? what's in a name

rather more than you might think, but first an update on earlier events.

Pumpkin wine was a failure. Too much yeast, not enough pumpkin. May have had something to do with my having effectively aged the wine on the lees (dead yeast cells) as I was attempting to rack it. I do, however, now have some real wine yeast. Things can only get better from here.

I'm in the middle of writing a philosophy paper, focusing on a paper by Saul Kripke called 'Identity and Necessity". I'm mostly through the first step, providing a coherent account of the argument, and am now working on my own response. I've not the time to go into it now, nor I am really sure that you've the interest, but I'll just say this:

1. For any objects x and y, if x is identical to y, then if x has a certain property F, so does y (substitutivity of identity).
2. Every object is necessarily self-identical.
3. By substitution, we can conclude that, for every x and y, if x = y, it is necessary that x = y. [I don't know how to type logic thingies on here, but this is an instance of the substitutivity law stated in (1)]
4. Therefore, for any objects x and y, if x is y, then it is necessary that x is y.

This all might seem rather uninteresting until you apply it to identity statements, things like 'water is H2O', statements that many of us generally take to be contingent. Kripke proposes that the way out of the apparent paradox of (4) above, is not to regard such identity statements as contigent, but as necessary (specifically, Kripke argues the necessity of identity for both theoretical identity statements, such as 'water is H2O', and for names). For Kripke, any identity statement that involves two rigiddesignators, is necessarily true, if it is true at all. A 'rigid-designator' is any term that refers to the same thing in all possible worlds in which that things exists. Kripke eventually uses this position to argue that the materialist, specifically the 'identity theory' (Every mental state is identical with a particular brain state) view of the mind-body problem is problematic.

I must get back to the writing of the essay. I'll be up in Vancouver over Christmas. I hope that there are still some of you left back home.

Love Ev