Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke - Part 1

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Background lecture on Possible Worlds and Rigid Designators: • What are Possible Worlds?
This is a video lecture in a course on the philosophy of language. It summarizes Saul Kripke's famous 1970 attack on the Descriptivist Cluster Theory of Proper Names of John Searle. This is just the first part of Lecture 2, which was delivered in January of 1970 at Princeton University, and then published as a book, Naming and Necessity. It includes the famous Godel Schmidt Case. I will make Part 2 of this video, which will cover Kripke's own causal theory of proper names, and once that video is ready I will post a link to it here:

[@khebrela]

I know you must be busy, professor Kaplan but we, who live on the other end of the world, need more of your videos.

[@bernardin5947]

PROFESSOR KAPLAN DROPPING A NAMING & NECESSITY LECTURE I WANT TO HEAR YOU ALL GO FUCKING CRRRRAAAAAAZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[@fxm5715]

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYY!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!!!!

[@sbnwnc]

😂😂😂

[@SiddiqueSukdiki]

@@sbnwnc mancunian

[@addammadd]

I love Zizek’s statement in Sublime Object (and so on) “The analysis of ideology must then direct its attention to the points at which names which prima facie signify positive descriptive features already function as 'rigid designators'.”

[@j.0x00n4]

sniff ... and so on and so forth

[@JulioLeonFandinho]

That's Lacan crap, forget it

[@SlickDissident]

"If you want to change the world be willing to give someone else the credit" - not me

[@ivannasha5556]

I looked for someone else for over 20 years and nobody wanted the credit. So big sorry that the world is still shit.

[@user-wy1xm4gl1c]

I love to learn about naming and language from philosophers, it's very helpful for software development

[@adriantm8430]

They could probably learn from programmers too, concepts such as labels, pointers, dangling pointers...

[@leoskucera3655]

@@adriantm8430 Totally! I attended a few philosophy lectures and often I thought of different concepts as data structures or sets, mappings...If nothing else it made the stuff more comprehensible

[@magicalhobo3000]

set theory goes crazy

[@peteMickeal33]

Helpful for software engineering. Stupid for philosphy, really

[@unleashedbread6146]

I disagree. (the video was posted 2 seconds ago)

[@DarrenAllatt]

I am four minutes into this and I’m doing a lot of work on ai Lodge language models. when you talk about descriptions having different weights and associations to a name that is very much how AI works

[@victorcode2075]

😂😂😂 WRONG

[@vertecies]

So names in languages as types. Like variable types in programming languages and they argue can integer be real number or can you convert string (text) to numbers. But disagree with what? 😊

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

​@@DarrenAllattIf I were to give ChatGPT the name Jay-Z, it would look up the name in its list of nouns or proper names and give me a list of the names and properties it found there. If it found the name Jay-Z it would also know that Jay-Z is the stage name and Shawn is the given name. If ChatGPT didn't have the properties of Jay-Z available, then it would not have any knowledge of Jay-Z at all. It would consider Jay-Z a possible proper name but would have nothing to say about it. For ChatGPT, the properties are the anchor. If ChatGPT is asked who Shawn Carter is, you will be told that he is the person whose stage name is Jay-Z. The properties of Shawn Carter seem more strongly attached to the nom Jay-Z, but I may be imagining it. Of course, if I were to ask it for a series of names that do not refer to anyone with a known property, it can give me a list of complete "given" names or stage names as the case may be. How the fact that ChatGPT identifies proper names and how it keeps the properties associated I don't understand. But I know that functionally that is what it is doing.

[@anastasiacaron6631]

Chad behavior

[@aravindappat]

I appreciate that this has already been added to the philosophy of language playlist 😌

[@victorcode2075]

Love your work. Ive always been very averse to this harder type of philosophy as a laymen, but youve made this really accessible. Cheers!

[@user-nb3mq3cg8k]

Just imagine having another enlightenment. Full of geniuses like these guys.

[@thomaslodger7675]

Hey Dr. Kaplan, thank you for your videos! You helped me a lot while I was writing papers for my modern philosophy class.

[@danknfrshtv]

He's back! Great to see a fresh vid, prof. These are life

[@SithandileMatshoba05]

Sir I appreciate your work and teaches, they really hell me a lot on my Philosophy Module ❤. They also give me a better and clearer understanding.

[@ihikefar]

Looking forward to your book Professor Kaplan. Cheers!

[@GynxShinx]

If there was no man named Shakespeare, but one man wrote all his works, then we would say that Shakespeare did exist, but we got his name wrong. If there was a man named Shakespeare, but each of his works were written by a different person, then we would say that Shakespeare did exist, but we attributed some things to him wrongly. If there was no man named Shakespeare AND each of his works were written by a different person, then we would say that Shakespeare did not exist.

[@weshull9311]

Damn, no joke walked out of Phil of lang final exam just to see this. You couldn’t have posted this a day ago?!?!Haha jk love this guy

[@daithi1966]

The only bad thing about watching Prof. Kaplan videos is that I am really dumb. There are people in the world that are just WAAAYYY smarter than I'll ever be. Looking forward to part 2 and the book.

[@bennoarchimboldi6245]

*than

[@daithi1966]

@@bennoarchimboldi6245 For anyone reading this, I wrote "There are people in the world that are just WAAAYYY smarter *then* I'll ever be." I have know idea why I wrote "then" instead of "than", as I do know the difference, but it does kind of prove the point I was trying to make.

[@stephenfleming8030]

@@daithi1966 If the beginning of wisdom is to assume that one knows nothing, then you're well on your way to overtaking those who think they know everything. Ignore the unhelpful pedantry mate. Really, your post merited much more than a juvenile spelling correction...

[@bobvanluijt897]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jeff your content is f***ing gold! Thank you!

[@bm7025]

I don't know if any of these philosophers ever spoke about their use of "necessary" and "necessity" but I find it quite difficult to give proper names properties to then explain that it could have been different and some of the properties aren't necessary. Like for exemple, if we say that it wasn't necessary that Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, and that it is contingent, then we flip the narrative upside down. We can say a posteriori that it could have been different but for that to happen Lincoln needed to become the 16th president of the United States. So then everything that is called "historical" is not contingent but in fact very necessary because in order for things to happen, they need to happen. I get that from a mathematical or physic point of view, we can speak from a broader scale of the possible experience, but then again, because langages are spoken they find sense in their use not in their theories.

[@puzzardosalami3443]

What Kripke means is that the name "Abraham Lincoln" indicates a guy and it doesn't matter if he ended up being president or not. Even if Lincoln wasn't president the name "Abraham Lincoln" would still refer to him. In this sense him being president was contingent, not necessary.

[@konstanty8094]

If events are contingent, then naming is contingent. He might have ended up with a different name.

[@bm7025]

@@konstanty8094 but events aren’t contingent they happen for a reason otherwise it’s speculation and we all can boil it down to « it could have been different » which is in my opinion not very useful.

[@konstanty8094]

@@bm7025 then wasn't him becoming the president also necessary?

[@bm7025]

@@konstanty8094 yes but necessary in the sense that it was fate (there were no signs or otherwordly interventions for him to become president), necessary in the sense that for it to happen, it needs to happen. It’s easy to look back on events and say « it could have been different », where you already know the outcome and speculate on the ifs

[@danwylie-sears1134]

It's been a lot of years since I originally heard about N&N, but as of 8:30 in this video, I think that we use names differently in different contexts. When we talk about a fictional character, something like Searle's theory is correct: if we imagine an alternate story where the character didn't do at least the important parts of what they did in the canonical story, the one in our new story isn't really the same character. They're a different character with the same name, based on the original. So it's necessary that the character has enough of their character-defining traits. Normally, when we talk about a real person, something like Kripke's theory is a better description of what language game we're playing. We can talk about scenarios where Lincoln wasn't nominated, intending to have it be the same guy, and not have our discussion lapse into incoherence. But it's not entirely clear-cut. We play whatever game works, to say what we want to say. For a figure from distant history, we could be so wrong about them that it makes sense to say that maybe there was no Julius Caesar or no Jesus Christ, because no one satisfies enough of the traits we associate with them, but it's hard to avoid lapsing into incoherence if we try to discuss counterfactuals where they didn't do the things we know them for. -- Yeah, after listening to the whole video, I think that a lot of our ordinary language is a lot closer to being like Jack the Ripper than Kripke is willing to acknowledge.

[@charlemagnesclock]

The Kripke argument is a bit hyperbolic (that's a math joke). You have the same probability issue in physics. Absolute certainty is impossible, as in Heisenberg's thing, but the thing with probability and limits, is that one can approach something so close, that one can use the assigned uncertain value (limit) as though it was a certainty. Virtually everything that engineers do depends on these approximations. Newton's laws? They work (until they don't at the subatomic level), but they are more than adequate to build planes, rockets, and bridges. So what one can do to get around this issue, is simply ensure that everyone understands the relevant scale in which we are working. When using Newtonian physics we are not probing quantum mechanics, but rather things at a human scale. How long is an inch? The precision required by a carpenter building a house does not care about the notion that it is the same thing as the distance that light travels in a vacuum during 1/299792458th of a second divided by 39.37 where a second is defined by a curiosity in the behavior of a cesium atom. His customer probably only cares that the accuracy is sufficient that the floors don't end up squeaking.

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

There must be a few things that are certain, such as, "nothing is certain, except for this statement." In physics, the old Newtonian Law of Gravitation would have had to have the exponent of exactly 2, so that was a certainty--a strange way to put it. But your point that, for the most part, in the physical world we are swimming in undulating waters is well taken. But in the worlds that may derive from the physical, the mental realm for instance, there is certainty. Take logic and mathematics for example. Now we could say that there is a positive probability that a given proof is wrong, so that for any mathematical result there is uncertainty. And proceeding in a theoretical way we can claim that any derivation or proof must have a positive probability of being false. But is this true? If I state that the sum of the first N numbers is N(N+1)/2 and prove it in various ways, is there really a positive probability that the statement is wrong? If our assumptions are correct, then possibly. But it depends on my assumption that there is a positive probability. By chance, in this situation, perhaps there isn't. The probability that the result is exactly zero is the same as the probability that is any other number, assuming a uniform distribution, that is a probability of zero. If you look at a range for the value, then for the range from zero to 10^-100, the probability is 10^-100. So, there must be only a very small chance that it has ever had a value near zero. In theory, we can rule out zero. Yet the proof of the statement is not a random process. Where does randomness creep in? It may creep in through misapprehension of the fundamental elements of the proof or demonstration. Here it would seem that there is a much greater chance of misapprehending the concepts of probability than the concepts involved in summing the first N integers. Hence, if one were told that probability suggests that the sum may not be N(N+1)/2, one might say let's take another look at probability theory. So, is there a chance? Possibly a vanishingly small chance. Possibly no chance at all. Language is more like logic and mathematics than it is like physics in regard to the way probability applies. It would be more like a great deterministic function with a minor random variable tacked on at the end just to keep us on our toes.

[@charlemagnesclock]

@@JackPullen-Paradox Well I was going to reply that in your math example, because you started out by using the term "numbers" that if we throw in the irrationals we are right back where we began. But then later you switched to integers, so I ended up nodding in full agreement. The thing I find so fascinating about this channel is the child-like enthusiasm Dr. Kaplan brings to his lectures. Gosh he is good. I think that, more than anything else explains why he has garnered such a large fan club with lots of people (not all) who add interesting comments to his videos. I think what I would really like to see happen is for the folks in the philosophy community to get over the notion that an absolutely solid theory of names is even possible, and instead get involved in ethics in some sort of an institutional way. Egads, our governmental and financial institutions desperately need some help in these areas, and they aren't getting it from the clergy any more, which has basically gone out of the ethics business and become militant defenders of their god and salvation stuff.

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

​@@charlemagnesclock The problem may be that the people who need the enlightenment are not willing to accept the clergy or the philosopher as an authority. In fact, I think they have a pretty good idea that they are on the dark side but they do not see the real possibility of consequences. For there to be a moral duty, there must be a reckoning. We've lost that. I would like philosophy to become more engaged in the philosophy of science, of cosmology, and things having to do with the fundamental nature of reality. I think it is strange that a scientist should teach the philosophy of science. For morality, it is important to have someone who has emotional and spiritual understanding. Now is it possible to have spiritual understanding, yet not be religious? I would say Socrates fit the mold and was not a part of any sect. So, I would say yes. I do not believe it can do any good to throw open the doors to moral pronouncements without having a vetted "priestly" group of authorities or philosopher kings. Unfortunately, this idea will also fail. Nevertheless, we need ethical knowledge in many new areas such as medicine, AGI, governance, genetic research, and the duties and responsibilities of the media, including questions of what responsibilities the media has to the state, the populous, and the individual; and we need clear thinking on such topics as what ought society look like when we must no longer work for a living after AGI becomes dominant; what must our economic system look like in that case; how are we to maintain our humanness when one of our most defining attributes is usurped by artificial intelligence; what constitutes the good life when we have the basics guaranteed but are free to retreat into virtual reality; and what do satellite societies that will be created on Mars, the Moon, on asteroids, or other planets owe to Earth, or what ought our duties and obligations to each other be?

[@charlemagnesclock]

@@JackPullen-Paradox Well put, I choose to be an optimist. Hey, look at the level of engagement that Jeffrey has snagged. That has to be a sign of hope.

[@axtro9749]

@@JackPullen-Paradox mathematics at its very essence is working on the principle of law of contradiction when you disprove it there is no coherent branch of knowledge left i'll agree with you that mathematics has this logical certainity but im not sure of its necessity when it comes to stats of affairs of the world . i only have this objection to that law , which being first of all i am a mental being i know not what is like being a physical thing , i deal in ideas my realm ( mental ( not supposing there is a mind but just saying that i deal in ideas ) has its own laws ( laws of logic ) while physical objects have their own laws . now my main problem is we dont find any logical necessity in physical laws ( hume's problem and many other ) even if natural laws are uniform we see not any logical reason why they were the case why when after a collision bodys didnot react with equal force , but the problem is i as a being dealing in ideas and am saying something about beings that are physical , i know not what is like being a body but if i was a body i think i would never be able to violate the physical laws ( i dont know for sure cus im not a physical body ) similarly im a mental thing and i cant violate laws of logic but what if there is some other substance that can see law of contradiction being violated like i can see newtons third law being violated . ( this is just my skepticism regarding law of contraiction )

[@obakengafrica2919]

You just made me want to read Naming and Necessity.

[@KRYPTOS_K5]

EXCELLENT Kaplan. Very good popularization. RHH Brasil

[@bendontran3605]

PART 1 OF A PHILOSOPHY SERIES? LETS GOOOOO

[@freesk8]

Very well explained. Great video! Thanks! :)

[@xizar0rg]

Perhaps it's because I'm coming from a math background, but using a tautology as an example for "necessarily" feels confusing. Can't you have a derived truth necessarily following from some other axiom that is *different* from that axiom?

[@beatrute2677]

Hi Jeffrey, thank you for your videos. I would like to ask a question about your upcoming book if i may. Is it accessible for a layperson or is it academic in nature?

[@fxm5715]

I love these kinds of explorations of language, but they generally like to ignore that language is far more messy and vague than the philosophers like to pretend. It's great stuff to explore and debate, but ultimately, language is only generally logical for utilitarian reasons, but not specifically logical. As an evolved communication tool, language is as full of weird dead ends, contradictions, and competing driving factors as an animal's body plan. Still, I love this stuff. Keep it up, Dr. Kaplan!

[@CaptMang]

You should read some Wittgenstein if you haven’t.

[@fxm5715]

@@CaptMang Yes, indeed, but it's been a long time, decades. I remember him being a proponent of the contextual flexibility of language, and that whatever logical structure it has can be similarly flexible. It's the utility that matters. An awful lot of life is messy, indistinct, and uncertain, and language often reflects that reality.

[@teaganrasmussen4012]

Heeeees back! Loved this one :)

[@veganphilosopher1975]

This is the area of philosophy most interesting to me

[@acaplan2112]

Thanks for the great lecture. FYI - tried to sign up for the email notification for the book but got an error message due to a “captcha failure”. I would love to read the book when it’s available. Is it possible that Searles theory is still correct but only works if you narrow down which clusters you give weight to?? Maybe Goedel is still Goedel even if he didn’t discover incompleteness because that’s not the important (or weighty) cluster. Maybe the more important cluster is that he grew up with that name, had hundreds of people that referred to him by it. Searle seems to give a lot of latitude is defining which clusters we should care about or how much weight to give.

[@freeshipping7]

i was thinking something along those lines too!

[@DarkZeidon]

Hey, Jeff. Is there any chance you sell digital copies of your book? I am from Brazil and the shipping from US to here probably would cost a plane itself. Great video, by the way, I love this series of philosophy of the language.

[@somanyteapots]

So, potentially dumb question: what happens to the definition of the referent in cases of mistaken, assumed, or stolen identities? The first that occurred to me was the case of a child who was returned to his parents wrongly and raised under the name of their actual child, but who was not actually their child (a quick google says this was Paul Fronczak, perhaps). Is this a case of Jack the Ripper-like properties where Searle's arguments make sense?

[@lbjvg]

I like that the papers discussed are presented and explained as they are without commentary or taking sides in the debates. Although I suspect Kripke misrepresents Searle.

[@OscarTheStrategist]

Prof. Kaplan. What are your thoughts on current advancements in AI and the alignment problem? Would love to see a video from you about that. Don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but just in case, never hurts to try :) Cheers!

[@stepheninman7568]

Thank you for your videos.

[@deshkar2211115]

If something has already happened doesn't that make the name associated with the action necessarily have the property of the action that happened? And while things could have gone differently, I am not sure how the fact that an existing person has done an action makes it not necessarily true. Unless of course, we believe that a statement has to be true at any given time and not just when examined in order to be considered necessarily true. Can anyone explain?

[@frankdoesthings8097]

Any chance you're going to cover Wittgenstein's Tractatus/Investigations? Love this series! These are excellent.

[@sarthakdhole]

I love your videos! Thank you!

[@thephelddagrif2907]

There are multiple people with the name Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if that fits into any argument

[@cofa4011]

Man, you are getting trolled down here :s Great work as usual, thanks for sharing, and kudos for the book ;)

[@davidcerna7092]

One thing confuses me and leaves me unable to distinguish between the Jack the ripper case and Abraham Lincoln case. What differenciates an object having a particular rigid designator and any other property of the object. It seems to me that we can only say that every object has a rigid designator, but we cannot claim to be using it when referring to the object. It seems unknowable what the actually rigid designator for an object is. Thus, in practical circumstances Searle's theory is correct as Kripke states in the case of Jack the ripper, but in theory it collapses when we have access to the rigid designator of the referred object.

[@agingerbeard]

Thank you 💙

[@freeshipping7]

Funnily enough what just happened in the rap beef has parallels here. When in "euphoria" Kendrick Lamar misnamed Joel Osment as Joel Osteen, he in the next lines gave some properties that, for most people listening, clarified it enough that he meant the one he did not name. For those that aren't in the loop, he meant Joel Osteen, the actor on the sixth sense and made a play on that. Only days later people really found out about the error. What does it implicate in regards to kripke? idk, but its fun and interesting! (someone more qualified than me: please analyse)

[@daigreatcoat44]

This is perilously clear - I must have misunderstood something. Certainly your lecture is a vast improvement on the lectures purporting to explain Kripke which I was subjected to when studying at Birkbeck, many years ago. I remember, also, a lecture given in London by the man himself which was hilariously obscure and eccentric. I'd love to hear you deal with Samuel Butler's theory that the works of Homer were written, not by Homer, but by someone else of the same name. I remember, also, being one of a quartet of tenor sax players all of whom had a BA in philosophy, and thinking that we should call ourselves the Rigid Designators.

[@liveblade]

It would be great to hear a lecture on Ludwig Wittgenstein, if you are going down this road.

[@ella.tischler]

So, how is Kripke's core point difference to Bertrand Russell's when he pointed out the meaninglessness of saying that, "'the present king of France is bald'? In both cases we're talking about a designator without a referent, are we not? Also, didn't they go through all this with the Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein? Didn't Karl Popper try to make similar points in the famous "Wittgenstein's Poker" incident, only to find that old Ludwig was way ahead of him. Is it just that the news hadn't reached Princeton (to borrow from Tom Lehrer)? Or else what am I missing?

[@iamyuvasrikishore04]

Can you explain the meaning of concepts and mental representation in philosophy with simple examples?

[@jenwans3055]

finally some good fucking food for thought

[@KRYPTOS_K5]

Please. Make a video about the last classical linguistic theory of Sperber e Wilson, Relevance Theory Brasil

[@stephenfleming8030]

I'm 4 minutes in and I'm already struck (I'm not a philosophy student nor a coder) by the similarities of this line of reasoning and the core principles of LLMs; Language models are exposed to a dataset, this dataset is tokenized and these tokens are subsequently projected into a higher dimensional vector space representing their relative relationships to one another. The LLM doesn't 'understand' what it's saying, nor does it need to have any concept of 'meaning', yet it is able to construct intelligent responses to human prompts. Language, meaning, understanding...perhaps more...at least appear here to be emergent properties of complex information. I can't help but wonder here whether Zipf's Law and how it pertains to written language is in some way related. Just thinking out loud!

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

Is this like principle components? And what exactly do we mean by "tokenized"? And how much do the responses from LLM depend upon what the training data has in it? What I'm getting at is can LLM create a novel sentence, or must it produce something that exists somewhere in its training data?

[@Name-ot3xw]

When I try to describe this to anyone else they look at me like I am a raving madman.

[@PeridotFacet-FLCut-XG-og1xx]

This feels like an issue for common words as well with "working definitions" as their version of proper names' "properties"... A chemist's definition of table sugar is sucrose (C12H22O11), but most people's working definition might only be "sweet white powder". If you ask people to imagine a world where sugar isn't sweet, they can simply imagine a tasteless white powder. You can even ask scientists to imagine a world where table sugar isn't sucrose, and they can imagine themselves experimenting on a sweet white powder and discovering a different a structure, like maltose. There is also the case of fictional objects and materials, like star trek's food replicator, mithril, adamantium, vampires, elves...

[@_34_Lies]

Great video. Now wondering whether an individual accused of committing a felony could use it to argue their way out of a criminal conviction #wasntme!

[@mutabazimichael8404]

Fascinating

[@axtro9749]

Hi professor , great work you are doing here on youtube , i have a request, could u kindly do a lecture series on russels's book " introduction to mathematical philosophy "

[@thatguy2740]

7:21 Isn't the second statement also contingent? I have never studied any of this so I might be missing something that makes these factors irrelevant but it seems to me that it's contingent on the fact that an election was held in that year, that the catholics created a calendar system that numbered that year as 1860, and that the person who was declared winner legitimately received the required number of votes to win and did not cheat?

[@noahespi]

It's necessarily true because it's a tautology. It isn't necessarily true that there was an election in 1860, you're right, but the proposition is true regardless of that fact. It might help to reformulate the proposition to understand this better. If you win an election, then you are the winner of an election. So, we can reformulate the proposition like this: "The winner of the election of 1860 was the winner of the election of 1860." If you are familiar with logic, here's another formulation: "If you are the winner of the election of 1860, then you are the winner of the election of 1860." This is A->A. If A is false, then A->A is true. If A is true, then A->A is also true. If there was no election in the year 1860, then A would be false, but the proposition as a whole would still be true. No matter the empirical (contingent) circumstances, the proposition is true - it's always true. This is just another way of saying that it's necessarily true.

[@thatguy2740]

​@@noahespiAbstract logic, even as inarguable as "a is a" is not necessarily reflective of reality. It works as an abstract because we can suppose it exists, but reality cannot imagine "a" like we can. It's either true, or it doesn't exist.

[@noahespi]

@@thatguy2740 You're completely right! And if it doesn't exist, then it is usually false. :) Logic is merely the form of argumentation and reason. You're right that just because something is necessarily true, doesn't mean that it is real. I was just showing you why the proposition was necessarily true regardless of the falsity of the propositions that make it up. My example is even more clear if we use nonsense words. Consider the proposition P: "Schmeeps are Munskos." This can be a false statement on it's own, which it probably is because Schmeeps and Munskos don't exist in any way; however, the complex proposition P->P is always going to be true regardless. "If Schmeeps are Munskos, then Schmeeps are Munskos." If we say that P is false, say if Schmeeps or Munskos don't exist, then we have the new proposition ~P: "Schmeeps are NOT Munskos." P->P now becomes: "If Schmeeps are NOT Munskos, then Schmeeps are NOT Munskos." This second proposition is still true! So, the statement "If Schmeeps are Munskos, then Schmeeps are Munskos" is tautologically true simply in virtue of its form (P->P) and not by its empirical justification. The election winner claim takes the same form which is why it is necessarily true even if there was no such thing as elections or winners or the year 1860. :)

[@thatguy2740]

@@noahespi Yes, I get how it works in abstract, but it only works in abstract. Creating the words Schmeps and Munskos is no different from using random letters like G and K. Can it be explained without relying on the abstract where anything is true so long as you say it is? Claiming something is true regardless of whether or not the foundation of its existence exists is nonsense. The fact of the existence of our world is not a priori. All statements that describe reality are contingent on the existence of reality. Only abstract statements can be true irrespective of reality because only they have no basis in reality.

[@NicoAssaf]

@@thatguy2740 Are mental spaces not real? Abstraction happens in the brain, as far as I know, so its reality basis is cognition itself. Whether abstractions are or are not equivalent to external facts has no bearing on how real they are.

[@Vedansh-xf8bq]

can anyone recommend any good philosophy of language books for beginners?

[@uxigadur]

This was all after Peirce works, right? it seems odd to me that something like descriptivism exists. But i know but a little of semiotic, not much of philosophy.

[@daviddelaney363]

Quite interesting!

[@shinn-tyanwu4155]

Outstanding thanks thanks 😊😊

[@SerfOnEarth]

What does this have to do with the Kendrick Drake Beef?????

[@Ndo01]

Is a proper name a rigid designator if the person was given a different name? Isn't the name that person was given contingent as well?

[@yulflip]

Looking forward to a theory that includes fictional/mythical proper names. If there was no one person called "Jack the Ripper", then this term truly has no referent. Compare this to "Harry Potter" or "Zeus", whose referent are not actual beings but a cultural or mythological object. And while the property of being fictional/mythological is a property that Harry Potter has, but not Abraham Lincoln, the way these names are used are very similar and should be accounted for in the same theory.

[@Hermanubis1]

Do a video on Phillipe J Roushton

[@axtro9749]

plus i also have this problem with philosophers till talking about states of affairs of the world edging around the law of contradiction ( aka necessary analytic a priori ) that can all be discarded easily when you show there being no real necessity ( not logical necessity but necessity in terms of stats of affairs of the world ) in law of contradiction.

[@AspiringSaint]

We missed you ❤

[@rafaelcarvalho3928]

Do caralho, Jeffrey! Love your vídeos!

[@fixpontt]

im a layman in philosophy and i dont understand one thing what is the difference between necessity or necessarily true statemens in possbile worlds philosophy vs apriori truth claims?

[@donaldb1]

Necessarily true means it is true in every possible world, or it's impossible for it to be false. A priori means (I think) something that can be known by pure reason, without having to do any experiment (like logical or mathematical truths). Traditionally there is a close connection between these things. For instance, if you know something a priori, without regard to what the world is actually like, then it seems it must be necessarily true (true in every possible world). However, among Kripke's other novelties, he comes up with statements that he thinks are necessary and a posteriori (so not a priori) and also statements which are a priori, but not necessary. That's quite complicated though. Possible Kaplan will do a video on that later.

[@fixpontt]

@@donaldb1 _"also statements which are a priori, but not necessary."_ name one

[@donaldb1]

@@fixpontt Sorry not to have seen this earlier. I can give you Kripke's example, and you may or may not find it convincing. It's about the standard metre, the metal bar which used to be kept in Paris as the standard of the metre length (though the metre is defined differently now). Some philosophers have claimed that the sentence "the standard metre is a metre long" is necessarily true, because it's true by definition, but that can't be quite right because, for example, if someone sneaked into the vault and chopped the end off, then it wouldn't be a metre any more. The word "metre" wouldn't suddenly change its meaning. But even if you introduce a fixed time, T0, at which the metre was officialy defined, and claimed that the sentence "At time T0 the standard metre was a metre long" is necessarily true, then that's still not right, according to Kripke because it confuses the meaning of a word with the way it gets its meaning (the reference fixing). The reference of the word metre was fixed by that bar, but it doesn't mean "however long that bar is". Metre just means _that particular length._ So the sentence "At time T0 the standard metre was a metre long" is apriori, because it's true by definition, you don't have to check it. But it is also contingent (not necessary) because it is possible that bar could have been a different length. But then it wouldn't have been a metre long, because "metre" is a rigid designator and means the same in all possible worlds. I hope that makes some sense.

[@Lladra]

Damn. 40 years later, I am sucked back into the philosophy of language. I was perfectly happy with Gödel and Wittgenstein; I left it it at that. But the deeper nuances are coming back to bother me.

[@youtoobfarmer]

Are you saying you understand Gödel (who isn't a philosopher of language) and Wittgenstein, but not much else? That's hard to believe...

[@badabing3391]

​@youtoobfarmer i dont think hes saying he doesnt understand anyone else, just that he obtained a satisfactory understanding of whatever he cared about in phil. of lang. through whatever he read from Godel or Wittgenstein.

[@youtoobfarmer]

@@badabing3391 Yes, and I don't find that believable. Gödel's discoveries have to do with the foundations of mathematics, not philosophy of language, and Wittgenstein's writings are some of the most difficult in the history of philosophy. They simply cannot be understood in isolation so, again, this is not believable.

[@havenbastion]

Only one of the two things can have happened; either he was elected or not, and the name would still refer to the same person with the entire continuity of their reality, either way. Identity requires continuity. A thing is an affordance-distinguished set of attributes and boundary conditions in a mind.

[@onion4062]

You should do a video on Godel's incompleteness theorem

[@cofa4011]

Theorems.

[@onion4062]

@@cofa4011 nah but his second theorem is kind of trash

[@user-nb3mq3cg8k]

Godel's Incompleteness theorem and its epistemological implications

[@stephenanastasi748]

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, being founded on axioms which may be incomplete, no matter how many you hold to be true, are themselves incomplete.

[@user-nb3mq3cg8k]

@@stephenanastasi748 prove it by the axiomatization of 1 + 1 = 2. Prove that all mathematical theory could be reduced to some collection of axioms.

[@mikechristian-vn1le]

But what if the Rail Spitter's parents had given him another name?

[@brothermine2292]

Right. A name is just another contingent property of the referent entity.

[@agranero6]

Latin police here: Kikero (restored classic pronunciation). So not all people (classic Romans ) would think of Cicero as that man (just trolling a little).

[@adenjones1802]

You can some up this whole argument by simply saying that: P1: There are analytic statements and synthetic statements P2: Analytic statements instantiate meaning and definitions while synthetic statements add onto the definition and describe contingient facts P3: A collection of properties associated with (lets say godel) is synthetic not analytic. P4: If these properties are not analytic then they are not apart of the definition C: Therefore, these properties are not apart of the definition.

[@thephelddagrif2907]

Simply give every concievable thing a unique identification number ez

[@pensulpusher2729]

I may be missing something here, but why is this significant? I guess that question is synonymous with why anyone accepted searl’s first theory to begin with? This all just seems so obvious. (I promise I’m not trying to simply sound smart)

[@AB-eq9mm]

Can’t help but wonder that the focus on language and naming in more recent philosophy is emblematic of its overly conceptual nature. Makes it seem very ungrounded to me.

[@malavoy1]

I'll comment later.

[@fgfsgdomagerd]

I'm having difficulty seeing why proper names are.

[@konstanty8094]

I don't understand how "Abraham Lincoln" necessarily describes a person, but his other unique properties don't. The person named Abraham Lincoln in this world could have been given some other name in a different world. Then it's not necessarily true that he is named Abraham Lincoln, so that can't be his proper name.

[@manavkhatarkar9983]

Both of them were wrong, Searle as well as Kripke... idk what the recent papers and studies are on these issues, but let's see if I'm able to settle this in years time.

[@Risenoph]

What do you propose?

[@manavkhatarkar9983]

@@Risenoph do you know where I can find latest papers on this subject?

[@hemangandhi4596]

California was named by the Spanish after a fictional place. So, in theory, it was a "Jack the Ripper" sort of case where they'd have only had a cluster of properties to attribute to a place (perhaps like Atlantis). However, this has ceased to be true of today's California. How does that work?

[@summerbreeze5115]

Make video on "purpose of life"

[@KRYPTOS_K5]

I will buy your book with pleasure. Brasil

[@NineInchTyrone]

Objects and classes like in programming

[@T61APL89]

... is he writing backwards?

[@scutterify]

oh Jesus!!!

[@Hfil66]

The problem with saying that Abraham Lincoln is the 16 President of the USA is that one can only say that one of the many possible Abraham Lincoln's was the 16th President of the USA (or one of the Abraham Lincoln's had any of the attributes you speak of). I suspect that the name Abraham Lincoln is not unique to a single individual, even if only one single individual with that name may be popularly known. In any case, whether Abraham Lincoln was or was not the 16th President of the United States, or whether or not Godel was the author of the incompleteness theory is not the key issue, the key issue is that these people are popularly known for these attributes, whether or not the actual attribute reflects reality or not. Even if someone later realizes that Abraham Lincoln was not the 16th President, he is still known for being the 16th President even if that is false knowledge (just as Jesus is known as someone who was born in year one in the modern Calendar, even though there remains questions as to whether Jesus even existed, and if he did he was probably born around 4BC, but yet the use of the name still has valid meaning). Similarly, it is wrong to say that Harry Potter does not exist. Apart from the fact that probably many Harry Potters do exist, but the person who is popularly associated with the name Harry Potter still exists, although may not have a human form. That name exists as intellectual property in a court of law, even if that person may never have had a birth certificate or have had any human form. The point of a name is (like all words in language) to communicate information, but it is not required that the information be factually correct in order to be a valid communication of that information. Probably, more meaningfully, a name is a label you put on a box, and you can place whatever facts (or other attributes you think appropriate to that label) into the box, hand that box to someone else, and they can add or remove attributes or facts as they see fit; but that label allows you to compare you set of facts with someone else's set of facts applicable to that label. It creates a point of comparison, and without that label you would be unable to make such comparisons.

[@raiyanjara4244]

IM TOO EARLY, not enough to read here yet

[@fateriddle14]

Post the actual lecture instead of giving your simplified interpretation of it. Is it possible?

[@felipejerez37]

never heard of it

[@Three-Chord-Trick]

The point of this lecture is specified at 21:38. Why wasn't it specified at the beginning? The lecturer should have said 'This is the point or assertion, and here's some suggestions to back it up...' (D_Q).

[@grapeshott]

I am getting a headache. Gonna sleep....

[@sergiomeza5389]

Need next aprt

[@Thionzi]

"ahh pree-Or-ee"

[@MuhammadAdamGhamkoley]

Had the prodigy have nothing better to do than to just think about pointless things. There is no need to create questions to complicate the obvious in attempting to answer it.

[@thegatorhator6822]

Why bother watching a philosophy channel that closes the comment sections on their videos when the dialogue isn't going as well as they hoped?

[@nHans]

As a computer programmer, database modeler, and social networker, let me assure you, a proper name does _not_ refer to a unique referent. There are over 1,400 people named Abraham Lincoln on LinkedIn alone. Very few of them are the 16th POTUS. Sometime back in 2009, CNN profiled a 23-year-old paralegal living in Everett, Washington named Abraham Lincoln. He too wasn't the 16th POTUS-though they are distantly related. So you really _have_ to use descriptions-such as "16th POTUS"-to pinpoint the referent. John Searle-one of the subjects of this video-was correct after all. That's also the reason why, in the real world, your proper name is not sufficient to identify you anywhere-particularly on legal documents. You almost always have to tack on additional identifiers-age, date of birth, account number, father's name, address etc. On the other hand, I suppose I could give you guys a pass and pretend that you mean UUID whenever you say "proper name." UUIDs don't have _a priori_ "associated properties." Which makes Saul Kripke-the other subject of this video-the winner. My attention span is just fine-but at the end, it just reinforced my suspicion that philosophers argue merely for the sake of argument and for no practical reason whatsoever.

[@charlemagnesclock]

Good observation, but there is that probability element again. Accuracy in any naming or clustering of referents is good enough whenever it is good enough. You can also think of this as a definition of "at the relevant scale."

[@Dere2727]

If I say ‘Abraham Lincoln’ I am referring to one specific person (you know the one) not any of the others who happen to have the same name. You have no idea what features of Abraham Lincoln I am aware of that might constitute some cluster of descriptions about him, yet you know exactly who I’m talking about.

[@nHans]

​@@Dere2727 "I'll say something ambiguous, but I'll assume that you know exactly what I'm talking about." Hmm, I think we're beginning to narrow down the problem with philosophers.

[@Dere2727]

Your argument was that there are lots of people with the same name so names must be descriptions. My point is you can often tell who someone is talking about through the context of the conversation, even if you don’t know what descriptions that person associates with them. Apologies if I was being ambiguous.

[@nHans]

​@@Dere2727 I agree with your point-the keywords being "often" and "context." That's how everyday conversation works. However, philosophy is not everyday conversation for most of us. In the philosophy of names discussed in this video, Proper Names are absolute; no provision exists for context or probabilities. And if even a single exception is found, it upends the entire theory. Which is why I was making fun of it. I find it amusing that philosophers struggle so much with such simple concepts. Notice that the context itself acts as a description. In the context of horse racing, for example, Abraham Lincoln is a racehorse. If that context hasn't been established, we do so by saying "Abraham Lincoln, the racehorse." From then on, whenever my sporting friends or I say "Abraham Lincoln," we're referring to the horse. (BTW, there are many racehorses with that name-it seems to be a popular name. So the context would need to be narrowed further, perhaps to a particular race, or additional descriptions provided.) I don't know if you're the sporting type, so I wouldn't presume that you were referring to a racehorse. If somebody I didn't know mentioned "Abraham Lincoln" out of the blue, I'd ask them to clarify: "The racehorse? Or the fictional vampire hunter?" And they'd reply "No, the paralegal chap featured on CNN" or something like. Note that Searle was describing this exact process. It wouldn't have been so funny if Jeff-you know which Jeff-had stuck to his predecessors' examples of "Cicero" and "Jack the Ripper." But noooo-he had to change it to an American example for his predominantly American audience. The rest is history. However, I did allow that if you interpret "Proper Name" as a technical term that actually means "UUID" (or some functional equivalent), then Kripke is right. Until, of course, the next genius philosopher comes along and proves that UUIDs cannot be assigned to every object of interest. Maybe using some kind of a self-referential paradox. BTW, did you just change your name from Ryan Wakefield to DeRe27? Dude, something like that can destroy an entire philosophical theory! I wonder if philosophers have considered what happens if a Proper Name that used to refer to a referent no longer does!

[@thomasdequincey5811]

Harry Potter does not kill Voldemort. It is the 'Elder Wand' that kills Voldemort to protect Harry Potter, it's true "owner".

[@dragonsagesummoner6071]

There is an issue with a Name being a rigid designator. Let’s think for a second How one’s name is established. A rigid designator is the same in all possible worlds. However a name is only a rigid designator if the person doing the naming is only considering 1 name. What if a parent is considering multiple names for there child, I know my mom was considering at least 3 other names that I don’t currently have. Or It is possible there is a world where the social conventions is that the person born must earn there name, and is only referred to as child until that happens. Some Native American culture had this naming ritual. In these cases a name cannot be a rigid designator. The moment another name is considered, a new possible world is established where, someone that is genetically identical to you, has a different name. The only rigid description of a person in all possible worlds is your DNA.