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13076
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Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1)
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A reaction:
The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata?
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13102
|
If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?'
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
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A reaction:
There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place.
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13103
|
Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
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A reaction:
This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job.
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13104
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Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4)
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A reaction:
[He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity?
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13100
|
Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3)
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A reaction:
They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously.
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13068
|
We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance?
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|
From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1)
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A reaction:
My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence.
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13069
|
The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2)
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A reaction:
It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open.
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13101
|
Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin.
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From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
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A reaction:
Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant).
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6374
|
To believe maximum truths, believe everything; to have infallible beliefs, believe nothing [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
If we want an agent to believe as many truths as possible, this could be achieved by simply believing everything; if we want an agent to have only true beliefs, this could be achieved by believing nothing.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §6.6)
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A reaction:
I like this. It highlights the pragmatic need for a middle road, in which a core set of beliefs are going to be approved of as 'knowledge', so that we can get on with life. This has to be a social matter, and needs flexibility of Fallibilism.
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21971
|
Transcendental philosophy is the subject becoming the originator of unified reality [Kant]
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Full Idea:
Transcendental philosophy is the act of consciousness whereby the subject becomes the originator of itself and, thereby, of the whole object of technical-practical and moral-practical reason in one system - ordering all things in God
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Posthumous notes [1799], 21:78, p.245), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06 App
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A reaction:
This is evidently Kant's last word on the matter (c.1799), and Moore says he was drifting close to Fichte's idealism, in which reality is actually (sort of) created by our own minds. Disappointing! God's role here is unclear.
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6373
|
Internalism says if anything external varies, the justifiability of the belief does not vary [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
Internalist theories make justifiability of a belief a function of the internal states of the believer, in the sense that if we vary anything but his internal states the justifiability of the belief does not vary.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §5.4.3)
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A reaction:
This seems to be a nice clear definition of internalism (and, by implication, externalism). It favours externalism. I know my car is in the car park; someone takes it for a joyride, then replaces it; my good justification seems thereby weakened.
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6353
|
People rarely have any basic beliefs, and never enough for good foundations [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
We argue that all foundations theories are false, for the simple reason that people rarely have any epistemological basic beliefs, and never have enough to provide a foundation for the rest of our knowledge.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §1.5.3)
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A reaction:
Once surprising things start to happen in a film, we rapidly jettison our normal basic beliefs, to be ready for surprises. However, it seems to me that quite a lot of beliefs are hard-wired into us, or inescapably arise from the use of our senses.
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6357
|
Reason cannot be an ultimate foundation, because rational justification requires prior beliefs [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
Reasoning, it seems, can only justify us in holding a belief if we are already justified in holding the beliefs from which we reason, so reasoning cannot provide an ultimate source of justification.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §2.1)
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A reaction:
This sounds slick and conclusive, but it isn't. If we accept that some truths might be 'self-evident' to reason, they could stand independently. And a large body of rational beliefs might be mutually self-supporting, as in the coherence theory of truth.
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6354
|
Coherence theories fail, because they can't accommodate perception as the basis of knowledge [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
All coherence theories fail, because they are unable to accommodate perception as the basic source of our knowledge of the world.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §1.5.3)
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A reaction:
An interesting claim, which the authors attempt to justify. They say it is direct realism, because the perceptions justify, without any intervening beliefs. My immediate thought is that they might justify knowledge of primary qualities, but not secondary.
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6370
|
Externalism comes as 'probabilism' (probability of truth) and 'reliabilism' (probability of good cognitive process) [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
There are two major kinds of externalist theory in the literature - probabilism (which expresses justification in terms of probability of the belief being true), and reliabilism (which refers to the probability of the cognitive processes being right).
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|
From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §4.1)
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|
A reaction:
A useful clarification. Reliabilism has an obvious problem, that a process can be reliable, but only luckily correct on this occasion (a clock which has, unusually, stopped). A ghost is more probably there if I believe in ghosts.
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6358
|
One belief may cause another, without being the basis for the second belief [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
If I fall flat on my back running to a class, my belief that I was late for class may cause me to have the belief that there are birds in the trees, but I do not believe the latter on the basis of the former.
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|
From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §2.3.1)
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A reaction:
A nice example, which fairly conclusively demolishes any causal theory of justification. My example is believing correctly that the phone ring is from mother, because she said she would call. Maybe causation is needed somewhere in the right theory.
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6352
|
Enumerative induction gives a universal judgement, while statistical induction gives a proportion [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
Enumerative induction examines a sample of objects, observes they all have a property, and infers that they all have that property; statistical induction observes a proportion of the objects having the property, and infers that proportion in general.
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From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §1.4.6)
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A reaction:
There is also induction by elimination, where it is either p or q, and observation keeps saying it isn't p. A small sample is very unreliable, but a huge sample (e.g. cigarettes and cancer) is almost certain, so where is the small/huge boundary?
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13071
|
We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
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Full Idea:
The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships.
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|
From:
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2)
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A reaction:
This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view.
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6360
|
Scientific confirmation is best viewed as inference to the best explanation [Pollock/Cruz]
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Full Idea:
The confirmation of scientific theories is probably best viewed in terms of inference to the best explanation.
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|
From:
J Pollock / J Cruz (Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) [1999], §2.3.3.3)
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A reaction:
A simple claim, but one with which I strongly agree. 'Inference', of course, implies that there is some fairly strict logical thinking going on, which may not be so. I suspect that dogs can move to the best explanation. It is, though, a rational process.
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