32 ideas
10405 | In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) |
10407 | Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Logical Form' is a technical notion motivated by the observation that sentences with a similar surface structure may exhibit quite different logical behaviour. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [Swoyer goes on to give some nice examples] The tricky question is whether each sentence has ONE logical form. Pragmatics warns us of the dangers. One needs to check numerous inferences from a given sentences, not just one. |
14592 | Some abstract things have a beginning and end, so may exist in time (though not space) [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Many things that seem to be abstract also seem to have a beginning (and ending) in time, such as a language like Urdu. It may be tempting to say that such things exist in time but not in space, but where exactly? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 1.1) | |
A reaction: A few distinctions might be needed. Urdu-speaking is an ability of certain people. We abstract from that their 'language'. There is nothing there apart from that ability. It has no more abstract existence than the 'weather'. |
10421 | Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17) | |
A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious. |
14594 | Ontologists seek existence and identity conditions, and modal and epistemic status for a thing [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Four things philosophers often want to know about a given sort of entity are: its existence conditions, its identity conditions, its modal status, and its epistemic status. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: I prefer 'modal profile' to 'modal status'. The 'existence conditions' sound rather epistemic. Why does the existence of anything require 'conditions' other than just existing? I suspect identity is irrelevant if humans aren't around. |
10410 | Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good. |
10416 | Can properties have parts? [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Can properties have parts? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6.4) | |
A reaction: If powers are more fundamental than properties, with the latter often being complexes of the underlying powers, then yes they do. But powers don't. Presumably whatever is fundamental shouldn't have parts. Why? |
10399 | If a property such as self-identity can only be in one thing, it can't be a universal [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some properties may not be universals, if they can only be exemplified by one thing, such as 'being identical with Socrates'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000]) | |
A reaction: I think it is absurd to think that self-identity is an intrinsic 'property', possessed by everything. That a=a is a convenience for logicians, meaning nothing in the world. And it is relational. The sharing of properties is indeed what needs explanation. |
14595 | Can properties exemplify other properties? [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Can properties themselves exemplify properties? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: Since I espouse a rather strict causal view of true properties, and lump the rest into the category of 'predicates', I am inclined to answer 'no' to this. Most people would disagree. 'Bright red' seems to be an example. But it isn't. |
10417 | There are only first-order properties ('red'), and none of higher-order ('coloured') [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Elementarism' is the view that there are first-order properties, but that there are no properties of any higher-order. There are first-order properties like various shades of red, but there is no higher-order property, like 'being a colour'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Bergmann 1968] Interesting. Presumably the programme is naturalistic (and hence congenial to me), and generalisations about properties are conceptual, while the properties themselves are natural. |
10413 | The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6) | |
A reaction: The necessity (in all possible worlds) covers renates and cordates. It is hard to see how one could assert the necessity without some deeper explanation. What makes us deny that actually coextensive renates and cordates have different properties? |
10402 | Various attempts are made to evade universals being wholly present in different places [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The worry that a single thing could be wholly present in widely separated locations has led to trope theory, to the claim that properties are not located in their instances, or to the view that this treats universals as if they were individuals. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I find it dispiriting to come to philosophy in the late twentieth century and have to inherit such a ridiculous view as that there are things that are 'wholly present' in many places. |
10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1) | |
A reaction: ..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it. |
10403 | If properties are abstract objects, then their being abstract exemplifies being abstract [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are abstract objects, then the property of being abstract should itself exemplify the property of being abstract. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer links this observation with Plato's views on self-predication, and his Third Man Argument (which I bet originated with Aristotle in the Academy!). Do we have a regress of objects, as well as a regress of properties? |
14593 | Quantum field theory suggests that there are, fundamentally, no individual things [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Quantum field theory strongly suggests that there are (at the fundamental level) no individual, particular things. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Abstract Entities [2008], 2.1) | |
A reaction: When people introduce quantum theory into ontological discussions I reach for my shotgun, but it does rather look as if things turn to mush at the bottom level. |
16235 | Persistence conditions cannot contradict, so there must be a 'dominant sortal' [Burke,M, by Hawley] |
Full Idea: Burke says a single object cannot have incompatible persistence conditions, for this would entail that there are events in which the object would both survive and perish. He says one sortal 'dominates' the other (sweater dominates thread). | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.3 | |
A reaction: This I take to be the most extreme version of sortal essentialism, and strikes me as incredibly gerrymandered and unacceptable. It is just too anthropocentric to count as genuine metaphysics. I may care more about the thread. |
14753 | The 'dominant' of two coinciding sortals is the one that entails the widest range of properties [Burke,M, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Burke claims that the 'dominant' sortal is the one whose satisfaction entails possession of the widest range of properties. For example, the statue (unlike the lump of clay) also possesses aesthetic properties, and hence is dominant. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4 | |
A reaction: [there are three papers by Burke on this; see all the quotations from Burke] Presumably one sortal could entail a single very important property, and the other sortal entail a huge range of trivial properties. What does being a 'thing' entail? |
16072 | 'The rock' either refers to an object, or to a collection of parts, or to some stuff [Burke,M, by Wasserman] |
Full Idea: Burke distinguishes three different readings of 'the rock'. It can be a singular description denoting an object, or a plural description denoting all the little pieces of rock, or a mass description the relevant rocky stuff. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 5 | |
A reaction: Idea 16068 is an objection to the second reading. Only the first reading seems plausible, so we must just get over all the difficulties philosophers have unearthed about knowing exactly what an 'object' is. I offer you essentialism. Rocks have unity. |
14751 | Tib goes out of existence when the tail is lost, because Tib was never the 'cat' [Burke,M, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Burke argues that Tib (the whole cat apart from its tail) goes out of existence when the tail is lost. His essentialist principle is that if something is ever of a particular sort (such as 'cat') then it is always of that sort. Tib is not initially a cat. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4 | |
A reaction: This I take to be a souped up version of Wiggins, and I just don't buy that identity conditions are decided by sortals, when it seems obvious that sortals are parasitic on identities. |
16071 | Sculpting a lump of clay destroys one object, and replaces it with another one [Burke,M, by Wasserman] |
Full Idea: On Burke's view, the process of sculpting a lump of clay into a statue destroys one object (a mere lump of clay) and replaces it with another (a statue). | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 5 | |
A reaction: There is something right about this, but how many intermediate objects are created during the transition. It seems to make the notion of an object very conventional. |
16234 | Burke says when two object coincide, one of them is destroyed in the process [Burke,M, by Hawley] |
Full Idea: Michael Burke argues that a sweater is identical with the thread that consitutes it, that both were created at the moment when they began to coincide, and that the original thread was destroyed in the process. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.3 | |
A reaction: [Burke's ideas are spread over three articles] It is the thread which is destroyed, because the sweater is the 'dominant sortal' (which strikes me as a particularlyd desperate concept). |
13278 | Maybe the clay becomes a different lump when it becomes a statue [Burke,M, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Burke has argued in a series of papers that the lump of clay which constitutes the statue is numerically distinct from the lump of clay which exists before or after the statue exists. The first is a statue, while the second is merely a lump of clay. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects | |
A reaction: Koslicki objects that this introduces radically different persistence conditions from normal. It would mean that a pile of sugar was a different pile of sugar every time a grain moved (even slightly). You couldn't step into the same sugar twice. |
14750 | Two entities can coincide as one, but only one of them (the dominant sortal) fixes persistence conditions [Burke,M, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Michael Burke has given an account that avoids distinguishing coinciding entities. ...The statue/lump satisfies both 'lump' and 'statue', but only the latter determines that object's persistence conditions, and so is that object's 'dominant sortal'. | |
From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4 | |
A reaction: Presumably a lump on its own can have its own persistance conditions (as a 'lump'), but those would presumably be lost if you shaped it into a statue. Burke concedes that. Can of worms. Using a book as a doorstop... |
10406 | One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Zalta 1983 4.2, and Forrest 1986] I think we are dealing with nothing more than imagined possibilities, which are inferred from our understanding of the underlying 'powers' of the actual world (expressed as 'properties'). |
10404 | Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Extreme empiricists wind up unable to explain much of anything. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the major problem for empiricism, but I am not sure why inference to the best explanation should not be part of a sensible empirical approach. Thinking laws are just 'descriptions of regularities' illustrates the difficulty. |
10408 | Intensions are functions which map possible worlds to sets of things denoted by an expression [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Intensions are functions that assign a set to the expression at each possible world, ..so the semantic value of 'red' is the function that maps each possible world to the set of things in that world that are red. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I am suddenly deeply alienated from this mathematical logicians' way of talking about what 'red' means! We need more psychology, not less. We call things red if we imagine them as looking red. Is imagination a taboo in analytical philosophy? |
10409 | Research suggests that concepts rely on typical examples [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Recent empirical work on concepts says that many concepts have graded membership, and stress the importance of phenomena like typicality, prototypes, and exemplars. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Rorsch 1978 as the start of this] I say the mind is a database, exactly corresponding to tables, fields etc. Prototypes sound good as the way we identify a given category. Universals are the 'typical' examples labelling areas (e.g. goat). |
10401 | The F and G of logic cover a huge range of natural language combinations [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: All sorts of combinations of copulas ('is') with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners, common nouns, noun phrases and prepositional phrases go over into the familiar Fs and Gs of standard logical notation. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This is a nice warning of how misleading logic can be when trying to understand how we think about reality. Montague semantics is an attempt to tackle the problem. Numbers as adjectives are a clear symptom of the difficulties. |
10420 | Maybe a proposition is just a property with all its places filled [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some say we can think of a proposition as a limiting case of a property, as when the two-place property '___ loves ___' can become the zero-placed property, or proposition 'that Sam loves Darla'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.6) | |
A reaction: If you had a prior commitment to the idea that reality largely consists of bundles of properties, I suppose you might find this tempting. |
10412 | If laws are mere regularities, they give no grounds for future prediction [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If laws were mere regularities, then the fact that observed Fs have been Gs would give us no reason to conclude that those Fs we haven't encountered will also be Gs. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I take this simple point to be very powerful. No amount of regularity gives grounds for asserting future patterns - one only has Humean habits. Causal mechanisms are what we are after. |
10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |
1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |