Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-960920-8
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 260 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

Joseph LaPorte offers a new account of the connections between the reference of words for properties and kinds, and theoretical identity statements. Some terms for concrete objects, such as 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus', are rigid, and the rigidity of these terms is important because it helps to determine whether certain statements containing them, including identity statements like 'Hesperus = Phosphorus', are necessary or contingent. These observations command broad
agreement. But there has been much less agreement about whether and how designators for properties are rigid: terms like 'white', 'brontosaur', 'beautiful', 'heat', 'H2O', 'pain', and so on. In Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities, LaPorte articulates and defends the position that terms for
properties are rigid designators. Furthermore, he argues that property designators' rigidity is put to good use in important philosophical arguments supporting and impugning certain theoretical identity statements. The book as a whole constitutes a broad defense of a tradition originating largely in seminal work from Saul Kripke, which affirms the truth and necessity of theoretical identities such as 'water = H2O', 'heat = the motion of molecules' and the like, and which looks
skeptically upon psychophysical identities like 'pain = c-fiber firing'. LaPorte responds to detractors of the Kripkean tradition whose objections and challenges indicate where development and clarification is needed, as well as to sympathizers who have put forward important contributions toward such ends. Specific
topics discussed by way of defending the Kripkean tradition include conventionalism and empiricism, nominalism about properties, multiple realizability, supervenience, analytic functionalism, conceptual dualism and 'new wave' or a posteriori materialism, the explanatory gap, scientific essentialism (more broadly: scientific necessitarianism), and vitalism.

Zielgruppe

Scholars and advanced students in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laporte, Joseph

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie des Geistes, Neurophilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sprachphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Sprachphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1: Rigid Designators for Concrete Objects and for Properties
2: On the Coherence of the Distinction
3: On Whether the Distinction Assigns to Rigidity the Right Role
4: A Uniform Treatment of Property Designators as Singular Terms
5: Rigid Appliers
6: Rigidity-Associated Arguments in Support of Theoretical Identity Statements: on their Significance and the Cost of their Philosophical Resources
7: The Skeptical Argument Impugning Psychophysical Identity Statements: on its Significance and the Cost of its Philosophical Resources
8: The Skeptical Argument Further Examined: on Resources, Allegedly Overlooked, for Confirming Psychophysical Identities
References
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Laporte, Joseph
Joseph LaPorte is Professor of Philosophy at Hope College. He has published many articles in the philosophy of language, metaphysics and the philosophy of science, as well as Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change (CUP, 2004).