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Single Idea 4961

[filed under theme 10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / b. Rigid designation ]

Full Idea

How could a person originating from different parents, from a totally different sperm and egg, be this very woman (Elizabeth II)? ..It seems to me that anything coming from a different origin would not be this very object.

Gist of Idea

It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents

Source

Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3)

Book Ref

Kripke,Saul: 'Naming and Necessity' [Blackwell 1980], p.113

A Reaction

Since baby Elizabeth could have been smuggled into the palace in a bedpan, it seems to me that her properties now are rather more obvious than her origin. I fear the only necessity here is that you can't change the past. An intriguing puzzle.

The 22 ideas with the same theme [items with fixed identity in all possible worlds]:

13588 A rigid designator (for all possible worlds) picks out an object by its essential traits [Quine]
11187 In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)]
9172 A 'rigid designator' designates the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke]
9173 We cannot say that Nixon might have been a different man from the one he actually was [Kripke]
7761 Test for rigidity by inserting into the sentence 'N might not have been N' [Kripke, by Lycan]
7693 Kripke avoids difficulties of transworld identity by saying it is a decision, not a discovery [Kripke, by Jacquette]
5821 Saying that natural kinds are 'rigid designators' is the same as saying they are 'indexical' [Kripke, by Putnam]
14068 If Kripke names must still denote a thing in a non-actual situation, the statue isn't its clay [Gibbard on Kripke]
10436 A rigid expression may refer at a world to an object not existing in that world [Kripke, by Sainsbury]
4953 We do not begin with possible worlds and place objects in them; we begin with objects in the real world [Kripke]
4961 It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents [Kripke]
17003 Kaplan's 'Dthat' is a useful operator for transforming a description into a rigid designation [Kripke]
11891 Possibilities for an individual can only refer to that individual, in some possible world [Plantinga, by Mackie,P]
11881 Rigid designators can be meaningful even if empty [Evans, by Mackie,P]
12138 Identity across possible worlds is prior to rigid designation [Brody]
16408 Rigid designation seems to presuppose that differing worlds contain the same individuals [Stalnaker]
14079 Kripke's semantics needs lots of intuitions about which properties are essential [Gibbard]
11979 It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis]
15530 A logically determinate name names the same thing in every possible world [Lewis]
12237 Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg]
15174 A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle]
15183 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle]