28 ideas
10794 | The nominalist is tied by standard semantics to first-order, denying higher-order abstracta [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: The nominalist finds that standard semantics shackles him to first-order languages if, as nominalists are wont, he is to make do without abstract higher order objects. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.166) | |
A reaction: Aha! Since I am pursuing a generally nominalist strategy in metaphysics, I suddenly see that I must adopt a hostile attitude to higher-order logic! Maybe plural quantification is the way to go, with just first-order objects. |
10786 | Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: The tendency has been to call any expression a 'name', however distant from the grammatical category of nouns, provided it is seen as referring. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.162) |
10788 | Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: For a nominalist with an ontology of empirically distinguishable objects, proper names are seen as a primary vehicle of reference. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.162) |
10799 | Nominalists should quantify existentially at first-order, and substitutionally when higher [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: For the nominalist, at level zero, where substituends are referring names, the quantifiers may be read existentially. Beyond level zero, the variables and quantifiers are read sustitutionally (though it is unclear whether this program is feasible). | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.167) |
10791 | Substitutional semantics has no domain of objects, but place-markers for substitutions [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: On a substitutional semantics of a first-order language, a domain of objects is not specified. Variables do not range over objects. They are place markers for substituends (..and sentences are true-for-all-names, or true-for-at-least-one-name). | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.165) |
10790 | Quantifiers are needed to refer to infinitely many objects [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: An adequate language for referring to infinitely many objects would seem to require variables and quantifiers in addition to names. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.164) |
10785 | Maybe a substitutional semantics for quantification lends itself to nominalism [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: It has been suggested that a substitutional semantics for quantification theory lends itself to nominalistic aims. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.161) |
10795 | Substitutional language has no ontology, and is just a way of speaking [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Translation into a substitutional language does not force the ontology. It remains, literally, and until the case for reference can be made, a façon de parler. That is the way the nominalist would like to keep it. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.166) |
10798 | A true universal sentence might be substitutionally refuted, by an unnamed denumerable object [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Critics say if there are nondenumerably many objects, then on the substitutional view there might be true universal sentences falsified by an unnamed object, and there must always be some such, for names are denumerable. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.167) | |
A reaction: [See Quine 'Reply to Prof. Marcus' p.183] The problem seems to be that there would be names which are theoretically denumerable, but not nameable, and hence not available for substitution. Marcus rejects this, citing compactness. |
10787 | Is being just referent of the verb 'to be'? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Being itself has been viewed as referent of the verb 'to be'. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.162) |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
10789 | Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Nominalists have the major task of explaining how predicates work. They usually construct it as a relation between individuals, or deny the referential function of predicates. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.163) |
10796 | If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism? [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism? | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.166) | |
A reaction: Personally I don't think that would be the end of the world, but Fregeans go into paroxyms at the mention of 'psychology', because they fear that it destroys objectivity. That may be because they haven't understood thought properly. |
11181 | Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Aristotelian essentialism may best be understood on a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of the modal operators. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.189) | |
A reaction: I record this because I very much like the sound of it, though I have yet to fully understand it. |
11184 | Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: An object must have some of its natural properties in this world. Some of those it has in common with objects of some proximate kind (Aristotelian essentialism), and others individuate it from objects of the same kind (individuating essentialism). | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) |
11180 | Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: In the range of modal systems for which Saul Kripke has provided a semantics, no essentialist sentence is a theorem. Furthermore, there are models for which such sentences are demonstrably false. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.188) |
11186 | 'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: We would never use 'is essentially' for 'is necessarily' where vacuous properties are concerned, as in 'Socrates is essentially snub-nosed' or 'Socrates is essentially Socrates'. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) | |
A reaction: This simple point does us a huge service in rescuing the word 'essential' from several hundred years of misguided philosophy. |
11185 | 'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: There seems to be surface synonymy between 'is essentially' and de re occurrences of 'is necessarily', but intersubstitution often fails to preserve sense (as in 'Winston is essentially a cyclist' and 'Winston is necessarily a cyclist'). | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) | |
A reaction: Clearly the two sentences have different meanings, with 'essentially' being a comment about the nature of Winston, and 'necessarily' probably being a comment about the circumstances in which he finds himself. Very nice. See also Idea 11186. |
11182 | If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers make a metaphysical shift, by inventing objects (individual concepts, forms, substances) called 'essences', which have only essential properties, and then worry when they can't locate them by rummaging around in possible worlds. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192) |
10797 | Substitutivity won't fix identity, because expressions may be substitutable, but not refer at all [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Substitutivity 'salve veritate' cannot define identity since two expressions may be everywhere intersubstitutable and not refer at all. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers [1978], p.167) |
11183 | The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects) [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: The usefulness of talk about possible worlds is not for purposes of individuating the object - that can be done in this world; such talk is a way of sorting its properties. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192) | |
A reaction: 'Possible worlds are a device for sorting properties' sounds to me like a promising slogan. Ruth Marcus originated rigid designation, before Kripke came up with the label. |
11187 | In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: The strategem of talk about possible worlds is that truth assignments of sentences and extensions of predicates may vary, but individual names don't alter their reference (unless they don't refer). They are a neutral peg for descriptions. | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.194) |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
11189 | Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)] |
Full Idea: Being gold or being a man is not accidental. ..Such essences are dispositional properties of a very special kind: if an object had such a property and ceased to have it, it would have ceased to exist or have changed (as if gold is transmuted to lead). | |
From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.202) | |
A reaction: Ruth Marcus is an important founder of modern scientific essentialism, by not only proposing the notion we call rigid designation, but by explicitly defending the essential identities that seem to emerge from modal logic. |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |