37 ideas
| 7990 | Serene wisdom is freedom from ties, and indifference to fortune [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.57) | |
| A reaction: This is very similar to the 'apatheia' of the Stoics, though they are always more committed to rationality. This is quite a good strategy when times are hard, but as a general rule it offers a bogus state of 'wisdom' which is really half way to death. |
| 7989 | Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.49) | |
| A reaction: Quotations like this can usually be counterbalanced in eastern philosophy by wild irrationality, but they certainly felt to tug of reason. Only the Dhaoists seem really opposed to reason (e.g. Idea 7289). |
| 12766 | Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality. |
| 7996 | I am all the beauty and goodness of things, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: I am the beauty of all things beautiful; ...I am the goodness of those who are good, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.36) | |
| A reaction: Another attempt to annexe everything which is admirable to the nature of God. This sounds strikingly Platonic (c.f. Idea 7992, which seems Aristotelian). One scholar dates the text to 150 BCE. I think there is influence, one way or the other. |
| 12764 | For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76) | |
| A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property. |
| 12761 | An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something. |
| 12763 | Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73) | |
| A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential! |
| 12762 | Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg. |
| 14703 | Superficial necessity is true in all worlds; deep necessity is thus true, no matter which world is actual [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: If we have a 'fixedly' operator F, then a sentence is fixedly actually true if it is true no matter which world is designated as actual (which 'he actually won in 2008' fails to be). Maybe '□' is superficial necessity, and FA is 'deep' necessity. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Gareth Evans distinguishes 'deep' from 'superficial' necessity. Humberstone and others introduced 'F'. Presumably FA is deeper because it has to pass a tougher test. |
| 14714 | Contradictory claims about a necessary god both seem apriori coherent [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: It seems apriori coherent that there could be a necessarily existing god, and that there could be no such god - but they can't both be true. Other examples include unprovable mathematical necessities | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.4) |
| 12765 | Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79) | |
| A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth? |
| 14704 | 2D semantics gives us apriori knowledge of our own meanings [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Generalized 2D semantics is meant to vindicate the traditional idea that we have apriori access to our own meanings through armchair reflection. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The idea is to split meaning in two, so that we know one part of it a priori. It is an unfashionably internalist view of meaning (which doesn't make it wrong!). |
| 7995 | In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.22) | |
| A reaction: Everything grand seems to be claimed for God at this stage of culture, but I am not sure how coherent this view is, unless this is pantheism. In what sense could we possibly be Krishna, when none of us (except Arjuna) is aware of it? |
| 14706 | Your view of water depends on whether you start from the actual Earth or its counterfactual Twin [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Your verdicts about whether the stuff on Twin Earth counts as water depends on whether you think of Twin Earth as a hypothesis about your actual environment or as a purely counterfactual possibility. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'two-dimensional semantics' approach to the Twin Earth problem, which splits meaning into two components. Whether you start from the actual world or from Twin Earth, you will rigidly designate the local wet stuff as 'water'. |
| 14711 | Rationalists say knowing an expression is identifying its extension using an internal cognitive state [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In rationalist views of meaning, based on the 'golden triangle', to be competent with an expression is to be in an internal cognitive state that puts one in a position to identify its extension in any possible world based only on apriori reflection. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a proper fight-back against modern rampant externalism about meaning. All my intuitions are with internalism, which I think points to a more coherent overall philosophy. Well done, David Chalmers! Even if he is wrong. |
| 14717 | Internalist meaning is about understanding; externalist meaning is about embedding in a situation [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Internalists take the notion of meaning to capture an aspect of an individual's current state of understanding, while externalists take the notion of meaning to reflect how an individual is embedded within her social and physical environment. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This idea also occurs in discussions of concepts (filed here under 'Thought'). |
| 14720 | Semantic theory assigns meanings to expressions, and metasemantics explains how this works [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A semantic theory assigns semantic values (meanings) to particular expressions of the language. In contrast, a metasemantic theory explains why expressions have those semantic values, appealing to facts about speakers and communities. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably some people only want the metasemantic version. I assume that the two are entangled, but I would vote for both. |
| 14695 | Semantic theories show how truth of sentences depends on rules for interpreting and joining their parts [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Semantic theories explain how the truth or falsity of whole sentences depends on the meanings of their parts by stating rules governing the interpretation of subsentential expressions and their modes of combination. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Somehow it looks as if the mystery of the whole business will still be missing if this project is ever successfully completed. Also one suspects that such a theory would be a fiction, rather than a description of actuality, which is too complex. |
| 14696 | Simple semantics assigns extensions to names and to predicates [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: The simplest semantic frameworks assign extensions as semantic values of particular expressions. The extension of a name is the thing, of 'cool' is the set of cool things, and sets of ordered pairs for 2-place predicates. The sentence has T or F. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate well-known problem is different predicates with the same extensions, such as 'renate' and 'cordate'. Possible worlds semantics is supposed to be an improvement to cover this, and to give a semantics for modal talk as well. Sounds good. |
| 14697 | 'Federer' and 'best tennis player' can't mean the same, despite having the same extension [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A simple extensional semantics will assign the same semantic value to 'Roger Federer' and 'world's best tennis player', but they clearly differ in meaning, and if events had unfolded differently they would pick out different people. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: You would think that this would be too obvious to need pointing out, but it is clearly a view that had a lot of popularity before the arrival of possible worlds. |
| 14698 | Possible worlds semantics uses 'intensions' - functions which assign extensions at each world [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible worlds semantics, the semantic value of an expression is an 'intension', a function that assigns an extension to the expression 'at' every possible world. ...It keeps track of the 'modal profiles' of objects, kinds and properties. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I just don't buy a semantics which is entirely based on extensions, even if this has sorted out some more obvious problems of extensionality. When I say someone is 'my hero', I don't just mean to pick out a particular person. |
| 14699 | Possible worlds make 'I' and that person's name synonymous, but they have different meanings [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible worlds semantics the semantic value of Hllary Clinton's utterance of 'I' will be the same as her utterance of 'Hillary Clinton'. But clearly the English word 'I' is not synonymous with the name 'Hillary Clinton'. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This problem was spotted by Kaplan, and it has been a chief motivator for the creation of two-dimensional semantics, which some people have then extended into a complete semantic theory. No purely extensional semantics can be right. |
| 14709 | Possible worlds semantics implies a constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible world semantics an expression's intension reflects the modal profile of an object, kind or property, which would establish an important constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: The central question becomes 'do you need to know a thing's modal profile in order to have a decent understanding of it?', but if you express it that way (my way), then what counts as 'decent' will be relative to all sorts of things. |
| 14719 | In the possible worlds account all necessary truths are same (because they all map to the True) [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A problem for a standard possible worlds analysis is that all necessary truths have precisely the same content (the function mapping every world to the True). Hesperus=Phosphorus has the same content as Hesperus=Hesperus-and-2+2=4. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: If this is supposed to be a theory of meaning then it has gone very badly wrong indeed. Has modern semantics taken a wrong turning somewhere? Two-dimensionalism is meant to address some of these problems. |
| 14701 | Array worlds along the horizontal, and contexts (world,person,time) along the vertical [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In a two-dimensional matrix we array possible circumstances of evaluation (worlds) along the horizontal axis, and possible contexts of utterance (world, person, time) along the vertical axis. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is due to Stalnaker 1978, and is clearest in operation when applied to an indexical such as 'I' in 'I am President'. 'I' is a rigid designator, but depends on context. The grid is filled in with T or F for each utterance in each world. |
| 14702 | If we introduce 'actually' into modal talk, we need possible worlds twice to express this [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: At first glance necessity and possibility can be fully expressed by quantifying over all possible worlds, but this cannot capture 'Possibly everything actually red is also shiny'. This needs a double-indexed framework, with worlds playing two roles. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: She points out that this also applies to tense logic, for the notion of 'now'. The point is that we not only need a set of possible worlds, but we also need a procedure (the 'Actuality' operator A or @) for picking out one of the worlds as special. |
| 14705 | Do we know apriori how we refer to names and natural kinds, but their modal profiles only a posteriori? [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps our best way of understanding names and natural kind terms is that we have apriori access to currently associated reference-fixing criterion, but only a posteriori access to the associated modal profile. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'generalized' view of 2D semantics (covering everything, not just modals and indexicals). I know apriori what something is, but only study will reveal its possibilities. The actual world is easy to talk about, but possible worlds are harder. |
| 14715 | 2D fans defend it for conceptual analysis, for meaning, and for internalist reference [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Supporters of generalized two-dimensional semantics agree to defend apriori conceptual analysis in metaphysics, and that 2D captures meaning and not just belief-patterns, and it gives a broadly internalist approach to reference determination. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I can evaluate this, but I sort of like conceptual analysis, and the concept of meaning, and fairly internalist views of reference, so I am ripe for the picking. |
| 14716 | 2D semantics can't respond to contingent apriori claims, since there is no single proposition involved [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to 2D semantics that it cannot explain Kripke's cases of contingent apriori truths, for there is no single proposition (construed as a set of possible worlds) that is both apriori and contingent. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a rather large objection to the whole 2D plan, if it implies that when we say something there is no single proposition that is being expressed. |
| 7999 | All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15) | |
| A reaction: The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth. |
| 7991 | Hate and lust have their roots in man's lower nature [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man's lower nature. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 3.34) | |
| A reaction: It seems outmoded now (since Freud) to label parts of human nature as 'higher' and 'lower'. I would defend the distinction, but it is not self-evident. The basis of morality is good citizenship, and parts of our nature are detrimental to that. |
| 7988 | There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a just war [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.31) | |
| A reaction: What worries me now is not the urging to fight, as long as a good cause can be found, but the idea that someone should see his social role as 'warrior'. The modern 'soldier' is ready to fight, but a traditional 'warrior' is obliged to fight. |
| 7992 | The visible forms of nature are earth, water, fire, air, ether; mind, reason, and the sense of 'I' [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: The visible forms of nature are eight: earth, water, fire, air, ether; the mind, reason, and the sense of 'I'. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is an implication that there are also invisible forms. The Bhuddists launched an attack on 'I' as one of the categories. The first five appear to be Aristotle's, which must be of scholarly (and chronological) interest. |
| 7994 | Everything, including the gods, comes from me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: All the gods come from me, says Krishna. ...I am the one source of all | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.2/8) | |
| A reaction: This seems very close to monotheism, and sounds very similar to the position that Zeus seems to occupy in later Greek religion, where he is shading off into a supreme and spiritual entity. |
| 7993 | Brahman is supreme, Atman his spirit in man, and Karma is the force of creation [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Brahman is supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in man. Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't help wondering how they know all this stuff, but then I'm just a typical product of my culture. We seem to have a trinity here. Who's in charge? Is Atman just a servant? Is Karma totally under the control of Brahman? |
| 7997 | Only by love can men see me, know me, and come to me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me, says Krishna | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 11.54) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a paradox here, as it is unclear how you can love Krishna, if you have not already seen him in some way. This is another paradox of fideism - that faith cannot possibly be the first step in a religion, as faith needs a target. |
| 7998 | The three gates of hell are lust, anger and greed [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Three are the gates of this hell, the death of the soul: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a man shun the three. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 16.21) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who wishes to procreate, champion justice, and make a living, has to pursue all three. Wisdom consists of pursuing the three appropriately, not in shunning them. How did this bizarre puritanism ever come to grip the human race? |