[video game music]
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A while ago, we made an episode discussing how names work,
and in particular, whether or not they are just disguised descriptions.
You can click here and see it if you haven't already.
A lot of people in the comments outlined a referential theory of names;
so I thought we'd go back to names, and examine that theory.
Bear in mind here that we're discussing _proper_ names only, like
"Olly,"
"Jeff Goldblum,"
"Felix Chelberg."
The referential theory of names is normally credited to 19th century philosopher
and awesome side-burn-haver, John Stuart Mill.
And he said that names don't have any meaning, they just refer.
They're like sign posts that just point to things in the world.
On their own, they're just arbitrary noises; the example Mill used was Dartmouth,
which is the name of a town near the south of England, located near the mouth of the River Dart.
That sounds like it's got something to do with its location, but really, if the River Dart dried up,
or moved, then people would still call the town "Dartmouth."
That's because the name "Dartmouth" points to the town, but doesn't say anything about it --
it's just a noise, a way of referring.
Mill said that names DEnote, but do not CONnote.
And that's kind of intuitive, I mean, the name doesn't mean anything --
they could have called it anything, like "Riverton" or "Streamsville" or "George" --
The name doesn't have _meaning_ it just refers.
But there are some serious problems with this, which led to Bertrand Russell
developing his theory about descriptions which we talked about in the last episode on names.
The first is "empty names."
Take a name like "Santa Claus:"
that doesn't point to anything in the world, since -- spoiler alert --
Santa Claus doesn't exist.
So according to Mill, not only does it not mean anything, it doesn't refer to anything either.
But if it doesn't have meaning or reference, then how do you know what I'm saying when I use it?
How can I say, "Santa Claus delivers presents," and you know what I mean
if the name doesn't mean anything and doesn't point to anything in the world?
Now you might say that the name does refer, because it points to a mythical figure,
but what does it mean to say that a "mythical figure" delivers presents?
If the name points to the myth, then I could never talk about Santa Claus as if he were real.
[Skyrim theme] There is another, more famous problem with Mill's theory:
And for that, we must turn to a Philosopher whose awesome name
makes it sound like he just jumped [loudly] right out of Skyrim:
Gottlob Frege!
[Skyrim theme swells]
So, Gottlob Frege
[Skyrim theme]
outlined something he called the "Problem of Trivial Identity."
Take two sentences: "Eric Blair wrote 1984,"
and "George Orwell wrote 1984."
George Orwell was actually a fake name that Eric Blair wrote under.
Both names refer to him, they both "point to" the same guy.
But isn't it possible that you could believe that George Orwell wrote 1984,
but disbelieve that Eric Blair wrote it.
If you didn't know that George Orwell was just Eric Blair's pseudonym, you could say,
"Well, no, Eric Blair didn't write it, George Orwell did."
In other words, it could be true that you believed George Orwell wrote 1984
and false that you believed Eric Blair wrote it.
But if one sentence is true and the other one is false,
they must /mean/ different things.
If the names didn't mean anything and just referred, then the two sentences would have the same
"truth value," as philosophers call it.
But they don't.
Similarly, if the names didn't mean anything, then it would just be trivial to say,
"George Orwell is Eric Blair."
Since both refer to the same guy, that's just like saying, "George Orwell is George Orwell."
But it's not the same. The Problem with Trivial Identity means that nowadays,
most philosphers think that Mill was wrong about names.
Although some of his ideas are making a comeback --
Frege's own position is famously complicated and people can't even agree on what it is,
nevermind whether or not it's correct.
What do you guys think? Those of you who were convinced by Mill last time, are you still convinced?
How do empty names work and is there a way around the Problem of Trivial Identity?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
You can also let me know whether you'd like the next episode to be about, "Should we believe in miracles?"
(very Christmas-y)
or "is it wrong to watch pornography?"
(Not quite so Christmas-y)
You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to join the PhilosoFans and leave a like if you --
[loudly] Fus Ro Da!! [thunder]
["Talk to the Animals" plays throughout] A lot of people in the comments section
of our last episode were keen to give peas a chance.
Let's see what the PhilosoFans had to say about "Should we become vegetarian?"
AnthonyMazzarella and HerodotVonHalikarnas said
that animals can't have rights.
Mmmm, be careful. We weren't asking the question of whether or not animals can have rights.
We were asking whether it's morally acceptable for humans to eat them.
Whether animals can have rights is an entirely separate debate about what the nature of a right is
and to whom exactly the apply, but I'm afraid they are two separate questions.
Jim Groth asked, "are there any philosophical reasons for us to care if an animal is in pain?"
I suppose one possible answer might take the form that your pain and another being's pain --
if they are qualitatively similar -- must be morally equivalent.
Like if it's bad for you to be in pain, then putting aside your preference for yourself,
it must also be bad for other beings to be in pain.
Of course, at that point, the question becomes, "Do animals feel pain, and if so, is it anything like ours? And
does something have to be painful for it to count as a harm, like a painless death, for instance?"
MadHatterHimself said that we'd still have to consider the basic interests of plants if we became vegetarian
and whether or not it was okay to override those. That would be a reply to the interest-based argument,
but the Bentham argument of whether or not they can suffer, you'd still be allowed to eat plants on that.
You said that it's been proven that plants can feel pain. I couldn't find any studies which seemed to support that
And also, plants don't have a brain or really a nervous system,
so they can't feel pain.
I mean, they can respond to stimuli, but that's not quite the same thing.
So, I think on the Bentham argument, you'd still be able to eat plants.
Also, even if it was the case that plants could suffer,
The animals that we rear for slaughter eat plants themselves, so if we cut out the middle man,
we'd still be causing less plant suffering than if we just ate meat.
Secretworldleader said that since so many of our clothes and electronics are produced by people
who suffer a lot in those working conditions,
there's kind of a bit of hypocrisy about saying that we really care about animals and we don't want them to suffer.
I see what you mean; there is a bit of a moral dissonance there.
I would say that maybe it's better to do one of those things,
like abstain from eating meat or abstain from electronics and clothings and cause less suffering that way
than it would be to not abstain from either and avoid charges of hypocrisy.
Maybe we should do both.
That's all we've got time for this week.
There were a whole bunch of comments that we really good that I didn't have time to put in the episode,
so I will post replies to those on the PhilosophyTube Facebook page.
MadHatterHimself, Tobias Legendium, Charlie Twermy (sp?), Manev (sp?) and Gary Toft:
your comments are all discussed there.
Thanks very much for watching, and I will see you in the next episode. Byyyyeeeee!