display all the ideas for this combination of texts
12 ideas
| 8273 | Is 'the Thames is broad in London' relational, or adverbial, or segmental? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: "The Thames is broad in London" might be taken as 'The Thames is broad-in-London', or as 'The Thames is-in-London broad', or as 'The Thames-in-London is broad'. I would urge the superiority of the second one, as an analysis of the normal meaning. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: He uses the example to attack the perdurance view of objects (i.e. the third analysis). I think I agree with Lowe, but I'm not sure, and I just love the example. Read the second as 'The Thames is (in London) broad'? 'Is' of existence, or predication? |
| 8285 | I prefer 'modes' to 'tropes', because it emphasises their dependence [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers call particularised properties of objects 'tropes', but I prefer the older term 'mode' (or 'individual accident'), because this term rightly has the implication that such entities are existentially dependent ones, depending on objects. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of the fact that philosophical terminology is not as metaphysically innocent as it sometimes pretends to be. I agree with Lowe. |
| 8295 | Why cannot a trope float off and join another bundle? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Why cannot a certain trope 'float free' of the trope-bundle to which it belongs and migrate to another bundle? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.8) | |
| A reaction: Tropes are said to be dependent on their possessors, but at the same time to exist as particulars. Lowe's suggestion is that you can't have it both ways. A particular sphericity with no sphere does not even make sense. |
| 8286 | Tropes cannot have clear identity-conditions, so they are not objects [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: I do not believe that tropes or modes can have well-defined or fully determinate identity-conditions, and hence do not believe that they should be thought of as 'objects'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: Lowe's account would still allow them to be 'entities'. Any proposal that they have an existence of their own, apart from the objects on which they depend, sounds very misguided. We won't make progress if we don't identify the real properties. |
| 8294 | How can tropes depend on objects for their identity, if objects are just bundles of tropes? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: It seems that tropes are identity-dependent upon their possessors, but it is difficult to square this claim with the thesis that the possessors of tropes are themselves just bundles of tropes. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.8) | |
| A reaction: This circularity in all attempts to individuate tropes is Lowe's main reason for rejecting them. It does seem that the sphericity of a ball must be either identified against other (universal) sphericities, or by the sphere that has the property. |
| 8296 | Does a ball snug in plaster have one trope, or two which coincide? [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If a round ball fits snugly into a round piece of plaster, do they contain the same roundness trope, or do they contain numerically distinct but exactly similar and coinciding roundness tropes? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.8) | |
| A reaction: A microscope would distinguish them, and they are made of different types of matter. Is a hole in a piece of paper a circular cut and a circular area of space? Neither example looks good for tropes. |
| 8288 | Sortal terms for universals involve a substance, whereas adjectival terms do not [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: I want to distinguish 'substantial' universals from 'non-substantial' universals. The former are denoted by sortal terms, such as 'statue' and 'tiger', whereas the latter are denoted by adjectival terms, such as 'red' and 'spherical'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.3) | |
| A reaction: It is an interesting question whether or not (assuming you are committed to universals) a universal necessarily implies an associated substance. If a property is a power, it must be a power of something. Nominalists will deny his distinction. |
| 8293 | Real universals are needed to explain laws of nature [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: I base my case for realism about universals on the need to explain the status of natural laws. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 9.6) | |
| A reaction: I need black magic to explain why my watch has disappeared. The key question, then, would be what we understand by the 'laws of nature'. I am inclined to think that scientific essentialism (qv) can build laws out of natural kinds. Idea 6614. |
| 8307 | Particulars are instantiations, and universals are instantiables [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A particular is something (not necessarily an object) which instantiates but is not itself instantiated. Universals, on the other hand, necessarily have instances (or, at least, are instantiable). | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: This is Lowe's proposal for distinction. It at least establishes the direction of dependency, but I find the notion of 'instantiation' to be as obscure and problematic as the Platonic notion of 'partaking' (see in Ontology|Universals|Platonic Forms). |
| 7956 | If all and only red things were round things, we would need to specify the 'respect' of the resemblance [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: According to Goodman's 'companionship difficulty', resemblance nominalism has a problem if, say, all and only the red things were the round things, because we cannot distinguish the two different respects in which the things resemble one another. | |
| From: report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Goodman opts for extreme linguististic nominalism in response to this (Idea 7952), whereas Russell opts for a sort of Platonism (4441). The current idea gives Russell a further problem, of needing a universal of the respect of the resemblance. |
| 7957 | Without respects of resemblance, we would collect blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock together [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Goodman's 'imperfect community' problem for Resemblance Nominalism says that without mention of respects in which things resemble, we end up with a heterogeneous collection with nothing wholly in common (blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock). | |
| From: report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This suggests Wittgenstein's 'family' resemblance as a way out (Idea 4141), but a blue book and a red clock seem totally unrelated. Nice objection! At this point we start to think that the tropes resemble, rather than the objects. |
| 7952 | If we apply the same word to different things, it is only because we are willing to do so [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Predicate nominalism is the view that what all things to which the same word applies have in common is simply our willingness to apply the same word to them. | |
| From: report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951], Ch.6) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: This is Goodman's 'extreme nominalist' position. This seems also to be an anti-realist position, as it denies any 'joints' to nature (Idea 7953). It strikes me as daft. WHY are we willing to apply words in certain ways? |