What is a Flaccid Designator? (Philosophy of Language)

[@BigBird3502]

We may like philosophy, but we all know why we clicked this video 😏

[@avaragedude6223]

😳😳😳

[@zedmann1680]

A flaccid designator is when you drink too much whiskey to perform, but not necessarily in all possible worlds

[@johnhill762]

I've been there a few times... yikes

[@atlas4074]

I was always skeptical of proper names being rigid and have been sympathetic to Russell's theory of names, so I'd say names are flaccid for now until presented with better argument

[@KManAbout]

I had the same intuitions

[@Fiction-pb5in]

what’s your positions on how relevant an authors intended meaning is when interpreting a statement made by said author? Also how rigid is your idea of identity? I’m inclined to believe that it matters significantly, tho i can’t fully articulate why. In the case of the examples given in the video of flaccid designators that contain rigid designators like “the number of toes Drew Carey has”, it can be reasonably assumed that he has a specific person in mind that exist within our world that happens to be named Drew Carey. It’s possible to conceive of a world where someone named Drew Carey (or not) exist that can be likened to the Drew Carey that the creator of this video has in mind, but for example has a different number of toes. But specifically likened through qualities which are fundamental to the Drew Carey that this authors envisioned; like parentage, appearance to a notable degree, name possibly to a lesser degree, etc. It could be asserted that a Drew Carey from a different world that differs from the Drew Carey of the authors world in any way, like in the number toes he has, is simply not Drew Carey. But some might see that as having an Idea of a specified Drew Carey that is too rigid. If In considering the statement you were to disregard the authors intended meaning of Drew Carey and consider only the words. One could say that we already live in a world where there are multiple people named Drew Carey and that at least one them probably has a different number of toes from another. But in ignoring the authors intended meaning some may see that as having come to an idea of Drew Carey that is so flaccid that it can’t even be asserted to apply to a single person even when used in the context of a video where the creator almost definitely has a specific person in mind. I kind of think of the identity of any thing or concept; a car, a person, a country, love, beauty, justice, as not being rigid or flaccid but as a kind of oobleck (corn starch & water) like substance, a non-newtonian substance that acts like a liquid when being poured but as a solid when a force is acting on it. And I see names as having no option but to take on the qualities (rigid or flaccid, fluid or solid) with respect to the force that the author’s mind impresses upon this supposed “ethereal identity substance”. In this analogy names by nature are emblematic of impressions on the substance. Therefore in context a name can very well take on a rigid form.

[@johnhill762]

You need a serious mic/recording setup. I recommend a decent cardioid microphone. Maybe set up a closet with clothes (to absorb echoes). Then buy a few plugins and a DAW (or use Adobe Audition) and put some compression and noise reduction on it. De-essers and limiters would also help. At times, your audio spikes (clips) and it can hurt your ears while listening. Other than that, keep up the great work on philosophy.

[@jasonlp4928]

Just in time for my exam on Philosophy on Language tomorrow... Excellent.

[@tuxino]

Classifying proper names as rigid designators seems to me to fall into the same kind of problem as Theseus' ship.

[@RENATVS_IV]

Yes, I guess it is founded in the supposition that we are always the same.

[@dasich2566]

@@RENATVS_IV the law of identity?

[@RENATVS_IV]

@@dasich2566 exactly. Given it's the purpose of this video, and we are supposed to be strict with the concepts, if we change so much, then our identity is in danger or is questionable

[@ebyronnelson]

I agree with your objection to proper names as rigid designators. In studying Kripke's work, I came to the conclusion that this bizarre idea of his originated in an even more bizarre claim made in "Identity and Necessity" (1971). There, he argues that all identities are necessary identities. His argument for this depends on the assumption that the alethic modal status of an object is a property of that object rather than an operation on that object like a quantifier. This seemed to me to be a profoundly misguided assumption. He apparently abandoned this assumption in later works but maintained the proper names claim he had derived from it.

[@itsmeagain1415]

Why hasn't there been any further attempts (atleast that I know of) to develop a formal language that is fully formalised yet can capture every aspect of natural language?

[@aronianspigonian8589]

It’s extremely inefficient and practically speaking, unfeasible

[@itsmeagain1415]

@@aronianspigonian8589 I cannot imagine you have given it a minute of inquiry, it is something that I have been exploring for an amount of time and I found it not that "unfeasable", like what is something that a human can identify in language that doesn't have to obey a definite structure of expressions? I cannot think of one, and as long as language has to satisfy certain properties that lie in the sphere of human ability to comprehend in a not so "unfeasibly" long time we can formalize it.

[@aronianspigonian8589]

@@itsmeagain1415 I agree with you, but I think you’ll understand the impracticality of it a little better if I give you an example to explain what I mean. If you have ever learned another language with an alphabet that uses different letters than your own, then you may have questioned why that is. The reason is that each language makes use of various letters that give up specificity and coverage for efficiency. You would think that the best language would use all of the known letters as long as there wasn’t overlap and that the ultimate language would have words like the greek word Φιλοξενία (filoksenia) that doesn’t have an english equivalent but such a language mushed together would be incoherent. Even if you started from scratch with new letters, I think the human experience may be too complex to create a language that can both describe it accurately AND be used in a practical manor. Maybe that example helped, maybe not. Your question is super interesting

[@aronianspigonian8589]

@@itsmeagain1415 Also, I mean to put an emphasis on “practically unfeasible”. I don’t mean that your idea is impossible. I think it would be really beneficial if it were somehow legitimized and used in reality. I just feel like as it stands, it isn’t practically sound. I mean you have to admit that it’s not easy at face value

[@aronianspigonian8589]

@@itsmeagain1415 Also, not to say there’s anything wrong with asking on youtube, but you should try posting your question on reddit with some context around it. If you really care about the question you’re asking, then I doubt my answer will satisfy you my friend. There are probably people just as interested in that idea as you are. If not, then someone should spark that interest, because I think it’s a cool idea!

[@Pfhorrest]

I think all designators are flaccid: we mean something by a term or take a term to mean something -- a connotation or intension, some pattern of criteria -- and whatever phenomenon matches that pattern is the denotation or extension of that term, what it designates or refers to. Because different speakers and listeners can take the same terms to mean different things, it could be the case that there is a trans-world version of you who has always answered to a different name and so does not take the name you use for yourself to designate himself, but *you* would still take it to designate him, since you take it to designate yourself, and he is a version of yourself. As to what makes a trans-world version of you identical to you, that's a little complicated because it hinges on the relationship between other possible worlds and other times: I prefer to think of possible worlds per se as not containing multiple times, but rather as possible states of the world, points in the state space of the world, which are thus single instants. A timeline is a path through that state space of the world (i.e. through the space of possible worlds), with an immediate future of a given state being a neighboring (i.e. minimally differing) state with higher entropy, and an immediate past conversely lower; more distant futures and pasts are those states accessible through chains of immediate futures or pasts, respectively, and due to the information-theoretic nature of entropy, alternate pasts rapidly converge, while alternate futures rapidly diverge. All that established, an object in one world is diamodally (trans-world) identical to an object in another world iff those objects are both diachronically (trans-time) identical to the same object, e.g. if there is a past version of one that is the same object, in the same world, as a past version of the other. Which, yes, I realize just pushes the problem back to that of diachronic identity, but this post is already long enough as-is.

[@Betterdangaming]

Noo analytic philosophy is factual and the best!!! Analytic philosophy:

[@joseville]

Is "flaccid designator" a flaccid designator? What if Kripke's trans-world counterpart had chosen to name it "fluidious nomen" instead... If we gave a unique name to each world, would that name be a rigid designator? What does it mean to have a unique name? For the sake of argument, let "global" be a collective noun referring to all the worlds. There would be two notions of unique. A unique name might mean that you don't share that name with anyone in your world (world unique) or that you don't share that name with anyone in any world (globally unique). What if each world decided to call itself "World 0" and call the other worlds "World 1", "World 2", ... Then in every world, the name "World 0" would refer to that world. Would that be a rigid designator? What if each world had a globally unique name such that for example, this world were called "World x æ a-12" in every world. Would that be a rigid designator? I guess it depends on what you mean by trans-world counterpart when the part/counterpart is the whole - i.e. not an individual, nor a planet, nor a galaxy of the world, but the entire world. I get that the trans-world counter of the Earth in another world would be that world's Earth, but what would the trans-world counterpart of this world be in another world? Still this world or that other world's world, i.e that other world...?

[@joseville]

Not to mention that things are ill-defined. Can you define a hard boundary around a person or a thing (a chair) where everything inside is the person (or thing) and everything outside is not part of the person (or thing)? Plus a person or a thing is in constant flux exchanging atoms with and interacting with its environment. After a certain number of years, the atoms that make a person are not the same set of atoms that made up the person all those years ago (like a living Ship of Theseus); perhaps there are some of the old atoms remain, sure, but plenty of atoms have been exchanged with the environment as you breathe, eat, sweat, etc. I think the person must be considered as something existing through time as a 4D spacetime object. After some searching, this seems related to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdurantism.

[@havenbastion]

There is only one possible world, making this an imaginary distinction.

[@tomholroyd7519]

Ah, the Evil Twin problem

[@aunttifa6794]

This has to do with the philosophy of holes 🕳. Designated holes 🕳.

[@InventiveHarvest]

This seems to point to an inherent contradiction in modal logic. We want to say that Obama is not necessarily the President. But is an Obama that is not the President the same Obama. What if his mom named him Steve? I can imagine such a world. If different Obamas are not the same thing as what we call Obama, then Obama is necessarily the President.

[@KManAbout]

For Obama to necessarily be the president he couldn't not be the president in another possible world. And since Obama is just a flaccid designator then he can. If we call Obama Steve since he is called Steve in this world obama Steve could also have been name Ohmama and not have been the president. Flaccid designators have no issues because we are just talking about collections of properties that can change between worlds. It is only when we suppose a rigid designator that contradictions abound.

[@InventiveHarvest]

@@KManAbout There is a possible world where Steve Obamama could be a pigmy humpback or grain of sand or a leaf. At some point it is not the same thing as what we call Obama. With flacid designators we could say anything is anything. See that star? That's Obama. Do you know how long it takes light to travel from the Sun to Earth? Obama. Who won the civil war? Obama.

[@KManAbout]

@@InventiveHarvest I say this totally fine its just an indication of whats different in this or that possible world. If we take worlds themselves as a collections then designators are only guides to smaller set differences between worlds.

[@InventiveHarvest]

@@KManAbout Then Obama can be anything except "not Obama" What then does "not Obama" even mean?

[@KManAbout]

@@InventiveHarvest I was writing a reply and it got deleted. So I was going to say that Obama is a referent to a bag of properties in this world that has no limit in all possible worlds. That is intuitive. It's simply saying that anything could possibly be any other thing. Including nothing.

[@aunttifa6794]

It’s the opposite of a tumescent designator. ROFL

[@isancicramon0926]

“Possible worlds” must be one of the dumbest thing i’ve read coming from Philosophy i’ve yet to read a compelling argument for it If this is what philosophy of language is about these days, it should be defunded

[@Sarcasmarkus]

I like to think of "different possible worlds" as "different contexts" you can talk about how a spicific person or thing would behave in one context and how they would behave differently in another contexts or how they might be something or someone different in a different context. The term "possible worlds" is a bit more vague than "context" so you can use it a bit more abstractly.

[@isancicramon0926]

@@Sarcasmarkus thank you for your answer to my ill-humored (!) comment. I'll stick to the notion of *_context,_* i don't mind it ‘doing (as they say) a lot of work’ in most instances. But then i'm no philosopher, barely a linguist, haha. Thanks for the clarification, at all rates