Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Epistemology of Modality', 'External and Internal Relations' and 'Letters to Jacques Lenfant'

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3 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 2. Internal Relations
21342 A relation is internal if two things possessing the relation could not fail to be related [Moore,GE, by Heil]
     Full Idea: Moore characterises internal relations modally, as those essential to their relata. If a and b are related R-wise, and R is an internal relation, a and b could not fail to be so related; otherwise R is external.
     From: report of G.E. Moore (External and Internal Relations [1919]) by John Heil - Relations 'Internal'
     A reaction: I don't think of Moore as an essentialist, but this fits the essentialist picture nicely, and is probably best paraphrased in terms of powers. Integers are the standard example of internal relations.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
12723 The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
     A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
19440 How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya]
     Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility.
     From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2)
     A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this.