Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet' and 'Properties'

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3 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / e. Being and nothing
I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L]
     Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people."
     From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / a. Nature of supervenience
Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer]
     Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties.
     From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17)
     A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer]
     Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics).
     From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2)
     A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good.