Kripke's modalargument establishes that if pain and C-fiber firing are genuinely identical, the identity is necessary, yet we can coherently conceive of pain without C-fiber firing, unlike paradigm theoretical identities like water and H2O.
?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.
Sign in or register to share your perspective on this statement.
Necessary identity(as the type of identity that would hold if pain really is C-fiber firing)
When two things must be identical in all possible situations—they couldn't be different without one of them ceasing to exist.
Paradigm theoretical identity(as used to compare familiar scientific identities to the pain/C-fiber case)
A classic, widely-accepted example of when two descriptions refer to the exact same underlying reality—a gold standard case used in philosophy.
Water and H2O(as the comparison case showing what genuine scientific identity looks like)
A famous example where the everyday word 'water' and the chemical formula 'H2O' refer to the identical substance, and we can't coherently imagine water existing without being H2O.
modal argument(Kripke's critique of Fregean descriptivism in Naming and Necessity)
An argument against Fregean descriptivism that uses considerations about necessity and possibility to show that names and their associated descriptions differ in modal behavior