8 ideas
14633 | How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic? [Jackson] |
Full Idea: On a friendly reading of Quine, there is nothing to make the difference between a table's being contingently plastic and its being essentially plastic. | |
From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 5) | |
A reaction: This is, of course, the dreaded modern usage of 'essential' to just mean 'necessary' and nothing more. In my view, there may be a big problem with knowing whether a problem is necessary, but knowing whether it is essential is much easier. |
14635 | An x is essentially F if it is F in every possible world in which it appears [Jackson] |
Full Idea: On the possible world's account, x's being essentially F is nothing more nor less than x's being F in every world in which it appears. | |
From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 6) | |
A reaction: There you go - 'true in every possible world' is the definition of metaphysical necessity, not the definition of essence. Either get back to Aristotle, or stop (forever!) talking about 'essence'! |
14632 | Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem [Jackson] |
Full Idea: The unfriendly response to Quine's objection to essentialism is that it conflates the de re and the de dicto. The friendly response is that behind that conflation is a real epistemological problem for essentialism. | |
From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 1) | |
A reaction: He cites Richard Cartwright 1968 for the friendly response. The epistemological question is how we can know the essentialness of an essence. |
14631 | How can you show the necessity of an a posteriori necessity, if it might turn out to be false? [Jackson] |
Full Idea: If something is offered as a candidate necessary a posteriori truth, how could we show that it is necessary, in the face of the fact that it takes investigation to show that it is true, and so, in some sense, it might have turned out to be false? | |
From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 1) | |
A reaction: This is the topic of his paper, which he compares with how we can know that essences are essential. |
19565 | How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality? [Devitt] |
Full Idea: What non-experiential link to reality could support insights into its necessary character? | |
From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 4) | |
A reaction: The key to it, I think, is your theory of mind. If you are a substance dualist, then connecting to such deep things looks fine, but if you are a reductive physicalist then it looks absurdly hopeful. |
19564 | Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that [Devitt] |
Full Idea: It is overwhelmingly plausible that some knowledge is empirical. The attractive thesis of naturalism is that all knowledge is; there is only one way of knowing. | |
From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: How many ways for us to know seems to depend on what faculties we have. We lump our senses together under a single heading. The arrival of data is not the same as the arrival of knowledge. I'm unconvinced that naturalists like me must accept this. |
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 |
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. |