Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Bhagavad Gita', 'The Metaphysics of Modality' and 'How Things Might Have Been'

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22 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
12017 In all instances of identity, there must be some facts to ensure the identity [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: For each instance of identity or failure of identity, there must be facts in virtue of which that instance obtains. ..Enough has been said to lend this doctrine some plausibility.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.5)
     A reaction: Penelope Mackie picks this out from Forbes as a key principle. It sounds to be in danger of circularity, unless the 'facts' can be cited without referring to, or implicitly making use of, identities - which seems unlikely.
11897 A principle of individuation may pinpoint identity and distinctness, now and over time [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: One view of a principle of individuation is what is called a 'criterion of identity', determining answers to questions about identity and distinctness at a time and over time - a principle of distinction and persistence.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.2)
     A reaction: Since the term 'Prime Minister' might do this job, presumably there could be a de dicto as well as a de re version of individuation. The distinctness consists of chairing cabinet meetings, rather than being of a particular sex.
11898 Individuation may include counterfactual possibilities, as well as identity and persistence [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: A second view of the principle of individuation includes criteria of distinction and persistence, but also determines the counterfactual possibilities for a thing.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.5)
     A reaction: It would be a pretty comprehensive individuation which defined all the counterfactual truths about a thing, as well as its actual truths. This is where powers come in. We need to know a thing's powers, but not how they cash out counterfactually.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
11883 A haecceity is the essential, simple, unanalysable property of being-this-thing [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Socrates can be assigned a haecceity: an essential property of 'being Socrates' which (unlike the property of 'being identical with Socrates') may be regarded as what 'makes' its possessor Socrates in a non-trivial sense, but is simple and unanalysable.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.2)
     A reaction: I don't accept that there is any such property as 'being Socrates' (or even 'being identical with Socrates'), except as empty locutions or logical devices. A haecceity seems to be the 'ultimate subject of predication', with no predicates of its own.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
12024 If we combined two clocks, it seems that two clocks may have become one clock. [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: If we imagine a possible world in which two clocks in a room make one clock from half the parts of each, the judgement 'these two actual clocks could have been a single clock' does not seem wholly false.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.4)
     A reaction: You would, of course, have sufficient parts left over to make a second clock, so they look like a destroyed clock, so I don't think I find Forbes's intuition on this one very persuasive.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 1. Essences of Objects
11889 Essentialism must avoid both reduplication of essences, and multiple occupancy by essences [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: The argument for unshareable properties (the Reduplication Argument) suggests the danger of reduplication of Berkeley; the argument for incompatible properties (Multiple Occupancy) says Berkeley and Hume could be in the same possible object.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.8)
     A reaction: These are her arguments in favour of essential properties being necessarily incompatible between objects. Whatever the answer, it must allow essences for indistinguishables like electrons. 'Incompatible' points towards a haecceity.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences
11885 Only individual essences will ground identities across worlds in other properties [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Forbes argues that, unless we posit individual essences, we cannot guarantee that identities across possible worlds will be appropriately grounded in other properties.
     From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.4
     A reaction: There is a confrontation between Wiggins, who says identity is primitive, and Forbes, who says identity must be grounded in other properties. I think I side with Forbes.
12014 An individual essence is a set of essential properties which only that object can have [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: An individual essence of an object x is a set of properties I which satisfies the following conditions: i. every property P in I is an essential property of x; ii. it is not possible that some object y distinct from x has every member of I.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1)
     A reaction: I am coming to the view that stable natural kinds (like electrons or gold) do not have individual essences, but complex kinds (like tigers or tables) do. The view is based on the idea that explanatory power is what individuates an essence.
12015 Non-trivial individual essence is properties other than de dicto, or universal, or relational [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: A non-trivial individual essence is properties other than a) those following from a de dicto truth, b) properties of existence and self-identity (or their cognates), c) properties derived from necessities in some other category.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1)
     A reaction: [I have compressed Forbes] Rather than adding all these qualificational clauses to our concept, we could just tighten up on the notion of a property, saying it is something which is causally efficacious, and hence explanatory.
11877 An individual essence is the properties the object could not exist without [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: By essentialism about individuals I simply mean the view that individual things have essential properties, where an essential property of an object is a property that the object could not have existed without.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 1.1)
     A reaction: This presumably means I could exist without a large part of my reason and consciousness, but could not exist without one of my heart valves. This seems to miss the real point of essence. I couldn't exist without oxygen - not one of my properties.
11882 No other object can possibly have the same individual essence as some object [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Individual essences are essential properties that are unique to them alone. ...If a set of properties is an individual essence of A, then A has the properties essentially, and no other actual or possible object actually or possibly has them.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.1/2)
     A reaction: I'm unconvinced about this. Tigers have an essence, but individual tigers have individual essences over and above their tigerish qualities, yet the perfect identity of two tigers still seems to be possible.
11886 There are problems both with individual essences and without them [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: If all objects had individual essences, there would be no numerical difference without an essential difference. But if there aren't individual essences, there could be two things sharing all essential properties, differing only in accidental properties.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.5)
     A reaction: Depends how you define individual essence. Why can't two electrons have the same individual essence. To postulate a 'kind essence' which bestows the properties on each electron is to get things the wrong way round.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
12013 Essential properties depend on a category, and perhaps also on particular facts [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: The essential properties of a thing will typically depend upon what category of thing it is, and perhaps also on some more particular facts about the thing itself.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1)
     A reaction: I see no way of dispensing with the second requirement, in the cases of complex entities like animals. If all samples are the same, then of course we can define a sample's essence through its kind, but not if samples differ in any way.
11909 Unlike Hesperus=Phosophorus, water=H2O needs further premisses before it is necessary [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: There is a disanalogy between 'necessarily water=H2O' and 'necessarily Hesperus=Phosphorus'. The second just needs the necessity of identity, but the first needs 'x is a water sample' and 'x is an H2O' sample to coincide in all possible worlds.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1.)
     A reaction: This comment is mainly aimed at Kripke, who bases his essentialism on identities, rather than at Putnam.
11899 Why are any sortals essential, and why are only some of them essential? [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Accounts of sortal essentialism do not give a satisfactory explanation of why any sortals should be essential sortals, or a satisfactory account of why some sortals should be essential while others are not.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.6)
     A reaction: A theory is not wrong, just because it cannot give a 'satisfactory explanation' of every aspect of the subject. We might, though, ask why the theory isn't doing well in this area.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
12012 Essential properties are those without which an object could not exist [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: An essential property of an object x is a property without possessing which x could not exist.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1)
     A reaction: This is certainly open to question. See Joan Kung's account of Aristotle on essence. I am necessarily more than eight years old (now), and couldn't exist without that property, but is the property part of my essence?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory
11906 The Kripke and Putnam view of kinds makes them explanatorily basic, but has modal implications [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam chose for their typical essence of kinds, sets of properties that could be thought of as explanatorily basic. ..But the modal implications of their views go well beyond this.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1)
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 11905. The modal implications are that the explanatory essence is also necessary to the identity of the thing under discussion, such as H2O. So do basic explanations carry across into all possible worlds?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 11. Essence of Artefacts
12022 Same parts does not ensure same artefact, if those parts could constitute a different artefact [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: Sameness of parts is not sufficient for identity of artefacts at a world, since the very same parts may turn up at different times as the parts of artefacts with different designs and functions.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.2)
     A reaction: Thus the Ship of Theseus could be dismantled and turned into a barn (as happened with the 'Mayflower'). They could then be reconstituted as the ship, which would then have two beginnings (as Chris Hughes has pointed out).
12025 Artefacts have fuzzy essences [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: Artefacts can be ascribed fuzzy essences. ...We might say that it is essential to an artefact to have 'most' of its parts.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.6)
     A reaction: I think I prefer to accept the idea that essences are unstable things, in all cases. For all we know, electrons might subtly change their general character, or cease to be uniform, tomorrow. Essences explain, and what needs explaining changes.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
12020 An individual might change their sex in a world, but couldn't have differed in sex at origin [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: In the time of a single world, the same individual can undergo a change of sex, but it is less clear that an individual of one sex could have been, from the outset, an individual of another.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.5)
     A reaction: I don't find this support for essentiality of origin very persuasive. I struggle with these ideas. Given my sex yesterday, then presumably I couldn't have had a different sex yesterday. Given that pigs can fly, pigs can fly. What am I missing?
11894 Origin is not a necessity, it is just 'tenacious'; we keep it fixed in counterfactual discussions [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: I suggest 'tenacity of origin' rather than 'necessity of origin'. ..The most that we need is that Caesar's having something similar to his actual origin in certain respects (e.g. his actual parents) is normally kept fixed in counterfactual speculation.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 6.9)
     A reaction: I find necessity or essentially of origin very unconvincing, so I rather like this. Origin is just a particularly stable way to establish our reference to something. An elusive spy may have little more than date and place of birth to fix them.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 1. Concept of Identity
11888 Identities must hold because of other facts, which must be instrinsic [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Forbes has two principles of identity, which we can call the No Bare Identities Principle (identities hold in virtue of other facts), and the No Extrinsic Determination Principle (that only intrinsic facts of a thing establish identity).
     From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 127-8) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.7
     A reaction: The job of the philosopher is to prise apart the real identities of things from the way in which we conceive of identities. I take these principles to apply to real identities, not conceptual identities.