/lit/ - Literature

>>18755462
Kripke maintains that questions of transworld identity, of identifying precisely the same individual from one logically possible world to another, cannot be made with high-powered telescopes and cannot be justified on the basis of such superficial properties as external appearance, since these factors can differ radically across different logically possible worlds, obscuring the usual tests for identity and nonidentity that might be conducted in the actual world. Kripke proposes that transworld identity is a matter of stipulation, which is to say of decision rather than discovery. We do not look at alternative logically possible worlds and try to learn from our observations whether Aristotle exists in another logically possible world and what properties he might have there. We simply declare, laying it down as a kind of choice we have made, that there is a logically possible world in which Aristotle exists and has the following accidental properties different from those he possesses in the actual world. We must proceed by stipulation in order to make sense of transworld identities, according to Kripke, and we can only do so in thought and language by means of rigid designators.

The appeal to rigid designators further enables Kripke to mount an argument in support of mind–body dualism. The core of the argument is to say that, since we can consider without internal contradiction that the mind ≠ body, at least in the sense that corpses presumably exist without minds, and we can imagine the mind existing without being associated with a body, it is logically possible that mind ≠ body. If we rigidly designate an individual body and mind or type of brain and psychological entity or event, then, since in that case there is at least one logically possible world in which (rigidly designated) mind ≠ (rigidly designated) body, it must be true that (rigidly designated) mind ≠ (rigidly designated) body in every logically possible world. It follows, then, that mind and body are distinct entities universally in every logically possible world. It is logically necessary, and therefore a fortiori actually the case, that mind ≠ body. The least objectionable mind–body dualism to be accepted as a result of Kripke’s argument is property dualism rather than substance or ontic (Cartesian) dualism, the latter of which has the additional burden of explaining causal interactions between the material body and the immaterial mind.

has dennett ever refuted kripke?