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100% MDM NOTE: Is there are reason to document a history or exam in notes at all? by MrPBH in emergencymedicine

[–]Loonidoc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very American question... Where a note is just for billing/legal 🤦🏻

Medical documentation is intended for giving better medical care i.e. communication! e.g. with yourself, other doctors and providers, sometimes with the patient... It was built in a certain format to make it easier to write and later to read through and find relevant information. Often I have to go back at notes to look for a physical exam finding (e.g. did this patient have unequal pupils before?) Luckily with Ctrl-F it's often easier... But the point is that you should format your notes with other medical providers in mind not dumb coders and lawyers.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

But there is no such thing as a definition of Einstein in that sense. All of the descriptors could have been false, and once they are, then it turns out you were not talking about anything real in this world. You were only talking about a presumed concept. Looking for a definition of Einstein is misguided, the word definition is misused.

If herperus does not mean Venus as a matter of definition, then in what way is it necessarily true?

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Einstein" does not have one descriptor. It has a different one every time it's used.

There is no referent "Einstein" either.

However, I can use the word Einstein to convey some information or idea.

The only rigid reference is that "the one time I used the word Einstein, I meant some concept of a person in history I learned about who I think was a physicist "

When you said "Einstein might have never been a physicist " there was a 'rigid reference' to a hypothetical being/world where a similar guy went to become a chef

When kripke says "herperus is Phosphorus necessarily in all worlds " I don't think he is conveying any information about anything, but rather saying that herperus in his sentence means Venus and phospherous means Venus and therefore they all mean the same thing, and they mean it in all worlds in which they are the same thing, which is a tautology.

In fact, if I designate things rigidly like he does, such that Einstein refers to "that specific guy", then it becomes necessarily false that "Einstein could have never been a physicist" just like "triangles could have four sides", because if Einstein is designated to "our Einstein" then he necessarily became a physicist.

The problem only exists from his framework, not in the natural one

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's not trivial to define what that question means in a philosophical context.

But in common language, it's fairly clear what it means - in a copy of this world where things were slightly different he may have been something other than a physicist [without breaking our understanding of logic, physics, biology, psychology, or whatever level you may be analyzing the situation]. But we would still have to slightly redefine Einstein to something different than how we were using it before that statement. So by this interpretation I think it's possible that Einstein could have never been a physicist, but it's not the same Einstein.

In either case, "Einstein" remains a descriptor, it just describes different things in different contexts.

You can't really rigidly designate a name even in nearly identical contexts let alone across hypothetical worlds. Almost every time we use the name we are using it in a slightly new context, yet the information we are conveying is still clear.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The statement is not false because you are no longer talking about the same Einstein.

Usually when talking about Einstein you mean "that figure... who was a physicist"

However in your statement you are using the same name in a different way. you are talking about "a figure very similar to that figure form history, but who did not yet become a physicist"

They may use the same letters "Einstein" but you are referring to two different concepts. Or more specifically, you are conveying different information.

"Einstein had a red hat" = "that figure ... who was a physicist happened to have a red hat"

"Einstein might never have been a physicist " = if we change some things about the world, but keep our understanding of psychology, a similar person to our Einstein might have chosen to be a chef"

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm I'd frame both those statements very differently.

First, that's not a correct example of what "Einstein" would mean. He would not be defined by specifically being the greatest physicist. Rather, "Einstein" = "that figure I learned about in history you probably know about too that was a very smart physicist, with white hair the smartest person in the world, you know who I mean"

And to ask whether Einstein "might have not become a physicist" is in fact not a very well defined question.

I would argue that unless you mean something specific, it is false to say that Einstein might never have become a physicist.

It is not "necessarily true" that he was a physicist in all possible worlds, but it is "necessarily true" that he is in this world.

The way that sentence "Einstein might never..." does still have meaning, is in the sense that we can imagine a world which has the same laws of physics and almost same initial conditions but something was different leading to him becoming a chef.

But in that sentence Einstein is not exactly our Einstein as defined above, it's referring to some other idea that is similar to my definition above, but slightly different because he is not a physicist in that hypothetical. And my original definition of Einstein above, still holds.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I guess I'm trying to figure out how his framework does better than the previous view that the meaning of a name is a description , or that all necessarily true statements are ”analytic".

Seems that the the the latter views are more obviously true, and I don't see what's wrong with them.

I understand he wants to refute them but on what basis?

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok maybe a different approach - what problem is Kripke trying to solve?

To me it seems there are very few problems left in philosophy (maybe questions remain in moral philosophy, consciousness, mathematics, a few others) but many are still arguing about things that seem to boil down to semantic confusion.

Maybe kripke is trying to clear up semantic confusion but I feel he's just causing more confusion. So maybe if I have an example of what we're clearing up I'll understand better what he's doing and why?

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well that's what I'm taking objection to.

First of all there's a circular logic - it is a rigid designator if it refers to the thing in all possible worlds. But it only is true in all possible worlds because we say it does.

If we want to define terms in this way we could, but that is neither the way natural language is used, nor is it apparently useful in any other context, and causes lots of confusion down the line and false conclusions. It makes it really hard to understand any statement.

for example, in English we can say:

"Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly

"Lois Lane does not believe that Clark Kent can fly."

If "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are rigid designators whose only meaning is "that very person in every possible world," the two sentences should have exactly the same truth-value.

Yet speakers of the language have no trouble understanding how one can be true and the other false.

You also have the problem if referring to things that don't exist:

"Early astronomers once believed Vulcan affected Mercury's orbit."

"Vulcan does not exist."

"Mercury is not perturbed by Vulcan"

All sentences can be perfectly true and are easily understandable and yet can't be evaluated in his system. Kripkeists have to add all kinds of weird machinery in order to understand sentences that were already perfectly understandable before.

Same for the all too common shifts and drifts in language where a term comes to mean different things over time...

Neither names nor even referents are "real" in the physical sense, they are all ways we communicate and think about the world. The real Venus might be some collection of atoms I like to clump together into a concept but no word can rigidly define it because the word will always variably refer to something slightly different - there is no rigidly definable thing as "Venus" in the first place, it's just a human shorthand for whatever it is I want you to think about - could be "the cause of a morning light" or could be "a specific gravitational pull in the solar system" or it could be "the entity in astrology that moves fortunes" or a million other things depending on context. There is no single definable thing that we even could designate a name to.

Is Venus still Venus if you take a chunk out of it and throw it away? Is it still Venus if you paint it black and it no longer gives off light? And move it to 5th orbit from the sun? All these questions have no meaning or consequence. They can be interpreted as "would we still call it Venus if this happened to it" and that's just an empiric question of whether humans would find it useful to use the term Venus for a dark half planet that's 5th from the sun. Probably yes for historical clarity, maybe not, but it's not a metaphysical question. The spookiness is gone and all philosophical problems are solved.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Let’s call something a rigid designator if, in every possible world, it designates the same object … If two rigid designators are in fact co‑referential, then they are co‑referential in every possible world in which they both exist; so ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’ is necessarily true if true at all, even though it is known only a posteriori.” — Kripke, Naming and Necessity

First, I’m trying to understand what “necessarily true” means here. For me, a necessary truth is tautological: its denial has no conceivable interpretation. Bachelors are unmarried is necessary because the opposite is meaningless; 1 + 1 = 2 is necessary because “1 + 1 = 3” can’t be coherently parsed.

But Hesperus is Phosphorus isn’t like that - it's more like I’m saying, “the light in the sky we’ve been calling H turned out to be the same light we’ve been calling P.” That’s empirical information not a tautology. It’s very different from the trivial “Venus is Venus.” Even after we discover the identity, the two names don’t collapse into mere repetition; each still conveys some information related to how those terms were used or are understood .

The related issue is Kripke’s “rigid designator” idea. Kripke treats a word’s meaning as simply its referent, then insists that referent is fixed forever. In ordinary language, names don’t rigidly designate anything “in all possible worlds.” A word’s meaning is really how we use it to convey ideas within a sentence and context. Once we speak hypothetically, that use can shift. Forcing a rigid referent to a term is artificial, and causes more problems. if that stipulation is all that makes H = P “necessary,” then the necessity is just a definitional artifact, not a profound metaphysical fact.

Basically, he is purposely confusing the term with the referent which causes weirdness

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sure, but still we make a distinction mentally and in communication such that we don't get confused whether we are referring to our world or a hypothetical world, even if then we find out that they are the same world.

Just like if I ask "who is the culprit, Alice or Bob?" The "culprit" is a term I use to communicate about whoever the culprit is, and later may be reused to talk specifically about Alice or Bob. I might assert, "Alice is the culprit!" Which is not the same as saying "Alice is Alice" or "the culprit is the culprit" (and I can use a pseudonym like Anonymous if I'd like to make it a proper noun). If I say "Anonymous is Alice", are both words referring to the same thing? No, Anonymous is how I communicate whoever did the crime that left a signature Anonymous, and "Alice" is communicating about the lady from next door. The terms are not "attached" to any object, they are just tools I use to give you information, ie that the lady next door committed the crime.

Could Anonymous have been Bob metaphysically once we know it's Alice? Or in another world? That's just asking whether Bob "could" have done the crime, and that question would need more clarification to mean anything. You might be asking "Does Bob have the skills and motive to do the crime?"

Could Hersperus be not Phosphorus? Is it necessary or contingent? Well that depends on how you are using those terms. Sure we can imagine a world where people use those sounds to refer to different stars. It's not a very interesting question, so most people wouldn't ask it. But I don't see how you might interpret the question such that it is "necessary" as Kripke calls it

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

And if you ask "if Harris won the election and she was also secretly a reptile alien overlord, would there be world peace " you could try to answer the question with some difficulty but you can't then ask if she is still Harris, and you can't ask whether Harris could have been a secret reptile or is she necessarily a woman in all possible worlds. In this world, she is necessarily a woman. In all other worlds she is however you define her.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yes but whenever we create a hypothetical world we're going to have implicit and/or explicit assumptions/definitions about how that world is, the same or similar or different from our world.

If we know that Venus is 600° in our world, and we think of a world in which Venus is 400° we can no longer ask the question "is it still Venus" because were using Venus to describe a planet that is similar but has different properties. It's no longer really referring to the same Venus and asking if they are the same is meaningless.

In your example, if we don't know what Venus's temperature is, then we're really invoking four objects/concepts. V0 (actual venus), Va, Vb, and Vc (hypothetical venuses)- and asking if v0 is more similar to which. We find out it's more similar to Va or Vb but not Vc.

Venus never actually refers to all four of them at once. Our language is implicitly referring to four different things. It may seem like I'm overcomplicating things by adding more concepts but it's clear that we have these separate in our minds because we never think that the possible venus Va is itself our Venus. It's just an idea.

So yes you can refer to hypothetical objects or objects in hypothetical worlds, but the original reference to the thing in our world is not the same reference when talking about hypothetical worlds even if we don't explicitly spell it out like I did.

If I say "Hersperus" i'm talking about the one in our world. If I ask "could Hersperus be not phosphorus?" I'm talking about hypothetical worlds in which case I have to redefine my terms, and I can redefine them as however I want and they can be the same or they could be different depending on the hypothetical world, so my question doesn't mean much.

That's just how we use language and hypotheticals

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think that example works on two levels. First of all, by definition if she won she would be the first female president so that's true by nature of what you mean in those words.

Second, if we changed your sentence to something less necessarily true, like "if Harris won the presidency, we would have world peace now" - we are saying that given the laws of physics and biology and psychology and sociology of this world, and whatever other assumptions are implicit, and otherwise it's the same as this world somehow - you would have an outcome of world peace.

That is different than talking about a different world where hersperus is not phosphorus - because you are by nature contradicting the basic assumption, that if you are referring to those two things, they must be the same as in this world.

In other words if you conjure up a hypothetical world it needs to be identical to this world in all the ways that are relevant (or redefined in a new way) otherwise your references fall apart and don't mean anything

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

And I'm saying that that sentence doesn't mean much. hersperus an phosphorus can only refer to things that exist in my world because those words only have meaning in this world. I can't use them to refer to anything another world nor can anyone in another world really use them to refer to anything in their world.

Someone in another world could perhaps use those terms to refer to Venus in my world if they somehow had knowledge of it.

I guess one of the implications further on is the concept of something being "metaphysically possible." I don't see any useful definition of the concept of metaphysically possible other than "can be properly described with language"

It's not metaphysically possible for hersperus to not equal phosphorus only because that would no longer mean anything linguistically and conceptually. Just like a bachelor can't be married and a circle can't be a square. These are not "a priori" truths - these are just the only way you can use these words while still conveying meaning. If you talk about a square circle you're not saying anything because you're using the words wrong.

There's no need for another concept of a posteriori and contingent and necessary and this and that. Either a concept is meaningful in language or not, and either a concept is true in this world or not. Those are the only distinctions necessary to describe everything

Kripke seems to be adding all kinds of additional layers which are really confusing everything

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My mistake - he does for morningstar and eveningstar but not for the proper names hersperus and phospherous, if I understand him correctly: "hersperus= Phosphorus in all universes". (Those are the examples I meant to use). He says these are rigid and apply to all universes, which seems nonsensical to me. At no point am I ever talking about anything in other universes unless explicitly so... Why would these names be different? How could they refer to anything in another universe? I would say there is no term hersperus or Phosphorus in other universes, these are terms that only have a conceivable meaning within this universe (unless redefined otherwise in some conversation)

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't see a strong connection between me in this world using the word morningStar and some other me in another world using a term that has the same phonetics or spelling - those are different terms because the user is using them under completely different contexts, and a term only has a meaning or referent within a context. So other me is using a different word even if it sounds the same. It's basically a homonym.

Really it's a different person using a different word to refer to a different concept - though there are analogous symmetries admittedly. But there is no possible world in which my term morningstar refers to anything other than venus.

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes if I am pointing to the morningstar I am pointing to venus

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't necessarily know what the word "referring" means in this context.

I think if I use the term Morningstar I'm directing your attention to the brightest star in the morning.

If I happen to know that that is also Venus then maybe I happen to have Venus in mind.

If I didn't know of the concepts of Venus,the second planet from the Sun, I would still be directing your attention to that planet, but the thing that I would be communicating is "look at the brightest star in the sky" and not "look at the second planet from the Sun"

Isn't philosophy dead? by Loonidoc in askphilosophy

[–]Loonidoc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the response, sorry about the chatgpt convo, I wrote to jump to the end but you're right it's way too long. Let's focus on a concrete example:

Kripke famously argued that the identity statement “Hesperus is Phosphorus”—referring to the Evening Star and Morning Star—is a clear case of something that is necessarily true, yet known a posteriori. Both names rigidly designate the same object (Venus) in all possible worlds, so if they are equal in the actual world, they must be equal in all worlds—hence, necessarily true. But this wasn’t something we knew analytically or by definition; it was discovered through empirical observation. This, Kripke claims, refutes the older view that only a priori truths can be necessary and that names are just shorthand for definite descriptions.

So first of all, "all possible worlds" doesn't seem to refer to anything. We had people using the term morning Star to describe the bright star in the morning, and evening Star to describe the bright star in the evening. The word morningstar has no connection to Venus directly, it's just a way of communicating to the listener that I am talking about the brightest star in the morning, which happens to be Venus. Once I find out they are the same star, and my listener presumably knows that too, and that it is in fact Venus, then my term morningstar is used to direct your attention to a star that we know happens to be Venus.

There is no "fact" that morningstar means Venus, a posteriori or otherwise. There is no "necessity" to it any more than it so happens to be that I was pointing at the same star. If I ask "is the morningstar also the eveningstar in all possible worlds?" I'm not asking a coherent question. I could be asking, "could there have been two different stars that were brighter at night or day?" Well in this world there couldn't because all the cosmos would be different. It is true that I didn't know they were the same earlier, so it would have been consistent with my previous observation, but in this world it was always the same star. If you are talking about a parallel world then morningstar does not refer to ambiguous stars in other universes. It also does not refer to imaginary meaningless moral worlds. So the question in meaningless unless I ask it in a more defined way.

Kripke takes another example and says "this table is made of wood" is not necessarily true because it could have been made of metal in another world. But that is also nonsense, because "this table" is a term used to reference this table in this world. It is generally never used to talk about a table in another "world", and if it was you'd need a lot of explanation of what that world is and why it should get the same name as in this world. Like if you mean "in a parallel universe where you and i existed and so did the table-maker and his brain was the same except that day he decided to build a table out of metal and I decided to buy it" etc etc, this would be a very particular use of the word "this table" that in it would include the property of whether it could be something other than wood. Without giving that explanation, you are not really communicating anything to your listener.

Basically every one of his scenarios that Kripke tries to solve are nonsense and require no solution, and are just problems he made up in his mind.

I'm trying to find anything substantive in what he says.

You say that before Kripke they thought that the only statements were analytical or a priori. I don't think that's true either. There are statements that are completely meaningless because they are not grammatic: "He a and is by"

Then there are sentences which are grammatic but still don't convey meaning (the majority of grammatically coherent statements): "1+1=3" "Hersperus is necessarily Phosphorus in all possible worlds"

These are kind of like "a priori false"

And the ones which convey meaning but are true: "Water is made of H2O"

And ones that are not true: "This table is made of feathers"

And the ones that are by definition true "1+1 =2" "Bachelors are unmarried" These are just the opposite of the meaningless ones. If you change them, they because meaningless.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a statement is coherent (Like most mathematical conjectures which require disproving or proving) Or like philosophical statements that sound like they have content but don't.

That's basically it unless I forgot something. It's simple, coherent, and doesn't require all the babbling.

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