14 ideas
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story. |
| 7746 | We don't normally think of names as having senses (e.g. we don't give definitions of them) [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If Tully=Cicero is synthetic, the names must have different senses, which seems implausible, for we don't normally think of proper names as having senses in the way that predicates do (we do not, e.g., give definitions of proper names). | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.89) | |
| A reaction: It is probably necessary to prize apart the question of whether Tully 'has' (intrinsically) a sense, from whether we think of Tully in that way. Stacks of books have appeared about this one, since Kripke. |
| 7747 | How can a proper name be correlated with its object if it hasn't got a sense? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It seems that a proper name could not have a reference unless it did have a sense, for how, unless the name has a sense, is it to be correlated with the object? | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.91) | |
| A reaction: This might (just) be the most important question ever asked in modern philosophy, since it provoked Kripke into answering it, by giving a social, causal, externalist account of how names (and hence lots of language) actually work. But Searle has a point. |
| 7748 | 'Aristotle' means more than just 'an object that was christened "Aristotle"' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle being identical with an object that was originally christened will not suffice, for the force of "Aristotle" is greater than the force of 'identical with an object named "Aristotle"', for not just any object named "Aristotle" will do. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.93) | |
| A reaction: This anticipates Kripke's proposal to base reference on baptism. I remain unsure about how rigid a designation of Aristotle could be, in a possible world where his father died young, and he became an illiterate soldier who hates philosophy. |
| 7749 | Reference for proper names presupposes a set of uniquely referring descriptions [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To use a proper name referringly is to presuppose the truth of certain uniquely referring descriptive statements. ...Names are pegs on which to hang descriptions. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.94) | |
| A reaction: This 'cluster' view of Searle's has become notorious, but I think one could at least try to mount a defence. The objection to Searle is that none of the descriptions are necessary, unlike just being the named object. |
| 7750 | Proper names are logically connected with their characteristics, in a loose way [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If asked whether or not proper names are logically connected with characteristics of the object to which they refer, the answer is 'yes, in a loose sort of way'. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be inviting trouble to assert that a connection is both 'logical' and 'loose'. Clearly Searle has been reading too much later Wittgenstein. This is probably the weakest point in Searle's proposal, which brought a landslide of criticism. |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here. |
| 16608 | Ockham was an anti-realist about the categories [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Ockham is the scholastic paradigm of anti-realism with respect to the categories. | |
| From: report of William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 05.3 | |
| A reaction: These are the ten categories mentioned in Aristotle's book 'Categories'. |
| 15728 | The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: The naturalness of a class depends as essentially on the nature of the observers who classify as it does on the nature of the objects that they classify. ...It depends on our perceptual apparatus, and on our relatively mutable needs and interests. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: This seems to translate 'natural' as 'natural for us', which is not much use to scientists, who spend quite a lot of effort combating folk wisdom. Do desirable sports cars constitute a natural class? |
| 9407 | Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say there are properties is to say there are natural classes, classes introduction to some of whose members enables people to pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: Aristotle would like this approach, but it doesn't find many friends among modern logician/philosophers. We should go on to ask why people agree on these things. Causal powers will then come into it. |
| 15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Properties that have no concrete instances must be defined in terms of those that have. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I wonder what the dodo used to smell like? |
| 8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Quinton proposes that an individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position. | |
| From: report of Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], Pt I) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §5 | |
| A reaction: This seems the obvious defence of a bundle account of objects against the charge that indiscernibles would have to be identical. It introduces, however, 'positions' into the ontology, but maybe that price must be paid. Materialism needs space. |
| 16599 | Ockham says matter must be extended, so we don't need Quantity [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Ockham regards Quantity as an entirely superfluous ontological category, …because matter is intrinsically extended. | |
| From: report of William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 04.4 |
| 16681 | Matter gets its quantity from condensation and rarefaction, which is just local motion [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: Matter is made to have a greater or lesser quantity not through its receiving any absolute accident, but through condensation and rarefaction alone. Parts come more or less close together, which can happen with local motion. | |
| From: William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320], I.13), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.1 | |
| A reaction: This is Ockham at his most modern, rejecting the odd idea of Quantity in favour of a modern corpuscular view of the mere motions of matter. |