Thanks for posting my list! Looking back, I think the third “more controversial” one (about the irrationality of some ultimate desires, e.g. Future Tuesday Indifference) probably doesn’t belong on the list. I do think it is very interesting and probably true, but that’s a different matter.
It’s not analytic (true by definition) that cats are animals. But it is metaphysically necessary: there is no possible world containing a cat that is not an animal.
I disagree with this. First, to make sure I know what you mean, you’re basically saying that “that cat-like thing I see” is not, by definition, a cat. If we took a full description of a cat’s biology to be the definition then it would be an animal by definition. Did I get all that right?
I don’t think it’s possible to prove a statement to be synthetic (the opposite of analytic—do LessWrongians know these words?) unless you prove that there is no possible way to show something by definition. In this case, it seems that we have just failed to show that the statement was analytic rather than proving it to be synthetic.
I’m not sure I follow your objection. In natural language, the meaning of ‘cat’ is fixed by ostention, not descriptive stipulation. We (most of us, at least) mean something like “that cat-like thing I see”. If it turns out that the cat-like creatures of our worlds are cleverly disguised robots, rather than animals, we would conclude that cats are robots, not that our world contains no cats. Hence the meaning of our word ‘cat’ does not include their animality.
You could, of course, introduce a new term ‘shcat’ which you stipulate means “cat-like animal”. So then the situation I’ve described above would be one in which we learn that our world contains no shcats. But the English word ‘cat’ does not function like this. And the interesting Kripkean point is just that we can (and often do) define words by ostension, which can then display this interesting behaviour of featuring in claims that are metaphysically necessary but not analytic. That is: it’s the possibility of such a distinction, rather than any particular instance of it, which is the really interesting thing here.
I agree with this. I do not know much about the philosophy of language, so I did not know that this was the consensus on the definitions of words like ‘cat’.
I am not sure that there is a possible distinction in this case. It is metaphysically necessary that cats are necessary, but we have not proved it to be synthetic.
Thanks for posting my list! Looking back, I think the third “more controversial” one (about the irrationality of some ultimate desires, e.g. Future Tuesday Indifference) probably doesn’t belong on the list. I do think it is very interesting and probably true, but that’s a different matter.
I disagree with this. First, to make sure I know what you mean, you’re basically saying that “that cat-like thing I see” is not, by definition, a cat. If we took a full description of a cat’s biology to be the definition then it would be an animal by definition. Did I get all that right?
I don’t think it’s possible to prove a statement to be synthetic (the opposite of analytic—do LessWrongians know these words?) unless you prove that there is no possible way to show something by definition. In this case, it seems that we have just failed to show that the statement was analytic rather than proving it to be synthetic.
I’m not sure I follow your objection. In natural language, the meaning of ‘cat’ is fixed by ostention, not descriptive stipulation. We (most of us, at least) mean something like “that cat-like thing I see”. If it turns out that the cat-like creatures of our worlds are cleverly disguised robots, rather than animals, we would conclude that cats are robots, not that our world contains no cats. Hence the meaning of our word ‘cat’ does not include their animality.
You could, of course, introduce a new term ‘shcat’ which you stipulate means “cat-like animal”. So then the situation I’ve described above would be one in which we learn that our world contains no shcats. But the English word ‘cat’ does not function like this. And the interesting Kripkean point is just that we can (and often do) define words by ostension, which can then display this interesting behaviour of featuring in claims that are metaphysically necessary but not analytic. That is: it’s the possibility of such a distinction, rather than any particular instance of it, which is the really interesting thing here.
I agree with this. I do not know much about the philosophy of language, so I did not know that this was the consensus on the definitions of words like ‘cat’.
I am not sure that there is a possible distinction in this case. It is metaphysically necessary that cats are necessary, but we have not proved it to be synthetic.