First, Kripke says that an identity statement is necessary, and it might be discovered through experience, but nonetheless, it’s necessary. This would mean that pain=c fibers firing is a posterori and necessary. In modal logic, necessary truth means that it is always true no matter what, even in every possible world (this will be discussed later). But the problem with this is that it is presumed that Kripke believes that pain=c fibers firing is an identity, and therefore is necessary, because both terms are rigid designators. Rigid designation means that a certain term refers to the same thing in every possible world; depending on if the thing exists or not. Kripke explained earlier in that paper that pain is in a fact a rigid designator, but in the ‘Modal Arguments’ section, he doesn’t seem to argue for why he believes that c fibers are rigid designators; he just assumes they are. “'C-fibers' is a rigid designator, as I will suppose here” (Kripke, 1980,
First, Kripke says that an identity statement is necessary, and it might be discovered through experience, but nonetheless, it’s necessary. This would mean that pain=c fibers firing is a posterori and necessary. In modal logic, necessary truth means that it is always true no matter what, even in every possible world (this will be discussed later). But the problem with this is that it is presumed that Kripke believes that pain=c fibers firing is an identity, and therefore is necessary, because both terms are rigid designators. Rigid designation means that a certain term refers to the same thing in every possible world; depending on if the thing exists or not. Kripke explained earlier in that paper that pain is in a fact a rigid designator, but in the ‘Modal Arguments’ section, he doesn’t seem to argue for why he believes that c fibers are rigid designators; he just assumes they are. “'C-fibers' is a rigid designator, as I will suppose here” (Kripke, 1980,