Monday, April 25, 2016

Kripke Lecture 2 [Danielle Trzil]

1. I agree with Kripke that if the speaker does not remember from whom or where they got their reference he cannot give a description. This is an argument in rebuttal to Strawson, and it makes sense. Even if you don't remember the first time you saw, learned about, or touched a cat, you can still refer and describe a cat in present day. Having remembered from the get go is not a requirement for describing.

2. I disagree with this idea of rigid designators. Even though this is applicable in certain situations, his case of "suppose we were all speaking x language", being different from English, would not be as rigid as he says it would. This theory does not account for the fact that some languages have words that can not be described or considered in other languages. For example, in Ukrainian there is only one word to refer to "arm" or "hand". It is the same word. Where in English we obviously have two. I don't think he accounts for these linguistic differences among languages and other possible worlds because he still sees it as the way we refer to these other worlds is in English, even though the hypothetical world is another language.

3. My question for Kripke is how he accounts for rigid designaters in other worlds in which the thing it refers two is reliant on the situation. Such as an alias someone in this world goes by, but suppose a world in which they never acquired that alias but are still the same person, just a different scenario and name. But we cannot refer to them with the alias that refers to them as before because in this world it would be different?

1 comment:

  1. The case of aliases certainly seems problematic for Kripke, especially when aliases are contingent on certain events or descriptions, like 'Alexander the Great'. It may not be a satisfying answer, but Kripke would probably disallow this case because he stipulates that we are keeping our language fixed when we consider possible worlds. However, I think you are pointing out a more general tension with the notion of rigid designator. Names often depend on contingent facts, and names can change over time too. Our names aren't fixed, so designators may not be rigid.

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