Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM, Dale Jacquette and Epictetus

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4 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 1. Ontologies
Ontology is the same as the conceptual foundations of logic [Jacquette]
     Full Idea: The principles of pure philosophical ontology are indistinguishable ... from the conceptual foundations of logic.
     From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref)
     A reaction: I would take Russell to be an originator of this view. If the young Wittgenstein showed that the foundations of logic are simply conventional (truth tables), this seems to make ontology conventional too, which sounds very odd indeed (to me).
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B)
     A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism.
The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11)
     A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
Ontology must include the minimum requirements for our semantics [Jacquette]
     Full Idea: The entities included in a theoretical ontology are those minimally required for an adequate philosophical semantics. ...These are the objects that we say exist, to which we are ontologically committed.
     From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref)
     A reaction: Worded with exquisite care! He does not say that ontology is reducible to semantics (which is a silly idea). We could still be committed, as in a ghost story, to existence of some 'nameless thing'. Things utterly beyond our ken might exist.