14 ideas
| 13795 | Properties only have identity in the context of their contraries [Elder] |
| Full Idea: The very being, the identity, of any property consists at least in part in its contrasting as it does with its own proper contraries. | |
| From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: See Elder for the details of this, but the idea that properties can only be individuated contextually sounds promising. |
| 13798 | Maybe we should give up the statue [Elder] |
| Full Idea: Some contemporary metaphysicians infer that one of the objects must go, namely, the statue. | |
| From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Zimmerman 1995] This looks like a recipe for creating a vast gulf between philosophers and the rest of the population. If it is right, it makes the true ontology completely useless in understanding our daily lives. |
| 13797 | The loss of an essential property means the end of an existence [Elder] |
| Full Idea: The loss of any essential property must amount to the end of an existence. | |
| From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is orthodoxy for essentialists, and I presume that Aristotle would agree, but I have a problem with the essence of a great athlete, who then grows old. Must we say that they lose their identity-as-an-athlete? |
| 13794 | Essential properties by nature occur in clusters or packages [Elder] |
| Full Idea: Essential properties by nature occur in clusters or packages. | |
| From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Elder proposes this as his test for the essentialness of a property - his Test of Flanking Uniformities. A nice idea. |
| 13796 | Essential properties are bound together, and would be lost together [Elder] |
| Full Idea: The properties of any essential nature are bound together....[122] so any case in which one of our envisioned familiar objects loses one of its essential properties will be a case in which it loses several. | |
| From: Crawford L. Elder (Real Natures and Familiar Objects [2004], 3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly good generalisation rather than a necessary truth. Is there a natural selection for properties, so that only the properties which are able to bind to others to form teams are able to survive and flourish? |
| 9169 | A statement can be metaphysically necessary and epistemologically contingent [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: A statement can be (metaphysically) necessary and epistemologically contingent. Human intuition has no privileged access to metaphysical necessity. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.160) | |
| A reaction: The terminology here is dangerously confusing. 'Contingent' is a term which (as Kripke insists) refers to reality, not to our epistemological abilities. The locution of adding the phrase "for all I know" seems to handle the problem better. |
| 5819 | Conceivability is no proof of possibility [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Conceivability is no proof of possibility. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.159) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a really basic truth which all novice philosophers should digest. It led many philosophers, especially rationalists, into all sorts of ill-founded claims about what is possible or necessary. Zombies, for instance… |
| 9168 | I can't distinguish elm trees, but I mean by 'elm' the same set of trees as everybody else [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: My concept of an elm tree is exactly the same as my concept of a beech tree (I blush to confess). ..We still say that the extension of 'elm' in my idiolect is the same as the extension of 'elm' in anyone else's, viz. the set of all elm trees. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.154) | |
| A reaction: This example is clearer and less open to hair-splitting than his water/XYZ example. You could, with Putnam, say that his meaning of 'elm' is outside his head, but you could also say that he doesn't understand the word very well. |
| 5820 | 'Water' has an unnoticed indexical component, referring to stuff around here [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Our theory can be summarized as saying that words like 'water' have an unnoticed indexical component: "water" is stuff that bears a certain similarity relation to the water around here. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.160) | |
| A reaction: This is the causal theory of reference, which leads to externalism about concepts, which leads to an externalist view of thought, which undermines internal accounts of the mind like functionalism, and leaves little room for scepticism… Etc. |
| 9170 | We need to recognise the contribution of society and of the world in determining reference [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Traditional semantic theory leaves out two contributions to the determination of reference - the contribution of society and the contribution of the real world; a better semantic theory must encompass both. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.161) | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree that there is a social aspect to reference-fixing, but I am much more dubious about the world 'determining' anything. The whole of his Twin Earth point could be mopped up by a social account, with 'experts' as the key idea. |
| 5817 | Language is more like a cooperative steamship than an individual hammer [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: There are tools like a hammer used by one person, and there are tools like a steamship which require cooperative activity; words have been thought of too much on the model of the first sort of tool. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.156) | |
| A reaction: This clear thought strikes me as the most fruitful and sensible consequence of Wittgenstein's later ideas (as opposed to the relativistic 'language game' ideas). I am unconvinced that a private language is logically impossible, but it would be feeble. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5818 | If water is H2O in the actual world, there is no possible world where it isn't H2O [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Once we have discovered that water (in the actual world) is H2O, nothing counts as a possible world in which water isn't H2O. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.159) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there could be a possible world in which water is a bit cloudy, so the fact that it is H2O is being judged as essential. Presumably the scientists in the possible world might discover that we are wrong about the chemistry of water? |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |