12 ideas
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To say than x has a property in a possible world is simply to say that x would have had the property if that world had been actual. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga tries to defuse all the problems with identity across possible worlds, by hanging on to subjunctive verbs and modal modifiers. The point, though, was to explain these, or at least to try to give their logical form. |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: A possible world is just a maximal possible state of affairs. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that Plantinga includes the word 'possible' in his definition. Possibility defines the worlds, and so worlds cannot be used on their own to define possibility. |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If the Socrates of the actual world has snubnosedness but Socrates-in-W does not, this is surely inconsistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which none sounder can be conceived. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: However, we allow Socrates to differ over time while remaining the same Socrates, so some similar approach should apply here. In both cases we need some notion of what is essential to Socrates. But what unites aged 3 with aged 70? |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case? |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The Theory of Worldbound Individuals contends that no object exists in more than one possible world; this implies the outrageous view that - taking properties in the broadest sense - no object could have lacked any property that it in fact has. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is the best known exponent of this 'outrageous view', though Plantinga shows that Lewis may be seen in the same light, since only counterparts are found in possible worlds, not the real thing. The Theory does seem wrong. |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: While Socrates has no counterparts that lack self-identity, he does have counterparts that lack identity-with-Socrates. He alone has that - the property, that is, of being identical with the object that in fact instantiates Socrateity. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: I am never persuaded by arguments which rest on such dubious pseudo-properties. Whether or not a counterpart of Socrates has any sort of identity with Socrates cannot be prejudged, as it would beg the question. |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense to say I could have been someone else, yet Counterpart Theory implies not merely that I could have been distinct from myself, but that I would have been distinct from myself had things gone differently in even the most miniscule detail. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: A counterpart doesn't appear to be 'me being distinct from myself'. We have to combine counterparts over possible worlds with perdurance over time. I am a 'worm' of time-slices. Anything not in that worm is not strictly me. |
| 7518 | If folk psychology gives a network of causal laws, that fits neatly with functionalism [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: The portrait of folk psychology as a network of causal laws dovetailed neatly with the emerging philosophy of mind called functionalism. | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], II) | |
| A reaction: And from the lower levels functionalism is supported by the notion that the brain is modular. Note the word 'laws'; this implies an underlying precision in folk psychology, which is then easily attacked. Maybe the network is too complex for simple laws. |
| 7519 | Many mental phenomena are totally unexplained by folk psychology [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology fails utterly to explain a considerable variety of central psychological phenomena: mental illness, sleep, creativity, memory, intelligence differences, and many forms of learning, to cite just a few. | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III) | |
| A reaction: If folk psychology is a theory, it will have been developed to predict behaviour, rather than as a full-blown psychological map. The odd thing is that some people seem to be very bad at folk psychology. |
| 7520 | Folk psychology never makes any progress, and is marginalised by modern science [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology has not progressed significantly in the last 2500 years; if anything, it has been steadily in retreat during this period; it does not integrate with modern science, and its emerging wallflower status bodes ill for its future. | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Folk Psychology [1996], III) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] However, while shares in alchemy and astrology have totally collapsed, folk psychology shows not the slightest sign of going away, and it is unclear how it ever could. See Idea 3177. |
| 5121 | Basing ethics on flourishing makes it consequentialist, as actions are judged by contributing to it [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Basing ethics on human flourishing tends towards utilitarianism or consequentialism; actions, character traits, laws, and so on are to be assessed with reference to their contributions to human flourishing. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the question of whether only virtue can contribute to flourishing, or whether a bit of vice might be helpful. This problem presumably pushed the Stoics to say that virtue itself is the good, rather than the resulting flourishing. |
| 5120 | What counts as 'flourishing' must be relative to various sets of values [Harman] |
| Full Idea: If we base our ethics on human flourishing, one implication would seem to be moral relativism, since what counts as 'flourishing' seems inevitably relative to one or other set of values. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This remark seems to make the relativist assumption that all value systems are equal. For Aristotle, flourishing is no more relative than health is. No one can assert that illness has an intrinsically high value in human life. |