40 ideas
16440 | I don't think Lewis's cost-benefit reflective equilibrium approach offers enough guidance [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Lewis articulated and made fashionable the cost-benefit reflective equilibrium methodology, but I have my reservations as it does not offer much guidance. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker suggests that this approach has 'run amok' in Lewis's case, giving reality to possible worlds. He spends much effort on showing the 'benefits' of a profoundly implausible view. The same can be said of 4D Perdurantism. |
16468 | Non-S5 can talk of contingent or necessary necessities [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: One can make sense of necessary versus contingent necessities in a non-S5 modal semantics. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3 n17) | |
A reaction: In S5 □φ → □□φ, so all necessities are necessary. Does it make any sense to say 'I suppose this might have been necessarily true'? |
16449 | In modal set theory, sets only exist in a possible world if that world contains all of its members [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: One principle of modal set theory should be uncontroversial: a set exists in a given possible world if and only if all of its members exist at that world. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2.4) | |
A reaction: Does this mean there can be no set containing all of my ancestors and future descendants? In no world can we coexist. |
16464 | We regiment to get semantic structure, for evaluating arguments, and understanding complexities [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The point of regimentation is to give a perspicuous representation of the semantic structure of an expression, making it easier to evaluate the validity of arguments and to interpret complex statements. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.2) | |
A reaction: This is an authoritative summary from an expert of why all philosophers must take an interest in logical form. |
16465 | In 'S was F or some other than S was F', the disjuncts need S, but the whole disjunction doesn't [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: In 'either Socrates was a philosopher or someone other than Socrates was a philosopher', both propositions expressed by the disjuncts depend for their existence on the existence of Socrates, but the whole disjunction does not. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Nice example, just the sort of thing we pay philosophers to come up with. He is claiming that propositions can exist in possible worlds in which the individuals mentioned do not exist. |
16434 | Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers deny there could have been anything other than what in fact exists, or that anything that exists could have failed to exist. This is developed in very different ways by Wittgenstein (in 'Tractatus'), Lewis and Williamson. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) | |
A reaction: This could come in various strengths. A weak version would say that, empirically, that all talk of what doesn't exist is vacuous. A strong necessity (Williamson?) that totally rules out other possible existence is a very odd view. |
16439 | A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A nominalist definition of existence is 'having spatio-temporal location'. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: This would evidently be physicalist as well as nominalist. Presumably it fits the 'mosaic' of reality Lewis refers to. I find this view sympathetic. A process of abstraction is required to get the rest of the stuff we talk about. |
13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1) | |
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? |
16443 | Properties are modal, involving possible situations where they are exemplified [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I take properties and relations to be modal notions. Properties are to be understood in terms of what it would be for them to be exemplified, which means understanding them in terms of a range of possible situations. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: I can't make head or tail of a property as anything other than a feature of some entity. Treating properties as a 'range of situations' is just as baffling to me as treating them as sets of objects. |
16471 | I accept a hierarchy of properties of properties of properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I myself am prepared to accept higher-order properties and relations. There is the property of being Socrates, …and the property of being the property of being Socrates, ..and so on. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Elsewhere I have quoted such a hierarchy of vacuous properties as an absurdity that arises if all predicates are treated as properties. Logicians can live with such stuff, given their set hierarchy and so on, but in science and life this is a nonsense. |
16452 | Dispositions have modal properties, of which properties things would have counterfactually [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Dispositional properties deserve special mention since they seem to be properties that have modal consequences - consequences for what properties the individuals that instantiate them would have in counterfactual circumstances. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.4) | |
A reaction: I take this to be the key idea in trying to understand modality, but Stalnaker makes this point and then moves swiftly on, because it is so far away from his possible worlds models, in which he has invested a lifetime. |
13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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?' | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
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. |
13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
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. |
13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4) | |
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? |
13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3) | |
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. |
13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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? | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1) | |
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. |
13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
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. |
16467 | 'Socrates is essentially human' seems to say nothing could be Socrates if it was not human [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It seems natural to paraphrase the claim that Socrates is essentially human as the claim that nothing could be Socrates if it was not human. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3) | |
A reaction: In ordinary speech it would be emphasising how very human Socrates was (in comparison with Frege, for example). By this token Socrates essentially breathes oxygen, but that is hardly part of his essence. |
13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2) | |
A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties. |
17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates. |
13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
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). |
16453 | The bundle theory makes the identity of indiscernibles a necessity, since the thing is the properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: On the bundle theory, the identity of indiscernibles (for 'individuals') is a necessary truth, since an individual is just the co-instantiation of all the properties represented by a point in the space of properties. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.6) | |
A reaction: So much the worse for the bundle theory, I presume. Leibniz did not, I think, hold a bundle theory, but his belief in the identity of indiscernibles seems to have had a theologicial underpinning. |
16466 | Strong necessity is always true; weak necessity is cannot be false [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Prior had a strong and a weak reading of necessity, where strong necessity is truth in all possible worlds, while weak necessity is falsity in no possible world. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3) | |
A reaction: [K.Fine 2005:Ch.9 is also cited] The point of the weak one is that in some worlds there might not exist the proposition which is the candidate for truth or falsehood. |
16438 | Necessity and possibility are fundamental, and there can be no reductive analysis of them [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: My view is that if there were a nonmodal analysis of the modal concepts, that would be a sure sign that we were on the wrong track. Necessity and possibility are fundamental concepts, like truth and existence. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: The mystery of modality is tied up with the mystery of time (which is a very big mystery indeed). You get a nice clear grip on the here and now, but time and motion whisk you away to something else. Modality concerns the something else. |
16436 | Modal concepts are central to the actual world, and shouldn't need extravagant metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Modal concepts are central to our understanding of the world - the actual world - and understanding them should not require extravagant metaphysical commitments. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) | |
A reaction: I agree. Personally I think powers and dispositions do the job nicely. You just have to embrace Leibniz's emphasis on the active nature of reality, and the implausible metaphysics starts to recede. |
16433 | Given actualism, how can there be possible individuals, other than the actual ones? [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: My main focus is on how, on an actualist interpretation of possible worlds as ways a world might be, one is to account for the possibility that there be individuals other than those that actually exist. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], Pref) | |
A reaction: The obvious thought would be that they are constructions from components of actual individuals, such as the chimaera, or fictional characters. We need some psychology here, which is not Stalnaker's style. |
16437 | Possible worlds are properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Possible worlds are (to a first approximation) properties. [p.12] They are properties of the total universe. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) |
16444 | Possible worlds don't reduce modality, they regiment it to reveal its structure [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It is not reduction (of modality) but regimentation that the possible-worlds framework provides - a procedure for representing modal discourse, using primitive modal notions, in a way that helps reveal its structure. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly my view. All discussion of the ontology of possible worlds is irrelevant. They no more exist than variables in logic exist. They're good when they clarify, but dubious when they over-simplify. |
16445 | I think of worlds as cells (rather than points) in logical space [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I prefer to think of the possible worlds not as points in logical space but as cells of a relatively fine-grained partition of logical space - a partition that makes all the distinctions we need. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: Since he regards possible worlds as simply a means of regimenting our understanding of modality, he can think of possible worlds in any way that suits him. I find it hard work tuning in to his vision. |
13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46) | |
A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is! |
16454 | Modal properties depend on the choice of a counterpart, which is unconstrained by metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Things have modal properties only relative to the choice of a counterpart relation, and the choice between alternative counterpart relations is not constrained by the metaphysics. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.6) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker is sympathetic to counterparts, but this strikes me as a powerful objection to the theory. I take the modal properties of something to be fixed by its actuality. |
16450 | Anti-haecceitism says there is no more to an individual than meeting some qualitative conditions [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The anti-haecceitist strategy holds that a purely qualitative characterisation of a possible world would be a complete characterisation; there is, on this view, nothing to being a particular individual other than meeting certain qualitative conditions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3) | |
A reaction: Not quite the same as the bundle theory of objects, which says the objects are the qualities. This is about individuation, not about ontology (I think). I don't like anti-haecceitism, but I also don't like haecceitism. Hmm. |
13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
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. | |
From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
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. |
16474 | How can we know what we are thinking, if content depends on something we don't know? [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: How can we know what we ourselves are thinking if the very existence of the content of our thought may depend on facts of which we are ignorant? | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 5) | |
A reaction: This has always been my main doubt about externalism. I may defer to experts about what I intend by an 'elm' (Putnam's example), but what I mean by elm is thereby a fuzzy tall tree with indeterminate leaves. I don't know the meaning of 'elm'! |
16461 | We still lack an agreed semantics for quantifiers in natural language [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: We still do not know how to give a direct semantics for the quantifiers of a natural language; that is something that we still do not know how to do (or at least how it is done remains controversial). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4) | |
A reaction: I am struck by how rapidly the domain of quantification changes, even in mid-sentence, in the course of an ordinary conversation. This is decided almost entirely by context, not by pure ('direct'?) semantics. |
16448 | Possible world semantics may not reduce modality, but it can explain it [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Most theorists agree that possible worlds semantics cannot provide an analysis of modal concepts which is an eliminative reduction, but it can still provide an explanation of the meanings of modal expressions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker cites Kit Fine for the view that there is no reduction of modality, which Fine takes to be primitive. Stalnaker defends the semantics, while denying the reduction which Lewis thought possible. |
16442 | I take propositions to be truth conditions [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I will defend the view that propositions are truth conditions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This sounds close to the Russellian view, which I take to equate propositions (roughly) with facts or states of affairs. But are 'truth conditions' in the world or in the head? |
16447 | A theory of propositions at least needs primitive properties of consistency and of truth [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A minimal theory of propositions can make do with just two primitive properties: a property of consistency applied to sets of propositions, and a property of truth applied to propositions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2) | |
A reaction: I would have thought a minimal theory would need some account of what a proposition is supposed to be (since there seems to be very little agreement about that). Stalnaker goes on to sketch a theory. |
16446 | Propositions presumably don't exist if the things they refer to don't exist [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It seems plausible that singular propositions are object-dependent in the sense that the proposition would not exist if the individual did not. It is also plausible that some objects exist contingently, and there are singular propositions about them. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2) | |
A reaction: This replies to the view that possible worlds are maximal sets of propositions, and so must exist for the worlds to exist; e.g. Lowe 1999:248. That is yet another commonplace of contemporary philosophy which I find utterly bewildering. |
8120 | Objects can be beautiful which express nothing at all, such as the rainbow [Herbart, by Tolstoy] |
Full Idea: Objects are often beautiful which express nothing at all, as, for instance, the rainbow, which is beautiful for its lines and colours and not for its mythological connexion with Iris, or Noah's rainbow. | |
From: report of Johann Herbart (works [1830]) by Leo Tolstoy - What is Art? Ch.3 | |
A reaction: A nice counterexample to Tolstoy's own theory. The example is one of a natural beauty, but it would be harder to find examples in human art. How much the artist may feel, though, has little to do with the success of a work of art. |