9 ideas
| 9455 | Maybe proper names have the content of fixing a thing's category [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: Some say that proper names have no descriptive content, but others think that although a name does not have the right sort of descriptive content which fixes a unique referent, it has a content which fixes the sort or category to which it belongs. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §7) | |
| A reaction: Presumably 'Mary', and 'Felix', and 'Rover', and 'Smallville' are cases in point. There is a well known journalist called 'Manchester', a famous man called 'Hilary', a village in Hertfordshire called 'Matching Tie'... Interesting, though. |
| 9454 | The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's, ...of which to many Frege's is the most intuitive of the four. Frege says they refer to the unique item (if it exists) which satisfies the predicate. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §5) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't expound the other three, but I record this a corrective to the view that Russell has the only game in town. |
| 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. |
| 9453 | Sentences saying the same with the same rigid designators may still express different propositions [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The propositions behind 'Cicero is emulated more than Tully' seems to differ somehow from 'Tully is emulated more than Cicero', despite the proper names being rigid designators. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, because this isn't a directly propositional attitude situation like 'believes', though it depends on such things. Bealer says this is a key modern difficulty with propositions. |
| 9452 | Propositions might be reduced to functions (worlds to truth values), or ordered sets of properties and relations [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The reductionist view of propositions sees them as either extensional functions from possible worlds to truth values, or as ordered sets of properties, relations, and perhaps particulars. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: The usual problem of all functional accounts is 'what is it about x that enables it to have that function?' And if they are sets, where does the ordering come in? A proposition isn't just a list of items in some particular order. Both wrong. |
| 9451 | Modal logic and brain science have reaffirmed traditional belief in propositions [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers have been skeptical about abstract objects, and so have been skeptical about propositions,..but with the rise of modal logic and metaphysics, and cognitive science's realism about intentional states, traditional propositions are now dominant. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: I personally strongly favour belief in propositions as brain states, which don't need a bizarre ontological status, but are essential to explain language, reasoning and communication. |
| 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. |