7 ideas
| 16186 | The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) |
| 16187 | The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things). | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual. |
| 16190 | BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5) | |
| A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing? |
| 16188 | Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners. |
| 4760 | Belief aims at knowledge (rather than truth), and mere believing is a kind of botched knowing [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Knowing is the best kind of believing. Mere believing is a kind of botched knowing. In short, belief aims at knowledge (not just truth). | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits [2000], §1.5) | |
| A reaction: The difference between aiming at truth and aiming at knowledge has to be in the justificiation, so beliefs aim to be justified. Believers always aim at truth, but they can be strikingly relaxed about justification. |
| 19512 | Don't analyse knowledge; use knowledge to analyse other concepts in epistemology [Williamson, by DeRose] |
| Full Idea: Williamson says that instead of being viewed as a concept to be analysed, knowledge should be seen as something useful in the analysis of all sorts of other concepts to epistemology - and to philosophy of mind as well. | |
| From: report of Timothy Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits [2000]) by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.8 | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe this, because knowledge is obviously a complex state of mind, which invites breaking it down into ingredients. How could knowledge possibly be prior to truth? |
| 7628 | Broad rejects the inferential component of the representative theory [Broad, by Maund] |
| Full Idea: Broad, one of the most important modern defenders of the representative theory of perception, explicitly rejects the inferential component of the theory. | |
| From: report of C.D. Broad (Mind and Its Place in Nature [1925]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Since the supposed inferences happen much too quickly to be conscious, it is hard to see how we could distinguish an inference from an interpretation mechanism. Personally I interpret things long before the question of truth arises. |