Posted by zeugma on August 29, 2005, at 22:40:14
In reply to Re: mystery of the missing indexical.., posted by alexandra_k on August 28, 2005, at 18:08:00
am in something of an addled way right now, wrote a detailed commentary and then my connection failed- i'm an idiot for not working offline- but anyways- it's late here- 11:19 pm Monday night and have an early day coming up- so- detailed exegesis will wait, a few comments i can't refrain from and are salient enough to me (hopefully to you)-
'I', 'here', 'now' are not flaccid designators. They are rigid. Rigidity applies to content, not character. Character is a function that maps contexts onto contents. Content is a function that maps possible worlds onto extensions. (So content is intensional. And we are externalists about content. :-))Now I remain [Z] (zero-place predicate denoting 'exists in that world') regardless of the flaccid designators that denote me and that vary from world to world (say the one in which I am female, the one in which I am not a basket case, the one in which my previous post to you wasn't lost (aggg!); I am me, just as Richard Nixon would still be Nixon even if not named 'Nixon' in many of the possible worlds in which the zero-place predicate [Nixon] has an extension denoting a member of those worlds.
Now 'now', here' and so on are also rigid. But of course only with respect to their content; their characters (which are also part of the senses of these terms) are not constant. By content Kaplan means more or less what everyone means when they talk about 'propositions' (it always comes down to those, right? Well, all that matters is that we are good content-externalists!)Characters are neither rigid nor flaccid; they are constant or inconstant. 'I' is not constant. But I can only use it to point to [Z], your friend from the tail end of the alphabet, no matter what world I am in or what flaccid designators pick me out.
Addendum largely unrelated: Counterpart theory is strangely satisfying. When I am at my lowest, I can always think of how my counterparts are having a great time, and rather than making me jealous of them, I feel oddly consoled. It's like, they're part of the team, and even though I'm slacking off, they're getting the job done. Strange, huh?
poster:zeugma
thread:541758
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050807/msgs/548524.html