• Leontiskos
    3.7k
    To the quote from Roark, I do wonder if "parasitic reference" is the right solution here. It seems possible to also frame it as a sort of mental bracketing. So, one can consider the idea of God and affirm that it implies its own affirmation, but then, outside the bracketing, deny that any concept should be able to imply its own affirmation.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Coming back to this, I think it's basically right, except that I think Klima sees that bracketing as bound up with parasitic reference. That is, for Klima when one refers to another's thought object—a thought object which is outside of one's own universe of thought objects—one is engaged in parasitic reference. But as I said just above, I don't really like the way he uses the words "property" and "description" to convey this bracketing in section 4. Regarding the quote from Roark:

    [The atheist] does not himself think of God as the thing than which nothing greater can be thought.Tony Roark, Conceptual Closure in Anselm's Proof, 9

    In Klima's terms, there is a parasitic understanding of what the theist is referring to, but there is no possible candidate in the atheist's universe of thought objects to which this thought object would correspond. On Klima's view, for the atheist to even have such a thought object in his own universe of thought objects would require the process of concept acquisition.

    Else, if we want to isolate and scrutinize the idea of parasitic reference, then perhaps we should ask whether one can achieve what Roark (and Klima) are trying to achieve without recourse to the notion of parasitic reference. I mostly think that one cannot do so. Nevertheless, it may be that parasitic reference is necessary but insufficient to account for the intricacies of disagreements over Anselm's proof, which gets at the difference between questions 1 and 2 <here>.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    I don't see how this is at odds with what Klima has said.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Who is the sentence "He did not write "Naming and Necessity" about? It is true of Kaplan, not of Kripke. Which is Sarah referring to? Her intent is to speak of that man she points to - Kaplan; and her description is true, he did not write Naming and Necessity. . Her semantic reference is to Kripke. Hence it is not true the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies her description. Kaplan satisfies her description, but is not the semantic reference of the statement. This brings out the issue of the opacity of the speaker's reference. It would be disingenuous to claim reference fails here, but the interplay between speaker's reference, the description and the demonstrative are not as direct as Klima supposes.

    More generally, Kripke and Donnellan show that there need be no description in virtue of which a reference is made. The speaker's reference may succeed when description is not satisfied by the referent, or if the belief of the speaker is in error.

    And this in turn brings out the fraught nature of what it is for a reference to succeed. In extensional situations, this is fairly simple - the reference succeeds if those in the discussion are talking about the very same thing. But in the non-extensional context of the beliefs of the participants, how are we to check that this is the case, that what each believes they are talking about is the same?

    And so back to Quine, who asks if there can even be a fact of the matter here, while pointing out that the pragmatics can overrule the semantics and intent of the speakers in such a way that the issue of whether the reference is successful or not becomes moot.

    If nothing else, this shows the poverty of any deep metaphysical theory that hopes to explain reference in every case. At the least, intent, semantics and pragmatics all play a part.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    You have still not said what you think parasitic reference is.

    And then this:
    "But throughout this process, the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer, without knowing under what description or name the answerer identifies this thought object."
    The issue here is clear enough: how could we know that "the questioner thinks of the same thought object as the answerer"? And further, how can the "thought-object" in the mind of the saint be said to be the same as the "thought-object" in the head of the fool - and indeed, how could they be said to be different?
    Banno
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    The following appears mistakenBanno

    The sources are available, and it does not appear to be mistaken at all. Klima quotes Kripke in footnote 20, which attaches directly to your quote:

    20 “So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.” Kripke, S. 1991, p.173.Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 4

    That he is characterizing him correctly can be verified by consulting the text in question: Meaning and Truth: Essential Readings in Modern Semantics, page 173. There Kripke says precisely what Klima claims, namely that "the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description."

    The speaker's reference, given by pointing to Kaplan, is Kaplan. The intended reference, given by the name "Kripke", is Kripke. Hence it is not always the case that the speaker's reference is the one that satisfies the speaker's intent.Banno

    As @Count Timothy von Icarus correctly pointed out, there is nothing here contrary to what Klima has said.

    Kripke showed that speaker's reference may differ from semantic reference. However, he also showed that a name may refer to it's referent regardless of any description, and indeed in the absence of any description.Banno

    To again quote the footnote, "...and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator." Klima is pointing out that on the intentional theory of reference such a belief is not necessary.

    Her semantic reference is to Kripke. Hence it is not true the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies her description.Banno

    This is a non sequitur, for it is in no way clear that Sarah does not, "believe ["Kripke"] fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator." That Kripke disagrees with your construal is clear if we read the text that Klima cites (my bolding):

    Suppose a speaker takes it that a certain object a fulfills the conditions for being the semantic reference of a designator, "d." Then, wishing to say something about a, he uses "d" to speak about a; say, he says "Φ(d)." Then, he said, of a, on that occasion, that it Φ'd; in the appropriate Gricean sense (explicated above), he meant that a Φ'd. This is true even if a is not really the semantic referent of "d." If it is not, then that a Φ's is included in what he meant (on that occasion), but not in the meaning of his words (on that occasion).

    So, we may tentatively define the speaker's referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.
    Kripke, Meaning and Truth: Essential Readings in Modern Semantics, 173

    -

    The speaker's reference may succeed when description is not satisfied by the referent, or if the belief of the speaker is in error.Banno

    This is yet another ignoratio elenchus, for this is not in question.
  • Banno
    26.1k


    Here's the footnote quoting Kripke:

    “So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.”
    This is in defence of:
    In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

    Notice that the quote does not mention descriptions at all. And notice also the use of the word "tentatively".

    Speaker’s meaning depends on context and intent. But Kripke showed that proper names are rigid designators—they refer to the same entity in all possible worlds. Speaker’s meaning is intensional, or if you prefer, subjective. It varies between individuals, and so cannot account for multiple folk talking about the same thing, nor provide modal rigidity.

    You and Klima both appear to have read "the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator" as implying the presence of a description. But the phrase is chosen so as to be neutral. The "conditions" can of course as well be those causal conditions that are the basis of Kripke's theory of reference.

    Look, I can do bolding too!
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    You and Klima both appear to have read "the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator" as implying the presence of a description. But the phrase is chosen so as to be neutral. The "conditions" can of course as well be those causal conditions that are the basis of Kripke's theory of reference.Banno

    You are falling into yet another ignoratio elenchus, for Klima tells us explicitly that the intentional theory and the causal or historical* theory agree on this (my bolding):

    This theory agrees with the recent “historical explanation”[19]—as opposed to the Russellian—theory of reference on the fundamental insight that speakers may successfully refer to objects by descriptions that do not apply to these objects.Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 4

    -

    But what you are doing is trying to change the subject. In and you were claiming that Klima is mistaken when he attributes to Kripke the doctrine that, "the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description." In I showed why Klima is not mistaken at all. That you did not reply to the substance of that post implies that you admit that Klima correctly captures what Kripke has said. To fall back on the appeal that Kripke's theory is "tentative" is nothing but a quibble, and a quibble that is preempted by Klima's footnote where he quotes Kripke. Klima is proposing something authentically different from Kripke's (tentative) theory. That is the point of the comparison with Kripke.

    * 'In the ensuing discussion, I consider how the conception of reference presented in the first section handles these problems, and how it is related to contemporary discussions of the “causal”, or “historical explanation theory” of reference' (Klima, introduction).

    ---

    You have still not said what you think parasitic reference is.Banno

    Did you read the paper? Klima gives his account of parasitic reference in section 4. Roark gives additional explication of the concept in section 4 of his own paper (beginning on page 8).
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    - Well no one seems to want to give an argument for their claims. No one wants to be transparent. So I did the work for you. . But still, no one seems to want to interact with that construal to say whether it is a correct or incorrect construal.

    So if folks want to make assertions against omnipotence, but they won't provide an argument for their assertion, and they won't interact with the argument that I offer them, then there is little more for me to do to help.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    You really will do anything to avoid addressing the elephant sitting opposite you at the table.

    Ok, I'll keep playing. Yes, the intentional theorist and the causal theorist may well agree that folk can talk about something despite not having a description that fixes the topic.

    So what.

    What is mistaken is the view that in the "Kripkean framework" the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

    For anyone who wishes to check, here is a better link to Kripke's article: https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281977%29.pdf

    (added: The crux is that Kripke argues that the semantic meaning of an act of reference can be maintained over the speaker's meaning. He uses this to defend Russell against Donnellen's view. Kripke's argument is that semantic reference is independent of speaker intent.)
  • Banno
    26.1k
    no one seems to want to give an argument for their claimsLeontiskos

    There's a difference between arguments unpresented and argument unacknowledged.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    OK, I've probably misspoken in the sense of failing to flesh out what I meant and poorly expressing what I did say.

    I said: "Yes, viewed through the lens of the human notion of goodness and justice an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator seems to be an oxymoron."

    I should have written the last words of the sentnece differently and added something like the underlined: "Looking at the actual conditions in, and nature of, our world and viewed through the lens of the human notion of goodness and justice an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator seems to be untenable".

    I don't agree that the notions of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are logically incompatible per se.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    I don't agree that the notions of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are logically incompatible per se.Janus

    Well, there is an argument from Broad to that conclusion. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a being with free will, but if he is omniscient, he should know what the being will do, which would take away the being's free will.

    And we can take this a step further, pointing out that a being with any two of these characteristics might be consistent, but that a being with all three is inconsistent. And yet, a being with all three would be greater than a being with any two. Hence, the notion of a greatest being in inconsistent.

    To be sure, these are not arguments to which one might attach much practicality, but they can be amusing.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    If I recall correctly Augustine dealt with that argument by pointing out that God who is not in time but in eternity sees all of the past present and future, so it is not a matter of him knowing what one will do, but what one has done.

    For me a far more telling argument would be that God should be able to create a perfect world but hasn't. That throws in doubt either omnibenevolence, omniscience or omnipotence. On that point it seems that the latter two must go together, or at least if Gord were omnipotent he must be omniscient, but neither require omnibenevolence.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Sure. What do we make of this? If god sees what we have done, and so cannot change it, then there is something god cannot do. Or god does not know what we will choose, in which case there is stuff he doesn't know.

    Not long ago we had a chap who insisted that god's omnipotence included his ability to perform paradoxical acts - make round squares and so on. I suppose one might go down that path.

    Or one might choose Kierkegaard's approach, accepting the paradox as an act of faith.

    There isn't an answer here. The dialogue is interminable.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    For me a far more telling argument would be that God should be able to create a perfect world but hasn't. That throws in doubt either omnibenevolence, omniscience or omnipotence. On that point it seems that the latter two must go together, or at least if Gord were omnipotent he must be omniscient, but neither require omnibenevolence.Janus

    Did you see the argument, from a recent Philosophy Now paper, proposing that this was the perfect world, but not for us?

    The Best Possible World, But Not For Us

    @Gnomon started a thread on it.
  • tim wood
    9.4k
    Yes, it's pretty basic. A real Porsche is greater than the idea of a Porsche. I haven't seen anyone present an argument against this.Leontiskos
    This is pretty stupid. A real Porsche may well be greater than the idea of a Porsche for someone who wants a Porsche. But there are people who appreciate their idea of a Porsche but are quite sure a real Porsche would be less "great" for lots of reasons. So much for the real being "greater" than the idea.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Here is Klima's "offending" passage.

    For Saul Kripke this indicates that speaker’s reference may diverge from semantic reference. In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description


    Here is the very article you are citing:

    So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator. He uses the designator with the intention of making an assertion about the object in question (which may not really be the semantic referent, if the speaker’s belief that it fulfills the appropriate semantic conditions is in error). The speaker’s referent is the thing the speaker referred to by the designator, though it may not be the referent of the designator, in his idiolect. In the example above, Jones, the man named by the name, is the semantic referent. Smith is the speaker’s referent, the correct answer to the question, “To whom were you referring?”22


    The semantic referent of a designator is the referent determined in virtue of the conventions of the language, and the speaker's referent of a designator is the object which the speaker wishes to speak of using the designator (see page 263-264).

    Here, , you seem to be confusing speaker's reference and semantic reference through the added complexity of the fact that people obviously can be mistaken about their beliefs when they make references. I can only make sense of the addendum here,, as somehow being counter to what Klima has said if the two are being confused again.

    Who is the sentence "He did not write "Naming and Necessity" about?

    From the perspective of convention, approached in the abstract as strictly "semantic meaning," it would refer to any male who didn't write something called "Naming and Necessity." But this can be modified or superseded in any particular context.



    Yes, and Boethius is generally seen as later offering the standard argument for why God must exist at "no time." It was already seen that to exist in just one place was to be limited. Further, God's existing in any one place would run counter the idea that God is the continuing ground for all being, that "in which we live and move and have our being," (St. Luke, Acts 17)—God as "within everything, but contained in nothing" (St. Augustine, Confessions I). And this generally goes along with the idea that God alone is subsistent being, the ground and first principle for all creation (Exodus 3 and elsewhere).

    St. Augustine points out that we can remember what we did in the past. Yet this does not somehow limit our freedom at the time of our choosing, even though we cannot change what we chose. Likewise, God recalling all of creation history from outside time does not affect the freedom of creatures in time. Boethius decisive innovation was to make it clear they being located at one moment in time is as limiting as being located in one space. To be at just one moment of time is to be separated from oneself, and not to fully possess all of oneself. God was already thought to be most truly One, so God's existence in time also runs into the problem of dividing God from Himself.

    Dante has my favorite "spatial" illustration of this:

    The point, as I have said, is that that home (the Empyrean) is nowhere at all. It does not exist in space or time; thus neither does the spatiotemporal world it “contains.” The Empyrean is the subject of all experience, it is what does the experiencing. As pure awareness or conscious being, its relation to creation, that is, to everything that can be described or talked about, may be metaphorically conceived in one of two ways: It may be imagined as an infinite reality containing the entire universe of every possible object of experience (this cosmological picture is the framework of the Paradiso) or it may be conceived as a point with no extension in either space or time, which projects the world of space and time around itself, as a light paints a halo onto mist. In the Primo Mobile, the ninth sphere, which is the nexus between the Empyrean and the world of multiplicity, between the subject of experience and every possible object of experience, Dante takes both these tacks.

    Christian Moevs - The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy - Introduction: Non-Duality and Self-Knowledge - pg. 6

    The physical world is Satanocentric, having Lucifer at its absolute center, with all corporeal beings tending towards that center of gravity to the extent that they are material. However, matter can also be seen as the darkness that appears at the furthest fringes from the Empyrean's light, beyond which is nothingness. The entire narrative takes place in a spiral (first down to the center of the universe, then outward), with a sort of fractal recurrence (the same themes show up taken from different angles in the same mathematical order), but at the very end the entire picture is inverted into a spiral inwards, " “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21); "You were more inward to me than my most inward part and higher than my highest” (Confessions 3.6.11).



    Klima, Plantinga, etc. provide us with clear arguments and do discuss the distinctions between ens reale and ens rationis or possible and necessary respectively. However, these are also distinctions made throughout philosophy, and all the time in everyday language. An objection that one does not understand these terms says more about the objector than the argument. At any rate, if one was truly mystified by them, it's unclear how one could even understand what the argument was claiming to demonstrate.

    I have already noted some grounds on which I think the opening premise might be challenged. However, not all challenges are equal. One could object to Cantor's distinction between different sizes of infinity. People do indeed raise cogent objections. However, not all objections are cogent. For example, simply stating: "Infinite means nothing greater, hence what is infinite cannot involve varying 'sizes,' that's just what infinite means, and it is incoherent and illogical to suggest otherwise," is a weak objection.

    So, perhaps what Klima points out is that even the process of objecting to the argument draws an objector towards the thought object Anselm has in mind, just as a mathematician might somehow disagree with Cantor's diagonal argument in some respect, but they won't be able to do so properly without first coming to understand it as Cantor does.

    This creates a difficulty for the argument though, on two fronts. The first, is as I noted previously, that it seems that the conclusion will be known better than the premises (at least for the faithful), and that even the faithful should hope that they know the conclusion better than the premises. St. Thomas has an entire chapter in the Summa Contra Gentiles titled something like "Why Man's Ultimate Happiness is Not to be Found in the Knowledge of God Has Through Demonstration," for instance.

    Second, that if it takes a trip through millennia of thought on the unlimited and absolute to decide the issue, the premise is, while perhaps prima facie plausible for many, clearly not without its difficulties. However, I think Anselm's intent was to have the conclusion be fairly obvious.

    So, for instance, if one needs to go into the Doctrine of Transcendentals to explain the relationship between "greatness" on the one hand, and existence, unity, and goodness on the other, one can hardly claim the objector is a "fool," because such issues have always been considered (in Anselm's time as well) extremely difficult and beyond the aptitudes of many (a point at least as old as Plato).
  • tim wood
    9.4k
    ens reale and ens rationisCount Timothy von Icarus
    Two definitions from our friend:
    1) "Ens reale is a Medieval Latin noun that translates to "real being". It refers to an entity that has the potential or actuality to exist beyond the human mind."
    2) "Ens rationis is a Medieval Latin term that means "being of the mind" or "abstract logical entity". It refers to something that exists only in the mind, and not in the real world."

    Our only definitions of "exist" and "real(ity)" so far in this thread are those of Leontiskos, above, who offers ordinary understandings of the terms. So far so good?

    For clarity's sake will you accept the substitutions for 1 & 2, "thing" and "idea"?

    An immediate consequence for Anselm's is that what is in his understanding is an idea, and thereby cannot exist in reality - is not any kind of thing at all.

    So let's stop for a moment so you can correct any errors of mine. The - my - argument is that given definitions 1 & 2, and Anselm's claims, then the God that in the understanding is that than which & etc. cannot exist in reality. Have at it!

    As to Klima, his conclusions, as I read them in the section of his paper called "Conclusion:...," seem reasonable to me. This one sentence as summary, "Indeed, in general, this kind of concept-acquisition seems to be essential for mutual understanding between people conceptualizing the world (and what is beyond) differently, thereby being committed to radically different "universes" of thought objects."

    That is, for people to communicate they need to try to understand each other.

    So we know, or think we know, that Anselm absolutely presupposes the existence in reality of God - as that than which & etc., and from which he adduces many qualities he attributes to God. And his demonstration to the fool is not that the fool doesn't believe, but rather that the fool denies what he (the fool) himself in fact does believe.

    But a lot of folks, failing to understand Anselm's, manage to persuade and excite themselves that because it can be thought, it must exist. Now, I do not want the headaches of Porsche ownership, being altogether happy with the superiority of fantasies of racing through he countryside, as against the less than ideal qualities of a real Porsche. Still, though, if I could bake up a batch of them in the heat of fervent ideation, I would. I've tried. It doesn't work.

    So this thread is about a standing both failure and refusal to understand Anselm, and an attempt to make something out of parts of a non-understanding of Klima's paper that it isn't.
  • Banno
    26.1k


    Compare and contrast
    believes satisfies his description
    against
    believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.

    See how one is about a description, and the other is about the referent?

    Now Kripke rather famously showed that names do not refer in virtue of some associated description.

    So it is an error to claim that Kripke thinks a description is needed in order to fix speaker's reference.

    The example given shows that speaker's reference is not as clear-cut as might otherwise be supposed. It provides a direct counterexample. The key issue here is not just what Kripke’s general definition says, but whether it applies universally. The case of Sarah misidentifying Kaplan demonstrates that speaker’s reference can diverge from belief, precisely because reference is not determined solely by belief but also by contextual factors like pointing.

    Klima assumes that 'conditions for being the semantic referent' must involve a descriptive element, but Kripke’s entire argument in Naming and Necessity is that names refer via causal chains, not definite descriptions. So Klima’s reading is not just mistaken—it contradicts Kripke’s core argument. Merely citing Kripke’s general definition does not refute the point. The question is whether all cases of speaker’s reference conform to this model, and the Kaplan/Kripke case shows they do not.

    Is this important? Perhaps not, perhaps it was just a slip on Klima's part. Or perhaps it indicates some reservations he might have towards Kripke's semantics.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    What do we make of this? If god sees what we have done, and so cannot change it, then there is something god cannot do. Or god does not know what we will choose, in which case there is stuff he doesn't know.Banno

    I think the eternalist view enables God to know what we have done. what we have chosen. On that view there is no past, present and future. Could God change the past? Would that not change all of reality?

    In any case is God compelled to fix our mistakes? This comes back to the obvious fact that he has no created a perfect world, not if a world, to be perfect involves no suffering for any creature.

    Also, there is the question as to whether God can do things that defy logic. Is God bound by logic? If so, then He cannot be omnipotent. So many questions about God!

    Did you see the argument, from a recent Philosophy Now paper, proposing that this was the perfect world, but not for us?

    The Best Possible World, But Not For Us
    Banno

    Doesn't sound too promising but I'll have a look.

    Kripke’s entire argument in Naming and Necessity is that names refer via causal chains, not definite descriptions.Banno

    I never got this. Naming and Necessity was the text we studied in one of my undergraduate units at Sydney Uni. I could not then and still cannot see how the causal chains would not necessarily have involved description, and that because names may refer to more than one individual, and because pointing in the case of remote individuals would not be possible.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    In any case is God compelled to fix our mistakes? This comes back to the obvious fact that he has no created a perfect world, not if a world, to be perfect involves no suffering for any creature.Janus

    For consistency god must have created the world of necessity. In modal logic (S5) if there is a necessary being then everything in every possible world is necessary. That is, god does not make choices.Whatever god does he is compelled to do out of necessity. The alternative, of course , is that there are no necessary beings.

    The Best Possible World, But Not For Us is a curiosity rather than a serious proposal.

    I almost agree with your critique of the causal chain theory of reference. It does not quite satisfy me, either. However I will say that it's advocates might not disagree with you that there is most likely a description involved at some point in the chain. But the success of the reference here and now is not dependent on that description. So at some stage Socrates was names "Socrates", perhaps using some description of the form "I name this baby before me'Socrates'". But now, given the ubiquity of the use of the name, there is a widespread agreement as to the referent of "Socrates" such that it is not dependent on that particular act.

    Hence this from SEP:
    2. On the causal model, words refer in virtue of being associated with chains of use leading back to an initiating use or ‘baptism’ of the referent. Extending this model beyond names has proven difficult, but one option is to insist that it is really the perceptual connection that underlies most baptismal events that runs the show. In that case, perceptually-grounded uses of demonstratives, deictic pronouns, and definite descriptions can be folded into the picture relatively easily, with anaphoric uses treated as something akin to links in a chain of reference-borrowingReference (SEP)
    Notice "...leading back to an initiating use or ‘baptism’ of the referent".

    Their target was the idea, from Russell and others, that a name refers in virtue of a description, and so that description must be at hand for a reference to be successful. This theory of reference is difficult to make work in a modal semantics.


    Added:
    Kripke’s entire argument in Naming and Necessity is that names refer via causal chains, not definite descriptions.Banno
    Actually, looking at that again, it's much too strong. The casual chain argument is not at all central to N&N. It is offered as an example of the sort of thing that might serve as an alternative. The main line of argument is against the necessity of a reference being associated with a description, and how possible world semantics shows this to be fraught with contradiction.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    So it is an error to claim that Kripke thinks a description is needed in order to fix speaker's reference.

    Ok, so why do you think:

    For Saul Kripke this indicates that speaker’s reference may diverge from semantic reference. In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description

    ...implies anything to the contrary?

    Klima assumes that 'conditions for being the semantic referent' must involve a descriptive element

    Where?

    Is this important? Perhaps not, perhaps it was just a slip on Klima's part. Or perhaps it indicates some reservations he might have towards Kripke's semantics.

    Yeah, probably not important, but unless I've missed it and you meant to quote a different part of the article, I think you are misreading "the conditions for being a semantic reference must include a descriptive element" into that sentence. It doesn't say anything about it; it says that when a speaker's does use a description, the "speaker's reference" is that to which they think it applies.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    so why do you think. ...implies anything to the contrary?Count Timothy von Icarus

    I don't understand. The first says that Kripke does not think a description is needed in order to fix a referent. The second, that Kripke thinks the speaker has at hand a description in order to fix the referent.

    What you talk'n 'bout?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.5k
    The dialogue is interminable.Banno

    St. Anselm, like many religious, looks in the wrong direction, ever using the template of life having to come from a Higher Life (etc., a regress ensues).

    Instead, think of what is the least that can be conceived, or, better yet, what physics shows as the near infinitesimal lightness of being.

    Look to the future for higher being. Throw the golden template out of the stained-glass window!
  • Banno
    26.1k
    It doesn't say anything about it; it says that when a speaker's does use a description, the "speaker's reference" is that to which they think it applies.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Perhaps that was his speaker's intent - that might explain the foux pas. But it would still be a mistake, as the example shows - and as Kripke argues - semantic meaning might well take priority. Sarah believes she is referring to Kripke when she is talking about Kaplan.

    It will not do to reply that her speaker's reference is to Kripke, because the indicative picks out Kaplan.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    So let's stop for a moment so you can correct any errors of mine. The - my - argument is that given definitions 1 & 2, and Anselm's claims, then the God that in the understanding is that than which & etc. cannot exist in reality. Have at it!

    I don't think the substitution will do. We can have ideas about ens reale. For instance, we have the ideas "man," "fox," etc. Yet presumably these also exist outside the mind.

    So:

    An immediate consequence for Anselm's is that what is in his understanding is an idea, and thereby cannot exist in reality - is not any kind of thing at all.

    Wouldn't this also imply that if I have an idea about a sandwich I am going to make for lunch later it cannot later exist outside my head? Or if I have an idea of Alabama, it cannot exist outside the mind?
  • tim wood
    9.4k
    I don't think the substitution will do. We can have ideas about ens reale. For instance, we have the ideas "man," "fox," etc. Yet presumably these also exist outside the mind.Count Timothy von Icarus
    You apparently do not understand your own terms. Or maybe you do. I should like to see you make the sandwich of which you have an idea. Of course you won't need anything at all from the grocery store, yes? Or for that matter anything at all that can be called real, or that exists, right? It's ideas all the way down that you're somehow going to make real.

    Now I agree you can think about a corned beef on rye, and you can make or buy a real corned beef on rye sandwich. And I will wager that you can tell the difference between the idea of a sandwich and a real sandwich. You can, can't you?

    The two terms distinguish what can be real, and what, as idea, cannot be. That's what it says. Maybe read it again?
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Presuming we may now talk about §5,
    Parasitic reference to each other’s thought objects between people not sharing each other’s beliefs seems to be a ubiquitous phenomenon.

    Returning to 'parasitic' reference, which is apparently where the fool refers to the thought object in the mind of the saint. (I've asked Leon several times if he agrees, but so far as I am aware he hasn't responded.) It was a while ago that I pointed out that there is no way to check the thought-object in the mind of the saint, to see what it is about; there is no way to verify that the thing in the mind of the saint is the thing being referred to by the fool. How do we know that when two people use the same words, they are referring to the same thought object?

    Indeed, the very idea of a thought object is opaque. Presumably the aforementioned thought-object Porsche is parasitic on the "real" Porsche... Or will we say that the thought-object Porsche existed prior to the "real" Porsche, in the collective minds of the various designers at Volkswagen? It is after all just a rich man's beetle.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    I should have written the last words of the sentnece differently and added something like the underlined: "Looking at the actual conditions in, and nature of, our world and viewed through the lens of the human notion of goodness and justice an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator seems to be untenable".

    I don't agree that the notions of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are logically incompatible per se.
    Janus

    Okay, I see what you are saying. Thanks for clarifying.

    ---

    An immediate consequence for Anselm's is that what is in his understanding is an idea, and thereby cannot exist in reality - is not any kind of thing at all.tim wood

    See the section of my post from the first page beginning, "We actually saw this play out two days ago in the midst of a discussion on Mario Bunge..."

    ---

    However, these are also distinctions made throughout philosophy, and all the time in everyday language.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, and this is one of the reasons Klima gives for refusing a global ban on causal closure, for it would ban existence predications.

    Ok, so why do you think [...] ...implies anything to the contrary?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yep. :up:
    @Banno keeps asserting things without argument.

    ---

    The first says that Kripke does not think a description is needed in order to fix a referent. The second, that Kripke thinks the speaker has at hand a description in order to fix the referent.Banno

    I think you are getting hung up on the word "description," and trying to make it a technical term. Here is Klima's quote in context:

    [The intentional theory of reference] agrees with the recent “historical explanation”19—as opposed to the Russellian—theory of reference on the fundamental insight that speakers may successfully refer to objects by descriptions that do not apply to these objects. For Saul Kripke this indicates that speaker’s reference may diverge from semantic reference. In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.20 On the intentional theory not even this is always required.

    20 “So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.” Kripke, S. 1991, p.173.
    Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 4

    Klima is explicit that Kripke's theory differs from Russell's descriptive theory. Now Kripke says that the speaker "believes [the referent] fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator," and Klima interprets this as saying, "that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description."

    • "[The speaker] believes [the referent] fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator" (Kripke)
    • "the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description" (Klima's interpretation)

    You are hung up on that word "description," and you want to say that Kripke differs from Russell on descriptions. Sure, but Klima already noted that. "Description" is a common word. Klima is quite reasonably reading "designator" as a description, given the belief about the semantic referent condition.

    So using Kripke's own example that Klima picks up, consider the referent, "Her husband," in the sentence, "Her husband is kind to her." For Kripke the speaker must believe that the man fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator, "Her husband." For Kripke, even though he is mistaken, his reference succeeds in virtue of his belief. Klima riffs on that very same example and shows how one can use parasitic reference even without the belief that Kripke requires. If Klima can say, "'Her husband' happens to be her kind boss," (or Roark can say, "The most significant British composer in history is a hack"), without involving the belief that Kripke claims is required, then obviously the theory of reference is different from Kripke's. And that's the point here: the intentional theory of reference differs from Kripke's theory of reference.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    Having read through Roark's paper and Klima's response to Roark, I think Klima successfully defends his positions. Let's look at the facet that was brought up:

    Arguably, the argument simply proves that the atheist cannot deny God (i.e. the being greater than which no being can be thought) without affirming a contradiction.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Here is Roark's explicit claim:

    The upshot of all of this is the following: in order simultaneously to render the sufficiency claim in the third premise plausible and to accommodate (γ), the predicate ‘Ix’ must also be interpreted as including a modal-pistic component: ‘x can be thought to exist only in the intellect’. One obvious consequence of this reinterpretation is the fact that the conclusion of the argument is not that God exists in reality, but rather that one cannot think God to exist only in the intellect.Tony Roark, Conceptual Closure in Anselm's Proof, 8

    Note that Roark wants to reinterpret Ix for two reasons: both because he thinks validity requires that Ix be pistic, and because Ix introduces conceptual closure.

    Klima's first point is that Ix is already pistic:

    The original interpretation of the predicate ‘I( )’ in the reconstruction was ‘( ) is only in the intellect’, which I expounded further by saying that an x is only in the intellect in this sense if and only if x is thought of, but does not exist in reality. So, this predicate does contain a certain ‘pistic component’, namely, the component that x is thought of, which of course entails the ‘modal-pistic component’ that x can be thought of. Now, if g is only in the intellect in this sense, then it seems clear that something greater than g can be thought of in the sense of Roark’s interpretation (γ) by a thinking subject S who assumes premise (2). For S, by virtue of assuming premise (2), is thinking that g is in the intellect and does not exist in reality. Therefore, S can obviously think of something with ‘a greater cardinality’, whether g itself or anything else, by simply thinking, or counterfactually assuming, that that thing does exist in reality.Klima, Conceptual closure in Anselm’s proof: reply to Tony Roark, 132

    But this does not foreclose Roark's claim that the conclusion of Klima's formulation of Anselm's argument ought to itself be pistic. Klima responds to this idea as follows:

    Accordingly, the argument does have to prove its conclusion for any thinking subject S, provided S assumes all the premises in the required senses, interpreting the phrase ‘x can be thought to be greater than y’ as expounded by Roark. The important point here is that what S has to conclude on the basis of the premises thus interpreted is not that he simply cannot think that g exists only in the intellect, but that it is not true that g exists only in the intellect, from which he further has to conclude that, since g is in the intellect and not only in the intellect, g also has to exist in reality.

    To be sure, an external observer E, listening to the reasoning of S, can describe what she observes by saying that S had to conclude that g exists because S cannot consistently think that g does not exist. And E may further claim that she is not thus committed to accepting S’s conclusion, for S can plausibly argue only for himself, since he is the one who makes the comparisons of his own thought objects regarding their assumed cardinalities within his own ‘modal-pistic’ context.

    But then, this result seems to make perfect sense in the larger context of the paper. After all, my main argument in the paper is that Anselm’s argument can genuinely work only for those who are willing to make constitutive reference to God. But for them it is indeed an inevitable conclusion that they cannot consistently think of God and think that he does not exist. So they have to conclude without any pistic-modal component in their conclusion that God exists.
    Klima, Conceptual closure in Anselm’s proof: reply to Tony Roark, 132-3

    To be clear, Roark is claiming that Ix should be reinterpreted as I2x:

    • I(): "() is only in the intellect"
    • I2(): "() can be thought to exist only in the intellect"

    ...and from I2x Roark thinks the conclusion should be changed to, "One cannot think God to exist only in the intellect."

    Klima's point, quoted above, is that Ix always meant, "x is thought of, but does not exist." Thus the conclusion of the reductio for the one thus thinking of x is that x must exist, not that one cannot think x to exist only in the intellect.

    But Klima admits that Ix brings with it "conceptual closure" on account of the non-existence claim that it includes. To Roark's conceptual closure objection, Klima simply notes that global solutions to semantic or conceptual closure, such as Tarski's or Roark's, are overkill. He provides an alternative local solution where one can reject the paradoxes of conceptual closure (such as Modest) without rejecting the non-paradoxes of conceptual closure (such as Anselm's argument).

    (Of course, strictly speaking Klima addresses the Modest paradox without arguing whether or not it is truly analogous to the Liar.)

    ---

    If we think about the importance of parasitic reference for dialogue, and then we think about the tendency of modern philosophy and logic towards a self-referential, closed system which is quasi-solipsistic, then I think it becomes plausible that the notion of parasitic reference could breathe life into the modern paradigm, opening it up to encounters with other forms of thought. This is because parasitic reference provides a principled way to speak about that which is not yet understood, and in this way erects bridges between interlocutors. On the Quinian conception there is a fairly dire absence of such bridges (even the point that, for example, Quinians are unable to make sense of questions regarding quantifier variance as representing substantive disagreements).
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Banno keeps asserting things without argument.Leontiskos

    You made that claim, then immediately quoted and addressed my argument.

    :smile:
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