display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
5992 | Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus regarded power to act and be acted upon as the criterion for existence or being - a test satisfied by bodies alone. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Chrysippus | |
A reaction: This defines existence in terms of causation. Is he ruling out a priori a particle (say) which exists, but never interacts with anything? If so, he is inclining towards anti-realism. |
16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Imagine a perfectly homogeneous non-atomistic disc. A record of all the non-relational information about the world at that moment will not reveal whether the disc is rotating about a vertical axis through. This tells against Humean supervenience. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: [Armstrong 1980 originated this, and it is famously discussed by Kripke in lectures] There will, of course, be dispositions present because of the rotation, but Lewis excludes any such modal truths. |
21673 | There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus says there are two classes of facts, simple and complex. An instance of a simple fact is 'Socrates will die at a given date', ...but 'Milo will wrestle at Olympia' is a complex statement, because there can be no wrestling without an opponent. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 13.30 | |
A reaction: We might say that there are atomic and complex facts, but our atomic facts tend to be much simpler, usually just saying some object has some property. |
16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Non-linguistic objects, properties, and states of affairs cannot be indeterminate because they cannot have determinate truth-values either. No cloud is indeterminate, just as no cloud is either determinately true or determinately false. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: If vagueness must be linguistic, this means animals can never experience it, which I doubt. Presumably 'this is a cloud' is only made vague by the vagueness of the object, rather than by the vagueness of the sentence? |
16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There is a question of whether there must be 'vagueness all the way down' for the world to be vague. One view is that if there is a base level of precisely describably facts, upon which all the others supervene, then the world is not really vague. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.5) | |
A reaction: My understanding of the physics is that it is non-vague all the way down, and then you get to the base level which is hopelessly vague! |
16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The epistemic account of vagueness is particularly attractive where persons are concerned. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.14) | |
A reaction: You'll have to see her text for details. Interesting that there might be different views of what vagueness is for different cases. Or putting it another way, absolutely everything (said, thought, existing or done) might be vague in some way! |
16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Supervaluationists take a present-tense predication as concerning a single, but vaguely specified, moment. …It is indeterminate which of a range of moments enters into the truth conditions, but it is true if satisfied by every member of the range. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.7) | |
A reaction: She is discussing stage theory, but this is a helpful clarification of the idea of supervaluation. Something can be satisfied by a whole bunch of values, even though you are not sure which one. |
16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A supervaluationist approach involves consideration of what the truth value of the utterance would have been if semantic indecision had been resolved in this way or that. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: At last, a lovely account of supervaluation in plain English that anyone can understand! Why don't they all do that? Well, done Katherine Hawley! ['semantic indecision' is uncertainty about what your words mean!] |
16652 | Stoics categories are Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation [Chrysippus, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The Stoics proposed a rather modest categorisation of Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.1 |