Ideas of Katherine Hawley, by Theme

[British, fl. 2001, Lecturer at the University of St Andrew's.]

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1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 7. Despair over Philosophy
16227 Philosophers are good at denying the obvious
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive
16216 Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / d. Humean supervenience
16211 A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
16219 Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all
16223 Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / c. Vagueness as ignorance
16226 Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / f. Supervaluation for vagueness
16208 Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range
16221 Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
16230 Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
16232 An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail
16200 Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat?
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
16237 The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue?
16238 Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
16220 Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality
16222 Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 6. Constitution of an Object
16228 The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place
16229 Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread
14492 If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing?
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change
16193 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property
16195 Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one
16202 The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 3. Three-Dimensionalism
16192 Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties
16196 Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism
16197 How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves?
16191 Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts
16199 If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large!
16201 Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing
16240 If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was?
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts
16203 Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object
16204 Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects
16212 An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages)
16213 Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations
16205 The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to
16206 Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 8. Leibniz's Law
16225 If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / c. Counterparts
16239 To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 5. Concerns of the Self
16218 On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / c. Counterfactual causation
16215 Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds?
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / b. Instants
16207 Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals)