PHIL 415 Lecture Notes - Rigid Designator, Definite Description
Document Summary
It seems trivially obvious that a property such as going to the cinema is not a necessary property of a person, since she/he could very well have done something different. It is also important to carry this ordinary intuition back to situations in the past. When one does htis extrapolation, it becomes clear that no ordinary property one can ascribe to, say, aristotle, is a necessary property. Aristotle to have written politics, nor was it necessary for him to have taught. If one thinks that the very meaning of the name is necessarily associated with a definite description, then one is really asking for a necessary property that can always be ascribed to the name. The name aristotle is a rigid designator, and the description the teacher of. This is the formalization of our regular intuition that, generally, rigid designators pick someone out uniquely in the ambient world.