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6532
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Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan]
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Full Idea:
If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens.
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From:
William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3)
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A reaction:
This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers.
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6534
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One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan]
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Full Idea:
One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls.
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From:
William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3)
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A reaction:
Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny.
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13877
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Singular terms in true sentences must refer to objects; there is no further question about their existence [Wright,C]
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Full Idea:
When a class of terms functions as singular terms, and the sentences are true, then those terms genuinely refer. Being singular terms, their reference is to objects. There is no further question whether they really refer, and there are such objects.
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From:
Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 1.iii)
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A reaction:
This seems to be a key sentence, because this whole view is standardly called 'platonic', but it certainly isn't platonism as we know it, Jim. Ontology has become an entirely linguistic matter, but do we then have 'sakes' and 'whereaboutses'?
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