73 ideas
| 14650 | Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the notion of a proper name itself involves essentialism. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.43) | |
| A reaction: This is just before Kripke's announcement of 'rigid designation', which seems to have relaunched modern essentialism. The thought is that you can't name something, if you don't have a stable notion of what is (and isn't) being named. |
| 14648 | Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Can't I name all the real numbers in the interval (0,1) at once? Couldn't I name them all 'Charley', for example? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga is nervous about such a sweeping move, but can't think of an objection. This addresses a big problem, I think - that you are supposed to accept the real numbers when we cannot possibly name them all. |
| 14664 | Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: A 'necessary being' is one that exists in every possible world; and only some objects - numbers, properties, pure sets, propositions, states of affairs, God - have this distinction. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 2) | |
| A reaction: This a very odd list, though it is fairly orthodox among philosophers trained in modern modal logic. At the very least it looks rather parochial to me. |
| 16435 | Plantinga proposes necessary existent essences as surrogates for the nonexistent things [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga proposes surrogates for nonexistent things - individual essences that are themselves necessary existents and that correspond one-to-one with all the 'things' that might exist. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 1 | |
| A reaction: There are an awful lot of competing concepts of essence flying around these days. This one seems to require some abstract 'third realm' (or worse) in which these essences can exist, awaiting the arrival of thinkers. Not for me. |
| 14655 | The 'identity criteria' of a name are a group of essential and established facts [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: What we might call 'identity criteria' associated with a name such as 'Aristotle' are what the users of the name regard as essential and established facts about him. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: The problem here is that identifying something is superficial, whereas essences run deep. Plantinga is, in fact, talking about Lockean 'nominal essence' (and seems unaware of the fact, and never mentions the Lockean real/nominal distinction). |
| 14647 | Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If anything is essential to Socrates, surely self-identity is. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.37) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern move of Plantinga and Adams, to make 'is identical with Socrates' the one property which assures the identity of Socrates (his 'haecceity'). My view is that self-identity is not a property. Plantinga wonders about that on p.44. |
| 14658 | 'Being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterise Socrates, so they are among his properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Surely it is true of Socrates that he is Socrates and he is identical with Socrates. If these are true of him, then 'being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterize him; they are among his properties or attributes. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: As far as I can see (if you insist on accepting self-identity as meaningful) the most you get here is that these are predicates that can attach to Socrates. If you identify predicates with properties you are in deep metaphysical trouble. |
| 13132 | A snowball's haecceity is the property of being identical with itself [Plantinga, by Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga assumes that being identical with that snowball names a property which is that snowball's haecceity. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (De Essentia [1979]) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §52 | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher would suggest such a bizarre way of establishing the unique individuality of a given snowball. You could hardly keep track of the snowball with just that criterion. How do you decide whether something has Plantinga's property? |
| 14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Socrates is a contingent being; his essence, however, is not. Properties, like propositions and possible worlds, are necessary beings. If Socrates had not existed, his essence would have been unexemplified, but not non-existent. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctive Plantinga view, of which I can make little sense. I take it that Socrates used to have an essence. Being dead, the essence no longer exists, but when we talk about Socrates it is largely this essence to which we refer. OK? |
| 14656 | Does Socrates have essential properties, plus a unique essence (or 'haecceity') which entails them? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Does Socrates have, in addition to his essential properties, an 'essence' or 'haecceity' - a property essential to him that entails each of his essential properties and that nothing distinct from him has in the world? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga says yes, and offers 'Socrateity' (borrowed from Boethius) as his candidate. This is a very odd use of the word 'essence'. I take an essence to be a complex set of fundamental properties. I am also puzzled by his use of the word 'entails'. |
| 14646 | An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: An object has a property essentially just in case it couldn't conceivably have lacked that property. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Making it depend on what we can conceive seems a bit dubious, for someone committed to real essences. The key issue is how narrowly or broadly you interpret the word 'property'. The word 'object' needs a bit of thought, too! |
| 14654 | Properties are 'trivially essential' if they are instantiated by every object in every possible world [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Let us call properties that enjoy the distinction of being instantiated by every object in every possible world 'trivially essential properties'. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
| A reaction: These would appear to be trivially 'necessary' rather than 'essential'. This continual need for the qualifier 'trivial' shows that they are not talking about proper essences. |
| 14653 | X is essentially P if it is P in every world, or in every X-world, or in the actual world (and not ¬P elsewhere) [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Socrates has P essentially if he has P in every world, or has it in every world in which he exists, or - most plausible of all - has P in the actual world and has its complement [non-P] in no world. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
| A reaction: These strike me as mere necessary properties, which are not the same thing at all. Essences give rise to the other properties, but Plantinga offers nothing to do the job (and especially not 'Socrateity'!). Essences must explain, say I! |
| 14660 | If a property is ever essential, can it only ever be an essential property? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Is it the case that any property had essentially by anything is had essentially by everything that has it? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga says it is not true, but the only example he can give is Socrates having the property of 'being Socrates or Greek'. I take it to be universally false. There are not two types of property here. Properties sometimes play an essential role. |
| 14661 | Essences are instantiated, and are what entails a thing's properties and lack of properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: E is an essence if and only if (a) 'has E essentially' is instantiated in some world or other, and (b) for any world W and property P, E entails 'has P in W' or 'does not have P in W'. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], IV) | |
| A reaction: 'Entail' strikes me as a very odd word when you are talking about the structure of the physical world (or are we??). Why would a unique self-identity (his candidate for essence) do the necessary entailing? |
| 14657 | Does 'being identical with Socrates' name a property? I can think of no objections to it [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Is there any reason to suppose that 'being identical with Socrates' names a property? Well, is there any reason to suppose that it does not? I cannot think of any, nor have I heard any that are at all impressive. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: Is there any reason to think that a planet somewhere is entirely under the control of white mice? Extraordinary. No wonder Plantinga believes in God and the Ontological Argument, as well as the existence of 'Socrateity' etc. |
| 14642 | Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Some statements predicate modality of another statement (modality 'de dicto'); but others predicate of an object the necessary or essential possession of a property; these latter express modality 'de re'. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.26) | |
| A reaction: The distinction seems to originate in Aquinas, concerning whether God knows the future (or, how he knows the future). 'De dicto' is straightforward, but possibly the result of convention. 'De re' is controversial, and implies deep metaphysics. |
| 14643 | 'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Aquinas says if a 'de dicto' statement is true, the 'de re' version may be false. The opposite also applies: 'What I am thinking of [17] is essentially prime' is true, but 'The proposition "what I am thinking of is prime" is necessarily true' is false. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.27) | |
| A reaction: In his examples the first is 'de re' (about the number), and the second is 'de dicto' (about that proposition). |
| 14649 | Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To explain the 'de re' via the 'de dicto' is to provide a rule enabling us to find, for each de re proposition, an equivalent de dicto proposition. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.41) | |
| A reaction: Many 'de dicto' paraphrases will change the modality of a 'de re' statement, so the challenge is to find the right equivalent version. Plantinga takes up this challenge. The 'de dicto' statement says the object has the property, and must have it. |
| 14652 | 'De re' modality is as clear as 'de dicto' modality, because they are logically equivalent [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The idea of modality 'de re' is no more (although no less) obscure that the idea of modality 'de dicto'; for I think we can see that any statement of the former type is logically equivalent to some statement of the latter. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If two things are logically equivalent, that doesn't ensure that they are equally clear! Personally I am on the side of de re modality. |
| 14659 | We can imagine being beetles or alligators, so it is possible we might have such bodies [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: We easily understand Kafka's story about the man who wakes up to discover that he now has the body of a beetle; and in fact the state of affairs depicted is entirely possible. I can imagine being an alligator, so Socrates could have had an alligator body. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: This really is going the whole hog with accepting whatever is conceivable as being possible. I take this to be shocking nonsense, and it greatly reduces Plantinga in my esteem, despite his displays of intelligence and erudition. |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To say than x has a property in a possible world is simply to say that x would have had the property if that world had been actual. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga tries to defuse all the problems with identity across possible worlds, by hanging on to subjunctive verbs and modal modifiers. The point, though, was to explain these, or at least to try to give their logical form. |
| 14662 | Possible worlds clarify possibility, propositions, properties, sets, counterfacts, time, determinism etc. [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The idea of possible worlds has delivered insights on logical possibility (de dicto and de re), propositions, properties and sets, counterfactuals, time and temporal relations, causal determinism, the ontological argument, and the problem of evil. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This date (1976) seems to be the high-water mark for enthusiasm about possible worlds. I suppose if we just stick to 'insights' rather than 'answers' then the big claim might still be acceptable. Which problems are created by possible worlds? |
| 18383 | Plantinga says there is just this world, with possibilities expressed in propositions [Plantinga, by Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga rejects other possible worlds, but adds to our world an uncountable multitude of sets of propositions, each set a way that the world might have been, but is in fact not. (Roughly, for each Lewis world, Plantinga has such a set). | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974]) by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 07.2 | |
| A reaction: To me it seems as ontologically extravagant to postulate unexpressed propositions as to postulate concrete possible worlds. I think the best line is that there is just the actual world, with the possibilities implied in its dispositions. |
| 16472 | Plantinga's actualism is nominal, because he fills actuality with possibilia [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga's critics worry that the metaphysics is actualist in name only, since it is achieved only by populating the actual world with entities whose nature is explained in terms of merely possible things that would exemplify them if anything did. | |
| From: comment on Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
| A reaction: Plantinga seems a long way from the usual motivation for actualism, which is probably sceptical empiricism, and building a system on what is smack in front of you. Possibilities have to be true, though. That's why you need dispositions in actuality. |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: A possible world is just a maximal possible state of affairs. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that Plantinga includes the word 'possible' in his definition. Possibility defines the worlds, and so worlds cannot be used on their own to define possibility. |
| 14651 | What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Is there a difference between what Socrates could have been, and what he could have become? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.44) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, 1) how different might he have been in the past, given how he is now?, and 2) how different might he have been in the past, and now, if he had permanently diverged from how he is now? 1) has tight constraints on it. |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If the Socrates of the actual world has snubnosedness but Socrates-in-W does not, this is surely inconsistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which none sounder can be conceived. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: However, we allow Socrates to differ over time while remaining the same Socrates, so some similar approach should apply here. In both cases we need some notion of what is essential to Socrates. But what unites aged 3 with aged 70? |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case? |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The Theory of Worldbound Individuals contends that no object exists in more than one possible world; this implies the outrageous view that - taking properties in the broadest sense - no object could have lacked any property that it in fact has. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is the best known exponent of this 'outrageous view', though Plantinga shows that Lewis may be seen in the same light, since only counterparts are found in possible worlds, not the real thing. The Theory does seem wrong. |
| 11891 | Possibilities for an individual can only refer to that individual, in some possible world [Plantinga, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga says for an individual to exist with certain properties in some possible world is simply for it to be true that, had that possible world obtained, that individual would have existed with those properties. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 5.1 | |
| A reaction: This is intended to dissolve the problem of transworld identity, and is certainly a flat rejection of counterparts. I take the point to be that the individual is the key element in defining the possible world, so can't possibly be different. |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: While Socrates has no counterparts that lack self-identity, he does have counterparts that lack identity-with-Socrates. He alone has that - the property, that is, of being identical with the object that in fact instantiates Socrateity. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: I am never persuaded by arguments which rest on such dubious pseudo-properties. Whether or not a counterpart of Socrates has any sort of identity with Socrates cannot be prejudged, as it would beg the question. |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense to say I could have been someone else, yet Counterpart Theory implies not merely that I could have been distinct from myself, but that I would have been distinct from myself had things gone differently in even the most miniscule detail. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: A counterpart doesn't appear to be 'me being distinct from myself'. We have to combine counterparts over possible worlds with perdurance over time. I am a 'worm' of time-slices. Anything not in that worm is not strictly me. |
| 6356 | Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz] |
| Full Idea: A modified version of reliabilism proposes that a belief is justified in case it is the product of a process that is working according to its 'proper function' in the environment for which it is appropriate. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function [1993]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.5.4 | |
| A reaction: Something might infallibly indicate something without that being its proper function (e.g. 'Red sky at night/ Shepherds' delight'). An inaccurate clock is fulfilling its proper function (telling the time), but not very well. |
| 17405 | If a theory can be fudged, so can observations [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: A theorist may have designed his theory to fit the facts, but is it not equally possible for observers to be influenced by a theory in their report of experimental facts? | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Power') | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Lipton's claim that prediction is better than accommodation because of the 'fudging' problem. The reply is that you might fudge to achieve a prediction. If it was correct, that wouldn't avoid the charge of fudging. |
| 17397 | The periodic system is the big counterexample to Kuhn's theory of revolutionary science [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The history of the periodic system appears to be the supreme counterexample to Kuhn's thesis, whereby scientific developments proceed in a sudden, revolutionary fashion. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 03 'Rapid') | |
| A reaction: What is lovely about the periodic table is that it seems so wonderfully right, and hence no revolution has ever been needed. The big theories of physics and cosmology are much more precarious. |
| 17393 | Scientists eventually seek underlying explanations for every pattern [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Whenever scientists are presented with a useful pattern or system of classification, it is only a matter of time before the begin to ask whether there may be some underlying explanation for the pattern. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Evol') | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears, against the idea that the sole aim of science is accurately describe the patterns. |
| 17403 | The periodic table suggests accommodation to facts rates above prediction [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Rather than proving the value of prediction, the development and acceptance of the periodic table may give us a powerful illustration of the importance of accommodation, that is, the ability of a new scientific theory to explain already known facts. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: The original table made famous predictions, but also just as many wrong ones (Scerri:143), and Scerri thinks this aspect has been overrated. |
| 9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The notion of an abstract object comes from the notion of abstraction; it is in origin an epistemological rather than an ontological category. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.232) | |
| A reaction: Etymology doesn't prove anything. However, if you define abstract objects as not existing in space or time, you must recognise that this may only be because that is how humans imaginatively created them in the first place. |
| 9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Theists may find attractive a view popular among medieval philosophers from Augustine on: that abstract objects are really divine thoughts. More exactly, propositions are divine thoughts, properties divine concepts, and sets divine collections. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.233) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I pass this on because we should be aware that there is a theological history to discussions of abstract objects, and some people have vested interests in keeping them outside of the natural world. Aren't properties natural? Does God gerrymander sets? |
| 16469 | Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The domains in Plantinga's interpretation of Kripke's semantics are sets of essences, and the values of variables are essences. The values of predicates have to be functions from possible worlds to essences. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
| A reaction: I begin to think this is quite nice, as long as one doesn't take the commitment to the essences too seriously. For 'essence' read 'minimal identity'? But I take essences to be more than minimal, so use identities (which Kripke does?). |
| 16470 | Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy [Stalnaker on Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: For Plantinga, essences are entities in their own right and will have properties different from what instantiates them. Hence he will need individual essences of individual essences, distinct from the essences. I see no way to avoid a hierarchy of them. | |
| From: comment on Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4 | |
| A reaction: This sounds devastating for Plantinga, but it is a challenge for traditional Aristotelians. Only a logician suffers from a hierarchy, but a scientist might have to live with an essence, which contains a super-essence. |
| 14663 | Are propositions and states of affairs two separate things, or only one? I incline to say one [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Are there two sorts of thing, propositions and states of affairs, or only one? I am inclined to the former view on the ground that propositions have a property, truth or falsehood, not had by states of affairs. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 1) | |
| A reaction: Might a proposition be nothing more than an assertion that a state of affairs obtains? It would then pass his test. The idea that a proposition is a complex of facts in the external world ('Russellian' propositions?) quite baffles me. |
| 9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Someone who believes propositions are concrete cannot agree that some propositions are necessary. For propositions are contingent beings, and could have failed to exist. But if they fail to exist, then they fail to be true. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.230) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He implies the actual existence of an infinity of trivial, boring or ridiculous necessary truths. I suspect that he is just confusing a thought with its content. Or we might just treat necessary propositions as hypothetical. |
| 9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If propositions are brain inscriptions, then if there had been no human beings there would have been no propositions. But then 'there are no human beings' would have been true, so there would have been at least one truth (and thus one proposition). | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.229) | |
| A reaction: This would make 'there are no x's' true for any value of x apart from actual objects, which implies an infinity of propositions. Does Plantinga really believe that these all exist? He may be confusing propositions with facts. |
| 7517 | I could take a healthy infant and train it up to be any type of specialist I choose [Watson,JB] |
| Full Idea: Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, artist, beggar, thief - regardless of his ancestry. | |
| From: J.B. Watson (Behaviorism [1924], Ch.2), quoted by Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate | |
| A reaction: This was a famous pronouncement rejecting the concept of human nature as in any way fixed - a total assertion of nurture over nature. Modern research seems to be suggesting that Watson is (alas?) wrong. |
| 17394 | Natural kinds are what are differentiated by nature, and not just by us [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are realistic scientific entities that are differentiated by nature itself rather than by our human attempts at classification. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Evol') |
| 17421 | If elements are natural kinds, might the groups of the periodic table also be natural kinds? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Elements defined by their atomic numbers are frequently assumed to represent 'natural kinds' in chemistry. ...The question arises as to whether groups of elements appearing in the periodic table might also represent natural kinds. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Elements') | |
| A reaction: Scerri says the distinction is not as sharp as that between the elements. As a realist, he believes there is 'one ideal periodic classification', which would then make the periods into kinds. |
| 17396 | The colour of gold is best explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Many seemingly mundane properties of elements such as the characteristic color of gold ....can best be explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 01 'Under') | |
| A reaction: John Locke - I wish you were reading this! That we could work out the hidden facts of gold, and thereby explain and predict the surface properties we experience, is exactly what Locke thought to be forever impossible. |
| 17420 | The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy, a quantity given by the difference between their masses and the masses of their constituent particles. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Stabil') |
| 17411 | If all elements are multiples of one (of hydrogen), that suggests once again that matter is unified [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The work of Moseley and others rehabilitated Prout's hypothesis that all elements were composites of hydrogen, being exact multiples of 1. ..This revitalized some philososophical notions of the unity of all matter, criticised by Mendeleev and others. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Philos') |
| 17407 | The electron is the main source of chemical properties [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: It is the electron that is mainly responsible for the chemical properties of the elements. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') |
| 17415 | A big chemistry idea is that covalent bonds are shared electrons, not transfer of electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: One of the most influential ideas in modern chemistry is of a covalent bond as a shared pair of electrons (not as transfer of electrons and the formation of ionic bonds). | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 08 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Gilbert Newton Lewis was responsible for this. |
| 17392 | How can poisonous elements survive in the nutritious compound they compose? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: A central mystery of chemistry is how the elements survive in the compounds they form. For example, how can poisonous grey metal sodium combine with green poisonous gas chlorine, to make salt, which is non-poisonous and essential for life? | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Elem') | |
| A reaction: A very nice question which had never occurred to me. If our digestive system pulled the sodium apart from the chlorine, we would die. |
| 17391 | Periodicity and bonding are the two big ideas in chemistry [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The two big ideas in chemistry are chemical periodicity and chemical bonding, and they are deeply interconnected. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Per') |
| 17404 | Chemistry does not work from general principles, but by careful induction from large amounts of data [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Unlike in physics, chemical reasoning does not generally proceed unambiguously from general principles. It is a more inductive science in which large amounts of observational data must be carefully weighed. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Mendel') | |
| A reaction: This is why essentialist thinking was important for Mendeleev, because it kept his focus on the core facts beneath the messy and incomplete data. |
| 17409 | Does radioactivity show that only physics can explain chemistry? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Some authors believe that the interpretation of the properties of the elements passed from chemistry to physics as a result of the discovery of radioactivity. ...I believe this view to be overly reductionist. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Radio') | |
| A reaction: It is all a matter of the explanations, and how far down they have to go. If most non-radiocative chemistry doesn't need to mention the physics, then chemistry is largely autonomous. |
| 17418 | It is now thought that all the elements have literally evolved from hydrogen [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The elements are now believed to have literally evolved from hydrogen by various mechanisms. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Evol) |
| 17398 | 19th C views said elements survived abstractly in compounds, but also as 'material ingredients' [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: In the 19th century abstract elements were believed to be permanent and responsible for observed properties in compounds, but (departing from Aristotle) they were also 'material ingredients', thus linking the metaphysical and material realm. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 04 'Nature') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I can make sense of this gulf between the metaphysical and the material realm, so this was an account heading for disaster. |
| 17406 | Moseley, using X-rays, showed that atomic number ordered better than atomic weight [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: By using X-rays, Henry Moseley later discovered that a better ordering principle for the periodic system is atomic numbers rather than atomic weight, by subjecting many different elements to bombardment. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Moseley was killed in the First World War at the age of 26. It is interesting that they more or less worked out the whole table, before they discovered the best principle on which to found it. |
| 17408 | Some suggested basing the new periodic table on isotopes, not elements [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Some chemists even suggested that the periodic table would have to be abandoned in favor of a classification system that included a separate place for every single isotope. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: The extreme case is tin, which has 21 isotopes, so is tin a fundamental, or is each of the isotopes a fundamental? Does there have to be a right answer to that? All tin isotopes basically react in the same way, so we stick with the elements table. |
| 17412 | Elements are placed in the table by the number of positive charges - the atomic number [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The serial number of an element in the periodic table, its atomic number, corresponds to the number of positive charges in the atom. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Models') | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a feature of the nucleus, despite that fact that the electrons decide the chemical properties. A nice model for Locke's views on essentialism. |
| 17413 | Elements in the table are grouped by having the same number of outer-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The modern notion is that atoms fall into the same group of the periodic table if they possess the same numbers of outer-shell electrons. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Quantum') | |
| A reaction: Scerri goes on to raise questions about this, on p.242. By this principle helium should be an alkaline earth element, but it isn't. |
| 17416 | Orthodoxy says the periodic table is explained by quantum mechanics [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The prevailing reductionist climate implies that quantum mechanics inevitably provides a more fundamental explanation for the periodic system. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 08 'Concl') | |
| A reaction: Scerri has argued that chemists did much better than physicists in working out how the outer electron shells of atoms worked, by induction from data, rather than inference from basic principles. |
| 17414 | Pauli explained the electron shells, but not the lengths of the periods in the table [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Pauli explained the maximum number of electrons successive shells can accommodate, ...but it does not explain the lengths of the periods, which is the really crucial property of the periodic table. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Pauli') | |
| A reaction: Paulis' Exclusion Principle says no two electrons in an atom can have the same set of four quantum numbers. He added 'spin' as a fourth number. It means 'electrons cannot be distinguished' (243). Scerri says the big problem is still not fully explained. |
| 17410 | Moseley showed the elements progress in units, and thereby clearly identified the gaps [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Moseley's work showed that the successive elements in the periodic table have an atomic number greater by one unit. The gaps could then be identified definitively, as 43, 61, 72, 75, 85, 87, and 91. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Henry') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17395 | Elements were ordered by equivalent weight; later by atomic weight; finally by atomic number [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Historically, the ordering of elements across periods was determined by equivalent weight, then later by atomic weight, and eventually by atomic number. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 01 'React') | |
| A reaction: So they used to be ordered by quantities (measured by real numbers), but eventually were ordered by unit items (counted by natural numbers). There need to be distinct protons (unified) to be counted. |
| 17422 | The best classification needs the deepest and most general principles of the atoms [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: An optimal classification can be obtained by identifying the deepest and most general principles that govern the atoms of the elements. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Continuum') | |
| A reaction: He adds (p.286) that the best system will add the 'greatest degree of regularity' to these best principles. |
| 17419 | Since 99.96% of the universe is hydrogen and helium, the periodic table hardly matters [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: All the elements other than hydrogen and helium make up just 0.04% of the universe. Seen from this perspective, the periodic table appears to rather insignificant. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Astro') |
| 17417 | To explain the table, quantum mechanics still needs to explain order of shell filling [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The order of shell filling has not yet been deduced from first principles, and this issue cannot be avoided if one is to really ask whether quantum mechanics explains the periodic system in a fundamental manner. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 09 'From') |
| 20704 | A possible world contains a being of maximal greatness - which is existence in all worlds [Plantinga, by Davies,B] |
| Full Idea: Plantinga reformulates Malcolm's argument thus: 1) There is a possible world in which there exists a being with maximal greatness, 2) A being has maximal greatness in a world only if it exists in every world. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity [1974], p.213) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 4 'b Descartes' | |
| A reaction: This is only Plantinga's starting point, which says nothing about the nature of God, but only that this 'great' being exists in all worlds. I would like to know why it is a 'being' rather than a 'thing'. Malcolm says if it is possible it is necessary. |
| 1474 | Moral evil may be acceptable to God because it allows free will (even though we don't see why this is necessary) [Plantinga, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Moral evil may be acceptable to a benevolent God because it is the only way to allow genuine free will, which may have a supreme value in creation (even if we are unsure what it is). | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Free Will Defence [1965], Pref.) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1475 | It is logically possible that natural evil like earthquakes is caused by Satan [Plantinga, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Physical evil (e.g. earthquakes) may be attributable to a fallen angel (Satan), who is the enemy of God, and this is enough to retain the idea that God is omnipotent and benevolent, and yet evil exists. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Free Will Defence [1965], III) by PG - Db (ideas) |