When
Plato described the realm of forms he created a field of philosophy
that would occupy the thought of those concerned with such arcane
interests for millennia. The realm of forms had a perfect form or
model for each and every real existing item finding itself to have an
appearance in the spatio-temporal empirical world. That of course
included words themselves. The realm of forms thus had some
similarities to Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorems generated 2500
years later.
W.V.O. Quine and Saul Kripke
along with numerous linguistic philosophers considered the meanings
and nature of words and the philosophy; did words have any actual
nature of Platonic realism about them such that their meanings
existed forever (though of course it was always possible to generated
another new word version 1.1, 1.2,1.n etc.).
Quine believed that meanings were
entirely nominal and cohered within a linguistic lexicon that might
evolve. Kripke seemed to think that word meanings had a mildly
lasting form though, even if not within a realm of forms. He believed
that some words were rigid designators and that their meanings could
not really change although they might be lost.
I
would think that his idea would be that a word meaning at a given
time, such as Mona Lisa, might like the painting always be the same
even if viewed or understood correctly 4000 years after construction.
When considering the nature of reality itself however, as might
metaphysicians, can there be said to be rigid designators?
Physicists today have numerous
terms for sub-atomic particles, waves and other theoretical objects.
Physiologists also have numerous ways of explaining how it is that
humans interpret and experience sense data with inherent cognitive
faculties. So philosophers reached the a point of understanding that
what is seen is an appearance of reflected light wavelengths
interpreted by others in ways the cognitive faculties allow. A black
object is not for instance, actually black; it just appears so
because it won’t reflect light in any other way. What about
invisible to the human eye theoretical objects comprising the
sub-atomic world; can they be said to have characteristics comparable
to those of neo-Platonic rigid designators?
In
a sense the complete sub-atomic world that comprises the physical
cosmology of the apparent Universe is forever unknowable as a
thing-in-itself, or what it is really like for-itself. Humans beings
experience it in a particular way, or at least select features of it
and perhaps at best learn about certain aspects of it work or
function instead of how they actually are. Physicists might be
regarded as developing rigid designators for apparent cause-effect
relations though they do not regard cause and affect as valid ideas
themselves these days I believe.
What if there are no actual rigid
designators possible for sub-atomic entities that theoretically exist
such as quarks and strings? Quarks and strings may be physical
locations for force events understood perhaps as locations along wave
segments that exist as emergent though not independent entities.
Perhaps the entire sub-atomic world is a monistic whole with variable
constituent parts. Human beings encounter and explain the behavior
and shape of such elements of the universal
object-for-sentient-others as they may and endeavor to observe and
learn more.
Forming rigid designators that
correspond to subatomic forces such as the nuclear force or the
theoretical gravitational force that has no immediate explanation or
object to associate a cause with seems challenging. Yet rigid
designators for the effects of forces may be the better practice for
contemporary scientists or philosophers.
In that sense science
investigating the subatomic realm and quantum cosmology maps the
observable and inferential behavior of mass and energy, even unto
larger structures such as a Higgs field, that cohere as greater
non-rigid designators for the Universe.
