18398
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Space, time, and some other basics, are not causal powers [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
Spatial, temporal, and other primary properties and relationships are not causal powers.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Response to David Armstrong [1999], p.42), quoted by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 10.4
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A reaction:
It is hard to see how time and space could actually be powers, but future results in physics (or even current results about 'fields') might change that.
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16984
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I don't think possible worlds reductively reveal the natures of modal operators etc. [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
I do not think of 'possible worlds' as providing a reductive analysis in any philosophically significant sense, that is, as uncovering the ultimate nature, from either an epistemological or a metaphysical view, of modal operators, propositions etc.
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.19 n18)
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A reaction:
I think this remark opens the door for Kit Fine's approach, of showing what modality is by specifying its sources. Possible worlds model the behaviour of modal inferences.
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9385
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The very act of designating of an object with properties gives knowledge of a contingent truth [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
If a speaker introduced a designator into a language by a ceremony, then in virtue of his very linguistic act, he would be in a position to say 'I know that Fa', but nevertheless 'Fa' would be a contingent truth (provided F is not an essential property).
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.14)
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A reaction:
If someone else does the designation, I seem to have contingent knowledge that the ceremony has taken place. You needn't experience the object, but you must experience the ceremony, even if you perform it.
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16983
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Probability with dice uses possible worlds, abstractions which fictionally simplify things [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
In studying probabilities with dice, we are introduced at a tender age to a set of 36 (miniature) possible worlds, if we (fictively) ignore everything except the two dice. …The possibilities are abstract states of the dice, not physical entities.
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.16)
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A reaction:
Interesting for the introduction by the great man of the words 'fictional' and 'abstract' into the discussion. He says elsewhere that he takes worlds to be less than real, but more than mere technical devices.
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22200
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If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle]
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Full Idea:
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
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From:
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6)
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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.
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