display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
16664 | Everything that exists is either a substance or an accident [Albert of Saxony] |
Full Idea: Everything that exists is either a substance or an accident. | |
From: Albert of Saxony (On 'Physics' [1357], I.18), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to be the view of those who base their ontology on first-order classical logic. The more austere reading of that makes the accidents into sets of substances, so it's just substances. All the non-substance stuff cries out for recognition. |
7771 | We need 'events' to explain adverbs, which are adjectival predicates of events [Davidson, by Lycan] |
Full Idea: To deal with the truth conditions for some adverbs, Davidson introduced a domain of 'events', and made adverbs into adjectival predicates of events. | |
From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9 | |
A reaction: This seems to be a striking case of a procedure of which I heartily disapprove - deriving you ontology from your semantics. Do all languages have adverbs? |
8860 | Language-learning is not good enough evidence for the existence of events [Yablo on Davidson] |
Full Idea: One needs a better reason for believing in events than the help they provide with language-learning. | |
From: comment on Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967], §8) by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence §8 | |
A reaction: I can almost believe in micro-events at the quantum level, but I cannot believe that the Renaissance (made of events within events within events) is an event, even though I may 'quantify over it', and discuss its causes and effects. |
15002 | If the best theory of adverbs refers to events, then our ontology should include events [Davidson, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Davidson argued that the best linguistic theory of adverbial modification assigns truth-conditions quantifying over events; thus we must embrace an ontology of events. | |
From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 07.8 | |
A reaction: Sider is critical and I agree. This is just the sort of linguistic manoeuvre that gets philosophy a bad name. As Yablo remarks, we have a terrible tendency to want to thingify everything. |