What are Possible Worlds?

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This is a video lecture in a course on the philosophy of language. It explains possible worlds, rigid designators, and non-rigid designators using some basketball examples involving LeBron James and Mt Everest and some other stuff. Even though the idea of possible worlds goes back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, this short video is specifically designed to provide the background necessary to understand Lecture 2 of Saul Kripke's famous work, Naming and Necessity.

[@ivermec-tin666]

Candide is a French satirical novel written by Voltaire in 1759. It is a savage denunciation of metaphysical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. The story follows a gentle man who, despite being pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759), Candide: or, The Optimist (1762), and Candide: Optimism (1947). Voltaire wrote the novel in three days, and it has been a gayer place for readers ever since.

[@PrometheusZandski]

I think Candide went beyond a denunciation of optimism. It was an absurdist view of reality that tried to show that nihilism is the only interpretation of reality that makes any sense. Things happen without any reason, and there is no meaning or purpose.

[@ivermec-tin666]

@heusZandski There is no grounds for painting Voltaire as a nihilist. He was a Rationalist and a Deist. He was a primary exponent of Enlightenment Philosophy, which is the very essence of optimism. This disqualifies him as a nihilist on three counts. Satire is not denunciation outright. It is exposition, critique, and explication through humor. Satire is highly contextual. It is a cultural phenomenon. Most people really don't get satire. They choose to read it as nihilism. This is common in regard to the modern reading of Dante's Divine Comedy. In fact it was a brilliant vehicle for taking the piss out of the whole panoply of prominent persons of the time without being banished by some Prince or Pope. I contend that "possible worlds" are a great French literary contribution with roots clear back to the Arthurian Legends, and later to the popular travel novelas upon which Swift modeled his Gulliver's Travels. Voltaire, Balzac, and even Jules Verne drew inspiration from this genre.

[@zesideral]

Ô malheureux mortels ! ô terre déplorable! Ô de tous les mortels assemblage effroyable! D'inutiles douleurs éternel entretien! Philosophes trompés qui criez: « Tout est bien », Accourez, contemplez ces ruines affreuses, Ces débris, ces lambeaux, ces cendres malheureuses, Ces femmes, ces enfants l'un sur l'autre entassés, Sous ces marbres rompus ces membres dispersés; Cent mille infortunés que la terre dévore, Qui, sanglants, déchirés, et palpitants encore, Enterrés sous leurs toits, terminent sans secours Dans l'horreur des tourments leurs lamentables jours! Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne Voltaire, 1756

[@andybandyb]

Candides best of all worlds is ironic as it’s his only.. right? Philosophically tho it’s with Camus

[@ivermec-tin666]

@@andybandyb Candide is Voltaire's only elipse? That is not a complete thought. If there can be such a thing as a factoid then what you have written is a thoughtoid. That is irony. Voltaire and Camus are products of utterly different worlds separated by several generations and most importantly the Great War! I read Camus body of work as a flippant and fascile attempt to slap a bandage on the psychic wound of WWI. Yes, I take his nihilism to be smug and adolescent. Albert Camus is not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Voltaire. That is irony. Voltaire is an exponent of the great Western Canon. Camus is a post war reactionary desperately seeking succor at Freud's tit. There is no sustenance or substance there, IMO. Of course that was before "chest feeding" was dreamed up by corporate pharma. This is ironic too. In a very palpable sense, the Western World has simply never come to terms with the Great War. The gaping maw of avarice and collective naivite continue to eat at the foundations of our civilization. Such malicious wanton destruction in the service of some collective madness cannot be reconciled with the relentless optimism of Enlightenment Values. The Great War diminished us. It continues to do so today. I suggest that this is the critical failure that permits us to accept something as stupid as a policy of "endless warfare", an endless list of wars in serivce of industrial and financial necessity chewing up and spitting out one generation after another to infinity.

[@tomw4918]

Na there’s no world where Draymond keeps his composure

[@DrGus7]

Love your videos Jeffrey, I think to be able to teach is a gift, not only to be able to make someone absorb information but to transmit the passion and the interest for the discipline, I encourage you to keep going! It had been a while since I watched new videos and I think the imagery from editing makes the ideas easier to follow. I personaly feel that zooming in ends up cutting out the rest of the board and making it a little bit too cut-up, the slower pace, almost classroom-ish vibe was really tender and accessible. Love your work.

[@not_enough_space]

I'm not sure I understand rigid designation. Or, more specifically, I'm unclear about when something is the same object between worlds. I mean, there's going to be a gradient of differences regarding features and contexts across worlds. So how is it possible for there to be a fact of the matter about where the line is that's separating what variation counts as the same object from what variation counts as a different object?

[@donaldb1]

I think according to Kripke you just have to stipulate identity. If you say, "Imagine a world in which Nixon lost the 1972 election" then in that world it is actually Nixon that lost the election, simply because you have said so, or that is what you have imagined. On this view possible worlds are not things that are out there where you can go and check that that Nixon is the same as our Nixon. He is the same simply becase that's what is stipulated when we imagine that world. But if you say, "Imagine a world in which the winner of the 1972 election lost the election" then that doesn't make sense. The phrase "winner of the 1972 election" is not a rigid designator and can't mean the same thing in every possible world. There must be limits. You can't say "Imagine a world in which Nixon is a lump of coal", because then you really can't be talking about Nixon any more. But I'm not sure that there can be any hard and fast rules here.

[@PeterBarnes2]

Really that's a matter for metaphysics. That is to say, your answer to that particular question says a lot about your metaphysical theory/beliefs. There are other matters metaphysical, but "where the line is that's separating what variation counts as the same object from what variation counts as a different object" you might recognize as being the discussion over the Ship of Theseus.

[@WaitingforGodel]

Yes, one way of looking at it might be by saying, what if Gloria Marie James named her son "Anthony McClelland Jr.". Then we would have to argue, well, he's the LeBron James of that world because he was "the son of Gloria Marie James", "2016 NBA Finals MVP", etc., e.g. by referring to non-rigid designations. Then maybe the rigid designation in that sense could be non-rigid.

[@davidonfim2381]

You don't even have to bother with other worlds. Are you the same person/object you were .00005 seconds ago? How about 20 minutes ago? 3 years? 15 years? What variation counts as the same object and what variation counts as different objects?

[@saggygnaw]

@@donaldb1 presumably Nixon would have been the same in both worlds until he lost the election in the other world, at which point the two Nixons couldn’t possibly be the same person from an experiential standpoint.

[@jayxavier6930]

I appreciate, as always, the clarity and concision in exposition, but I find that: by going by way of Kripke, and saving Lewis for some other time, the focus stays on the periphery: rigid designators are important to possible world semantics, but they arguably matter less than questions of identity and similarity (a big issue in Lewis); and the distinction between de re (a word that refers or denotes) and de dicto (a description) can operate independently of possible worlds theory (i.e., de re/dicto could have surfaced in a possible world in which there were no possible worlds). And, of course, missing is how it all started, at least in the 20th century: modal logic, modal/intensional operators, and the difference between possibility and necessity in semantics and truth conditionals...

[@rafaelarevalo8047]

curious what you mean by saying "a possible world in which there were no possible worlds". how can I make sense of that more clearly?

[@geoffhead111]

i can certainly see why the philosophy of language is one of your core subjects. words are simple labels for complex realities, so we really need a set of ideas about logic and syntax and meaning to properly use them, nice work, im really enjoying your lectures. youre obviously enthused by your subject, you have good pedagogic technique and youve wrapped your head around the topic so you can summarize complex ideas simply

[@陈孜-n3t]

As a nonnative english speaker who is fed up with hectic college routine, I can follow your train of thought smoothly even though my english sucks and I don't major in philosophy.Shoutout to your articulation and explanation skills!

[@a.hardin620]

I’m just here to recommend 2 more of Kripke’s books: “Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language” and perhaps the much less well known sequel to Naming and Necessity: “Reference and Existence.“ It’s like a trilogy of great modern philosophy.

[@a_creamsy1st228]

Could you say a world in which the Himalayas are called something else disproves rigid descriptors being unchanging, or does the fact that I still had to reference the Himalayas prove it more?

[@madmartigan21]

I was thinking something as simple as, "what if in another world everything was identical except Mr and Mrs James decided to name their son Robert?"

[@donaldb1]

That's a matter of what language you are speaking. One of Kripke's favourite examples is Richard Nixon (he was writing in the 70s). He says there could be a possible world in which Nixon was not called Nixon, but he would still _be_ Nixon. What this means is that we can imagine that the person we think of as Richard Nixon could have been called something different (maybe if his mother had divorced and remarried, and Richard took his stepfather's name). But would still be the same man as (the person that we call by the name) Richard Nixon.

[@anastasiya256]

@@donaldb1 but then you’re describing a non-rigid designator of the man we know as Nixon…

[@anastasiya256]

I was thinking it had to be rigid in relation to our world… using our world as a source of truth for these definitions… but that would mean that it’s relative, which would make the references more complicated 😅

[@donaldb1]

@@anastasiya256 Yes, I think that's right. It's all tied to Kripke's theory of how names refer in language. Some people think that what the name "Richard Nixon" really means is a concept that we have of a person who did and said such and such, but Kripke would say no, "Richard Nixon" means a particular human being. He was baptised with that name as a child and everyone else has used that name for him ever since. He could have been called something else, but he would still have been the same child, the one we, in the actual world, call Richard Nixon. You see more where Kripke's going with this when you realise he applies this to general terms, as well as proper names. For instance, gold has the atomic number 79. Someone might say, "Imagine a world in which gold had an atomic number of 78", but Kripke would deny that was possible. In our language "gold" refers to that particular substance, which we know has an atomic number of 79. There could be a possible world in which the name "gold" was used to refer to a different material, but then it wouldn't really be gold, as we understand it. In our language, "Gold has an atomic number of 79" is necessarily true, i.e. true in every possible world (because "gold" is a rigid designator). The idea that there could be necessary truths that can only be discovered by science, rather than by pure logic, was I think new to Kripke and quite radical. It leads him into a sort of metaphysical essentialism which is rather controversial.

[@theyagis4550]

i want to say you that you ar a great teacher, you explain very complicated concepts in an actually very single way. i am learning english, and your videos have been actually useful to get vocabulary wile i learn new things. thank you very much for your great work

[@bendontran3605]

Babe wake up! New Jeffrey Kaplan video just dropped!

[@ajw9533]

"If only India hadn't collided with Eurasia." This is so encouraging.l to hear. All I hear from Americans using a past counterfactual conditional now is "If India didn't collide with Eurasia..." It's infecting UK English. Thank you for using the language accurately, along with your excellent exegesis.

[@Inebia-All-ElTheBlackZeitgeist]

I love your videos. Do you have a general time line of when your book is going to go on sale and what aspect of philosophy will it cover?

[@balinttanos9806]

Maybe the several serious problems around Kripke's theory are also worth a video :) I just mention that Kripke refers to intiution no less than 48 times in the book, so what if others' intuitions about 'sameness' of stuff in different possible worlds are different form Kripke's, as later turned out they are? What if LeBron James was a car mechanic in Canada in a possible world of the height of 5'6"? How would that be the 'same' LeBron James? (Not speaking of the possibility of a possible world where LeBron James is a particulary intelligent octopus :) )

[@not_enough_space]

I have similar worries. It's not clear to me that an alternate LeBron James needs to have the same history or personality or genetics or the same parents. I'm not sure any particular thing in isolation, or any specific cluster, is necessary or sufficient for someone to be LeBron James.

[@jsphwst]

I love your content! I had a quick question though. Is the "rigidity" of the designator determined by the intention of the speaker? For example, lets say I use "Mt. Everest" to refer to the mountain that we call Mt. Everest. There is a possible world where "the mountain "world @" calls Mt. Everest" is actually called something else (lets say Mt. Kaplan). I would assume that the designator would still be considered rigid, since my intention is to refer to the same mountain that resulted from India's impact. But now, lets assume I say "the mountain called Mt. Everest" in a non-rigid way to refer to any mountain in any possible world that is mamed Mt. Everest. This would exclude Mt. Kaplan, but possibly include other mountains in other worlds that are not "our" Mt. Everest. So, I guess what I am asking is: what determines the rigidity? Is it the intention of the one making the statement? Would I need to clarify the "non-rigidty" by phrasing the designator as "any mountain named Mt. Everest in any possible world"?

[@bendontran3605]

Can you make some lecture videos on the philosophy of science? I'm interested in hearing your explanations of the works of Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn. I've watched all of your video lectures multiple times over and I love this content. I'm not even a philosophy major

[@mussyhall]

Hi, thanx for these videos. Insightful stuf. Could you talk a bit about the word "possible" in possible worlds?. Does it actually have to be possible? Or can it just be something that is made up, or thought of or said. I feel that some people use the term to suggest that something is plausible or could have existed, whilst they have not yet shown their "possible world" is actually possible or could actually have existed. Are their philosophical rules for "possible"?

[@johnclay7422]

sir can you make video on Hegel dialectics and his work .!!! thanks

[@sbnwnc]

Probably not because he is an analytic philosopher and they don't usually study Hegel

[@BrandochGarage]

What is the point of a philosophy channel where the comments on videos are turned off?

[@Reddles37]

Like a lot of ideas related to possible worlds, I feel like the concept of a rigid designator really falls apart if you think about it too much. The worlds should vary continuously, so there is no sharp cutoff where something goes from being the same object to being a different object. If LeBron James didn't win the 2016 championship it might have made a big difference to his life after that, so would he really be the exact same person as the LeBron in our world? What if the divergence happened much earlier and totally changed his whole life history, and maybe prevented him from getting into basketball at all? I think most people would agree that if a different sperm fertilized the egg and made a baby with totally different genetics then it wouldn't be the same person, even if they were still named LeBron James. And alternatively, if everything was the same except that his mother named him something different then all the non-rigid designators would be the same, but the supposedly rigid designator would have changed...

[@anastasiya256]

But there are many possible worlds where stuff other than LeBron James is different where the rigid designator in the strictest sense would apply. It doesn’t all have to be about LeBron, haha But yeah, this seems like something that needs clarification 🤨

[@mrosskne]

It's rigid if the speaker decides it is. This is a hypothetical construct used to assist in explaining arguments.

[@Reddles37]

@@mrosskne I haven't thought about this in a bit, but I think my issue was that a rigid designator seems to assume things have some kind of immutable essence that I don't believe exists. And that's a problem because it invites you to make assumptions based on what you know about the real world, even if they wouldn't necessarily hold. To keep overusing LeBron, consider a hypothetical situation where he became a doctor instead of playing basketball. If you think we've used a rigid designator to somehow pick out "the same" person in both worlds then you might be tempted to assume that his life outside of his career is pretty similar. But I think its pretty obvious that doctor LeBron would be a totally different person with a totally different life, and more importantly there would be tons of more subtle changes to the world as a whole that are easy to overlook if you think of things as having a rigidly defined identity.

[@mrosskne]

@@Reddles37 No. If we decide he was the same person except that he became a doctor, he is.

[@Reddles37]

@@mrosskne Well, the fact that you think that sentence makes any sense just proves my point. LeBron didn't flip a coin one day and decide to become an NBA star, it was the result of a chain of events starting when he was a little kid that would have had to play out differently. And do you REALLY think that becoming a super famous billionaire hasn't affected him at all? If so I'd appreciate it if you donated your savings to me, since it apparently wouldn't make any difference for you...

[@raydencreed1524]

Not sure how relevant this is, but there are two types of things we call “possible”. Claims and actions. For example, we might say that it’s possible that the Riemann Hypothesis is true. There, the claim that the Riemann Hypothesis is true is the thing being called “possible”. For another example, we might say that it’s possible to arrive at the party before John does. There, arriving at the party before John does (which is an action) is the thing being called “possible”.

[@raydencreed1524]

To add on to this, before the Indian subcontinent had collided with Eurasia, I don’t believe that it would have been possible for it to not collide because we live in a deterministic universe. So I’m not sure how useful this way of thinking in terms of “possible worlds” is.

[@Dere2727]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@raydencreed1524You’re kind of onto something. There are multiple types of possibility. The type talked about in this video is *metaphysical* possible, which is just sort of how things could have been in the most basic sense. The sense in which the Riemann hypothesis *could* be true/false is what’s called *epistemic* possibility, i.e. what is consistent with your beliefs. Metaphysically, the Riemann hypothesis is either necessarily true or false, but epistemically for us it is neither necessary nor impossible. The sense in which things have to be a certain way because of the laws of physics is *physical* possibility. But things that are physically impossible can still be metaphysically possible because the laws of physics could have been different. Possible worlds are arguably the most influential development in philosophy in the last century, so there’s definitely a lot of use to them. I really recommend reading Naming and Necessity if you’re interested in this kind of thing.

[@raydencreed1524]

@@Dere2727 Another thing I realized is that a claim being possible is really just a special case of a certain related action being impossible. If we say that it is *possible* that Adam was at the party last night, what we’re really saying is that to know that Adam was *not* at the party last night is *not* *possible* .

[@Dere2727]

@@raydencreed1524 that’s not entirely true, since in your example there is some possible world in which Adam wasn’t at the party and you knew he wasn’t there, so it is both possible to know he was there and possible to know he was not there. It is true, though that when something is *necessarily* true, it is impossible for it to not be true

[@raydencreed1524]

@@Dere2727 I’m not sure what you mean. I’m talking about a hypothetical situation in which we have a friend named John (or Adam, either way) who went to a party last night and in which we don’t know that. In that situation, if we started to wonder (for whatever reason) whether John went to a party last night, either of us could utter the sentence “It *is* possible that John went to a party last night”. What I’m trying to figure out is precisely what we’d be conveying by uttering that sentence. What would it mean for the claim that John went to a party last night to be *possible* ? The answer I came up with is that what we’d be conveying could also be conveyed by the sentence “It is *not* *possible* to *know* that John did *not* go to a party last night”. I *think* that those two sentences convey precisely the same thing. In case it needs to be said, I’m not saying that they *basically* convey the same thing, or that we can derive one from the other, or that one conveys a consequence of the other. I’m saying that they convey *precisely* the same thing.

[@wafflepotato]

These videos are as good a resource for philosophy as they are for teaching philosophy!

[@mentalitydesignvideo]

This is not a "philosophy of language", it's a manual for using ad-hoc nomenclature. Also, there are no "possible worlds" that can be intelligibly discussed. Different initial conditions lead to different worlds, of which we cannot reliably say anything. We can, however, discuss fantasies (on various merits -- entertainment value, inventivness, consistency), but that's another matter altogether.

[@Petticca]

This. I have _no_ idea if possible worlds, and the modal axioms used in philosophy have a meritorious use. I do know that they have been employed extensively by apologists creating what are essentially convoluted, and fallacious arguments, leading to the ineluctable conclusion that they've demonstrated the empirical fact of the existence of their preferred deity existing in reality. These are presented as though they're intellectually honest, logically sound and academically rigorous triumphs, because holding a PhD in philosophy, and the nature of the subject, lends the air of legitimacy to the endeavor. I've encountered numerous examples of apologists obfuscating their attempts to define their god into existence, by use of possible world semantics, and, I've found numerous examples of philosophers giving a brief description of possible worlds, that never seems to include any concrete information about the origination of the idea, aside from a mention that they can pertain to the concepts of the possibility, or necessity of something... somehow... I don't recall there being any mention of the philosophy branch(es) they were first intended for use within, or their current uses in philosophy, and within which branches... Just brief examples of how possible worlds can be invoked as a way of entertaining fantastical ideas, that have no bearing upon reality.

[@BlueWolfCAST]

“In what world” Nice 👍🏽

[@DarkZeidon]

Hey, Jeffrey! Good video! I am a brazillian fan and truly enjoy your effort and your work here. I would like to read your book, but, unfortunely, the price for a ship between you and me would be a magnanimous overpriced proceedment. I would like to know if your book is going to have a digital version. Love from BR.

[@vaelinlaornas]

as always so great I cant remember watching somebody teaching so interesting but also irmative Could you do something about marxism?

[@Sohnoob]

Hearing him talk the big what-if of the 2016 NBA Finals and Draymond Green's composure is unexpected. But very graspable.

[@umbomb]

I enjoy your videos, which I watch while working out. I rarely read books. Thanks!

[@gthomasfinn]

Fascinating as always, professor.

[@ishtarg8]

Check out, He Walked Around the Horses, by H Beam Piper for a fun exploration of the possible worlds idea. Also the rest of his Paratime stories. Keith Laumer’s Imperium novels work with the same idea too.

[@Insertnamehere255]

I recommend checking out the show Steins;Gate (it's an anime) that explores this theme of possible worlds.

[@mmmmishkaaaa]

Didn't expect a philosophical video to include Draymond Green commiting a flagrant and Kevin Durant joining the Warriors.

[@mcsweatshop]

i like your hoops references philosophy man

[@flywheelshyster]

Good teacher.

[@PrometheusZandski]

The idea that there could be a rigid designator in another world seems rather contradictory. I would say it's impossible for there to be an absolute substantial term when comparing any two worlds. All of the things (experiences, thoughts, atoms) that make up our Le Bron James wouldn't be the same in the other world, so it's NOT Le Bron James. If you want to say he's the closest thing that world has to our Le Bron James, that's about as much that could be said.

[@CoreenMontagna]

Is this sort of a signifier/sign situation?

[@jjjccc728]

When a philosopher like this guy says it's possible that things could have been different how does he know? He can imagine that things could have been different but how does he demonstrate that what he imagines could actually happen? Inquiring minds want to know. How does he differentiate between imagination and reality?

[@robinharwood5044]

Logical possibility or nomomlogical possibility?

[@jjjccc728]

@@robinharwood5044 Logical possibility is basically in the imagination. Actual possibility would be a subset of logical possibility. It is logically possible to imagine traveling faster than the speed of light through space but it doesn't appear to be actually possible. Although The actuality of the speed of light question is an empirical issue.

[@robinharwood5044]

@@jjjccc728 So you are suggesting that it might only be logically possible that things could have been different?

[@jjjccc728]

@@robinharwood5044 Yes. If it's only logically possible then that reduces the meaning in my opinion. We are just talking fantasies then.

[@tomrobingray]

The current orthodoxy of Possible Worlds equates what is currently possible with what once was possible. In doing this it renders itself meaningless. Even if such modal logic really did have meaning (which it doesn't) , rigid designators themselves would still be meaningless, because words only have intention, they have no extension.

[@OdairJunior-xc2bq]

Possible worlds include worls where LeBron James was a girl, or simply was named Brown James or something else, or decided to play baseball or be a musician. He can have a different name and/or a totally diferent personality/life/genetics. Also, nothing deny the possibility of other complete different people sharing the same name. I don't accept these different versions to be the same LeBron James of this world. Worst, i don't think you can have real "rigid denominators" in the sense the concept was intended.

[@stewartfraser4210]

The human brain can handle future contingencies with no effort. It is all pretty much built in. The ability to consider different presents/pasts sort of flows down from the future contingency ability. THERE IS ONLY ONE WORLD

[@Makebuildmodify]

Possibility needs to be demonstrated. Otherwise, it's imagination, right?

[@knuu]

Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth but not the tallest. That's how it is. LeBron James does not become shorter than me when he enters water. "The tallest mountain in the world from base to peak is Mauna Kea, a long-dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. In total, it is approximately 10,205m (33481 feet) in height, taller than Mount Everest's 8,849m (29032 feet). Over half of Mauna Kea is underwater in the Pacific Ocean."

[@emiliog.4432]

Ok.

[@louaygammo2204]

Software uses rigid and non rigid designators. Except they are called pointers and double pointers.

[@OBGynKenobi]

But then wouldn't you have to assume that the possible worlds are exact clones of earth? Mount Everest may have the same name, but it is not a clone of Mount Everest here on earth, and so you can't have a rigid designator, but it's just a designator to A mountain.

[@ninj-as7710]

Yeah, like the Draymond who keeps his composure is a slightly different Draymond than the one we know here in our world. So at this point, it becomes a ship of theseus problem.

[@cometcake575]

But what about the world where LeBron James has a different name and someone else is named LeBron James?

[@danwylie-sears1134]

I don't believe in rigid designators, as normally understood. I think they're useful, but I don't think they make sense if pushed too hard. Something in one possible world is being thought of as the same entity as its counterpart in a different possible world, but really they're counterparts in different worlds. If I had stepped into something like a Star Trek transporter, and two individuals had appeared in two locations that could have been where I was transported to, both apparently identical to me and both claiming to be the one who stepped into the transporter, there's no good way of saying which one is me.

[@hoagie911]

Is there a possible world in which Kripke was right?

[@davidkey4272]

I would attack the concept of rigid designators as somehow being consistent in worlds where everything else is not. Why should that be the case?

[@jjjccc728]

What problem is the concept of possible worlds trying to solve?

[@dicipuluscaptiosus]

aconCAgua , the accent goes on CA , nice lecture btw

[@mutabazimichael8404]

Always interesting

[@Alex-vm6ef]

Great vid as usual, cut looks good too, excited about the book

[@onion4062]

you should did a video on Wittgenstein's later views on language

[@Daniel.m.m.87]

I'm liable to go, Michael Jackson, Tyson, Jordan game six. You can pix. 😅

[@grapeshott]

Ok but whats the relevance of it?

[@XOPOIIIO]

Every time I start a new civilization game.

[@jumperjay]

ayee youre a fan of hoops🙏🙏

[@saggygnaw]

Is it possible to have a possible world in which possible worlds are impossible?

[@Calligraphybooster]

Hm. This looks to me (a bike mechanic) like set theory for the mathematically inapt, like myself.

[@kingcole55]

What’s your book about though

[@kalebdodge775]

The best of all possible worlds is the world where I get a free copy of your book.

[@jeppeaim3039]

It's as if non-rigid designators refer to an object in "social space" or something like that

[@jeppeaim3039]

I misspoke. They are more like variables with qualifiers. Whether or not they refer to anything depends on whether or not any objects exist that fulfill those qualities.

[@ThePeaceableKingdom]

Are other possible worlds even possible? Sure. Why not? I like a world with a police box that's bigger on the inside. If I'm offered a chance to go there I will. But to speak seriously of other possible worlds it would seem you need to show that other worlds are possible. That any concept of rigid Fate is wrong, or any concept of universal causality. It's devilishly difficult to prove that anything could have happened in a way different that it did, or that some things might just be random or uncaused. Physicists in some fields have warmed up to the idea because it makes the math(s) work(s). But proof is another matter and not really their concern. You can run the experiment by making a video of flipping a coin. It comes up heads. You can run that very exact same coin flip again by rewinding the video and watching it again. It will come up heads. No matter how many times you watch it. Despite the fact that if you perform multiple similar experiments by repeatedly flipping a coin it will tend to a 50 50 distribution of heads and tails. Perhaps that one original flip had to be heads, ever and always. Maybe not. But prove it. That's devilishly hard. Is The Doctor (Who) a rigid designator or a non rigid designator? There have been 15 Doctors (so far) of different ages, personalities, abilities, sexes, races and with different fashion senses. (16 if you count Peter Cushing movies, 17 for the stage actor, 18 for... etc.) But they are in some sense still the same person, only still totally different. If you come from a culture that believes in reincarnation, and LeBron James dies and is reincarnated as a Chinese girl who loves baseball and plays on her university's baseball team (and of course isn't called LeBron James) is she still LeBron James? Is Lebron James then a rigid designator or not? (Edit to fix an embarrassing "there concern" to the proper "their concern." Though perhaps in some possible world the spellings of 'there' and 'their' are reversed...)

[@thatguy2740]

What about a world in which you were assigned a different rigid designator at birth

[@stormycat0905]

In whatever world you're in Larry Bird is still the greatest basketball player of all time.

[@practeff]

He would also want to take on every other player in every other world in his prime

[@ActedUponNoMore]

Where does the multiverse fit into this?

[@jayxavier6930]

That's a whole can of worms, but some might say the multiverse encapsulates all the different possible worlds... But then if you're thinking that possible world theory can illuminate, say, what's going on in Marvel films, then it's an ongoing debate... David Lewis, who wrote the book on possible worlds (and unwittingly inspired that film Everything, Everywhere... etc.) sometimes suggested yes, sometimes said no... Best bet would be to read up on modal fictionalism: see the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy on that, and also, same site, on Lewis, Kripke and possible worlds...

[@matthewsaligumba7733]

So then, is there a possible world where possible worlds don't exist?

[@JalilAhmad-ro7vq]

Sir👍

[@madmartigan21]

LeBron dunks.

[@jz5005]

These are Imaginary Worlds, there's no reason to suggest or believe that they are or ever were Possible.'

[@iWAAOG]

#iWAAOG wholeheartedly i appreciate u🤲🏾…💭 calming 🌪️of 🛐🌬️worldwind🌫️.. i 🌊 clearly. ThankU 4 clarity 👀💯

[@willnash1842]

Hate to be a bore, but, Everest isn't the tallest. It is the highest tho. Mauna Kea is the tallest, most of it under the ocean tho

[@keksimus__maximus]

>insert technically best kinda correct meme that's cool dude i didn't know that

[@guadalupe8589]

Everest has the highest point of land on earth, which colloquially means, "tallest"

[@keksimus__maximus]

@@guadalupe8589 LeBron James is taller than me, but if he digs himself in the sand on the beach I'll be higher. So no, taller doesn't mean higher colloquially it means taller.

[@Q-Ball.]

One could( and maybe should ) measure them both from a common reference point, and that makes Everest taller. Lebron might be longer head to foot than you, but that is all that is being said. That is not transferable to mountains. Mauna Kea might be « more prominent » in some strange and not useful perspective of the world. Mt Everest is the tallest.

[@charlesmarshall1309]

Clearly you don’t hate it enough…

[@melaniehowells2747]

Enough with LeBron James!! Jesus!

[@Tymachos]

In a possible world without humans the idea of possible worlds is impossible.

[@jayxavier6930]

That depends if you're a psychologist (Kant) or an objectivist (Frege). Kant would agree. Frege wouldn't. In other words: it's a very complicated issue that no one here is going to solve...

[@Psychol-Snooper]

New Jersey is not part of this world.

[@mktwatcher]

Dude, put a whiteboard behind you so we can see what you're drawing on the Clear Panel in front of you.

[@Robinson8491]

Please not a white background, that reaps havoc when watching on big screen. This black is relaxing, just use something else than your miniphone

[@southerncross4956]

Good gosh!!! Don’t these people have anything of value (or of some small interesting) to talk about? They haven’t even got back to us with a number as to how many angles can dance on the head of a pen. No soup for any of you, one year Get out!!!😮

[@BlueWolfCAST]

A world is a perception, not a state of being Therefore, saying that the world is the universe is false to one . The world can only be entered by the individual ,; There’s no collective world There’s only collective state of beings

[@iWAAOG]

#iWAAOG

[@iWAAOG]

Grateful i am 🫶🏽

[@scribbler60]

@bluewolfindustry No, the world is not a perception. The world exists entirely independent of one's perception of it. Even though we can only see (ie: perceive) the moon in the sky 50% of the time (clouds notwithstanding) it actually exists 100% of the time. Human beings are lousy at perceiving things/events. We are a product of our perceptual abilities, our biases, our personal histories, etc. Exterior things/events exist in their own right, regardless of our abilities to correctly see/interpret them.

[@nicholasgreenway610]

I don’t think you need to talk about sports in order for people to connect with this topic. I doubt very many people watching these videos care about sports.

[@gavinchristiantoro]

Where is Feminism and Ethics of Care? Please make one...

[@00billharris]

He rants and gestures for 8 minutes to make a one-sentence point. I'll make sure that my grandchildren, then, will not be attending one of his philosophy classes. Otherwise, his mere presence makes Hamas a moral necessity--Categorically speaking,

[@yurivincentweber]

Just a heads up about your pronunciation of Aconcagua (not the point of the video, I know). It's pronounced more like "ah-kon-KAH-gwah". Your rendering of the pronunciation had me sniggering haha

[@hakimal-hakim8890]

I am a physicist and I really enjoy your videos, especially this kind of videos where physics and philosophy inrtersect

[@Mai-Gninwod]

how so physics?

[@Hfil66]

@@Mai-Gninwod I am guessing the reference is to the multiverse theory (multiple universes, but equivalent to philosophical multiple worlds).

[@Mai-Gninwod]

@@Hfil66 Right. This has absolutely nothing to do with multiverse theory though. Physicists think those universes actually exist. In philosophy they are just deployed as like... hypotheticals? Not the same thing at all. I know you are not the one who claimed they were.

[@matthewlennon6289]

@@Mai-Gninwodsome physicists do. Some physicists entertain the math for its potential uses without needing to go so far as treating those other universes as real in any sense. Most physicists recognize that, as the multiverse “theory” is not testable even in principle, it’s not actually physics of any kind, but fantasy extrapolated from mathematical theorems that are, or could become, useful. I’m a physics pretender but have to agree the philosophical underpinnings here are much more interesting even to physicists than the multiverse theory.

[@ComptonFunk]

The goat is back ❤

[@elias8141]

What about "lebron James" in a possible world in which lebron's mother named him Mike instead?

[@madmcall]

Or what about the world where a different combination of egg and sperm produce a slightly shorter son which Lebron's parents decide to name LeBron. In that case is LeBron not a name but an alias for the definite descriptor describing LeBron's parents' son?

[@lux3546]

I'm not sure if you're into political philosophy, and this is a bit weird to ask, but can you make a lecture about Machiavelli's philosophy?

[@IntegralDeLinha]

So, it seems to me that the only expressions that are actual rigid designators are the ones that mention the referent's world. For instance, "This world's Mt. Everest" is a rigid designator, but "Mt. Everest" isn't since it refers to different things in different worlds. What makes World-12309832's Mt. Everest still count as the referent in the expression "Mt. Everest" uttered in World-7? Whatever uniquely identifies this world's Mt. Everest can't be in any other world. And whatever doesn't uniquely identify a single entity is necessarily a non-rigid designator.

[@davidonfim2381]

By your logic, you could also say that the only expressions that are actual rigid designators are the ones that mention the referent's world *at an exact instant in time*. Mt. Everest is not a static, unchanging thing. Every nanosecond, its molecules and subatomic particles change positions. In longer time scales, snow falls on the mountain, birds poop on it, water carries dirt away from it, and so on. In even longer time scales, the tectonic forces keep pushing the mountain up.... etc etc etc. it's never good to define something in such a strict and rigid way (pun intended) that it loses all meaning or usefulness. Nobody would have any problem knowing what "Mt. Everest" means in "other worlds" that have such a thing.

[@IntegralDeLinha]

@@davidonfim2381 , good points! But I'll bite this bullet. Mt. Everest either is multiply realizable and therefore not a rigid designator or is not multiply realizable and can't change in time. Since we will still call Mt. Everest Mt. Everest after it loses a grain of dirt, it's not a rigid designator and, you're right, we might have almost no use for the concept of rigid designator. We shouldn't mourn the loss of a deceitful concept, though. If we are to be epistemically rational, we should place truth above usefulness and get rid of arbitrariness. I sign under Amy Karofsky's necessitarian view. If there is a possible world in which I'm a dog, in which sense is this dog really me? Difference and identity are incompatible, as Leibniz probably would agree.

[@davidonfim2381]

@@IntegralDeLinhaI don't think it's a deceitful concept, it's just that people misunderstand it. The word "rigid" doesn't mean absolutely 100% objectively immovable. A tree is a rigid object, but it still sways in the wind. I don't think the concept of a rigid designator was ever intended to be so absolute that it never applies to anything. Trying to use it that way just constitutes a straw man based on a false premise. Truth and usefulness are not mutually exclusive, and the "usefulness" in question is in regards to our ability to determine the truth. You can't ever make progress towards determining a particular aspect of the truth if you are eternally side-tracked by semantic word games. For example, I find it interesting that you keep using the "deceitful concept" of the self. You keep saying "I" this and "I" that. But that is a lie- "you" are not the exact same entity that "you" were .00000001 seconds ago, let alone 2 minutes ago or 5 hours ago. Same goes for nearly all of the words that you used- none of them are absolute, objective, eternal, unchanging concepts or free from "arbitrariness". So if we should overanalyze every single word instead of using the meaning that was intended and that everyone knows was intended, and we should discard everything that is arbitrary and potentially deceitful.... well, I think I will discard your whole comment :)

[@IntegralDeLinha]

@@davidonfim2381 I agree that we shouldn't be so rigorous in our everyday conversations, but philosophy, on the other hand, is the place for formal rigour. At least if you're aiming at truth, not metaphor or something akin. Btw, the word I is one of the very few actual rigid designators in my discourse. When I say I, I'm not referring to my persona. I'm not referring to my psychological self, to the set of my current beliefs, emotions, desires, dispositions, atitudes etc. When I say I, I'm referring to the owner of my perceptual field. I think this never changes. As I see it, I have a perceptual field, constituted of a visual field, an auditory field, an olfactory field, a tactile field, proprioceptive field etc. My perceptual field is where all my experiences are represented. The experiences themselves change in time, but the subject of those experiences doesn't. When Descartes said "I think, therefore I am", he recognized 2 entities: the thought and the thinker. He uses the thought to infer the existence of the thinker. This thinker is what I call I. I'm not my persona, I'm not my body, I'm also not my current experiences. I'm the subject of those experiences, the thinker. Contrary to your belief, the thinker doesn't change. The reason I don't care if my beliefs, emotions etc. change is precisely because I am not them. That's why I don't cease to exist when my current set of desieres/beliefs/experiences ceases to exist. I'm not them. I persist through time. Or, at least, I have a strong intuition that I do. So I is a rare literal rigid designator.

[@anastasiya256]

@@IntegralDeLinha 🤔 do you persist when you’re unconscious in your sleep or do you go out of existence for a time?

[@EasleyCorey]

KZbin your ““Epistemology and Cosmology: An Explanation of Flat Earthers”, UNCG Prison Education Program, Federal Correctional Institution: Butner Medium II, Aug 2023.

[@DoYouEvenGambitBro]

In the @ctual world I subscribed

[@sardinhunt]

People in humanities should study more math, It's not obvious that accumulating luxury items is morally irrelevant, their value stays throughout time, their worth is capital. Also, you do not know how neuroscience opearates incentives and how things that people want make them prone to produce more. The absolutes you gave for granted in ordinary people (besides the first statement) are not absolute at all. Please be skeptical

[@Millathunmain]

5:58 But how can they refer to the same person in every possible world when in some possible world Neither Humans nor Le born James would’ve even existed like your example of world C, how can they refer to the same person in every possible world when in some worlds the person might not even exist? If he does not exist in a possible world, what is the name referring to, nothing, right?

[@Jack-o6u8k]

Can the logically impossible happen in other possible worlds?

[@jayxavier6930]

David Lewis eventually says no, in On the Plurality of Worlds, but in his earlier book Counterfactuals he gave, I think, a more satisfying answer: he says, yes our sense of what is impossible can be possible or true in another world, but it's vacuously true. In other words: there can be a possible world whereby, if p + 1 is a prime number, then pigs can fly (his example). That's nonsense in our world; but it could be meaningful and true in some other world... but then Lewis says, ok, who cares? It's true, but it's vacuously true... It's empty. It doesn't teach us anything that makes any sense to us... It's sort of a pragmatist answer, but one I find hard to disagree with... (By "pragmatist" I mean the philosophy of pragmatism, which sometimes has been at loggerheads with analytic philosophy...)

[@Paladin_67]

Hi Jeffery, it's great to see another presentation. I've enjoyed al your others. In fact I've enjoyed them many times and I would love to see more; thank you for all those that you have done. I've learnt so much that I didn't know I didn't know. Cheers🙏🙏

[@darrellee8194]

Rigid designators don't work, because I can imagine a possible world where Steph Curry and LeBron James names are swapped and that other stuff happens so that The Warriors win so the LeBron James is still the 2016 NBA Finals MVP. But genetically the guy named Steph Curry plays for the Lakers (or whatever team) and is "our" LeBron James. Or a world where the Highest Mountain is still called Mt. Everest (for historical reason) but geophysically is our K2. Hell, I can imagine a world where both LeBron James and Steph Curry are LeBron James. (identical twins separated at birth). So rigid designators aren't so rigid except in a small subset of possible worlds. How can you even identify the corresponding entities when every possible relation or property could be different. Some entities could converge (like the multiple LeBron James, in the example. With people you could maybe use DNA, but that too could possible be different. You need some distance metrics, and as you made a graph across different worlds. One entity could drifty away from X while another (different entity) drifts closer. In which case you designate would switch. If you going to say were going to use the designator "Lebron" from what ever entity most closely matching LeBron (regardless of what he is called in that world). You have to have some metric and that metric might might not return a unique result.

[@johnmichaelcule8423]

1) I'm still not convinced that the idea of 'possible worlds' makes sense: do you have any videos taking about that?. 2) The talk about 'rigid designators' makes me think about the doctrine of True Names in various fantasy works. I'm not sure that concept makes sense either. I'm also pretty sure that if other possible worlds exist the designator 'Le Brun James' isn't going to be rigid enough to produce a consistent result. The Le Brun James in our world, pleased with his MVP title, is a different person from the one in world (b) all disappointed and doubtless learning to feel philosophical. If I have a magical spell that calls up Le Brun James and it works across worlds I will either get a whole clutch of examples or the spell will return a null value. (Yes, I think about spells as being like computer functions: it helps.)

[@mechtheist]

Does a rigid designator work for a world where James was injured at an early age and couldn't play basketball? What if his DNA glitched during development and he, say, was something like anencephalic and died shortly after birth? Every photon from the sun hitting the earth is either reflected or not, each of those is a possible world, there are astronomical combinatorics here. Are each of these everettian universes? Every world with a sun would have such world-splitting, possible worlds, what to make of such utterly insignificant differences? Multiuniverse stories really fail in imagination.

[@WolfgangRP]

Imagine if we apply Singer's horrible deontology to THIS video. Studying - or even thinking about - topics that do not lead to the direct relief of famine, etc. are EVIL. Surely no one wants that world?

[@heliumcalcium396]

So if another world has a person exactly like Lebron James but with a different haircut, then that person is not Lebron James. But if Lebron James gets a different haircut, he remains Lebron James. "Rigid identifier" doesn't seem like a very useful concept.

[@thomassikes9835]

Mt. Everest is not the tallest mountain on Earth. It's actually on the Big Island of Hawaii. Everest is the highest. Namaste 🙏 still love you bro.

[@No-uc6fg]

Using the @ for the actual world gives me roguelike vibes, where the @ is usually the playable character.