Murali Ramachandran

David Lewis’s counterpart-theoretic semantics for quantified modal logic is motivated originally by worries about identifying objects across possible worlds; the counterpart relation is grounded more cautiously on comparative similarity. The possibility of contingent identity is an unsought -- and in some eyes, unwelcome -- consequence of this approach. In this paper I motivate a Kripkean counterpart theory by way of defending the prior, pre-theoretical, coherence of contingent directness. Contingent identity follows for free. The theory is Kripkean in that the counterpart relation is in a sense stipulated rather than grounded on similarity, and is such that no object has more than one counterpart at a world. This avoids a number of objections Fara and Williamson have recently levelled against counterpart theory generally; their other objections are addressed by enriching the theory with special quantifiers and actuality operators

A Russellian theory of (definite) descriptions takes an utterance of the form ‘The F is G' to express a purely general proposition that affirms the existence of a (contextually) unique F: there is exactly one F [which is C] and it is G. Strawson, by contrast, takes the utterer to presuppose in some sense that there is exactly one salient F, but this is not part of what is asserted; rather, when the presupposition is not met the utterance simply fails to express a (true or false) proposition. A defender of Strawson's approach, however, must square up to what appear to be straightforward counterexamples to the presupposition thesis, and must also provide an account of certain linguistic phenomena that supposedly demand treating descriptions as quantifiers, as the Russellian theory does. In this paper I propose fresh considerations in favour of Strawson's approach. I shift attention from what the utterer presupposes to preconditions for the use of descriptions, and distinguish between referring and predicative uses of descriptions (not to be confused with referential and attributive uses); importantly, the referring and predicative uses have different preconditions, I argue, and these provide some satisfactory responses to the aforementioned challenges facing the Strawsonian. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (3) 2008: pp. 242-257.

André Gallois (1998) attempts to defend the occasional identity thesis (OIT), the thesis that objects which are distinct at one time may nonetheless be identical at another time, in the face of two influential lines of argument against it. One argument involves Kripke’s (1971) notion of rigid designation and the other, Leibniz’s law (affirming the indiscernibility of identicals). It is reasonable for advocates of (OIT) to question the picture of rigid designation and the version of Leibniz’s law that these arguments employ, but, the problem is, some form of rigidity is required for one to affirm the occasional identity of objects, and some (restricted) version of Leibniz’s law must be conceded if identity really is involved. Gallois accordingly recommends an account of rigidity and a version of Leibniz’s law to this end.1 We find Gallois’ proposals entirely inadequate to their task. We aim in this paper is to explicate and defend an alternative approach for occasional identity theorists. We do not seek to defend (OIT) per se; our aim, rather, is simply to show that the arguments from rigid designation and Leibniz’s law are inconclusive. Let’s begin with an outline of these arguments

In this note I revive a lingering (albeit dormant) account of rigid designation from the pages of Mind with the aim of laying it to rest. Why let a sleeping dog lie when you can put it down? André Gallois (1986) has proposed an account of rigid designators that allegedly squares with Saul Kripke’s (1980) characterisation of them as terms which designate the same object in all possible worlds, but on which, contra Kripke, identity sentences involving rigid designators may be merely contingently true. This suits Gallois, as he finds the notion of contingent identity coherent. Thus, the thrust of Gallois’ thesis is that his account of rigidity is preferable to Kripke’s because his accommodates a coherent metaphysical viewpoint, whereas Kripke’s doesn’t. Gallois has thwarted one unconvincing challenge (see Carter 1987; Gallois 1988) and his account, as yet, remains untainted. But not for long, I hope.1 Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the notion of contingent identity is coherent, that, in other words, it makes—or can make—sense to say that certain (possible) objects are identical in one world but distinct in another. What I shall argue here is that Gallois’ account of rigidity would prevent us from expressing the contingent nonidentity of objects; if so, this is a significant failing of the account, for, as it will emerge, clearly Gallois is committed to the contingency of non-identity

Timothy Williamson (2000) reckons that hardly any mental state is luminous, i.e. is such that if one were in it, then one would invariably be in a position to know that one was. This paper examines an argument he presents against the luminosity of feeling cold, which he claims generalizes to other phenomenal states, such as e.g. being in pain. As we shall see, the argument fails. However, our deliberations do yield two anti-luminosity results: a simple refutation of the claim that one invariably knows whether one feels cold or not,1 and a counterexample to the luminosity of knowing—in effect, a counterexample to the (KK)- principle.

Kripke (1977) presents an argument designed to show that the considerations in Donnellan (1966) concerning attributive and referential uses of (definite) descriptions do not, by themselves, refute Russell’s (1905) unitary theory of description sentences (RTD), which takes (utterances of) them to express purely general, quantificational, propositions. Against Kripke, Marga Reimer (1998) argues that the two uses do indeed reflect a semantic ambiguity (an ambiguity at the level of literal truth conditions). She maintains a Russellian (quantificational) analysis of utterances involving attributively used descriptions but attempts to defend the following two claims about utterances involving referentially used descriptions (referential utterances) (1998, p. 89).

Hempel‘s paradox of the ravens, and his take on it, are meant to be understood as being restricted to situations where we have no additional background information. According to him, in the absence of any such information, observations of FGs confirm the hypothesis that all Fs are G. In this paper I argue against this principle by way of considering two other paradoxes of confirmation, Goodman‘s 'grue‘ paradox and the 'tacking‘ (or 'irrelevant conjunct‘) paradox. What these paradoxes reveal, I argue, is that a presumption of causal realism is required to ground any confirmation; but once we grant causal realism, we have no reason to accept the central principles giving rise to the paradoxes.

Advocates of occasional identity have two ways of interpreting putative cases of fission and fusion. One way—we call it the Creative view—takes fission to involve an object really dividing (or being replicated), thereby creating objects which would not otherwise have existed. The more ontologically parsimonious way takes fission to involve merely the ‘separation’ of objects that were identical before: strictly speaking, no object actually divides or is replicated, no new objects are created. In this paper we recommend the Creative approach as the best way of dealing with certain problem cases involving teletransportation. Our considerations yield novel takes on psychological-continuity theories of personal identity and survival, and on the puzzle of Theseus' ship.