16 ideas
| 12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' can be taken as true without have any truthmaker. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: There might be an equivocation over 'true' here. 'What, really really true that he IS a fictional mouse?' |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: No truth predicate is ever indispensable, because Tarski biconditionals, the equivalences between sentences and explicit truth ascriptions to those sentences, allow us to replace explicit truth ascriptions with the sentences themselves. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Holding a sentence to be true isn't the same as saying that it is true, and it isn't the same as saying the sentence, because one might say it in an ironic tone of voice. |
| 12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: My take on truth is a fairly deflationary one: The role of the truth predicate is to enable us to assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Clearly this is a role for truth, as in 'I forget what he said, but I know it was true', but it isn't remotely what most people understand by true. We use 'true' about totally explicit sentences all the time. |
| 12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: Names function the same way (semantically and grammatically) regardless of whether or not there's an object that they refer to. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3 n55) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a fairly clear rebuttal of the 'Fido'-Fido view of names (that the meaning of the name IS the dog), which never seems to quite go away. A name is a peg on which description may be hung, seems a good slogan to me. |
| 12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: If the argument isn't that, metaphysically speaking, anything that exists must have causal powers - how on earth would we show that? - rather, the claim is an epistemic one. Any thing we're in a position to know about we must causally interact with. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A very good point. I am attracted to causal power as a criterion for existence, but Azzouni's distinction is vital. Maybe there is just no point in even talking about things which exist but have no causal powers. |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: It's robustly part of common sense that fictional objects don't exist in any sense at all, and this means they aren't abstracta either. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is so easy to have some philosopher dilute and equivocate over the word 'object' until you find yourself committed to all sorts of daft things as somehow having objectual existence. We can discuss things which don't exist in any way at all. |
| 12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: It is widespread in contemporary metaphysics to extract commitments to various types of object on the basis of the logical form of certain sentences. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm with Azzouni in thinking that this procedure is a very bad idea. I'm increasingly inclined towards the wild view that people are only ontologically committed to things if they explicitly say that they are so committed. |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: The argument that objectual quantifiers are ontologically committing has the crucial and unnoticed presupposition that the language in which the semantics for the objectual quantifiers is couched (the 'metalanguage') also has quantifiers with commitment. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: That is, presumably we find ourselves ontologically committed to the existence of quantifiers, and are also looking at an infinite regress. See Idea 12439. |
| 12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: There are no linguistic devices, no idioms (not 'there is', not 'exists') that unequivocally indicate ontological commitment in the vernacular. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, since people talk in such ways about soap opera, while understanding the ontological situation perfectly well. Presumably Quine is seeking higher standards than the vernacular, if we are doing science. |
| 12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: A slogan: One can't read ontological commitments from semantic conditions unless one has already smuggled into those semantic conditions the ontology one would like to read off. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The arguments supporting this are subtle, but it's good enough for me, as I never thought anyone was ontologically committed just because they used the vagueries of language to try to say what's going on around here. |
| 17945 | Forms are not a theory of universals, but an attempt to explain how predication is possible [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: The theory of Forms is not a theory of universals but a first attempt to explain how predication, the application of a single term to many objects - now considered one of the most elementary operations of language - is possible. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xxvii) |
| 17946 | Only Tallness really is tall, and other inferior tall things merely participate in the tallness [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Only Tallness and nothing else really is tall; everything else merely participates in the Forms and, being excluded from the realm of Being, belongs to the inferior world of Becoming. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xxviii) | |
| A reaction: This is just as weird as the normal view (and puzzle of participation), but at least it makes more sense of 'metachein' (partaking). |
| 12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: Things that don't exist don't have any properties. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds reasonable! I totally agree, but that is because my notion of properties is sparse and naturalistic. If you identify properties with predicates (which some weird people seem to), then non-existents can have properties like 'absence' or 'nullity'. |
| 17944 | 'Episteme' is better translated as 'understanding' than as 'knowledge' [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: The Greek 'episteme' is usually translated as 'knowledge' but, I argue, closer to our notion of understanding. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xvi) | |
| A reaction: He agrees with Julia Annas on this. I take it to be crucial. See the first sentence of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics'. It is explanation which leads to understanding. |
| 22456 | Maybe virtues conflict with each other, if some virtue needs a vice for its achievement [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Maybe so far from forming a unity ...., the virtues actually conflict with each other: that is, if someone has one of them he inevitably fails to have some other. ...Maybe he a man can only be good in one way be being bad in another. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma [1983], p.57) | |
| A reaction: She suggests the self-loathing needed to rein in evil desires. She cites Nietzsche having a similar thought. Presumably the ideal virtuous person has no such conflicts, and the self-loathing undermines eudaimonia. Unity in theory but not in practice? |
| 12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: The periodic table not only governs what elements there can be, with their properties, but also explicitly excludes others sorts of elements, because the elements are individuated by the number of discrete protons in their nuclei. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It has to be central to the thesis of scientific essentialism that the possibilities in nature are far more restricted than is normally thought, and this observation illustrates the view nicely. He makes a similar point about subatomic particles. |