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All the ideas for 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz', 'Predest.,God's foreknowledge and contingents' and 'The Thought: a Logical Enquiry'

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26 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 5. Objectivity
7740 There exists a realm, beyond objects and ideas, of non-spatio-temporal thoughts [Frege, by Weiner]
     Full Idea: There is, in addition to the external world of physical objects and the internal world of ideas, a third realm of non-spatio-temporal objective objects, among which are thoughts.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.7
     A reaction: This seems to be Platonism, and, in particular, to give a Platonic existent status to propositions. Personally I believe in propositions, but as glimpses of how our brains actually work, not as mystical objects.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 2. Defining Truth
19466 The word 'true' seems to be unique and indefinable [Frege]
     Full Idea: It seems likely that the content of the word 'true' is sui generis and indefinable
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60))
     A reaction: This is the view I associate with Davidson, though fans of Axiomatic Truth give up defining it, and just describe how it behaves. Defining it is very elusive, but I don't accept that nothing can be said about the contents of the concept of truth.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
19465 There cannot be complete correspondence, because ideas and reality are quite different [Frege]
     Full Idea: It is essential that the reality shall be distinct from the idea. But then there can be no complete correspondence, no complete truth.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60))
     A reaction: He thinks that logic can give a perfect account of truth, or at least the extension of truth, where ordinary language will always fail. I wonder what he would have thought of Tarski's theory?
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
19468 The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets' [Frege]
     Full Idea: The sentence 'I smell the scent of violets' has just the same content as 'It is true that I smell the scent of violets'. So it seems that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.328 (61))
     A reaction: This idea predates Ramsey's similar proposal, for which, oddly, Ramsey always seems to get the credit. To a logician they may have identical content, but pragmatically they are likely to differ in context. 'True' certainly doesn't add to the thought.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 2. Types of Existence
19470 Thoughts in the 'third realm' cannot be sensed, and do not need an owner to exist [Frege]
     Full Idea: Thoughts are neither things in the external world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognised. Anything in this realm has it in common with ideas that it cannot be perceived by the senses, and does not need an owner to belong with his consciousness.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.337(69))
     A reaction: This important idea is the creed for modern platonists. We don't have to accept Forms, or any particular content, but there is a mode of existence which is distinct from both mental and physical, and is the residence of 'abstracta'. I deny it!
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / c. Facts and truths
19471 A fact is a thought that is true [Frege]
     Full Idea: A fact is a thought that is true.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.342(74))
     A reaction: It strikes me as pretty obvious that facts are not thoughts, because they concern the contents of thoughts. You can't discuss facts without the notion of what a thought is 'about'. If I think about my garden, the relevant fact is aspects of my garden.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
16654 Our words and concepts don't always correspond to what is out there [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: It should not be said that as distinct words and intentions or concepts are distinct from one another, so too the corresponding things are distinct. Those distinctions do not always line up with distinctions among things that are signified.
     From: William of Ockham (Predest.,God's foreknowledge and contingents [1320], 7.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.2
     A reaction: [compressed] This is the great nominalist opponent of the idea that Aristotle's ten categories give an accurate map of reality. He proposed just substance and accidents, and based categorisation on the questions we ask.
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
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?
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 3. Objects in Thought
9877 Late Frege saw his non-actual objective objects as exclusively thoughts and senses [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Earlier, Frege divided objects into subjective, actual objective, and non-actual objective; in the 'Grundgesetze' he emphasised logical objects; but in 'The Thought' the non-actual objects become exclusively thoughts and their constituent senses.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.18
     A reaction: Sounds to me like Frege was finally waking up and taking a dose of common sense. The Equator is the standard example of a non-actual objective object.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
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.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
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?
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance
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.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / c. Types of substance
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.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / d. Substance defined
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.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
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.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
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).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
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!
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / c. Explanations by coherence
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.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
19469 We grasp thoughts (thinking), decide they are true (judgement), and manifest the judgement (assertion) [Frege]
     Full Idea: We distinguish the grasp of a thought, which is 'thinking', from the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought, which is the act of 'judgement', from the manifestation of this judgement, which is an 'assertion'.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.329 (62))
8162 Thoughts have their own realm of reality - 'sense' (as opposed to the realm of 'reference') [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: For Frege, thoughts belong to a special realm of reality, which he called the 'realm of sense' and distinguished from the 'realm of reference'.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1
     A reaction: A thought is, for Frege, a proposition. There is a halfway Platonism possible here, where the 'realm' for such things exists, but within that realm the objects might be conventional, or some such. Real possible worlds containing fictions!
9818 A thought is distinguished from other things by a capacity to be true or false [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: On Frege's view, what distinguishes thoughts from everything else is that they may meaningfully be called 'true' and 'false'.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2
     A reaction: A lot of thinking is imagistic, and while the image may or may not truly picture the world, we tend to think that the truth or otherwise of daydreaming is simply irrelevant. Does Frege take all thought to be propositional?
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 9. Indexical Thought
16379 Thoughts about myself are understood one way to me, and another when communicated [Frege]
     Full Idea: When Dr Lauben thinks he has been wounded, ..only Dr Lauben can grasp thoughts determined in this way. But he cannot communicate a thought which only he can grasp. To say 'I have been wounded' he must use 'I' in a sense graspable by others.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 16.1
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems to be the first, and very influential, attempt to explain the unusual and revealing semantics of indexicals. It seems to be the ultimate source of 2-D semantics, by introducing two modes of meaning for one term.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / a. Propositions as sense
19467 A 'thought' is something for which the question of truth can arise; thoughts are senses of sentences [Frege]
     Full Idea: I call a 'thought' something for which the question of truth can arise at all. ...So I can say: thoughts are senses of sentences, without wishing to assert that the sense of every sentence is a thought.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327-8 (61))
     A reaction: This builds on his distinction between sense and reference. The reference of every truth sentence is just 'the true', and the sense is the proposition. The concept of a proposition seems indispensable to logic, I would say.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 5. Unity of Propositions
19472 A sentence is only a thought if it is complete, and has a time-specification [Frege]
     Full Idea: Only a sentence with the time-specification filled out, a sentence complete in every respect, expresses a thought.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.343(76))
     A reaction: I take the 'every respect' to include the avoidance of ambiguity, and some sort of perspicacious reference for the terms. I wish philosophers would focus on the thoughts in their subject, and not nit-pick about the sentences. Does he mean 'utterances'?