Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics' and 'Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions?'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 5. Metaphysics beyond Science

16415	Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
	A reaction: He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 7. Against Metaphysics

16413	Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do?
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1)
	A reaction: Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good.

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 1. Quantification

16416	The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: The inferential role of the existential quantifier in first order logic does not carry over to the existential quantifier in English (we have empty names, singular terms that are not even in the business of denoting, and so on).
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 6. Probability

13857	Truth-functional possibilities include the irrelevant, which is a mistake [Edgington]
	Full Idea: How likely is a fair die landing on an even number to land six? My approach is, assume an even number, so three possibilities, one a six, so 'one third'; the truth-functional approach is it's true if it is not-even or six, so 'two-thirds'.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 3)
	A reaction: The point is that in the truth-functional approach, if the die lands not-even, then the conditional comes out as true, when she says it should be irrelevant. She seems to be right about this.

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / a. Conditionals

13853	It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is [Edgington]
	Full Idea: The mistake philosophers have made, in trying to understand the conditional, is to assume that its function is to make a statement about how the world is (or how other possible worlds are related to it), true or false, as the case may be.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)
	A reaction: 'If pigs could fly we would never catch them' may not be about the world, but 'if you press this switch the light comes on' seems to be. Actually even the first one is about the world. I've an inkling that Edgington is wrong about this. Powers!

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / d. Non-truthfunction conditionals

13855	A conditional does not have truth conditions [Edgington]
	Full Idea: A conditional does not have truth conditions.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)

13859	X believes 'if A, B' to the extent that A & B is more likely than A & ¬B [Edgington]
	Full Idea: X believes that if A, B, to the extent that he judges that A & B is nearly as likely as A, or (roughly equivalently) to the extent that he judges A & B to be more likely than A & ¬B.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 5)
	A reaction: This is a formal statement of her theory of conditionals.

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / e. Supposition conditionals

13854	Conditionals express what would be the outcome, given some supposition [Edgington]
	Full Idea: It is often necessary to suppose (or assume) that some epistemic possibility is true, and to consider what else would be the case, or would be likely to be the case, given this supposition. The conditional expresses the outcome of such thought processes.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)
	A reaction: This is the basic Edgington view. It seems to involve an active thought process, and imagination, rather than being the static semantic relations offered by possible worlds analyses. True conditionals state relationships in the world.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

468	Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
	Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
	From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?