Abstract
In “Rigidity and Scope” M. J. More attempts to defend the thesis that primacy of scope does not confer rigidity; i.e., the thesis that in de re statements of the form “a is necessarily the F” the designator in place of ‘a’ may take wide scope with respect to the modal operator and yet function non-rigidly. As More points out, the issue is of considerable importance – for if primacy of scope did confer rigidity, then proper names could be both rigid designators and disguised definite descriptions. More’s defence of his thesis rests crucially upon the alleged contingency of certain de re truths. However, it is my contention that (i) More’s arguments establish neither the contingency nor the truth of such statements; and (ii) even if there were compelling arguments for the existence of such contingent de re truths, this would entail the thesis that primacy of scope does not confer rigidity only at the cost of rendering the modal operator embedded in such statements totally impotent.
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Notes
- 1.
There is a weaker definition of necessary truth according to which a necessary truth is one which is either true in all possible worlds or true in some worlds but false in none. According to this definition, the above statements about Tully and Socrates (given certain essentialist principles) would count as necessary truths.
- 2.
Note that More cannot object to this substitution move since his arguments for the contingency of (α) rely upon the legitimacy of precisely such a substitution.
- 3.
Exactly the same question can be posed to those, e.g., Smullyan (1976), who argue for the contingency of certain de re truths as a way out of Quine’s “paradox of modal logic” (i.e., as a way of establishing that (de re) modal contexts are referentially transparent and thus providing a rationale for the project of quantified modal logic).
References
More, M. J. (1980). Rigidity and scope. Logique et Analyse, 23(90/91), 327–330.
Quine, W. V. (1976). Reference and modality. In L. Linsky (Ed.), Reference and modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smullyan, A. F. (1976). Modality and description,. In L. Linsky (Ed.), Reference and modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Garrett, B., Joven Joaquin, J. (2022). More on Rigidity and Scope. In: Joaquin, J.J. (eds) Time, Identity and the Self: Essays on Metaphysics. Synthese Library, vol 442. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85517-8_13
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