16 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
17009 | I won't object if someone shows that gravity consistently arises from the action of matter [Newton] |
Full Idea: If someone explains gravity along with all its laws by the action of some subtle matter, and shows that the motion of the planets and comets will not be disturbed by this matter, I shall be far from objecting. | |
From: Isaac Newton (Letters to Leibniz 1 [1693], 1693.10.16) | |
A reaction: Important if you think that Newton is the hero of the descriptive regularity theory of laws. Newton probably thought laws came from God, but he wouldn't object to Leibniz's view, that God planted the laws within the matter. |
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. |
7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |