9455
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Maybe proper names have the content of fixing a thing's category [Bealer]
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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.
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From:
George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §7)
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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.
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9454
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The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's [Bealer]
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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.
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From:
George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §5)
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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.
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17447
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Parsons says counting is tagging as first, second, third..., and converting the last to a cardinal [Parsons,C, by Heck]
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Full Idea:
In Parsons's demonstrative model of counting, '1' means the first, and counting says 'the first, the second, the third', where one is supposed to 'tag' each object exactly once, and report how many by converting the last ordinal into a cardinal.
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From:
report of Charles Parsons (Frege's Theory of Numbers [1965]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3
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A reaction:
This sounds good. Counting seems to rely on that fact that numbers can be both ordinals and cardinals. You don't 'convert' at the end, though, because all the way you mean 'this cardinality in this order'.
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9452
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Propositions might be reduced to functions (worlds to truth values), or ordered sets of properties and relations [Bealer]
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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.
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From:
George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1)
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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.
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9451
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Modal logic and brain science have reaffirmed traditional belief in propositions [Bealer]
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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.
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From:
George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1)
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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.
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19384
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Space and time are the order of all possibilities, and don't just relate to what is actual [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
Space and time taken together constitute the order of possibilities of the one entire universe, so that these orders relate not only to what actually is, but also to anything that could be put in its place.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to 'Rorarius' 2nd ed [1702], GP iv 568), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Space and Time'
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A reaction:
A very nice idea. Rather like the 'space of reasons', where all rational thought must exist, space and time are the 'space of existence and action'. Their concepts involve more than relations between what actually exists.
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