Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Naming and Necessity lectures' and 'The Elm and the Expert'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects
If Hesperus and Phosophorus are the same, they can't possibly be different [Kripke]
     Full Idea: If Hesperus and Phosphorus are one and the same, then in no other possible world can they be different.
     From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2)
     A reaction: If we ask whether one object could possibly be two objects, and deny that possibility, then Kripke's novel thought seems just right and obvious.
Identity statements can be contingent if they rely on descriptions [Kripke]
     Full Idea: If the man who invented bifocals was the first Postmaster General of the United States - that they were one and the same - it's contingently true. …So when you make identity statements using descriptions, that can be a contingent fact.
     From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2)
Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato]
     Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b)
     A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically.