessimism. I think that the notion of referen- tiality can be satisfactorily defined, and that the objections raised to the referentiality theory can be met. -
Naming and Necessity
NAMING AND NECESSITY Saul A. Kripke Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright C 1972, 1980 by Saul A. Kripke All rights reserved Twelfth prll1ting, 2001 Library of CODp'etI Catalogiag in PublicatioD Data Kripke, Saul A. 1940- Nammg and necessity. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Necessity (PhIlosophy) -Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Reference (Philosophy) - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Identity-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title BD417.K74 160 79-26088 ISBN 0-674-59845-8 (doth) ISBN 0-674-59846-6 (paper) Printed in the United States of America for MARGARET CONTENTS Preface 1 Lecture I 22 Lecture II 71 Lecture III 106 Addenda 156 Index 165 PREFACE Originally I had intended to revise or augment Naming and Necessity extensively. Considerable time has elapsed, and I have come to realize that any extensive revision or expansion would delay the appearance of a separate, less expensive edition of Naming and Necessity indefmitely. Further, as fa r as revision is concerned, there is something to be said fo r preserving a work in its original fo rm, warts and all. I have thus fo llowed a very conservative policy of correction fo r the present printing. Obvious printing errors have been corrected, and slight changes have been made to make various sentences or fo rmulations clearer.1 A good indication of my conservative policy is in fo otnote 56. In that fo otnote the letter-nomenclature fo r the various objects involved, inexplicably garbled in the original printing, has been corrected; but I make no mention of the fact that the argument of the fo otnote now seems to me to have problems which I did not know when I wrote it and which at least require further discussion. -
Kripke's Naming and Necessity: Lecture II
Kripke’s Naming and Necessity: Lecture II PHIL 83104 October 12, 2011 1. Varieties of descriptivism (end of Lecture I) ....................................................................1 2. Kripke’s arguments against descriptivism (71-90) ...........................................................2 2.1. The modal argument (48-49, 71-77) 2.1.1. Rigidified descriptions 2.1.2. Wide-scoping descriptions 2.2. The semantic argument (78-85) 2.3. The epistemic argument (86-87) 3. Kripke’s alternative picture of reference (91-97) ..............................................................5 4. Identity sentences and the necessary a posteriori (97-105) ..............................................7 4.1. The necessity of identity 4.2. A prioricity and qualitatively identical situations 4.3. Some sources of skepticism about Kripke’s claim 4.3.1. Contingent identities? 4.3.2. The illusion of contingency 4.3.3. Millianism about names 1. VARIETIES OF DESCRIPTIVISM (END OF LECTURE I) We’ve already seen two distinctions Kripke makes between different versions of descriptivism: • The distinction between descriptivist views which let a single description do the work, and those which rely on a cluster of descriptions • The distinctiopn between views according to which a description gives the meaning of a name, and those according to which it merely fixes the reference of the name Here Kripke introduces a third distinction: between circular and non-circular descriptivist views. This distinction is not like the others; it is less a distinction between varieties of descriptivism than a constraint on descriptivist views. What exactly is this constraint? Suppose we identified the meaning of the name “Aristotle” with the meaning of the description “the person called ‘Aristotle’” or “the referent of ‘Aristotle.’” These would be examples of descriptivist views which fail to meet the non-circularity condition, since to determine what object satisfies the description, we must first know which object is the referent of the name in question. -
David Lewis's Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames by The
David Lewis’s Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames By the early 1970s, and continuing through 2001, David Lewis and Saul Kripke had taken over W.V.O. Quine’s leadership in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic in the English-speaking world. Quine, in turn, had inherited his position in the early 1950s from Rudolf Carnap, who had been the leading logical positivist -- first in Europe, and, after 1935, in America. A renegade positivist himself, Quine eschewed apriority, necessity, and analyticity, while (for a time) adopting a holistic version of verificationism. Like Carnap, he placed philosophical logic and the philosophy of science at the center of philosophy. While not entirely avoiding metaphysics and epistemology, he tried to “naturalize” both. By contrast, Lewis and Kripke embraced the modalities Quine rejected.1 They also had no sympathy for his early verificationism, or his twin flights from intension and intention. As for philosophy of science, it was transforming itself into specialized philosophies of the several sciences, and did not lend itself to unified treatment. Although Lewis had deep interests in scientific issues, and was commendably realist about science in general, science itself was not the center of own distinctive approach to philosophy. Despite similarities in their opposition to Quine, the differences between Lewis and Kripke were large – especially in the semantics and metaphysics of modality. They also had different philosophical styles. Whereas Lewis was a wide-ranging thinker who pieced together a systematic philosophical world view, Kripke gave little thought to system, focusing instead on a few central topics. There is, therefore, no conflict between the two on many of the issues on which Kripke was silent. -
General MT09 4 Scepticism M
GeneralGeneral PhilosophyPhilosophy DrDr PeterPeter MillicanMillican,, HertfordHertford CollegeCollege LectureLecture 4:4: TwoTwo CartesianCartesian TopicsTopics Scepticism,Scepticism, andand thethe MindMind LastLast TimeTime …… … we looked at scepticism about INDUCTION. ThisThis LectureLecture …… … will move on to SCEPTICISM concerning the external world, most famously exemplified in Descartes’ first Meditation, and his related claims about the nature of MIND AND BODY. TheThe NextNext LectureLecture …… … will say more about modern responses to SCEPTICISM, and focus on KNOWLEDGE. 2 TwoTwo KindsKinds ofof ScepticismScepticism VerticalVertical ScepticismScepticism – Inferring from one kind of thing to a different kind (e.g. inferring from one’s sensations or appearances, to the existence of real physical objects that cause them). HorizontalHorizontal ScepticismScepticism – Inferring things of the same kind as one has experienced (e.g. inferring from one’s sensations or appearances, to expect similar sensations or appearances in the future). 3 ExternalExternal WorldWorld ScepticismScepticism ItIt cancan seemseem thatthat ((““verticalvertical””)) externalexternal worldworld scepticismscepticism isis farfar moremore worryingworrying thanthan ((““horizontalhorizontal””)) inductiveinductive scepticism:scepticism: – Maybe I am just dreaming, and there is no external world at all. – Maybe an evil demon is causing me to have illusions of an external world. – Maybe a wicked scientist has my brain in a vat, and is creating these illusions. 4 DescartesDescartes’’