41 ideas
19275 | You cannot understand what exists without understanding possibility and necessity [Hale] |
Full Idea: I defend the thesis that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
A reaction: Good. I would say that this is a growing realisation in contemporary philosophy. The issue is focused when we ask what are the limitations of Quine's approach to metaphysics. If you don't see possibilities around you, you are a fool. |
19291 | A canonical defintion specifies the type of thing, and what distinguish this specimen [Hale] |
Full Idea: One might think of a full dress, or canonical, definition as specifying what type of thing it is, and what distinguishes it from everything else within its type. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.4) | |
A reaction: Good! At last someone embraces the Aristotelian ideas that definitions are a) quite extensive and detailed (unlike lexicography), and b) they aim to get right down to the individual. In that sense, an essence is captured by a definition. |
18696 | The vagueness of truthmaker claims makes it easier to run anti-realist arguments [Button] |
Full Idea: The sheer lack of structure demanded by truthmaker theorists means that it is easier to run model-theoretic arguments against them than against correspondence theorists. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.3) | |
A reaction: Truthmaking is a vague relation, where correspondence is fairly specific. Model arguments say you can keep the sentences steady, but shuffle around what they refer to. |
18701 | The coherence theory says truth is coherence of thoughts, and not about objects [Button] |
Full Idea: According to the coherence theory of truth, for our thoughts to be true is not for them to be about objects, but only for them to cohere with one another. This is rather terrifying. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 14.2) | |
A reaction: Davidson espoused this view in 1983, but then gave it up. It strikes me as either a daft view of truth, or a denial of truth. The coherence theory of justification, on the other hand, is correct. |
1564 | True and false statements can use exactly the same words [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: There is no difference between a true statement and a false statement, because they can use exactly the same words. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §4) |
19301 | With a negative free logic, we can dispense with the Barcan formulae [Hale] |
Full Idea: I reject both Barcan and Converse Barcan by adopting a negative free logic. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3) | |
A reaction: See section 9.2 of Hale's book, where he makes his case. I can't evaluate this bold move, though I don't like the Barcan Formulae. We can anticipate objections to Hale: are you prepared to embrace the unexpected consequences of your new logic? |
19297 | The two Barcan principles are easily proved in fairly basic modal logic [Hale] |
Full Idea: If the Brouwersche principle, p ⊃ □◊p is adjoined to a standard quantified vesion of the weakest modal logic K, then one can prove both the Barcan principle, and its converse. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2) | |
A reaction: The Brouwersche principle (that p implies that p must be possible) sounds reasonable, but the Barcan principles strike me as false, so something has to give. They are theorems of S5. Hale proposes giving up classical logic. |
19296 | If second-order variables range over sets, those are just objects; properties and relations aren't sets [Hale] |
Full Idea: Contrary to what Quine supposes, it is neither necessary nor desirable to interpret bound higher-order variables as ranging over sets. Sets are a species of object. They should range over entities of a completely different type: properties and relations. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 08.2) | |
A reaction: This helpfully clarifies something which was confusing me. If sets are objects, then 'second-order' logic just seems to be the same as first-order logic (rather than being 'set theory in disguise'). I quantify over properties, but deny their existence! |
19289 | Maybe conventionalism applies to meaning, but not to the truth of propositions expressed [Hale] |
Full Idea: An old objection to conventionalism claims that it confuses sentences with propositions, confusing what makes sentences mean what they do with what makes them (as propositions) true. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.2) | |
A reaction: The conventions would presumably apply to the sentences, but not to the propositions. Since I think that focusing on propositions solves a lot of misunderstandings in modern philosophy, I like the sound of this. |
19298 | Unlike axiom proofs, natural deduction proofs needn't focus on logical truths and theorems [Hale] |
Full Idea: In contrast with axiomatic systems, in natural deductions systems of logic neither the premises nor the conclusions of steps in a derivation need themselves be logical truths or theorems of logic. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2 n7) | |
A reaction: Not sure I get that. It can't be that everything in an axiomatic proof has to be a logical truth. How would you prove anything about the world that way? I'm obviously missing something. |
18694 | Permutation Theorem: any theory with a decent model has lots of models [Button] |
Full Idea: The Permutation Theorem says that any theory with a non-trivial model has many distinct isomorphic models with the same domain. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
A reaction: This may be the most significant claim of model theory, since Putnam has erected an argument for anti-realism on it. See the ideas of Tim Button. |
19295 | Add Hume's principle to logic, to get numbers; arithmetic truths rest on the nature of the numbers [Hale] |
Full Idea: The existence of the natural numbers is not a matter of pure logic - it cannot be proved in pure logic. It can be proved in second-order logic plus Hume's principle. Truths of arithmetic are not logic - they depend on the nature of natural numbers. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.4) | |
A reaction: Hume's principles needs entities which can be matched to one another, so a certain ontology is needed to get neo-logicism off the ground. |
19281 | Interesting supervenience must characterise the base quite differently from what supervenes on it [Hale] |
Full Idea: Any intereresting supervenience thesis requires that the class of facts on which the allegedly supervening facts supervene be characterizable independently, without use or presupposition of the notions involved in stating the supervening facts. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.1) | |
A reaction: There might be intermediate cases here, since having descriptions which are utterly unconnected (at any level) might be rather challenging. |
18692 | Realists believe in independent objects, correspondence, and fallibility of all theories [Button] |
Full Idea: External realists have three principles: Independence - the world is objects that are independent of mind, language and theory; Correspondence - truth involves some correspondence of thoughts and things; Cartesian - an ideal theory might be false. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 01.1-3) | |
A reaction: [compressed; he cites Descartes's Demon for the third] Button is setting these up as targets. I subscribe to all three, in some form or other. Of course, as a theory approaches the success implying it is 'ideal', it becomes highly likely to be accurate. |
18693 | Indeterminacy arguments say if a theory can be made true, it has multiple versions [Button] |
Full Idea: Indeterminacy arguments aim to show that if there is any way to make a theory true, then there are many ways to do so. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
A reaction: Button says the simplest indeterminacy argument is Putnam's Permutation Argument - that you can shuffle the objects in a formal model, without affecting truth. But do we belief that metaphysics can be settled in this sort of way? |
18695 | An ideal theory can't be wholly false, because its consistency implies a true model [Button] |
Full Idea: If realists think an ideal theory could be false, then the theory is consistent, and hence complete, and hence finitely modellable, and hence it is guaranteed that there is some way to make it true. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.2) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This challenges the realists' supposed claim that even the most ideal of theories could possibly be false. Presumably for a theory to be 'ideal' is not all-or-nothing. Are we capable of creating a fully ideal theory? [Löwenheim-Skolem] |
19278 | There is no gap between a fact that p, and it is true that p; so we only have the truth-condtions for p [Hale] |
Full Idea: There is no clear gap between its being a fact that p and its being true that p, no obvious way to individuate the fact a true statement records other than via that statement's truth-conditions. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.2) | |
A reaction: Typical of philosophers of language. The concept of a fact is of something mind-independent; the concept of a truth is of something mind-dependent. They can't therefore be the same thing (by the contrapositive of the indiscernability of identicals!). |
19302 | If a chair could be made of slightly different material, that could lead to big changes [Hale] |
Full Idea: How shall we prevent a sorites taking us to the conclusion that a chair might have originated in a completely disjoint lot of wood, or even in some other material altogether? | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3.7) | |
A reaction: This seems a good criticism of Kripke's implausible claim that his lectern is necessarily (or essentially) made of the piece of wood it is made of. Could his lectern have had a small piece of plastic inserted in it? |
19290 | Absolute necessities are necessarily necessary [Hale] |
Full Idea: I argue that any absolute necessity is necessarily necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.5.2) | |
A reaction: This requires the principle of S4 modal logic, that necessity implies necessary necessity. He argues that S5 is the logical of absolute necessity. |
19286 | 'Absolute necessity' is when there is no restriction on the things which necessitate p [Hale] |
Full Idea: The strength of the claim that p is 'absolutely necessary' derives from the fact that in its expression as a universally quantified counterfactual ('everything will necessitate p'), the quantifier ranges over all propositions whatever. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
A reaction: Other philosophers don't seem to use the term 'absolute necessity', but it seems a useful concept, in contrast to conditional or local necessities. You can't buy chocolate on the sun. |
19288 | Logical and metaphysical necessities differ in their vocabulary, and their underlying entities [Hale] |
Full Idea: The difference between logical and metaphysical necessities lies, not in the range of possibilities for which they hold, but - at the linguistic level - in the kind of vocabulary essential to their expression, and the kinds of entities that explain them. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
A reaction: I don't think much of the idea that the difference is just linguistic, and I don't like the idea of 'entities' as grounding them. I see logical necessities as arising from natural deduction rules, and metaphysical ones coming from the nature of reality. |
19285 | Logical necessity is something which is true, no matter what else is the case [Hale] |
Full Idea: We can identify the belief that the proposition that p is logically necessary, where p may be of any logical form, with the belief that, no matter what else was the case, it would be true that p. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
A reaction: I find this surprising. I take it that logical necessity must be the consequence of logic. That all squares have corners doesn't seem to be a matter of logic. But then he seems to expand logical necessity to include conceptual necessity. Why? |
19287 | Maybe each type of logic has its own necessity, gradually becoming broader [Hale] |
Full Idea: We can distinguish between narrower and broader kinds of logical necessity. There are, for example, the logical necessities of propostional logic, those of first-order logic, and so on. Maybe they are necessities expressed using logical vocabulary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
A reaction: Hale goes on to prefer a view that embraces conceptual necessities. I think in philosophy we should designate the necessities according to their sources. This might clarify a currently rather confused situation. First-order includes propositional logic. |
19282 | It seems that we cannot show that modal facts depend on non-modal facts [Hale] |
Full Idea: I think we may conclude that there is no significant version of modal supervenience which both commands acceptance and implies that all modal facts depend asymmetrically on non-modal ones. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.3) | |
A reaction: This is the conclusion of a sustained and careful discussion, recorded here for interest. I'm inclined to think that there are very few, if any, non-modal facts in the world, if those facts are accurately characterised. |
19276 | The big challenge for essentialist views of modality is things having necessary existence [Hale] |
Full Idea: Whether the essentialist theory can account for all absolute necessities depends in part on whether the theory can explain the necessities of existence (of certain objects, properties and entities). | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
A reaction: Hale has a Fregean commitment to all sorts of abstract objects, and then finds difficulty in explaining them from his essentialist viewpoint. His book didn't convince me. I'm more of a nominalist, me, so I sleep better at nights. |
19293 | Essentialism doesn't explain necessity reductively; it explains all necessities in terms of a few basic natures [Hale] |
Full Idea: The point of the essentialist theory is not to provide a reductive explanation of necessities. It is, rather, to locate a base class of necessities - those which directly reflect the natures of things - in terms of which the remainder may be explained. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.6) | |
A reaction: My picture is of most of the necessities being directly explained by the natures of things, rather than a small core of natures generating all the derived ones. All the necessities of squares derive from the nature of the square. |
19294 | If necessity derives from essences, how do we explain the necessary existence of essences? [Hale] |
Full Idea: If the essentialist theory of necessity is to be adequate, it must be able to explain how the existence of certain objects - such as the natural numbers - can itself be absolutely necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.1) | |
A reaction: Hale and his neo-logicist pals think that numbers are 'objects', and they necessarily exist, so he obviously has a problem. I don't see any alternative for essentialists to treating the existing (and possible) natures as brute facts. |
19279 | What are these worlds, that being true in all of them makes something necessary? [Hale] |
Full Idea: We need an explanation of what worlds are that makes clear why being true at all of them should be necessary and sufficient for being necessary (and true at one of them suffices for being possible). | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.3.2) | |
A reaction: Hale is introducing combinatorial accounts of worlds, as one possible answer to this. Hale observes that all the worlds might be identical to our world. It is always assumed that the worlds are hugely varied. But maybe worlds are constrained. |
19299 | Possible worlds make every proposition true or false, which endorses classical logic [Hale] |
Full Idea: The standard conception of worlds incorporates the assumption of bivalence - every proposition is either true or false. But it is infelicitous to build into one's basic semantic machinery a principle endorsing classical logic against its rivals. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 10.3) | |
A reaction: No wonder Dummett (with his intuitionist logic) immediately spurned possible worlds. This objection must be central to many recent thinkers who have begun to doubt possible worlds. I heard Kit Fine say 'always kick possible worlds where you can'. |
18700 | Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button] |
Full Idea: Cartesian scepticism agonises over whether our beliefs are true or false, whereas Kantian scepticism agonises over how it is even possible for beliefs to be true or false. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 07.2) | |
A reaction: Kant's question is, roughly, 'how can our thoughts succeed in being about the world?' Kantian scepticism is the more drastic, and looks vulnerable to a turning of the tables, but asking how Kantian worries can even be expressed. |
1559 | Thracians think tattooing adds to a girl's beauty, but elsewhere it is a punishment [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: Thracians think that tattooing enhances a girl's beauty, whereas for everyone else tattooing is a punishment for a crime. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §2) |
1560 | Lydians prostitute their daughters to raise a dowery, but no Greek would marry such a girl [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: The Lydians find it acceptable for their daughters to work as prostitutes to raise money for getting married, but no one in Greece would be prepared to marry such a girl. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §2) |
1561 | Anything can be acceptable in some circumstances and unacceptable in others [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: Anything can be acceptable under the right circumstances, and unacceptable under the wrong circumstances. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §2) |
18698 | Predictions give the 'content' of theories, which can then be 'equivalent' or 'adequate' [Button] |
Full Idea: The empirical 'content' of a theory is all its observable predictions. Two theories with the same predictions are empirically 'equivalent'. A theory which gets it all right at this level is empirically 'adequate'. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 05.1) |
19300 | The molecules may explain the water, but they are not what 'water' means [Hale] |
Full Idea: What it is to be (pure) water is to be explained in terms of being composed of H2O molecules, but this is not what the word 'water' means. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.2) | |
A reaction: Hale says when the real and verbal definitions match, we can know the essence a priori. If they come apart, presumably we need a posteriori research. Interesting. It is certainly dubious to say a stuff-word means its chemical composition. |
18697 | A sentence's truth conditions are all the situations where it would be true [Button] |
Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions comprise an exhaustive list of the situations in which that sentence would be true. | |
From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 03.4) | |
A reaction: So to know its meaning you must know those conditions? Compare 'my cat is licking my finger' with 'dramatic events are happening in Ethiopia'. It should take an awful long time to grasp the second sentence. |
1567 | How could someone who knows everything fail to act correctly? [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: If someone knows the nature of everything, how could he fail to be able also to act correctly in every case? | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §8) |
1563 | Every apparent crime can be right in certain circumstances [Anon (Diss), by PG] |
Full Idea: It can be right, in certain circumstances, to steal, to break a solemn promise, to rob temples, and even (as Orestes did) to murder one's nearest and dearest. | |
From: report of Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §3) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: Not sure about the last one! I suppose you can justify any hideousness if the fate of the universe depends on it. It must be better to die than the perform certain extreme deeds. |
1562 | It is right to lie to someone, to get them to take medicine they are reluctant to take [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: It is right to lie to your parents, in order to get them to take a good medicine they are reluctant to take. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §3) | |
A reaction: I dread to think what the medicines were which convinced the writer of this. A rule such as this strikes me as dangerous. Justifiable in extreme cases. House on fire etc. |
1566 | The first priority in elections is to vote for people who support democracy [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: A lottery is not democratic, because every state contains people who are not democratic, and if the lottery chooses them they will destroy the democracy. People should elect those who are observed to favour democracy. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §7) |
1565 | We learn language, and we don't know who teaches us it [Anon (Diss)] |
Full Idea: We learn language, and we don't know who teaches us it. | |
From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §6) |