17 ideas
| 9208 | Philosophers with a new concept are like children with a new toy [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers with a new concept are like children with a new toy; their world shrinks to one in which it takes centre stage. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.10) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully accurate observation, I'm afraid. You can trace the entire history of the subject as a wave of obsessions with exciting new ideas. Fine is referring to a posteriori necessities and possible worlds. |
| 9358 | There are several logics, none of which will ever derive falsehoods from truth [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The fact is that there are several logics, markedly different, each self-consistent in its own terms and such that whoever, using it, avoids false premises, will never reach a false conclusion. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.366) | |
| A reaction: As the man who invented modal logic in five different versions, he speaks with some authority. Logicians now debate which version is the best, so how could that be decided? You could avoid false conclusions by never reasoning at all. |
| 9357 | Excluded middle is just our preference for a simplified dichotomy in experience [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The law of excluded middle formulates our decision that whatever is not designated by a certain term shall be designated by its negative. It declares our purpose to make a complete dichotomy of experience, ..which is only our penchant for simplicity. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.365) | |
| A reaction: I find this view quite appealing. 'Look, it's either F or it isn't!' is a dogmatic attitude which irritates a lot of people, and appears to be dispensible. Intuitionists in mathematics dispense with the principle, and vagueness threatens it. |
| 9364 | Names represent a uniformity in experience, or they name nothing [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: A name must represent some uniformity in experience or it names nothing. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368) | |
| A reaction: I like this because, in the quintessentially linguistic debate about the exact logical role of names, it reminds us that names arise because of the way reality is; they are not sui generis private games for logicians. |
| 9210 | Possible objects are abstract; actual concrete objects are possible; so abstract/concrete are compatible [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If it is in the nature of a possible object to be abstract, this is presumably a property it has in any possible circumstance in which it is actual. If it is actual it is also concrete. So the property of being abstract and concrete are not incompatible. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.14) | |
| A reaction: A rather startling and powerful idea. What of the definition of an abstract object as one which is not in space-time, and lacks causal powers? Could it be that abstraction is a projection of our minds, onto concepts or objects? |
| 9211 | A non-standard realism, with no privileged standpoint, might challenge its absoluteness or coherence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: By challenging the assumption that reality is 'absolute' (not relative to a standpoint), or that reality is 'coherent' (it is of a piece, from one standpoint), one accepts worldly facts without a privilege standpoint. I call this 'non-standard' realism. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.15) | |
| A reaction: Fine's essay 'Tense and Reality' explores his proposal. I'm not drawn to either of his challenges. I have always taken as articles of faith that there could be a God's Eye view of all of reality, and that everything coheres, independent of our view. |
| 16661 | There are two sorts of category - referring to things, and to circumstances of things [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Is it not now clear what the difference is between items in the categories? Some serve to refer to a thing, whereas others serve to refer to the circumstances of a thing. | |
| From: Boethius (Concerning the Trinity [c.518], Ch. 4), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.5 |
| 9202 | Objects, as well as sentences, can have logical form [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We normally think of logical form as exclusively an attribute of sentences; however, the notion may also be taken to have application to objects. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p. 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking proposal which seems intuitively right. If one said that objects have 'powers', one might subsume abstract and physical objects under a single account. |
| 9206 | We must distinguish between the identity or essence of an object, and its necessary features [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The failure to distinguish between the identity or essence of an object and its necessary features is an instance of what we may call 'modal mania'. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p. 9) | |
| A reaction: He blames Kripke's work for modal mania, a reaction to Quine's 'contempt' for modal notions. I don't actually understand Fine's remark (yet), but it strikes me as incredibly important! Explanations by email, please. |
| 9205 | The three basic types of necessity are metaphysical, natural and normative [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There are three basic forms of necessity - the metaphysical (sourced in the identity of objects); natural necessity (in the 'fabric' of the universe); and normative necessity (in the realm of norms and values). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p. 7) | |
| A reaction: Earlier he has allowed, as less 'basic', logical necessity (in logical forms), and analytic necessity (in meaning). Fine insists that the three kinds should be kept separate (so no metaphysical necessities about nature). I resent this. |
| 9209 | Metaphysical necessity may be 'whatever the circumstance', or 'regardless of circumstances' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There are two fundamental ways in which a property may be metaphysically necessary: it may be a worldly necessity, true whatever the circumstances; or it may be a transcendent necessity, true regardless of the circumstances. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.10) | |
| A reaction: [See Fine's 'Necessity and Non-Existence' for further details] The distinction seems to be that the first sort needs some circumstances (e.g. a physical world?), whereas the second sort doesn't (logical relations?). He also applies it to existence. |
| 9362 | Necessary truths are those we will maintain no matter what [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: Those laws and those laws only have necessary truth which we are prepared to maintain, no matter what. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.367) | |
| A reaction: This bold and simple claim has famously been torpedoed by a well-known counterexample - that virtually every human being will cling on to the proposition "dogs have at some time existed" no matter what, but it clearly isn't a necessary truth. |
| 9200 | Empiricists suspect modal notions: either it happens or it doesn't; it is just regularities. [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Empiricists have always been suspicious of modal notions: the world is an on-or-off matter - either something happens or it does not. ..Empiricists, in so far as they have been able to make sense of modality, have tended to see it as a form of regularity. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p. 1) | |
| A reaction: Fine is discussing the two extreme views of Quine and Lewis. It is one thing to have views about what is possible, and another to include possibilities 'in your ontology'. Our imagination competes with our extrapolations from actuality. |
| 9365 | We can maintain a priori principles come what may, but we can also change them [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The a priori contains principles which can be maintained in the face of all experience, representing the initiative of the mind. But they are subject to alteration on pragmatic grounds, if expanding experience shows their intellectual infelicity. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.373) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This simply IS Quine's famous 'web of belief' picture, showing how firmly Quine is in the pragmatist tradition. Lewis treats a priori principles as a pragmatic toolkit, which can be refined to be more effective. Not implausible... |
| 9361 | We have to separate the mathematical from physical phenomena by abstraction [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: Physical processes present us with phenomena in which the purely mathematical has to be separated out by abstraction. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.367) | |
| A reaction: This is the father of modal logic endorsing traditional abstractionism, it seems. He is also, though, endorsing the view that a priori knowledge is created by us, with pragmatic ends in view. |
| 9207 | If sentence content is all worlds where it is true, all necessary truths have the same content! [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The content of a sentence is often identified with the set of possible worlds in which it is true, where the worlds are metaphysically possible. But this has the awkward consequence that all metaphysically necessary truths will have the same content. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Intro to 'Modality and Tense' [2005], p.10) | |
| A reaction: I've never understood how the content of a sentence could be a vast set of worlds, so I am delighted to see this proposal be torpedoed. That doesn't mean that truth conditions across possible worlds is not a promising notion. |
| 9363 | Science seeks classification which will discover laws, essences, and predictions [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The scientific search is for such classification as will make it possible to correlate appearance and behaviour, to discover law, to penetrate to the "essential nature" of things in order that behaviour may become predictable. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368) | |
| A reaction: Modern scientific essentialists no longer invoke scare quotes, and I think we should talk of the search for the 'mechanisms' which explain behaviour, but Lewis seems to have been sixty years ahead of his time. |