16 ideas
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To say than x has a property in a possible world is simply to say that x would have had the property if that world had been actual. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga tries to defuse all the problems with identity across possible worlds, by hanging on to subjunctive verbs and modal modifiers. The point, though, was to explain these, or at least to try to give their logical form. |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: A possible world is just a maximal possible state of affairs. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that Plantinga includes the word 'possible' in his definition. Possibility defines the worlds, and so worlds cannot be used on their own to define possibility. |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If the Socrates of the actual world has snubnosedness but Socrates-in-W does not, this is surely inconsistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which none sounder can be conceived. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: However, we allow Socrates to differ over time while remaining the same Socrates, so some similar approach should apply here. In both cases we need some notion of what is essential to Socrates. But what unites aged 3 with aged 70? |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case? |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The Theory of Worldbound Individuals contends that no object exists in more than one possible world; this implies the outrageous view that - taking properties in the broadest sense - no object could have lacked any property that it in fact has. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is the best known exponent of this 'outrageous view', though Plantinga shows that Lewis may be seen in the same light, since only counterparts are found in possible worlds, not the real thing. The Theory does seem wrong. |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: While Socrates has no counterparts that lack self-identity, he does have counterparts that lack identity-with-Socrates. He alone has that - the property, that is, of being identical with the object that in fact instantiates Socrateity. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: I am never persuaded by arguments which rest on such dubious pseudo-properties. Whether or not a counterpart of Socrates has any sort of identity with Socrates cannot be prejudged, as it would beg the question. |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense to say I could have been someone else, yet Counterpart Theory implies not merely that I could have been distinct from myself, but that I would have been distinct from myself had things gone differently in even the most miniscule detail. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: A counterpart doesn't appear to be 'me being distinct from myself'. We have to combine counterparts over possible worlds with perdurance over time. I am a 'worm' of time-slices. Anything not in that worm is not strictly me. |
| 3102 | Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee] |
| Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?' | |
| From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose. |
| 19451 | When absorbed in deep reflection, is your reason in control, or is it you? [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: When, submerged in deep reflection, you forget both yourself and your surroundings, is it you who controls reason, or is it rather reason that controls and absorbs you? | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: A delightful question, even if it looks like a false dichotomy. I'm not sure what to make of 'me', if my reason can be subtracted from it. Aquinas was one the same wavelength here. |
| 19450 | Reason, love and will are the highest perfections and essence of man - the purpose of his life [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man; they are his highest powers, his absolute essence in so far as he is man, the purpose of his existence. Man exists in order to think, love and will. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Feuerbach was a notable atheist, but adopts a religious style of language which modern atheists would find rather alien. Personally I love talk of ideals and perfections. Ideals have been discredited in modern times, but need a revival. |
| 19448 | Consciousness is said to distinguish man from animals - consciousness of his own species [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What constitutes the essential difference between man and animal? The most simple, general, and most widely held answer to this question is consciousness. Consciousness is given only in the case of a being to whom his species ...is an object of thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Rather speculative. Since other species cohabit and breed only with their fellow species members, one might have thought they were aware of them. |
| 19454 | A God needs justice, kindness and wisdom, but those concepts don't depend on the concept of God [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The concept of God depends on the concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom - a God who is not kind, not just, and not wise is no God. But these concepts do not depend on the concept of God. That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Feuerbach's argument for atheism, but if you ask for the source of our human concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom, no one, I would have thought, could cite God for the role. |
| 19452 | The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his expressed self. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Even if you are a deeply committed theist, you have to concede some of this point. The perfections attributed to God are usually of human qualities. Leibniz, though, says that God has an infinity of perfection, mostly unknown to us. |
| 19453 | If love, goodness and personality are human, the God who is their source is anthropomorphic [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: If love, goodness, and personality are human determinations, the being which constitutes their source and ...their presupposition is also an anthropomorphism; so is the existence of God. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly a struggle for the imagination to grasp a being which is characterised by idealised versions of human virtues, and yet has an intrinsic nature which is utterly different from humanity. |
| 19449 | Religion is the consciousness of the infinite [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Religion is the consciousness of the infinite. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) |
| 19455 | Today's atheism will tomorrow become a religion [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What is regarded as atheism today will be religion tomorrow. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Modern critics of atheism frequently accuse it of being a new religion. I doubt whether Feuerbach is right, but it is a nice provocative idea. |