display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
| 6473 | Physical things are series of appearances whose matter obeys physical laws [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We may lay down the following definition: Physical things are those series of appearances whose matter obeys the laws of physics. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §XI) | |
| A reaction: We will then have to define the laws of physic without making any reference to 'physical things'. There is an obvious suspicion of circularity somewhere here. I find it very odd to define objects just in terms of their appearances. |
| 14508 | A 'thisness' is a thing's property of being identical with itself (not the possession of self-identity) [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: A thisness is the property of being identical with a certain particular individual - not the property that we all share, of being identical with some individual, but my property of being identical with me, your property of being identical with you etc. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
| A reaction: These philosophers tell you that a thisness 'is' so-and-so, and don't admit that he (and Plantinga) are putting forward a new theory about haecceities, and one I find implausible. I just don't believe in the property of 'being-identical-to-me'. |
| 14511 | There are cases where mere qualities would not ensure an intrinsic identity [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: I have argued that there are possible cases in which no purely qualitative conditions would be both necessary and sufficient for possessing a given thisness. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6) | |
| A reaction: Are we perhaps confusing our epistemology with our ontology here? We can ensure that something has identity, or ensure that its identity is knowable. If it is 'something', then it has identity. Er, that's it? |
| 6465 | We need not deny substance, but there seems no reason to assert it [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary to deny a substance or substratum underlying appearances; it is merely expedient (by the application of Occam's Razor) to abstain from asserting this unnecessary entity. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §V) | |
| A reaction: Russell then goes on to struggle heroically in attempts to give accounts of 'matter' and 'objects' entirely in terms of 'sense-data'. If he failed, as many think he did, should we go back to belief in Aristotelian substance? |
| 6471 | The assumption by physicists of permanent substance is not metaphysically legitimate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The assumption of permanent substance, which technically underlies the procedure of physics, cannot of course be regarded as metaphysically legitimate. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §XI) | |
| A reaction: It is a moot point whether physicists still thought this way after the full arrival of quantum theory in 1926. Russell raises all sorts of nice questions about the relationship between physics and philosophy here. I'm on Russell's side. |
| 12031 | Essences are taken to be qualitative properties [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Essences have normally been understood to be constituted by qualitative properties. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
| A reaction: I add this simple point, because it might be challenged by the view that an essence is a substance, rather than the properties of anything. I prefer that, and would add that substances are individuated by distinctive causal powers. |
| 12034 | If the universe was cyclical, totally indiscernible events might occur from time to time [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: There is a temporal argument for the possibility of non-identical indiscernibles, if there could be a cyclical universe, in which each event was preceded and followed by infinitely many other events qualitatively indiscernible from itself. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: The argument is a parallel to Max Black's indiscernible spheres in space. Adams offers the reply that time might be tightly 'curved', so that the repetition was indeed the same event again. |
| 14510 | Two events might be indiscernible yet distinct, if there was a universe cyclical in time [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Similar to the argument from spatial dispersal, we can argue against the Identity of Indiscernibles from temporal dispersal. It seems there could be a cyclic universe, ..and thus there could be distinct but indiscernible events, separated temporally. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14509 for spatial dispersal. If cosmologists decided that a cyclical universe was incoherent, would that ruin the argument? Presumably there might even be indistinguishable events in the one universe (in principle!). |
| 16455 | Black's two globes might be one globe in highly curved space [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: If God creates a globe reached by travelling two diameters in a straight line from another globe, this can be described as two globes in Euclidean space, or a single globe in a tightly curved non-Euclidean space. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: [my compression of Adams's version of Hacking's response to Black, as spotted by Stalnaker] Hence we save the identity of indiscernibles, by saying we can't be sure that two indiscernibles are not one thing, unusually described. |