19 ideas
| 15134 | The truthmaker principle requires some specific named thing to make the difference [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems compelling, because if a proposition is true, something must be different from a world in which it is false. The principle makes this specific, by treating 'something' as a quantifier binding a variable in name position. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
| A reaction: See Williamson for an examination of the logical implications of this. The point is that the principle seems to require some very specific 'thing', which may be asking too much. For a start, it might be the absence of a thing. |
| 15140 | The converse Barcan formula will not allow contingent truths to have truthmakers [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The converse Barcan formula does not allow any contingent truths at all to have a truthmaker. Once cannot combine the converse Barcan formula with any truthmaker principle worth having. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: One might reply, so much the worse for the converse Barcan formula, but Williamson doesn't think that. |
| 15141 | Truthmaker is incompatible with modal semantics of varying domains [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Friends of the truthmaker principle should reject the Kripke semantics of varying domains. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: See other ideas from this paper to get a sense of what that is about. |
| 15131 | If metaphysical possibility is not a contingent matter, then S5 seems to suit it best [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: In S5, necessity and possibility are not themselves contingent matters. This is plausible for metaphysical modality, since metaphysical possibility, unlike practical possibility, does not depend on the contingencies of one's situation. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of why S5 might be preferable for metaphysics. See Nathan Salmon for the rival view. Williamson's point sounds pretty persuasive to me. |
| 15135 | If the domain of propositional quantification is constant, the Barcan formulas hold [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: If the domain of propositional quantification is constant across worlds, the Barcan formula and its converse hold. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
| A reaction: So the issue is whether we should take metaphysics to be dealing with a constant or varying domains. Williamson seems to favour the former, but my instincts incline towards the latter. |
| 15139 | Converse Barcan: could something fail to meet a condition, if everything meets that condition? [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The converse Barcan is at least plausible, since its denial says there is something that could fail to meet a condition when everything met that condition; but how could everything meet that condition if that thing did not? | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the response involves a discussion of domains, since everything in a given domain might meet a condition, but something in a different domain might fail it. |
| 18492 | Not all quantification is either objectual or substitutional [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: We should not assume that all quantification is either objectual or substitutional. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], p.262) | |
| A reaction: [see Prior 1971:31-4] He talks of quantifying into sentence position. |
| 15136 | Substitutional quantification is metaphysical neutral, and equivalent to a disjunction of instances [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: If quantification into sentence position is substitutional, then it is metaphysically neutral. A substitutionally interpreted 'existential' quantification is semantically equivalent to the disjunction (possibly infinite) of its substitution instances. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
| A reaction: Is it not committed to the disjunction, just as the objectual reading commits to objects? Something must make the disjunction true. Or is it too verbal to be about reality? |
| 15138 | Not all quantification is objectual or substitutional [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: We should not assume that all quantification is objectual or substitutional. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) |
| 15137 | If 'fact' is a noun, can we name the fact that dogs bark 'Mary'? [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: If one uses 'fact' as a noun, the question arises why one cannot name the fact that dogs bark 'Mary'. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2 n10) | |
| A reaction: What an intriguing thought! Must all nouns pass this test? 'The courage of the regiment was called Alfred'? |
| 15142 | Our ability to count objects across possibilities favours the Barcan formulas [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Consideration of our ability to count objects across possibilities strongly favour both the Barcan formula and its converse. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I can understand counting objects across possibilities. The objects themselves are possibilia, and possibilia seem to include unknowns. The unexpected is highly possible. |
| 22098 | Socrates neglects the gap between knowing what is good and doing good [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental weakness in Socrates, that he does not take into account the gap between knowing what is good and actually putting this into action. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: This rejects Socrates's intellectualism about weakness of will. It is perhaps a better criticism that Aristotle's view that desires sometimes overcome the will. It is also the problem of motivation in Kantian deontology. Or utilitarianism. |
| 22096 | Anxiety is not a passing mood, but a response to human freedom [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: For Kierkegaard anxiety is not simply a mood or an emotion that certain people experience at certain times, but a basic response to freedom that is part of the human condition. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: Outside of Christianity, this may be Kierkegaard's most influential idea - since existential individualism is floating around in the romantic movement. But the Byronic hero experiences a sort of anxiety. If you can't face anxiety, become a monk or nun. |
| 22097 | The ultimate in life is learning to be anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Every human being must learn to be anxious in order that he might not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learnt the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.154), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: I think this is the most existentialist quotation I have found in Kierkegaard. It sounds circular. You must be in anxiety because otherwise you won't be able to cope with anxiety? I suppose anxiety is facing up to his concept of truth. |
| 21909 | Ultimate knowledge is being anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Whoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.187), quoted by Alastair Hannay - Kierkegaard 06 | |
| A reaction: This shows us that Kierkegaard had a rather bizarre mental life which the rest of us have little chance of penetrating. I'll have a go at cataloguing my types of anxiety, but I'm not hopeful. |
| 20758 | Anxiety is staring into the yawning abyss of freedom [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: One may liken anxiety to dizziness. He whose eyes chance to look down into a yawning abyss becomes dizzy. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom which is when freedom gazes down into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.55), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Moods' | |
| A reaction: Most of us rapidly retreat from the thought of the infinity of things we might choose. Choosing bizarrely merely to assert one's freedom is simple stupidity. |
| 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. |
| 15133 | A thing can't be the only necessary existent, because its singleton set would be as well [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: That there is just one necessary existent is surely false, for if x is a necessary, {x} is a distinct necessary existent. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §1) | |
| A reaction: You would have to believe that sets actually 'exist' to accept this, but it is a very neat point. |