display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
6070 | Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Existence is like a primary quality; non-existence is like a secondary quality. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n29) | |
A reaction: Since McGinn thinks existence really is a property, and hence, presumably, a predicate, I don't quite see why he uses the word "like". A nicely pithy and thought-provoking remark. |
19470 | Thoughts in the 'third realm' cannot be sensed, and do not need an owner to exist [Frege] |
Full Idea: Thoughts are neither things in the external world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognised. Anything in this realm has it in common with ideas that it cannot be perceived by the senses, and does not need an owner to belong with his consciousness. | |
From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.337(69)) | |
A reaction: This important idea is the creed for modern platonists. We don't have to accept Forms, or any particular content, but there is a mode of existence which is distinct from both mental and physical, and is the residence of 'abstracta'. I deny it! |
6062 | Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Paraphrasing existence statements into statements about the instantiation of a property does not establish that existence is not a predicate, since the notion of instantiation must be taken to have existence built into it. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Thank you, Colin McGinn! This now strikes me as so obvious that it is astonishing that for the whole of the twentieth century no one seems to have said it. For a century philosophers had swept the ontological dirt under the mat. |
6065 | We can't analyse the sentence 'something exists' in terms of instantiated properties [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The problems of the orthodox view are made vivid by analysis of the sentence 'something exists'; this is meaningful and true, but what property are we saying is instantiated here? | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: A very nice point. McGinn claims that existence is a property, a very generalised one. Personally I don't think anyone is even remotely clear what a property is, so the whole discussion is a bit premature. Must properties have causal powers? |
6082 | If causal power is the test for reality, that will exclude necessities and possibilities [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Whether my body weight is necessary or contingent makes no difference at all to my causal powers, so modality is epiphenomenal; if you took causal potential as a test of reality you would have to declare modes unreal. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: We could try analysing modality into causal terms, as Lewis proposes with quantification across worlds, or as Quine proposes by reduction to natural regularities. I am not sure what it would mean to declare that modes are 'real'. |
6075 | Facts are object-plus-extension, or property-plus-set-of-properties, or object-plus-property [McGinn] |
Full Idea: A fact may be an object and an extension (Quine's view), or a property and a set of properties, or an object and a property; the view I favour is the third one, which seems the most natural. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Personally I tend to use the word 'fact' in a realist and non-linguistic way. There must be innumerable inexpressible facts, such as the single pattern made by all the particles of the universe. McGinn seems to be talking of 'atomic facts'. See Idea 6111. |
19471 | A fact is a thought that is true [Frege] |
Full Idea: A fact is a thought that is true. | |
From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.342(74)) | |
A reaction: It strikes me as pretty obvious that facts are not thoughts, because they concern the contents of thoughts. You can't discuss facts without the notion of what a thought is 'about'. If I think about my garden, the relevant fact is aspects of my garden. |