26 ideas
18487 | We want to know what makes sentences true, rather than defining 'true' [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: The generalisation 'What makes a (any) sentence true?' is not a request for definitions of 'true' (the concept), but rather requests for (partial) explanations of why certain particular sentences are true. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
A reaction: McFetridge is responding to the shortcomings of Tarski's account of truth. The mystery seems to be why some of our representations of the world are 'successful', and others are not. |
18488 | We normally explain natural events by citing further facts [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: If one were asked 'What makes salt soluble in water?', the most natural answer would be something of the style 'The fact that it has such-and-such structure'. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
A reaction: Personally I would want to talk about its 'powers' (dispositional properties), rather than its 'structure' (categorical properties). This defends facts, but you could easily paraphrase 'fact' out of this reply (as McFetridge realised). |
14508 | A 'thisness' is a thing's property of being identical with itself (not the possession of self-identity) [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: A thisness is the property of being identical with a certain particular individual - not the property that we all share, of being identical with some individual, but my property of being identical with me, your property of being identical with you etc. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
A reaction: These philosophers tell you that a thisness 'is' so-and-so, and don't admit that he (and Plantinga) are putting forward a new theory about haecceities, and one I find implausible. I just don't believe in the property of 'being-identical-to-me'. |
14511 | There are cases where mere qualities would not ensure an intrinsic identity [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: I have argued that there are possible cases in which no purely qualitative conditions would be both necessary and sufficient for possessing a given thisness. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6) | |
A reaction: Are we perhaps confusing our epistemology with our ontology here? We can ensure that something has identity, or ensure that its identity is knowable. If it is 'something', then it has identity. Er, that's it? |
16463 | Adams says actual things have haecceities, but not things that only might exist [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Adams favours haecceitism about actual things but no haecceities for things that might exist but don't. | |
From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Actualism and Thisness [1981]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.2 | |
A reaction: This contrasts with Plantinga, who proposes necessary essences for everything, even for what might exist. Plantinga sounds crazy to me, Adams merely interesting but not too plausible. |
12031 | Essences are taken to be qualitative properties [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: Essences have normally been understood to be constituted by qualitative properties. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
A reaction: I add this simple point, because it might be challenged by the view that an essence is a substance, rather than the properties of anything. I prefer that, and would add that substances are individuated by distinctive causal powers. |
12034 | If the universe was cyclical, totally indiscernible events might occur from time to time [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: There is a temporal argument for the possibility of non-identical indiscernibles, if there could be a cyclical universe, in which each event was preceded and followed by infinitely many other events qualitatively indiscernible from itself. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
A reaction: The argument is a parallel to Max Black's indiscernible spheres in space. Adams offers the reply that time might be tightly 'curved', so that the repetition was indeed the same event again. |
14510 | Two events might be indiscernible yet distinct, if there was a universe cyclical in time [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: Similar to the argument from spatial dispersal, we can argue against the Identity of Indiscernibles from temporal dispersal. It seems there could be a cyclic universe, ..and thus there could be distinct but indiscernible events, separated temporally. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
A reaction: See Idea 14509 for spatial dispersal. If cosmologists decided that a cyclical universe was incoherent, would that ruin the argument? Presumably there might even be indistinguishable events in the one universe (in principle!). |
16455 | Black's two globes might be one globe in highly curved space [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: If God creates a globe reached by travelling two diameters in a straight line from another globe, this can be described as two globes in Euclidean space, or a single globe in a tightly curved non-Euclidean space. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
A reaction: [my compression of Adams's version of Hacking's response to Black, as spotted by Stalnaker] Hence we save the identity of indiscernibles, by saying we can't be sure that two indiscernibles are not one thing, unusually described. |
15083 | The fundamental case of logical necessity is the valid conclusion of an inference [McFetridge, by Hale] |
Full Idea: McFetridge's conception of logical necessity is one which sees the concept as receiving its fundamental exemplification in the connection between the premiss and conclusion of a deductively valid inference. | |
From: report of Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986]) by Bob Hale - Absolute Necessities 2 | |
A reaction: This would mean that p could be logically necessary but false (if it was a valid argument from false premisses). What if it was a valid inference in a dodgy logical system (including 'tonk', for example)? |
15084 | In the McFetridge view, logical necessity means a consequent must be true if the antecedent is [McFetridge, by Hale] |
Full Idea: McFetridge's view proves that if the conditional corresponding to a valid inference is logically necessary, then there is no sense in which it is possible that its antecedent be true but its consequent false. ..This result generalises to any statement. | |
From: report of Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986]) by Bob Hale - Absolute Necessities 2 | |
A reaction: I am becoming puzzled by Hale's assertion that logical necessity is 'absolute', while resting his case on a conditional. Are we interested in the necessity of the inference, or the necessity of the consequent? |
12180 | Logical necessity requires that a valid argument be necessary [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: There will be a legitimate notion of 'logical' necessity only if there is a notion of necessity which attaches to the claim, concerning a deductively valid argument, that if the premisses are true then so is the conclusion. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
A reaction: He quotes Aristotle's Idea 11148 in support. Is this resting a stronger idea on a weaker one? Or is it the wrong way round? We endorse validity because we see the necessity; we don't endorse necessity because we see 'validity'. |
12184 | Logical necessity overrules all other necessities [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: If it is logically necessary that if p then q, then there is no other sense of 'necessary' in which it is not necessary that if p then q. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
A reaction: The thesis which McFetridge proposes to defend. The obvious rival would be metaphysical necessity, and the rival claim would presumably be that things are only logically necessary if that is entailed by a metaphysical necessity. Metaphysics drives logic. |
12181 | Traditionally, logical necessity is the strongest, and entails any other necessities [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: The traditional crucial assumption is that logical necessity is the strongest notion of necessity. If it is logically necessary that p, then it is necessary that p in any other use of the notion of necessity there may be (physically, practically etc.). | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
A reaction: Sounds right. We might say it is physically necessary simply because it is logically necessary, and even that it is metaphysically necessary because it is logically necessary (required by logic). Logical possibility is hence the weakest kind? |
12183 | It is only logical necessity if there is absolutely no sense in which it could be false [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: Is there any sense in which, despite an ascription of necessity to p, it is held that not-p is possible? If there is, then the original claim then it was necessary is not a claim of 'logical' necessity (which is the strongest necessity). | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
A reaction: See Idea 12181, which leads up to this proposed "test" for logical necessity. McFetridge has already put epistemic ('for all I know') possibility to one side. □p→¬◊¬p is the standard reading of necessity. His word 'sense' bears the burden. |
12192 | The mark of logical necessity is deduction from any suppositions whatever [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: The manifestation of the belief that a mode of inference is logically necessarily truth-preserving is the preparedness to employ that mode of inference in reasoning from any set of suppositions whatsoever. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §4) | |
A reaction: He rests this on the idea of 'cotenability' of the two sides of a counterfactual (in Mill, Goodman and Lewis). There seems, at first blush, to be a problem of the relevance of the presuppositions. |
12182 | We assert epistemic possibility without commitment to logical possibility [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: Time- and person-relative epistemic possibility can be asserted even when logical possibility cannot, such as undecided mathematical propositions. 'It may be that p' just comes to 'For all I know, not-p'. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
A reaction: If it is possible 'for all I know', then it could be actual for all I know, and if we accept that it might be actual, we could hardly deny that it is logically possible. Logical and epistemic possibilities of mathematical p stand or fall together. |
12187 | Objectual modal realists believe in possible worlds; non-objectual ones rest it on the actual world [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: The 'objectual modal realist' holds that what makes modal beliefs true are certain modal objects, typically 'possible worlds'. ..The 'non-objectual modal realist' says modal judgements are made true by how things stand with respect to this world. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §2) | |
A reaction: I am an enthusiastic 'non-objectual modal realist'. I accept the argument that real possible worlds have no relevance to the actual world, and explain nothing (see Jubien). The possibilities reside in the 'powers' of this world. See Molnar on powers. |
12186 | Modal realists hold that necessities and possibilities are part of the totality of facts [McFetridge] |
Full Idea: The 'modal realist' holds that part of the totality of what is the case, the totality of facts, are such things as that certain events could have happened, certain propositions are necessarily true, if this happened then that would have been the case. | |
From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §2) | |
A reaction: I am an enthusiastic modal realist. If the aim of philosophy is 'to understand' (and I take that to be the master idea of the subject) then no understanding is possible which excludes the possibilities and necessities in things. |
14507 | Are possible worlds just qualities, or do they include primitive identities as well? [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: Is the world - and are all possible worlds - constituted by purely qualitative facts, or does thisness hold a place beside suchness as a fundamental feature of reality? | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], Intro) | |
A reaction: 'Thisness' and 'suchness' aim to capture Aristotelian notions of the entity and its attributes. Aristotle talks of 'a this'. Adams is after adding 'haecceities' to the world. My intuitive answer is no, there are no 'pure' identities. We add those. |
11964 | Possible worlds are world-stories, maximal descriptions of whole non-existent worlds [Adams,RM, by Molnar] |
Full Idea: According to a theory proposed by Adams, possible worlds are world-stories, that is maximally complete consistent sets of propositions which between them describe non-existent whole worlds. | |
From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by George Molnar - Powers 12.2.2 | |
A reaction: Presumably this places an additional constraint on the view that a world is just a maximal set of propositions. It seems to require coherence as well as consistency. Suppose an object destroys all others objects. Is that a world? |
16451 | Adams says anti-haecceitism reduces all thisness to suchness [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The anti-haecceitist thesis (according to Adams's version) is that all thisnesses are reducible to, or supervenient upon, suchnesses. | |
From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 3.5 |
11901 | Haecceitism may or may not involve some logical connection to essence [Adams,RM, by Mackie,P] |
Full Idea: Moderate Haecceitism says that thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive, but logically connected with suchnesses. ..Extreme Haecceitism involves the rejection of all logical connections between suchness and thisness, for persons. | |
From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been | |
A reaction: I am coming to the conclusion that they are not linked. That thisness is a feature of our conceptual thinking, and is utterly atomistic and content-free, while suchness is rich and a feature of reality. |
14512 | Moderate Haecceitism says transworld identities are primitive, but connected to qualities [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: My position, according to which thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive but logically connected to suchnesses, we may call 'Moderate Haecceitism'. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6) | |
A reaction: The rather tentative connection to qualities is to block the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg, which he (quite reasonably!) holds to be counterintuitive. It all feels like a mess to me. |
12032 | Direct reference is by proper names, or indexicals, or referential uses of descriptions [Adams,RM] |
Full Idea: Direct reference is commonly effected by the use of proper names and indexical expressions, and sometimes by what has been called (by Donnellan) the 'referential' use of descriptions. | |
From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 2) | |
A reaction: One might enquire whether the third usage should be described as 'direct', but then I am not sure that there is much of a distinction between references which are or are not 'direct'. Either you (or a sentence) refer or you (or it) don't. |
6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |