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Full Idea
In the Megaran view, there will be nothing cold or hot or pleasant or perceptible at all unless someone is currently observing it. So this Megaran wisdom turns out to boil down to rehashed Protagoras.
Clarification
Protagoras was an extreme relativist about what we perceive
Gist of Idea
Megaran actualism is just scepticism about the qualities of things
Source
Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a10)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Metaphysics', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,Hugh [Penguin 1998], p.259
A Reaction
I don't think you can defeat the rejection of modal features of reality that easily. The Megarans might, I suppose, be called verificationists. What is the semantic value of a statement about potential?
Related Idea
Idea 11938 The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle]
| 11938 | The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle] |
| 15766 | Megaran actualism is just scepticism about the qualities of things [Aristotle] |
| 15767 | Megaran actualists prevent anything from happening, by denying a capacity for it to happen! [Aristotle] |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| 15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 9499 | Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions [Bird] |
| 14350 | If a disposition is never instantiated, it shouldn't be part of our theory of nature [Corry] |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |