Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities

Name: Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities
Price: 233 AUD
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ISBN: 9780199609208

Joseph LaPorte (Hope College, Michigan)

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English

Oxford University Press
06 December 2012

Philosophy of language; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; Philosophy of mind

Joseph LaPorte offers a new account of the connections between the reference of words for properties and kinds, and theoretical identity statements. Some terms for concrete objects, such as 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus', are rigid, and the rigidity of these terms is important because it helps to determine whether certain statements containing them, including identity statements like 'Hesperus = Phosphorus', are necessary or contingent. These observations command broad agreement. But there has been much less agreement about whether and how designators for properties are rigid: terms like 'white', 'brontosaur', 'beautiful', 'heat', 'H2O', 'pain', and so on. In Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities, LaPorte articulates and defends the position that terms for properties are rigid designators. Furthermore, he argues that property designators' rigidity is put to good use in important philosophical arguments supporting and impugning certain theoretical identity statements. The book as a whole constitutes a broad defense of a tradition originating largely in seminal work from Saul Kripke, which affirms the truth and necessity of theoretical identities such as 'water = H2O', 'heat = the motion of molecules' and the like, and which looks skeptically upon psychophysical identities like 'pain = c-fiber firing'. LaPorte responds to detractors of the Kripkean tradition whose objections and challenges indicate where development and clarification is needed, as well as to sympathizers who have put forward important contributions toward such ends. Specific topics discussed by way of defending the Kripkean tradition include conventionalism and empiricism, nominalism about properties, multiple realizability, supervenience, analytic functionalism, conceptual dualism and 'new wave' or a posteriori materialism, the explanatory gap, scientific essentialism (more broadly: scientific necessitarianism), and vitalism.

By: Joseph LaPorte (Hope College Michigan)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 558g
ISBN: 9780199609208
ISBN 10: 0199609209
Pages: 260
Publication Date: 06 December 2012
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Joseph LaPorte is Professor of Philosophy at Hope College. He has published many articles in the philosophy of language, metaphysics and the philosophy of science, as well as Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change(CUP, 2004).

Reviews for Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities

LaPorte's book is the definitive work on the question of the rigidity of natural kind terms and other property designators and the role that such rigidity would play in theoretical identities. Anyone who is interested in these topics, and generally in the topics of natural kinds, natural kind terms, property designation, or theoretical identities will find it a challenging, illuminating, and indispensable resource. * Stephen P. Schwartz, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *