10 ideas
| 18889 | Ostensive definitions needn't involve pointing, but must refer to something specific [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: So-called ostensive definitions need not literally involve ostension, e.g. pointing, but they must involve genuine reference of some sort (in this case reference to a sample of water). | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 4.11.2) |
| 14627 | S4, and therefore S5, are invalid for metaphysical modality [Salmon,N, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Salmon argues that S4 and therefore S5 are invalid for metaphysical modality. | |
| From: report of Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 238-40) by Timothy Williamson - Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 4 | |
| A reaction: [He gives references for Salmon, and for his own reply] Salmon's view seems to be opposed my most modern logicians (such as Ian Rumfitt). |
| 8502 | Realism doesn't explain 'a is F' any further by saying it is 'a has F-ness' [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Realists feel that the one-place predication 'a is F' leaves something unexplained, yet all that is offered is a two-place predication (a relational statement). There is an equal problem about 'a having F-ness'. | |
| From: Michael Devitt ('Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? [1980], p.97) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a key argument on the nominalist side - the denial that the theory of universals actually makes any progress at all in giving an explanation of what is going on around here. Platonist have the problem of 'partaking'. |
| 8503 | The particular/universal distinction is unhelpful clutter; we should accept 'a is F' as basic [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Talk of 'particulars' and 'universals' clutters the landscape without adding to our understanding. We should rest with the basic fact that a is F. | |
| From: Michael Devitt ('Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? [1980], p.98) | |
| A reaction: Ramsey was first to challenge the basic distinction. I find the approach of Quine and Devitt unsatisfactory. We abandon explanation when it is totally hopeless, but that is usually in the face of complexity. Properties are difficult but simple. |
| 8501 | Quineans take predication about objects as basic, not reference to properties they may have [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: For 'a and b have the same property, F-ness' the Quinean Nominalist has a paraphrase to hand: 'a and b are both F'. ..In denying that this object need have properties, the Quinean is not denying that it really is F. | |
| From: Michael Devitt ('Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? [1980], p.95) | |
| A reaction: The question that remains is why 'F' is used of both a and b. We don't call a and b 'a', because they are different. Quine falls back on resemblance. I suspect Quineans of hiding behind the semantics. |
| 18888 | Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysical doctrine of essentialism says that certain properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have, except by not existing. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 3.8.2) | |
| A reaction: A bad account of essentialism, and a long way from Aristotle. It arises from the logicians' tendency to fix objects entirely in terms of a 'flat' list of predicates (called 'properties'!), which ignore structure, constitution, history etc. |
| 22200 | If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle] |
| Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. | |
| From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible. |
| 18886 | Frege's 'sense' solves four tricky puzzles [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: Reference via sense solves Frege's four puzzles, of the informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitutivity in attitude contexts, of negative existentials, and the truth-value of statements using nondenoting singular terms. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: These must then be compared with Kripke's three puzzles about referring via sense, and the whole debate is then spread before us. |
| 18887 | The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works. |
| 18891 | Nothing in the direct theory of reference blocks anti-essentialism; water structure might have been different [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be nothing in the theory of direct reference to block the anti-essentialist assertion that the substance water might have been the very same entity and yet have had a different chemical structure. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 6.23.1) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, water could be continuously changing its inner structure, while retaining the surface appearance that gets baptised as 'water'. We make the reasonable empirical assumption, though, that structure-change implies surface-change. |