49 ideas
| 14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical enquiry can survive if we are willing to live with highly tentative conclusions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Nothing alienates the rather literal scientific sort of mind quicker that bold, dogmatic and even arrogant assertions about metaphysics. But to entirely close down metaphysical speculation for that reason is absurd. |
| 15053 | If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If there is no way of settling metaphysical questions, then who cares whether or not they make sense? | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4 n20) | |
| A reaction: This footnote is aimed at logical positivists, who seemed to worry about whether metaphysics made sense, and also dismissed its prospects even if it did make sense. |
| 15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'quietist' view of metaphysics says that realist metaphysics should be abandoned, not because its questions cannot be framed, but because their answers cannot be found. The real world of metaphysics is akin to Kant's noumenal world. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Blackburn, Dworkin, A.Fine, and Putnam-1987 as quietists] Fine aims to clarify the concepts of factuality and of ground, in order to show that metaphysics is possible. |
| 20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He said that dialectical arguments were like spiderswebs: although they seem to indicate craftsmanlike skill, they are useless. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.161 | |
| A reaction: Useful for the spider, but useless to Ariston. |
| 14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism does not respect a deep difference between thing-talk and process-talk, because it tends to place events and things in the same ontological category. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: He then quotes Broad, Idea 14759. This idea is the best reason yet for being sympathetic to the four-dimensionalist view, because I think processes really must have a central place in any decent ontology. |
| 15007 | If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: My main objection to Fine's notion of grounding as fundamental is that it violates 'purity' - that fundamental truths should involve only fundamental notions. | |
| From: comment on Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.2 | |
| A reaction: [p.106 of Sider for 'purity'] The point here is that to define a grounding relation you have to mention the 'higher' levels of the relationship (as in a 'city' being grounded in physical stuff), which doesn't seem fundamental enough. |
| 15006 | Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: When p 'grounds' q then q holds in virtue of p's holding; q's holding is nothing beyond p's holding; the truth of p explains the truth of q in a particularly tight sense (explanation of q by p in this sense requires that p necessitates q). | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 15-16) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.1 | |
| A reaction: This proposal has become a hot topic in current metaphysics, as attempts are made to employ 'grounding' in various logical, epistemological and ontological contexts. I'm a fan - it is at the heart of metaphysics as structure of reality. |
| 15055 | Grounding relations are best expressed as relations between sentences [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I recommend that a statement of ground be cast in the following 'canonical' form: Its being the case that S consists in nothing more than its being the case that T, U... (where S, T, U... are particular sentences). | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that grounding is to be undestood in terms of sentences (and 'its being the case that...'), rather than in terms of objects, properties or relations. Fine thus makes grounding a human activity, rather than a natural activity. |
| 15050 | Reduction might be producing a sentence which gets closer to the logical form [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: One line of reduction is logical analysis. To say one sentence reduces to another is to say that they express the same proposition (or fact), but the grammatical form of the second is closer to the logical form than the grammatical form of the first. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Fine objects that S-and-T reduces to S and T, which is two propositions. He also objects that this approach misses the de re ingredient in reduction (that it is about the things themselves, not the sentences). It also overemphasises logical form. |
| 15051 | Reduction might be semantic, where a reduced sentence is understood through its reduction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A second line of reduction is semantic, and holds in virtue of the meaning of the sentences. It should then be possible to acquire an understanding of the reduced sentence on the basis of understanding the sentences to which it reduces. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Fine says this avoids the first objection to the grammatical approach (see Reaction to Idea 15050), but still can't handle the de re aspect of reduction. Fine also doubts whether this understanding qualifies as 'reduction'. |
| 15052 | Reduction is modal, if the reductions necessarily entail the truth of the target sentence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The third, more recent, approach to reduction is a modal matter. A class of propositions will reduce to - or supervene upon - another if, necessarily, any truth from the one is entailed by truths from the other. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Armstrong, Chalmers and Jackson for this approach] Fine notes that some people reject supervenience as a sort of reduction. He objects that this reduction doesn't necessarily lead to something more basic. |
| 15056 | The notion of reduction (unlike that of 'ground') implies the unreality of what is reduced [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The notion of ground should be distinguished from the strict notion of reduction. A statement of reduction implies the unreality of what is reduced, but a statement of ground does not. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: That seems like a bit of a caricature of reduction. If you see a grey cloud and it reduces to a swarm of mosquitoes, you do not say that the cloud was 'unreal'. Fine is setting up a stall for 'ground' in the metaphysical market. We all seek structure. |
| 15047 | What is real can only be settled in terms of 'ground' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This looks like being one of Fine's most important ideas, which is shifting the whole basis of contemporary metaphysics. Only Parmenides and Heidegger thought Being was the target. Aristotle aims at identity. What grounds what is a third alternative. |
| 15046 | Reality is a primitive metaphysical concept, which cannot be understood in other terms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I conclude that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fine offers arguments to support his claim, but it seems hard to disagree with. The only alternative I can see is to understand reality in terms of our experiences, and this is the road to metaphysical hell. |
| 15060 | Why should what is explanatorily basic be therefore more real? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We may grant that some things are explanatorily more basic than others, but why should that make them more real? | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
| A reaction: This is the question asked by the 'quietist'. Fine's answer is that our whole conception of Reality, with its intrinsic structure, is what lies at the basis, and this is primitive. |
| 15048 | In metaphysics, reality is regarded as either 'factual', or as 'fundamental' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The first main approach says metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'objective' or 'factual'. ...According to the second conception, metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'irreducible' or 'fundamental'. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Fine is defending the 'fundamental' approach, via the 'grounding' relation. The whole structure, though, seems to be reality. In particular, a complete story must include the relations which facilitate more than mere fundamentals. |
| 14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A proper ontology should invoke only categorical, or occurrent, properties and relations. Categorical properties involve what objects are actually like, whereas hypothetical properties 'point beyond' their instances. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This spectacularly leaves out powers and dispositions, which are actual properties which 'point beyond' their instances! This is the nub of the powers debate, and the most interesting topic in modern metaphysics. |
| 14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Followers of the view that every entity is associated with some sortal term that answers the question 'what kind of thing is this?', and determines its persistence conditions, must answer the question what kinds of entity there are. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [He explicitly refers to David Wiggins here] In other words Wiggins has got it the wrong way round, which is my own view of his theory. Sortal terms don't grow on the trees in the Garden of Eden, available for applications. |
| 14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
| Full Idea: This powerful puzzle (known to the Stoics, introduced by Geach, popularised by Wiggins) has a cat Tibbles and a proper part Tib, which is all of Tibbles except the tail. If Tibbles loses her tail, the two were distinct, but they now coincide. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Compare a few people leave a football ground, and what was a large part of the crowd becomes the whole of the crowd. Which suggests that there is no problem if cats are like crowds. But we don't like that view of cats. |
| 14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is claimed that the artist 'created' the statue because the object created is essentially a statue, and thus cannot be identified with the unformed lump of clay with which the artist began. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001]) | |
| A reaction: This is based on Burke's views. This is sortal essentialism, rather than my own view of essence as an inner explanatory mechanism or form. If an old abstract sculpture was no longer recognised as a statue, would it necessarily still be a statue? |
| 14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There are numerous cases in which there is pressure to admit coincident entities. The best way of coming to grips with this, I think, invokes the stage view. ...In the worm theory, coincident objects are no more mysterious than overlapping roads. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: At this point I get nervous if in order to 'get to grips' with a phenomenon which is hard to articulate but obvious to common sense, we have to invoke a rather startling metaphysics that completely upends the common sense we started with. |
| 14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Composition as identity' says that when a thing, x, is composed of some other objects, the ys, then this is a kind of identity between the x and the ys. The industrial-strength version says object x just is the ys. Lewis says it is just an analogy. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: I am averse to such a doctrine, as is Leibniz, with his insistence that an aggregate is not a unity. There has to be some sort of principle that bestows oneness on a many. I take this to be structural, and is an elucidation of hylomorphism. |
| 14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Mereological essentialism says that an object's parts are necessary for its existence. ....It is literally never correct to say that an thing survives a change in its parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm is well known for proposing this view. Sider adds a possible toughening clause, that the parts are also sufficient for the object's existence. This is a philosophers' notion of identity, not the normal English language concept. |
| 14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Three-dimensionalists say that things have no 'temporal parts', that they 'endure', and that they are wholly present at every moment of their careers. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: An obvious problem case for being wholly present would be the building and fitting of a large ship, where it might seem to be present before it was wholly present. |
| 14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Some might even regard inconsistency with time travel as an advantage of three-dimensionalism, as a vindication of a prior belief that time travel is impossible! I see no merit in these claims. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I do! Sider cheerfully says that there are good reasons to believe that time travel is possible, and then use this possibility to support his four-dimensional view, but I personally doubt his assumption. The evidence for time travel is flimsy and obscure. |
| 14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalists say that things have 'temporal parts', that they 'perdure', and that they are spread out over time. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) |
| 14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: For four-dimensionalists intrinsic change is difference between successive temporal parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This attempts a reply to the commonest criticism of four-dimensionalism - that you can't explain change if you don't have one enduring thing which undergoes the change. I get stuck of the question 'how big (temporally) is a part?'. |
| 14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism may be formulated as the claim that, necessarily, each spatiotemporal object has a temporal part at every moment at which it exists. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: If there were tiny quantum gaps between temporal parts, that would presumably ruin the story. On this view an object has to be a 'worm', to be the thing which has the parts. |
| 14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
| Full Idea: My four-dimensionalism implies the existence of temporal parts, but not that those parts are more fundamental, nor that the object is 'constructed' from its parts, nor that identity over time is reducible to parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: That's a rather negative account of temporal parts, which makes you ask what their positive role could be. Do they contribute anything to our understanding of a temporally extended object? |
| 14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Unless otherwise noted, I will think of temporal parts as being instantaneous. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This comes up against all the Augustinian worries about the intrinsic nature of time. How many temporal parts does a typical object possess? Is a third temporal part always to be found between any two of them? How do they 'connect'? |
| 14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: How can an instantaneous stage believe anything? Beliefs take time. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Sider's four-dimensionalist answer is that the belief is embodied in the earlier counterparts, making belief a 'highly relational property'. I am not impressed by this answer to the very nice problem which he has raised. It's a problem for 3D, too. |
| 14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The sensible four-dimensionalist will claim that current temporal parts are caused to exist by previous temporal parts. The laws that govern this process are none other than the familiar laws of motion. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I keep struggling with the instantaneous natural of temporal parts, and now I find that they have to do the job of being causal relata. When do they do their job? They've gone home before they've finished clocking in. Continuance requires motion? |
| 14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Ship of Theseus seems to be a case of 'asymmetric' fission (where one resultant entity has a stronger claim). Many see the continuously rebuilt ship as the stronger candidate, but each candidate, without the other, would be the original ship. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) |
| 14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If someone is in pain at t1 and not at t2, we might restrict Leibniz's Law so as not to apply to 'timebound' properties, ..but this is deeply unsatisfying, ...and forfeits one's claim to be discussing identity. The demands of identity are high. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: [on Myro 1986] Sider's response is unsatisfying. It means a thing loses its identity (with itself?) if it has even a tiny fluctuating in its properties. Quantum changes then destroy all notions of identity. English-speakers don't use 'identity' like that. |
| 14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A counterpart relation is a similarity relation. Since there are different dimensions of similarity, there are different counterpart relations. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.4) |
| 15061 | Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: As long as colour terms pick out fundamental physical properties, I would be willing to countenance their use in the description of Reality in itself, ..even if they are based on a peculiar form of sensory awareness. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
| A reaction: This seems to explain why metaphysicians are so fond of using colour as their example of a property, when it seems rather subjective. There seem to be good reasons for rejecting Fine's view. |
| 15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The main sources of evidence for judgments of ground are intuitive and explanatory. The relationship of ground is a form of explanation, ..explaining what makes a proposition true, which needs simplicity, breadth, coherence, non-circularity and strength. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: My thought is that not only must grounding explain, and therefore be a good explanation, but that the needs of explanation drive our decisions about what are the grounds. It is a bit indeterminate which is tail and which is dog. |
| 15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We take ground to be an explanatory relation: if the truth that P is grounded in other truths, then they account for its truth; P's being the case holds in virtue of the other truths' being the case. ...It is the ultimate form of explanation. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: To be 'ultimate' that which grounds would have to be something which thwarted all further explanation. Popper, for example, got quite angry at the suggestion that we should put a block on further investigation in this way. |
| 15058 | A proposition ingredient is 'essential' if changing it would change the truth-value [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A proposition essentially contains a given constituent if its replacement by some other constituent induces a shift in truth value. Thus Socrates is essential to the proposition that Socrates is a philosopher, but not to Socrates is self-identical. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: In this view the replacement of 'is' by 'isn't' would make 'is' (or affirmation) part of the essence of most propositions. This is about linguistic essence, rather than real essence. It has the potential to be trivial. Replace 'slightly' by 'fairly'? |
| 3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The chief good is to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.2.1 |
| 3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Ariston says that rules are useless if you are virtuous, and useless if you are not. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.4 |
| 14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There is an alternative to the Russellian 'at-at' theory of motion, according to which dynamical quantities are intrinsic to times. Whether and how an object is moving at a time is a fact about what that object is like then. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I think I find this quite appealing, because there is too much of a tendency to think of objects as passive and inert, with laws, forces, motions etc. imposed from the outside. But nature is active and dynamic. However, motion can't be wholly intrinsic. |
| 14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Unlike time, space has three dimensions and lacks a distinguishing direction; unlike space, time seems to be specially connected with causation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: These strike me as nice reasons to doubt (what I already prima facie doubt) that there is a single manifold that is 'space-time', for all that twentieth century physics tells us it is so. A century is a mere click of a clock where truth is concerned. |
| 14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Intermediate between the polar opposites of presentism and eternalism is the view (defended by Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997) that the past is real but the future is not. Reality consists of a growing four-dimensional manifold, the 'growing block universe'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The obvious and plausible basis for this is that statements about the past seem to have truthmakers, but statements about the future lack them. Does a truth always require ontological commitment? Death is cessation of existence. |
| 14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Presentist acknowledges that no atemporal description of the case can be given; a vantage point must be chosen for any description. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This is because Presentists are committed to tense, which have to be either explicit or implicit in any sentence. But what of famously 'timeless' truths such as '2 and 2 are 4'? |
| 14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The presentist must deny the truth of everyday claims that concern multiple times taken together. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This rests on the extent to which every truth has an ontological commitment. You can deny the literal existence of multiple times without denying such truths. |
| 14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The temporal reductionist claims that tensed locutions are indexical - 'present' being the time of utterance etc. This generalises to say that nothing corresponding to tense need be admitted as a fundamental feature of the world. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He particular cites Mellor for this view] Highly implausible. I very much doubt whether it is possible to explain the indexicality of a word like 'now' without referring to tenses. Does time only exist when sentences and thoughts occur? |
| 14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The B-theoretic description of the world is completely adequate except that it leaves out information about which time is present. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty basic deficiency. How could there a time which lacked a present moment? The present is when things happen. How would it qualify as time at all if it lacked past, present and future? |
| 14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The B-series has two components: eternalism - the thesis that all future entities are real - and the thesis of reducibility of tense. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.2) |