IIF   26912
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES FILOSOFICAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Rigidity is Context Sensitive
Autor/es:
EDUARDO GARCÍA RAMÍREZ
Lugar:
Buenos Aires
Reunión:
Seminario; Seminario Regular; 2020
Institución organizadora:
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, SADAF-CONICET
Resumen:
The received view has it that rigidity is a mandatory semantic feature of ordinary proper names. Thus, whenever a declarative sentence involves a bare singular use of an ordinary proper name in argument position of a predicate, such name must be rigid, i.e., it must refer to one and the same individual across counterfactual scenarios. This view has some indirect problems, both semantic and metaphysical. In this paper I want to show that it also faces a direct problem, as it simply fails to account for the contextsensitivity of ordinary proper names. I will begin (section 1) by briefly describing the view and its commitment to the context-insensitivity of rigidity for proper names. I then (section 2) present counterexamples by means of three cases where the reference of ordinary proper names varies across counterfactual scenarios, showing that rigidity is context-sensitive. I consider (section 3) three different replies intended to reject or discredit such counterexamples, as well as three alternative theories, already available in the literature, intended to accommodate the problematic cases while keeping the context-insensitive view of rigidity in place (section 4). I show why each of these theories fails. I conclude (section 5) by offering an alternative understanding of rigidity as a flexible, contextual requirement. I show how rigidity can be so understood, and how we can account for the problematic scenarios, while doing justice to the idea that, typically, bare singular uses of ordinary proper names are rigid.