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SYSTEMS OF MEASUREMENT
Author(s) -
Law Stephen
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2005.00280.x
Subject(s) - proposition , philosophy , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , sort , mathematics , arithmetic , chemistry , biochemistry
Wittgenstein and Kripke disagree about the status of the proposition: the Standard Metre is one metre long. Wittgenstein believes it is necessary. Kripke argues that it is contingent. Kripke's argument depends crucially on a certain sort of thought‐experiment with which we are invited to test our intuitions about what is and isn’t necessary. In this paper I argue that, while Kripke's conclusion is strictly correct, nevertheless similar Kripke‐style thought experiments indicate that the metric system of measurement is after all relative in something like the way Wittgenstein seems to think. Central to this paper is a thought‐experiment I call The Smedlium Case .