12 ideas
| 17954 | Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Essence is, as it were, necessity rooted in things, ...but how about possibility rooted in things? ...Having the potential to Φ, unlike being essentially Φ, does not entail being actually Φ. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §2) | |
| A reaction: To me this invites the question 'what is it about the entity which endows it with its rooted possibilities?' A thing has possibilities because it has a certain nature (at a given time). |
| 17953 | Real definition fits abstracta, but not individual concrete objects like Socrates [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: I can understand the notion of real definition as applying to (some) abstact entities, but I have no idea how to apply it to a concrete object such as Socrates or myself. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: She is objecting to Kit Fine's account of essence, which is meant to be clearer than the normal account of essences based on necessities. Aristotle implies that definitions get fuzzy when you reach the level of the individual. |
| 17952 | Modal accounts make essence less mysterious, by basing them on the clearer necessity [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The modal account was meant, I take it, to make the notion of essence less mysterious by basing it on the supposedly better understood notion of necessity. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §1) |
| 17959 | Metaphysical necessity is even more deeply empirical than Kripke has argued [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We support the views of metaphysical modality on which metaphysical necessity is an even more deeply empirical matter than Kripke has argued. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], p.2) | |
| A reaction: [co-author E. Viebahn] This seems to pinpoint the spirit of scientific essentialism. She cites Bird and Shoemaker. If it is empirical, doesn't that make it a matter of epistemology, and hence further from absolute necessity? |
| 17955 | Possible worlds allow us to talk about degrees of possibility [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The apparatus of possible worlds affords greater expressive power than mere talk of possibility and necessity. In particular, possible worlds talk allows us to introduce degrees of possibility. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: A nice feature, but I'm not sure that either the proportion of possible worlds or the closeness of possible worlds captures what we actually mean by a certain degree of possibility. There is 'accidental closeness', or absence of contingency. See Vetter. |
| 17957 | Maybe possibility is constituted by potentiality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should look at the claim that possibility is constituted by potentiality. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: A problem that comes to mind is possibilities arising from coincidence. The whole of reality must be described, to capture all the possibilities for a particular thing. So potentialities of what? Nice thought, though. |
| 13858 | The truth-functional account of conditionals is right, if the antecedent is really acceptable [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson defends the truth-functional account by saying that for a conditional to be assertable, it must not only be believed that its truth-conditions are satisfied, but the belief must be robust or resilient with respect to the antecedent. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals and Possibilia [1981]) by Dorothy Edgington - Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? 4 | |
| A reaction: ..That is, one would not abandon the conditional if one believed the antecedent to be true. |
| 17958 | The apparently metaphysically possible may only be epistemically possible [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Some of what metaphysicians take to be metaphysically possible turns out to be only epistemically possible. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear expression of the increasingly common view that conceivability may be a limited way to grasp possibility. |
| 17956 | Closeness of worlds should be determined by the intrinsic nature of relevant objects [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The closeness of possible worlds should be determined by similarity in the intrinsic constitution of whatever object it is whose potentialities are at issue. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: Nice thought. This seems to be the essentialist approach to possible worlds, but it makes the natures of the objects more fundamental than the framework of the worlds. She demurs because there are also extrinsic potentialities. |
| 13550 | To be always happy is to lack knowledge of one half of nature [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: To be always happy and to pass through life without any mental distress is to lack knowledge of one half of nature. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §4) | |
| A reaction: These kind of paradoxes plague virtue theory, and any theory which aims at an ideal. Heaven, for example, seems to have no problems to solve, which spells boredom. The fascination of corrupt people is their superior knowledge of the world. |
| 13549 | Nothing bad can happen to a good man [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Nothing bad can happen to a good man. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §2) | |
| A reaction: This is a pithy summary of a well know ancient attitude - one that is rejected by Aristotle, but defended by Socrates. It depends what you mean by 'bad' - but that is a rather modern response. |
| 13548 | The ocean changes in volume in proportion to the attraction of the moon [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: The waves increase by degrees, approaching to the hour and day proportionately larger or smaller in volume as they are attracted by the star we call the moon, whose power controls the ocean's surge. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (On Providence [c.60], §1) | |
| A reaction: ....just in case anyone thought that Isaac Newton had invented gravity. |