Week 16 Naming and Necessity
Recap
Frege
Wittgenstein
Russell "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"
Descartes: Put phil and science on a solid foundation, thus no doubt on starting point (of induction)
common ground: in logical way and infer from obvious truth and common sense
Russell over etc.
Paradoxes
Over Science and Philosophy
Comparison to Mathematics: Overlap
Intelligence, Learning
Nietzsche: The affirmation of life
Over Socratic Method
Analytic tradition of Western Traditions
Nietzsche's criticism: See Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Friedrich Nietzsche, Duncan Large) (Z-Library)
Throughout the ages the wisest of men have passed the same judgement on life: it is no good... Always and everywhere their mouths have been heard to produce the same sound—a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said as he was dying: ‘Life is one long illness: I owe the saviour Asclepius a cock.’* Even Socrates had had enough of it.—What does this prove? What does this point to?—In former times people would have said (—oh they did say it, and loudly enough, with our pessimists* in the vanguard!): ‘There must be at least something true here! The consensus sapientium* proves the truth.’—Shall we still speak in such terms today? can we do so? ‘There must be at least something sick here’ is the answer we give: these wisest of every age,* we should look at them from close to! Were they all perhaps no longer steady on their feet? belated? doddery? decadents?* Would wisdom perhaps appear on earth as a raven excited by a faint whiff of carrion?...
Naming and Necessity
Proper Names = words for particulars
In Kripke's "Naming and Necessity," the term "particular" refers to specific, concrete individuals or objects that exist in the world, like a person named "John" or a specific tree in your backyard. These are distinct from general concepts or abstract entities, like "humanity" or "the number three." Kripke uses this concept to argue that proper names directly refer to these particulars, independent of any descriptive definition, and function as rigid designators that always refer to the same individual across all possible worlds, challenging traditional theories that view names as shorthand for descriptions.
The only words one does use as names in logical sense are words like "this" or "that"
Russell 1918 p.524
Frege
"I call anything a proper name if it is a sign for an object."
"A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value."
An object is anything that is not a function [f(x)], so tat an expression for it does not contain any empty place.
Fine to regard concept as sort of object.
- Sentence -> Sense of the sentence (proposition) -> Reference of the sentence (truth-value)
- Proper name -> Sense of the proper name -> Reference of the proper name (object)
- Concept expression -> Sense of the concept expression -> Reference of the concept expression (concept) -> Object falling under the concept
Logic, philosophy of language A paradox, originally formulated by C. H. Langford in his discussion of Moore’s notion of analysis, leads to the conclusion that all analysis is either trivial or false. An analysis states relations between an analysandum (the expression to be analyzed) and an analysans (the analyzing expression). These expressions are either synonymous or not synonymous. If they are synonymous, the analysis does not convey any information and is trivial. If they are not synonymous, the analysis is false. Therefore, analysis is either trivial or false and is not a significant philosophical or logical procedure. This paradox involves an analysis of the notion of analysis. The standard response to it involves the use of Frege’s distinction between sense and reference. The truth of the analysis is a matter of the different expressions having the same reference, but triviality is avoided if the expressions have difference senses.
- “And the paradox of analysis is to the effect that, if the verbal expression representing the analysandum has the same meaning as the verbal expression representing the analysans, the analysis states a bare identity and is trivial; but if the two verbal expressions do not have the same meaning, the analysis is incorrect.” Langford, in Schilpp (ed.), Philosophy of G. E. Moore
The word "common name" leads to the mistaken assumption that a common name is related to objects in essentially the same way as a proper name.
Def.
A rigid designator is anything that will designate the same object in every possible world where it exists (and nothing else in any possible world).
Example: Gödel and Schmidt over discovery of Incompleteness Theorem
Kripke
Kripke argues that proper names are rigid designators
Q. #todo