Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:55:29.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rigid Designators: Two Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Michael Levin
Michael Levin*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy City College of the City University of New York
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

1. Introduction. In (Kripke 1970), Saul Kripke distinguished rigid from accidental designators to refute the Frege-Russell theory of names, to rehabilitate natural necessity, and to subvert mind-body dualism. Discussions of Kripke's work have tended to follow this agenda. Here I examine a possible extension of Kripke's apparatus to scientific reduction and physical necessity. My overall conclusions are negative: while Kripkean arguments appear to yield surprising conclusions that cut against empiricism, these conclusions merely restate empiricist tenets in mildly paradoxical terms. The larger moral is that contemporary essentialism is less philosophically significant that has perhaps been supposed.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 283 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I wish to thank Arthur Collins, Christopher Hill and my wife Margarita for their discussions with me, oral and written, on the following material. I also wish to thank the Philosophy Departments of the University of Wollongong and Monash University for comments on an earlier draft.

References

REFERENCES

Ager, A.; Aronson, J. L.; and Weingard, R. (1974), “Are Bridge Laws Really Necessary?”, Noûs VIII: 119–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayer, A. J. (1983), Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Causey, R. (1972a), “Attribute-Identities in Microreductions”, Journal of Philosophy LXIX: 407–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Causey, R. (1972b), “Uniform Microreductions”, Synthese XXV: 176–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Causey, R. (1977), Unity of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, S. (1970), “Naming and Necessity”, in Davidson, D. and Harman, G. (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 253–355.Google Scholar
Levin, M. (1979), Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nagel, E. (1961), The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975), Philosophical Papers, vol. II. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1973), The Roots of Reference. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court.Google Scholar