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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Naming and Necessity lectures' and 'Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory'

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7 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 1. Objects over Time

1350	Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist [Reid]
	Full Idea: Identity supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence….Otherwise we must suppose a being to exist after it has ceased to exist, and to have existed before it was produced, which are manifest contradictions.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
	A reaction: I take the point to be that if something is supposed to survive a gap in its existence, that must imply that it somehow exists during the gap. If a light flashes on and off, is it really a new entity each time?

16991	No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke]
	Full Idea: Adequate necessary and sufficient conditions for identity which do not beg the question are very rare. …I don't know of such conditions for identity of material objects over time, or for people. Everyone knows what a problem this is.
	From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1)
	A reaction: Typical of Kripke, who only seems to commit to conclusions suggested to him by his modal logic, and is baffled by almost everything else. I think one can at least attempt an essentialist approach to this problem.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential

11867	If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins]
	Full Idea: Perhaps Kripke's argument for the necessity to a thing of its actual origin is that the speculator has to be able to rebut the charge that he has lost his grasp of his subject of discourse if he conceives of this subject with changed parents or origin.
	From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.10
	A reaction: On the whole Wiggins opposes necessity of origin (cf. Forbes, who defends it). If this idea is right, then any means of ensuring reference will do the job, and it clearly wouldn't be an argument that guaranteed necessity of origin.

12018	Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G]
	Full Idea: If we generalise what Kripke says about the Queen, then he is arguing that the parents of any organism are essentially the parents of that organism.
	From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1
	A reaction: It strikes me that we have to be extremely careful in specifying what it is that Kripke is saying. I take it that either Kripke is saying something rather uninteresting, or he is saying what Forbes suggests. Parenthood is essential, not just necessary.

17046	Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke]
	Full Idea: Could the Queen - could this woman herself - have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came?
	From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3)
	A reaction: Tricky! No, because the past is fixed? Could the Queen have visited Russia when she was 20? I suppose so. Might she not have had parents, given who she is? I don't see why not. Could this desk have been made by someone else? Why not?

8274	Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke]
	Full Idea: Against Kripke's thesis of 'necessity of origin' I will just point out the intuitive force of the claim that Socrates - that very person - could, logically, have had no beginning to his existence at all, or have come into existence ex nihilo.
	From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.110-) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 6.5
	A reaction: It also strikes me that one base-pair difference in his DNA (by a mutation, or a fractionally different parent) would still leave him as Socrates. People are not good candidates for 'rigid' designation. Counterparts seems a better account here.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 13. No Identity over Time

21322	We treat slowly changing things as identical for the sake of economy in language [Reid]
	Full Idea: All bodies, as they consist of innumerable parts, are subject to continual changes of their substance. When such changes are gradual, because language could not afford a different name for each state, it retains the same name and is considered the same.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
	A reaction: This is hard to deny. We could hardly rename a child each morning. Simlarly, we can't have a unique name for each leaf on a tree. Economy of language explains a huge amount in philosophy.