Rigid Designator

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A Rigid Designator is a statement designator that is identifies an object in all possible worlds.



References

2015

  • (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rigid_designator Retrieved:2015-11-17.
    • In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator when it designates (picks out, denotes, refers to) the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists [1] and does not designate anything else in those possible worlds in which that thing does not exist. A designator is persistently rigid if it designates the same thing in every possible world in which that thing exists and designates nothing in all other possible worlds. A designator is obstinately rigid if it designates the same thing in every possible world, period, whether or not that thing exists in that world. Rigid designators are contrasted with non-rigid or flaccid designators, which may designate different things in different possible worlds.
  1. Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Revised Second Edition 2008, p. 318

2006

1980

  • (Rory, 1980) ⇒ Richard Rorty. (1980). “Kripke versus Kant.” In: London Review of Books, 2(17).
    • QUOTE: Kripke tries to sober us up by denying that meaning determines reference. Rather, we name things by confronting them and baptising them, not by creating them out of a list of qualities. Names are not, pace Russell, shorthand for such lists. They are not abbreviations for descriptions, but (in Kripke’s coinage) ‘rigid designators’ – that is, they would name the same things in any possible world, including worlds in which their bearers did not have the properties we, in this world, use to identify them.
  • (Kripke, 1980) ⇒ Saul Kripke. (1980). “Naming and Necessity." Harvard University Press. ISBN:0674598466
    • QUOTE: (p.48) Let's call something a rigid designator if in every possible world it designates the same object, a nonrigid or accidental designator if that is not the case. Of course we don't require that the objects exist in all possible worlds. Certainly Nixon might not have existed if his parents had not gotten married, in the normal course of things. When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called 'strongly rigid.