Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim, William Paley and Scott Shalkowski

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13 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 1. Essences of Objects

14221	Serious essentialism says everything has essences, they're not things, and they ground necessities [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: Serious essentialism is the position that a) everything has an essence, b) essences are not themselves things, and c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possibility.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Intro')
	A reaction: If a house is being built, it might acquire an identity first, and only get an essence later. Essences can be physical, but if you extract them you destroy thing thing of which they were the essence. Does all of this apply to abstract 'things'.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier

14222	Essences are what it is to be that (kind of) thing - in fact, they are the thing's identity [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: The route into essentialism is, first, a recognition that the essence of a thing is "what it is to be" that (kind of) thing; the essence of a thing is just its identity.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent')
	A reaction: The first half sounds right, and very Aristotelian. The second half is dramatically different, controversial, and far less plausible. Slipping in 'kind of' is also highly dubious. This remark shows, I think, some confusion about essences.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 13. Nominal Essence

14226	We distinguish objects by their attributes, not by their essences [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: In ordinary contexts, we distinguish objects not by their essences but by their attributes.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know')
	A reaction: Hence we have a gap between what bestows identity intrinsically, and how we bestow identity conventionally. If you could grasp the essence of something, you might predict a new attribute, as yet unobserved.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

14225	Critics say that essences are too mysterious to be known [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: According to critics, the thorniest problem for essentialism is the question of our knowledge of essence. It is usually at this point that terms of abuse such as 'dark', 'mysterious', and 'occult' are wheeled out.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know')
	A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the existence of essences can be fairly conclusively inferred, but that attributing a precise identity to them is the biggest challenge.

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality

14223	De dicto necessity has linguistic entities as their source, so it is a type of de re necessity [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: De dicto necessity is a species of de re necessity. Anyone prone to countenance de dicto necessity must recognise mental and/or linguistic entities, thus counting each of them as a res to which necessity attaches.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent')
	A reaction: This seems to rest on the Kit Fine thought that analytic necessities seem to derive from the essences of words such as 'bachelor'. I like this idea: all necessity is de re, but some of the 'things' are words.

10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds

9220	Lewis must specify that all possibilities are in his worlds, making the whole thing circular [Shalkowski, by Sider]
	Full Idea: If purple cows are simply absent from Lewis's multiverse, then certain correct propositions turn out to be impossible. Lewis must require a world for every possibility. But then it is circular, as the multiverse needs modal notions to characterize it.
	From: report of Scott Shalkowski (Ontological Ground of Alethic Modality [1994], 3.9) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.9
	A reaction: [Inversely, a world containing a round square would make that possible] This sounds very nice, though Sider rejects it (p.197). I've never seen how you could define possibility using the concept of 'possible' worlds.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / j. Explanations by reduction

20653	Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson]
	Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles.
	From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro'
	A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture?

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 7. Extensional Semantics

14224	Equilateral and equiangular aren't the same, as we have to prove their connection [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: That 'all and only equilateral triangles are equiangular' required proof, and not for mere curiosity, is grounds for thinking that being an equilateral triangle is not the same property as being an equiangular triangle.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Serious')
	A reaction: If you start with equiangularity, does equilateralness then require proof? This famous example is of two concepts which seem to be coextensional, but seem to have a different intension. Does a dependence relation drive a wedge between them?

28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof

21275	Unlike a stone, the parts of a watch are obviously assembled in order to show the time [Paley]
	Full Idea: When we come to inspect a watch we perceive (what we could not discover in a stone) that its several parts are put together for a purpose, to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day.
	From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1)
	A reaction: Microscopic examination of the stone would have surprised Paley. Should we infer a geometer because the sun is spherical? Crytals look designed, but are explained by deeper chemistry.

21276	From the obvious purpose and structure of a watch we must infer that it was designed [Paley]
	Full Idea: The inference is inevitable that the watch had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who designed its use.
	From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1)
	A reaction: It rather begs the question to refer to an ordered structure as a 'design'. Why do we think it is absurd to think the the 'purpose' of the sun is to benefit mankind? Suppose we found a freakish natural sundial in the woods.

21277	Even an imperfect machine can exhibit obvious design [Paley]
	Full Idea: It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to show with what design it was made.
	From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch 1)
	A reaction: This encounters Hume's point that you will then have to infer that the designer contains similar imperfections. If you look at plagues, famines and mothers dying in childbirth (see Mill), you might wish the designer had never started.

21278	All the signs of design found in a watch are also found in nature [Paley]
	Full Idea: Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature.
	From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], Ch.3)
	A reaction: This is far from obvious. It was crucial to the watch analogy that we immediately see its one self-evident purpose. No one looks at nature and says 'Aha, I know what this is all for'.

21357	No organ shows purpose more obviously than the eyelid [Paley]
	Full Idea: The eyelid defends the eye; it wipes it; it closes it in sleep. Are there, in any work of art whatever, purposes more evident than those which this organ fulfils?
	From: William Paley (Natural Theology [1802], p.24), quoted by Armand Marie LeRoi - The Lagoon: how Aristotle invented science 031
	A reaction: Nice to have another example, in addition to the watch. He is not wholly wrong, because it is impossible to give an evolutionary account of the development of the eyelid without referring to some sort of teleological aspect. The eyelid has a function.