From cowan@ccil.org Sat Feb 10 15:02:21 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 10 Feb 2001 23:02:18 -0000 Received: (qmail 13394 invoked from network); 10 Feb 2001 23:02:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 10 Feb 2001 23:02:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1 with SMTP; 10 Feb 2001 23:02:18 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14Rj39-0005rU-00; Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:03:27 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u In-Reply-To: from Jorge Llambias at "Feb 10, 2001 07:56:59 pm" To: Jorge Llambias Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:03:27 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Jorge Llambias scripsit: > >The predicate "married to Gale McGhan" non-rigidly designates me, since > >there are many possible worlds in which it isn't true. But "first son > >of Thomas Cowan and Marianne Schultz" rigidly designates me, since it > >refers to me in every possible world in which I exist at all, and where > >I don't exist it designates nobody. > > Can't you conceive of a world where your parents had a son > say a year earlier than the year you were born? Would that > person have been really you? "First son" was of course ill-chosen. It's not easy to find truly rigid designators that aren't names. Nevertheless I do think it an *essential* property of me that I am the child of my parents. > I'm not sure why you would not be you if you had been > someone else's son. Probably you are right in biological > terms, but "other worlds" includes any world we can imagine > in linguistic terms, if I say "if you had been the son of > George Washington" then I am bringing forth a world where > you are the son of George Washington. I think you conceive of *possible* worlds too broadly; not every conceivable world is a possible world. For example, there is no possible world in which (Kripke's example) Queen Elizabeth has always been a swan. We can *say* "If the Queen of England were a swan, she would have feathers", but we cannot *reason* about this world usefully. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter