counterparts

["James Alexander Cunningham" <0203734C@student.gla.ac.uk>]

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


Hello everyone, I thought it might be a good time to descend from my cloud and give you all some further insights into my wisdom.

First of all I hope that everyone that went to Sheffield conference had fun. It is worth visiting Sheffield Uni Just to have a go on the lifts in the arts tower. They are about third on the list of why I want to go there next year.

Anyway, one of the things that has got me thinking lately is the idea of essential knowledge and the identity of persons across possible worlds. In short knowing the proposition p is essential to a person a if there is no possible world in which a, or a counterpart to a, exists but does not know p. Jakko Hintikka argued that al knowledge is essential (although I am not sure that he realised it) but this is very improbable, there are surely counterparts in other possible worlds who do not know everything that I do, and vice versa. So are there any genuine examples of essential knowledge. If knowing how is reducible to knowing that, I think that there probably are, but then again it is unlikely that knowing how is reducible to knowing that. This leads me to wonder what is it that allows me to identify possible world counterparts. If I had been born in PVS I would never know anything, but would that person be me? I suppose that depends how one answers the question of whether or not there is such a thing as essential knowledge (although it also raises the question of what a subject can be said to know while unconscious). Someone (Kripke? Putnam?) said that it is a necessary condition of a and b being possible world counterparts, that their parents be counterparts. But this is not sufficient; otherwise I could argue that some possible world counterpart of my sister is in fact a possible world counterpart of me. Genetic makeup then? Well that seems too strict. Surely I could have had different fingerprints, or hair colour, or sexuality. Also it does not exclude the above problem. Let us suppose that in possible world 1 there are two identical twins. James becomes a devilishly handsome philosophy student, while Wilbur becomes a swashbuckling pirate on the Spanish Main. In possible world 2 the one called Wilbur becomes a devilishly handsome philosophy student, while the one called James becomes a swashbuckling pirate on the Spanish Main. Which twin in world 1 is the correct counterpart of the twin in world 2? Genetics gi

Enough of such drivel. Give me your thoughts.    









Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.shtml