77 ideas
| 8558 | One system has properties, powers, events, similarity and substance [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a system of internally related concepts containing the notion of a property, the notion of a causal power, the concept of an event, the concept of similarity, and the concept of a persisting substance. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of a modern metaphysical system, one which I find fairly congenial. His notion of events is Kim's, which involves his properties. The persisting substance is the one I am least clear about. |
| 8559 | Analysis aims at internal relationships, not reduction [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The goal of philosophical analysis should not be reductive analysis but rather the charting of internal relationships. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 8558 for an attempt by Shoemaker himself. The idea that there has never been a successful analysis has become a truism among pessimistic analytic philosophers. But there are wonderful relationship maps (Quine, Davidson, Lewis, Lowe). |
| 8594 | People have had good reasons for thinking that the circle has been squared [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: People have had good reasons for thinking that the circle has been squared. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.54) | |
| A reaction: A lovely concise illustration of the limits of reason. We might distinguish 'rational to us' from 'rational in itself', with only what is true or real aspiring to the latter status. But the latter might be unknowable by us. |
| 4037 | Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §9) | |
| A reaction: This presumably follows from an assumption that all beliefs need reasons, but is that the case? The Principle of Sufficient Reason precedes Ockham's Razor. |
| 9065 | S5 collapses iterated modalities (◊□P→□P, and ◊◊P→◊P) [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: S5 collapses iterated modalities (so ◊□P → □P, and ◊◊P → ◊P). | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §5) | |
| A reaction: It is obvious why this might be controversial, and there seems to be a general preference for S4. There may be confusions of epistemic and ontic (and even semantic?) possibilities within a single string of modalities. |
| 15091 | Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I favour restricting the term 'logical truth' to what logicians would count as such, excluding both analytic truths like 'Bachelors are unmarried' and Kripkean necessities like 'Gold is an element'. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I) | |
| A reaction: I agree. There is a tendency to splash the phrases 'logical truth' and 'logical necessity around in vague ways. I take them to strictly arise out of the requirements of formal systems of logic. |
| 8596 | Inability to measure equality doesn't make all lengths unequal [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is not plausible to argue from the fact (if it is one) that it is impossible to verify that two things are exactly equal in length to the conclusion that any two things necessarily differ in length. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.58) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple point against anti-realist or verificationist views of the measurement of length. In any case where we can approach perfect precision, but not quite get there, the anti-realist view looks wildly implausible. |
| 8597 | We couldn't verify the earth's rotation if everyone simultaneously fell asleep [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It would be impossible to verify directly that the rotation of the earth would continue if everyone in the universe were sound asleep, yet it is clearly possible that everyone in the universe should at some time be sound asleep. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.59) | |
| A reaction: Another beautifully simple argument from Shoemaker against anti-realism (cf. Ideas 8595, 8956). This one is nice because it is so obviously possible, given that everyone able to know of the earth's rotation also seems to need sleep. |
| 9064 | Objects such as a cloud or Mount Everest seem to have fuzzy boundaries in nature [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: A common intuition is that a vague object has indeterminate or fuzzy spatio-temporal boundaries, such as a cloud. Mount Everest can only have arbitrary boundaries placed around it, so in nature it must have fuzzy boundaries. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §5) | |
| A reaction: We would have to respond by questioning whether Everest counts precisely as an 'object'. At the microscopic or subatomic level it seems that virtually everything has fuzzy boundaries. Maybe boundaries don't really exist. |
| 9044 | If someone is borderline tall, no further information is likely to resolve the question [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: If Tek is borderline tall, the unclarity does not seem to be epistemic, because no amount of further information about his exact height (or the heights of others) could help us decide whether he is tall. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: One should add also that information about social conventions or conventions about the usage of the word 'tall' will not help either. It seems fairly obvious that God would not know whether Tek is tall, so the epistemic view is certainly counterintuitive. |
| 9048 | The simplest approach, that vagueness is just ignorance, retains classical logic and semantics [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The simplest approach to vagueness is to retain classical logic and semantics. Borderline cases are either true or false, but we don't know which, and, despite appearances, vague predicates have well-defined extensions. Vagueness is ignorance. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that you must have a rather unhealthy attachment to the logicians' view of the world to take this line. It is the passion of the stamp collector, to want everything in sets, with neatly labelled properties, and inference lines marked out. |
| 9055 | The epistemic view of vagueness must explain why we don't know the predicate boundary [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: A key question for the epistemic view of vagueness is: why are we ignorant of the facts about where the boundaries of vague predicates lie? | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is a range of answers, from laziness, to inability to afford the instruments, to limitations on human perception. At the limit, with physical objects, how do we tell whether it is us or the object which is afflicted with vagueness? |
| 9049 | Supervaluationism keeps true-or-false where precision can be produced, but not otherwise [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The supervaluationist view of vagueness is that 'tall' comes out true or false on all the ways in which we can make 'tall' precise. There is a gap for borderline cases, but 'tall or not-tall' is still true wherever you draw a boundary. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: [Kit Fine is the spokesperson for this; it preserves classical logic, but not semantics] This doesn't seem to solve the problem of vagueness, but it does (sort of) save the principle of excluded middle. |
| 9056 | Vague statements lack truth value if attempts to make them precise fail [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The supervaluationist view of vagueness proposes that a sentence is true iff it is true on all precisifications, false iff false on all precisifications, and neither true nor false otherwise. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be just a footnote to the Russell/Unger view, that logic works if the proposition is precise, but otherwise it is either just the mess of ordinary life, or the predicate doesn't apply at all. |
| 9058 | Some of the principles of classical logic still fail with supervaluationism [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Supervaluationist logic (now with a 'definite' operator D) fails to preserve certain classical principles about consequence and rules of inference. For example, reduction ad absurdum, contraposition, the deduction theorem and argument by cases. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: The aim of supervaluationism was to try to preserve some classical logic, especially the law of excluded middle, in the face of problems of vagueness. More drastic views, like treating vagueness as irrelevant to logic, or the epistemic view, do better. |
| 9059 | The semantics of supervaluation (e.g. disjunction and quantification) is not classical [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The semantics of supervaluational views is not classical. A disjunction can be true without either of its disjuncts being true, and an existential quantification can be true without any of its substitution instances being true. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: There is a vaguely plausible story here (either red or orange, but not definitely one nor tother; there exists an x, but which x it is is undecidable), but I think I will vote for this all being very very wrong. |
| 9060 | Supervaluation misunderstands vagueness, treating it as a failure to make things precise [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Why should we think vague language is explained away by how things would be if it were made precise? Supervaluationism misrepresents vague expressions, as vague only because we have not bothered to make them precise. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: The theory still leaves a gap where vagueness is ineradicable, so the charge doesn't seem quite fair. Logicians always yearn for precision, but common speech enjoys wallowing in a sea of easy-going vagueness, which works fine. |
| 9050 | A third truth-value at borderlines might be 'indeterminate', or a value somewhere between 0 and 1 [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: One approach to predications in borderline cases is to say that they have a third truth value - 'neutral', 'indeterminate' or 'indefinite', leading to a three-valued logic. Or a degree theory, such as fuzzy logic, with infinite values between 0 and 1. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: This looks more like a strategy for computer programmers than for metaphysicians, as it doesn't seem to solve the difficulty of things to which no one can quite assign any value at all. Sometimes you can't be sure if an entity is vague. |
| 9061 | People can't be placed in a precise order according to how 'nice' they are [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: There is no complete ordering of people by niceness, and two people could be both fairly nice, nice to intermediate degrees, while there is no fact of the matter about who is the nicer. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
| A reaction: This is a difficulty if you are trying to decide vague predicates by awarding them degrees of truth. Attempts to place a precise value on 'nice' seem to miss the point, even more than utilitarian attempts to score happiness. |
| 9062 | If truth-values for vagueness range from 0 to 1, there must be someone who is 'completely tall' [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Many-valued theories still seem to have a sharp boundary between sentences taking truth-value 1 and those taking value less than 1. So there is a last man in our sorites series who counts as 'completely tall'. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. Completely nice, totally red, perfectly childlike, an utter mountain, one hundred per cent amused. The enterprise seems to have the same implausibility found in Bayesian approaches to assessing evidence. |
| 9063 | How do we decide if my coat is red to degree 0.322 or 0.321? [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: What could determine which is the correct function, settling that my coat is red to degree 0.322 rather than 0.321? | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
| A reaction: It is not just the uncertainty of placing the coat on the scale. The two ends of the scale have all the indeterminacy of being red rather than orange (or, indeed, pink). You are struggling to find a spot on the ruler, when the ruler is placed vaguely. |
| 15092 | Formerly I said properties are individuated by essential causal powers and causing instantiation [Shoemaker, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My 1980 paper said properties are individuated by causal features - the contribution they make to the causal powers of things, and also how their instantiation can be caused. Collectively, these causal features are the essence of a property. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], I) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity | |
| A reaction: The later paper worries about uncertainty over individuation. The view I favour is that 'powers' is a much better term for what is basic, and this allows 'properties' to be the complex notion we use in real life, as innumberable power-combinations. |
| 15095 | A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The view I now favour says that the causal features of a property, both forward-looking and backward-looking, are essential to it. And it says that properties having the same causal features are identical. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: In this formulation we have essentialism about properties, as well as essentialism about the things which have the properties. |
| 15097 | I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The controversial claim of my theory is that the causal features of properties are essential to them - are features that they have in all possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: One problem is that a property can come in degrees, so what degree of the property is necessary to it? It is better to assign this claim to the fundamental properties (which are best called 'powers'). |
| 8543 | Genuine properties are closely related to genuine changes [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine properties are closely related to our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine changes. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: A simple but brilliant insight. Somehow we must hack through the plethora of bogus properties and get to the real ones, cutting nature at the joints. Here we have the principle needed for the task. |
| 8551 | Properties must be essentially causal if we can know and speak about them [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Only if some causal theory of properties is true can it be explained how properties are capable of engaging our knowledge, and our language, in the way they do. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Exactly. This also the reason why epiphenomenalism doesn't make sense about consciousness (Idea 7379). The fact that something has causal powers doesn't mean that it just IS a causal power. A bomb isn't an explosion. |
| 8557 | To ascertain genuine properties, examine the object directly [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a plausible way of distinguishing genuine and mere-Cambridge properties. To decide whether an emerald is green the thing to do is to examine it, but a mere-Cambridge property is settled by observations at a remote time and place. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Scientific essentialism is beautifully simple! Schoemaker is good at connecting the epistemology to the ontology. If you examined a mirror, you might think it contained reflections. |
| 4027 | Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: Note that this definition does not mention a causal role for properties. |
| 15761 | We should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I think we should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Right. I have Shoemaker on my side, and he is a distinguished and senior member of the philosophical community. I don't just prefer not to use 'predicate' and 'property' indistinguishably - philosophers should really really give it up! |
| 15756 | Some truths are not because of a thing's properties, but because of the properties of related things [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a predicate is true of a thing, not because (or only because) of any properties it has, but because something else, perhaps something related to it in certain ways, has certain properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: I'm on mission to prize predicates and properties apart, and the strategy is to focus on what is true of something, given that this may not ascribe a property to the thing. |
| 4029 | Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: Objects might be grasped without language, but events cannot be understood, and explanations of events seem inconceivable without properties (implying that they are essentially causal). |
| 15758 | Things have powers in virtue of (which are entailed by) their properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between powers, and the properties in virtue of which things have they powers they have (n8: 'in virtue of' means that there is a lawlike truth, which turns out to be the properties entailing the powers). | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: To me this is an ontology which rests something very clear (a power) on something very indeterminate (a 'property'). |
| 8547 | One power can come from different properties; a thing's powers come from its properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to have the same power (e.g. being poisonous) in virtue of having very different properties. ..So it is in virtue of a thing's properties that the thing has the powers that it has. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an accurate and helpful picture. It means that true properties give rise to powers, and categorial or relational or whimsical properties must have their ontological status judged by that standard. |
| 8549 | Properties are functions producing powers, and powers are functions producing effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Powers are functions from circumstances to causal effects, and properties (on which powers depend) can be thought of as functions from sets of properties to sets of powers. Maybe we should call properties 'second-order powers', as they produce powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: He presents property as both a function, and a component of the function. This is the core picture on which modern scientific essentialism is built. See under Natural Theory|Laws of Nature. |
| 15094 | I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I now reject the formulation of the causal theory which says that a property is a cluster of conditional powers. That has a reductionist flavour, which is a cheat. We need properties to explain conditional powers, so properties won't reduce. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: [compressed wording] I agree with Mumford and Anjum in preferring his earlier formulation. I think properties are broad messy things, whereas powers can be defined more precisely, and seem to have more stability in nature. |
| 12678 | Shoemaker says all genuine properties are dispositional [Shoemaker, by Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I am against Shoemaker's strong dispositionalism, according to which all genuine properties are dispositional. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Brian Ellis - The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism 3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Ellis argues that some properties are categorical, and are needed to underly the active dispositional ones. I think I side with Shoemaker, but this needs more thought. |
| 8545 | A causal theory of properties focuses on change, not (say) on abstract properties of numbers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My account of properties concerns those with respect to which change is possible; it is not intended to apply to such properties of numbers as being even and being prime. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: You could argue that while these properties may not cause change, they are abstract powers. Being even allows division by 2, and being prime blocks it. I say patterns are the basis, and dividing groups of physical objects is involved. |
| 15757 | 'Square', 'round' and 'made of copper' show that not all properties are dispositional [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Surely we make a distinction beween dispositional and nondispositional properties, and can mention paradigms of both sorts. ....It seems plain that predicates like 'square', 'round' and 'made of copper' are not dispositional. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: It might be possible to account for squareness and roundness in dispositional ways, and it is certainly plausible to say that 'made of copper' is not a property (even when it is a true predicate). |
| 15759 | The identity of a property concerns its causal powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity, is its potential for contributing to the causal powers of the things that have it. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that the 'potential' to act is the essence of the property, or is a property of the property, or is wholly identical with the property? Or is this just epistemological - whatever individuates the property for observers? |
| 15760 | Properties are clusters of conditional powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: A thing has a 'conditional power' when it has a power conditionally upon the possession of certain properties. ...We can then express my view by saying that properties are clusters of conditional powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: His example is a knife-shaped thing, which conditionally cuts wood if it is made of steel. Shoemaker rejected this in 1998. Mumford/Anjum prefer the earlier view. Which is fundamental? Powers are simple and primitive. Properties are complex. |
| 15762 | Could properties change without the powers changing, or powers change without the properties changing? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Could a thing undergo radical change with respect to its properties without undergoing any change in its causal powers, or undergo radical change in its causal powers without undergoing any change in the properties that underlie these powers? | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept properties underlying powers, but these two questions at least force us to see how closely the two are linked. |
| 8552 | If properties are separated from causal powers, this invites total elimination [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The disassociation of property identity from causal potentiality is an invitation to eliminate reference to properties from our explanatory hypotheses altogether. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Just as epiphenomenalism about consciousness is a step towards eliminativism. This seems to describe Quine's reaction to Goodman, in moving from predicate nominalism to elimination of properties. I agree with Shoemaker. |
| 4040 | The notions of property and of causal power are parts of a single system of related concepts [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a property and the notion of a causal power belong to a system of internally related concepts, no one of which can be explicated without the use of the other. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. It is hard to conceive of a property which has no causal powers, or a causal power that doesn't arise from a property. |
| 15765 | Actually, properties are individuated by causes as well as effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I should probably modify my view, and say that properties are individuated by their possible causes as well as by their possible effects. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §11) | |
| A reaction: (This is in an afterword responding to criticism by Richard Boyd) He doesn't use the word 'individuate' in the essay. That term always strikes me as smacking too much of epistemology, and not enough of ontology. Who cares how you individuate something? |
| 14534 | Shoemaker moved from properties as powers to properties bestowing powers [Shoemaker, by Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Shoemaker ventured the theory in 1980 that properties just are clusters of powers, but he has subsequently abandoned this, and now thinks properties bestow their bearers with causal powers. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Self, Body and Coincidence [1999], p.297) by S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum - Getting Causes from Powers 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Like Mumford and Anjum, I prefer the earlier theory. I think taking powers as basic is the only story that really makes sense. A power is intrinsic and primitive, whereas properties are complex, messy, partly subjective, and higher level. |
| 8548 | Dispositional predicates ascribe powers, and the rest ascribe properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: By and large, dispositional predicates ascribe powers while nondispositional monadic predicates ascribe properties that are not powers in the same sense. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: The powers are where the properties come into contact with the rest of the world, so you would expect dispositions to be found at that level, rather than at the deeper level of properties. Sounds good to me. |
| 9485 | Universals concern how things are, and how they could be [Shoemaker, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Shoemaker contends that universals concern the way things could be, not merely the way any things actually are. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 3.2.2 | |
| A reaction: If you want to retain universals within a scientific essentialist view (and I would rather not), then this seems like the only way to go. |
| 8550 | Triangular and trilateral are coextensive, but different concepts; but powers and properties are the same [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is natural to say that 'being triangular' and 'being trilateral', though necessarily coextensive, are different properties. But what are distinct are the concepts and meanings. If properties are not meanings of predicates, these are identical. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: A good test example. Being renate (kidney) and being cordate (heart) are different, because being cordate produces a thumping noise. Shoemaker's example is pretty much Phosphorus/Hesperus. |
| 9045 | Vague predicates involve uncertain properties, uncertain objects, and paradoxes of gradual change [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Three interrelated features of vague predicates such as 'tall', 'red', 'heap', 'child' are that they have borderline cases (application is uncertain), they lack well-defined extensions (objects are uncertain), and they're susceptible to sorites paradoxes. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: The issue will partly depend on what you think an object is: choose from bundles of properties, total denial, essential substance, or featureless substance with properties. The fungal infection of vagueness could creep in at any point, even the words. |
| 9047 | Many vague predicates are multi-dimensional; 'big' involves height and volume; heaps include arrangement [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: Many vague predicates are multi-dimensional. 'Big' of people depends on both height and volume; 'nice' does not even have clear dimensions; whether something is a 'heap' depends both the number of grains and their arrangement. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who was hoping for a nice tidy theory for this problem should abandon hope at this point. Huge numbers of philosophical problems can be simplified by asking 'what exactly do you mean here?' (e.g. tall or bulky?). |
| 9053 | If there is a precise borderline area, that is not a case of vagueness [Keefe/Smith] |
| Full Idea: If a predicate G has a sharply-bounded set of cases falling in between the positive and negative, this shows that merely having borderline cases is not sufficient for vagueness. | |
| From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: Thus you might have 'pass', 'fail' and 'take the test again'. But there seem to be two cases in the border area: will decide later, and decision seems impossible. And the sharp boundaries may be quite arbitrary. |
| 8555 | There is no subset of properties which guarantee a thing's identity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is, putting aside historical properties and 'identity properties', no subset of the properties of a thing which constitutes an individual essence, so that having those properties is necessary and sufficient for being that particular thing. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: He asserts this rather dogmatically. If he says a thing can lose its essence, I agree, but it seems to me that there must be a group of features which will guarantee that (if they are present) it has that identity. |
| 15099 | If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If it is possible that there could be possible states of affairs that are not nomologically possible, don't we therefore need a notion of metaphysical possibility that outruns nomological possibility? | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: Shoemaker rejects this possibility (p.425). I sympathise. So there is 'natural' possibility (my preferred term), which is anything which stuff, if it exists, could do, and 'logical' possibility, which is anything that doesn't lead to contradiction. |
| 8554 | Possible difference across worlds depends on difference across time in the actual world [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The ways in which a given thing can be different in different possible worlds depend on the ways in which such a thing can be different at different times in the actual world. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Where change in a thing is possible across time in the actual world seems to require a combination of experiment and imagination. Unimaginability does not entail necessity, but it may be the best guide we have got. |
| 15101 | Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII) | |
| A reaction: The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke). |
| 15764 | 'Conceivable' is either not-provably-false, or compatible with what we know? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: We could use 'conceivable' to say it is not provable that it is not the case, or we could use it to say that it is compatible with what we know. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: Rather significant, since the first one would seem to allow in a great deal that the second one would rule out. Any disproof of some natural possibility founders on the remark that 'you never know'. |
| 15098 | Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: We have abundant empirical evidence that when we can imagine some phenomenal situation, e.g., imagine things appearing certain ways, such a situation could actually exist. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: There seem to be good reasons for holding the opposite view too. We can imagine gold appearing to be all sorts of colours, but that doesn't make it possible. What does empirical evidence really tell us here? |
| 15100 | Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Imaginability can give us access to conceptual possibility, when we come to believe situations to be conceptually possible by reflecting on their descriptions and seeing no contradiction or incoherence. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: If take the absence of contradiction to indicate 'logical' possibility, but the absence of incoherence is more interesting, even if it is a bit vague. He is talking of 'situations', which I take to be features of reality. A priori synthetic? |
| 8562 | It is possible to conceive what is not possible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to conceive what is not possible. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that, while we cannot clearly conceive the impossible in a world like mathematics, we can conceive of impossible perceptions in the physical world, such as a bonfire burning under water. |
| 5691 | The adverbial account of sensation says not 'see a red image' but be 'appeared to redly' [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Some who reject the act-object conception of sensation favour an 'adverbial' account, where (instead of the act of 'seeing a red image') it is better to speak of 'being appeared to redly'. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Introspection [1994], p.398) | |
| A reaction: The point is that you couldn't perceive without a colour (or travel without a speed), so the qualifying adverb is intrinsic to the process, not a separate object. The adverbial theory will imply a fairly minimal account of universals. |
| 8593 | Maybe billions of changeless years have elapsed since my last meal [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If it is possible for there to be changeless intervals of time, then it may seem compatible with my total experience that any number of such intervals, each of them lasting billions of years, should have elapsed since I ate my last meal. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.52) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 2792. A nice new sceptical thought! Shoemaker's paper is devoted, successfully I think, to proving that there can indeed by changless intervals of time. |
| 15096 | 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps 'grue' has causal features, but only derivatively, in virtue of its relation to green. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: I take grue to be a behaviour, and not a property at all. The problem only arises because the notion of a 'property' became too lax. Presumably Shoemaker should also mention blue in his account. |
| 8556 | Grueness is not, unlike green and blue, associated with causal potential [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Grueness, as defined by Goodman, is not associated in the way greenness and blueness are with causal potentialities. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Expressed rather more simply in Idea 7296. 'Grue' is a characteristic production of a predicate nominalist (i.e. Goodman), and that theory is just wrong. The account of properties must mesh with the account of induction. |
| 5687 | For true introspection, must we be aware that we are aware of our mental events? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Some writers distinguish introspection from a pre-introspective awareness of mental phenomena, saying one is not properly introspecting unless one is not only aware of the phenomena, but aware that one is aware of them. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Introspection [1994], p.395) | |
| A reaction: The test question might be what we think animals do. I think I agree with the 'writers'. You are either just aware of the contents or qualia or images of thought, which is not introspection, or you become introspectively aware that you are having them. |
| 5688 | Empirical foundationalism says basic knowledge is self-intimating, and incorrigible or infallible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Foundationalist epistemology takes all empirical knowledge to be grounded in the introspective knowledge each mind has of its own states, …holding that introspective judgements are 'incorrigible' or 'infallible', and mental states are 'self-intimating'. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Introspection [1994], p.396) | |
| A reaction: Descartes' foundationalist Cogito also seems to be based on introspection, making introspection the essence of all foundationalism. The standard modern view is that introspective states are incorrigible, but not infallible. |
| 1389 | If memory is the sole criterion of identity, we ought to use it for other people too [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If memory were the sole criterion of personal identity it would have to be the sole criterion that we use in making identity statements about persons other than ourselves. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §4) | |
| A reaction: From Locke's point of view, he is much less certain about the continued identity of other people, because he allows the possibility of transference of minds. Even we might reject physical identity, if a person had suffered a severe trauma. |
| 1390 | Bodily identity is one criterion and memory another, for personal identity [Shoemaker, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Bodily identity must be one of the criteria for personal identity (to establish that a rememberer was present at a past event), but memory itself must also be accepted as one of the criteria. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §5) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This concerns the epistemology of personal identity, not the ontology. Someone with total amnesia would probably accept a driving licence as a criterion. Is personal identity a mental state, or a precondition which makes mental states possible? |
| 4039 | Abstractions lack causes, effects and spatio-temporal locations [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Abstract entities (such as sets) are usually understood as lacking causes, effects, and spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg some questions. Has the ideal of 'honour' never caused anything? Young men dream of pure velocity. |
| 8542 | If causality is between events, there must be reference to the properties involved [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Any account of causality as a relation between events should involve, in a central way, reference to the properties of the constituent objects of the events. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is aimed at Davidson, who seems to think you need know no more about an event than the way in which someone chooses to describe it. Metaphysics must dig deeper, even if science can't. |
| 8598 | If things turn red for an hour and then explode, we wouldn't say the redness was the cause [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If we found that things always explode after having been red for an hour, we would never suppose that what causes the explosion is simply a thing's having been red for an hour. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.63) | |
| A reaction: Shoemaker points out that even Hume says that cause and effect must be 'contiguous', but it clearly means that a simplistic regularity analysis of causation won't work. |
| 15093 | We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals. |
| 8560 | If causal laws describe causal potentialities, the same laws govern properties in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: To the extent that causal laws can be viewed as propositions describing the causal potentialities of properties, it is impossible that the same properties should be governed by different causal laws in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §08) | |
| A reaction: [He has just asserted that causal potentialities are essential to properties] This is the dramatic basic claim of scientific essentialism, which grows out of Shoemaker's causal account of properties. Note that the laws are just descriptions. |
| 15763 | If properties are causal, then causal necessity is a species of logical necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My theory of properties as causal appears to have the consequence that causal laws are logically necessary, and that causal necessity is just a species of logical necessity. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: Where he writes 'logical' necessity I would claim that he really means 'metaphysical' necessity. The point, I take it, is that given the existence of those properties, certain causal efforts must always follow from them. I agree. |
| 8561 | If a world has different causal laws, it must have different properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If there are worlds in which the causal laws are different from those that prevail in this world, ..then the properties will have to be different as well. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: The next question is whether the same stuff (e.g. gold or water) could have different properties, and I take the the scientific essentialism answer to be 'no'. So the actual stuff (substances?) would have to be different. |
| 8553 | It looks as if the immutability of the powers of a property imply essentiality [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a prima facie case for saying that the immutability of the causal potentialities of a property implies their essentiality. ...If they cannot vary across time, they also cannot vary across possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: This is only the beginning of scientific essentialism, but one of the targets is to save the phenomena. It is also involves unimaginability (of different powers from a given property) implying necessity. |
| 4226 | If three regions 'freeze' every three, four and five years, after sixty years everything stops for a year [Shoemaker, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If region A has a year's 'freeze' every three years, region B does it every four years, and C every five years, every sixty years they would all freeze, and there would be no witnesses. The simplest hypothesis is that a year passes with no events. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.247 | |
| A reaction: Lovely argument. I definitely vote for there being a year of time with no events, even though it contradicats Einstein and the rest. As usual, we should be doing ontology, but get lured into epistemology. |
| 8595 | If three regions freeze every 3rd, 4th and 5th year, they all freeze together every 60 years [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If region A locally freezes (for one year, observed by the other two regions) every third year, and region B every fourth year, and region B every fifth year, ...then every sixtieth year there will be a total freeze lasting one year. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.56) | |
| A reaction: One of the most brilliant thought experiments in modern philosophy!!! He demonstrates that there can be time without change, but also that we must rely on best explanation, and that there is more to ontology than epistemology (let alone semantics). |