8865
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If 'the number of Democrats is on the rise', does that mean that 50 million is on the rise? [Yablo]
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Full Idea:
If someone says 'the number of Democrats is on the rise', he or she wants to focus on Democrats, not numbers. If the number is 50 million, is 50 million really on the rise?
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From:
Stephen Yablo (Apriority and Existence [2000], §14)
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A reaction:
This is a very nice warning from Yablo, against easy platonism, or any sort of platonism at all. We routinely say that numbers are 'increasing', but the real meaning needs entangling. Here it refers to people joining a party.
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5060
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All substances analyse down to simple substances, which are souls, or 'monads' [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
What (in the analysis of substances) exist ultimately are simple substances - namely, souls, or, if you prefer a more general terms, 'monads', which are without parts.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Metaphysical conseqs of principle of reason [1712], §7)
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A reaction:
This seems to me to be atomistic panpsychism. He is opposed to physical atomism, because infinite divisibility seems obvious, but unity is claimed to be equally obvious in the world of the mental. Does this mean bricks are made of souls? Odd.
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8864
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We quantify over events, worlds, etc. in order to make logical possibilities clearer [Yablo]
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Full Idea:
It is not that the contents of sentences are inexpressible without quantifying over events, worlds, etc. (they aren't). But the logical relations become much more tractable if we represent them quantificationally.
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From:
Stephen Yablo (Apriority and Existence [2000], §13)
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A reaction:
Yablo is explaining why we find ourselves committed to abstract objects. It is essentially, as I am beginning to suspect, a conspiracy of logicians. What on earth is 'the empty set' when it is at home? What's it made of?
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8858
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Philosophers keep finding unexpected objects, like models, worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets, properties [Yablo]
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Full Idea:
There's a tradition in philosophy of finding 'unexpected objects' in truth-conditions, such as countermodels, possible worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets and properties.
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From:
Stephen Yablo (Apriority and Existence [2000], §02)
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A reaction:
This is a very nice perspective on the whole matter of abstract objects. If we find ourselves reluctantly committed to the existence of something which is ontologically peculiar, we should go back to the philosophical drawing-board.
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5059
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Power rules in efficient causes, but wisdom rules in connecting them to final causes [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
In all of nature efficient causes correspond to final causes, because everything proceeds from a cause which is not only powerful, but wise; and with the rule of power through efficient causes, there is involved the rule of wisdom through final causes.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Metaphysical conseqs of principle of reason [1712], §5)
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A reaction:
Nowadays this carrot-and-stick view of causation is unfashionable, but I won't rule it out. The deepest 'why?' we can ask won't just go away. This unity by a divine mind strikes me as too simple, but Leibniz is right to try to unify Aristotelian causes.
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