15 ideas
| 15533 | We can quantify over fictions by quantifying for real over their names [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Substitutionalists simulate quantification over fictional characters by quantifying for real over fictional names. | |
| From: David Lewis (Noneism or Allism? [1990], p.159) | |
| A reaction: I would say that a fiction is a file of conceptual information, identified by a label. The label brings baggage with it, and there is no existence in the label. |
| 15534 | We could quantify over impossible objects - as bundles of properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can quantify over Meinongian objects by quantifying for real over property bundles (such as the bundle of roundness and squareness). | |
| From: David Lewis (Noneism or Allism? [1990], p.159) |
| 15532 | 'Allists' embrace the existence of all controversial entities; 'noneists' reject all but the obvious ones [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An expansive friend of the controversial entities who says they all exist may be called an 'allist'; a tough desert-dweller who says that none of them exist may be called a 'noneist'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Noneism or Allism? [1990], p.152) | |
| A reaction: Lewis gives examples of the obvious and the controversial entities. Lewis implies that he himself is in between. The word 'desert' is a reference to Quine. |
| 15535 | We can't accept a use of 'existence' that says only some of the things there are actually exist [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If 'existence' is understood so that it can be a substantive thesis that only some of the things there are exist, we will have none of it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Noneism or Allism? [1990], p.163) | |
| A reaction: Lewis is a strong advocate, following Quine, of the univocal sense of the word 'exist', and I agree with them. |
| 2181 | It is an absurd Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom coincide [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There is a deluded Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom will totally coincide. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], VI - p.158) |
| 2176 | There is only a problem of free will if you think the notion of 'voluntary' can be metaphysically deepened [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There is a problem of free will only for those who think that the notion of voluntary can be metaphysically deepened. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.68) | |
| A reaction: Years later, I now see that his refers to a pet hate of mine in discussions of free will, which is the idea that a person can have something called 'ultimate' responsibility for an action (which is the 'deep' version of 'you did it'). |
| 14080 | Are causal descriptions part of the causal theory of reference, or are they just metasemantic? [Kaplan, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Kaplan notes that the causal theory of reference can be understood in two quite different ways, as part of the semantics (involving descriptions of causal processes), or as metasemantics, explaining why a term has the referent it does. | |
| From: report of David Kaplan (Dthat [1970]) by Jonathan Schaffer - Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson 1 | |
| A reaction: [Kaplan 'Afterthought' 1989] The theory tends to be labelled as 'direct' rather than as 'causal' these days, but causal chains are still at the heart of the story (even if more diffused socially). Nice question. Kaplan takes the meta- version as orthodox. |
| 4317 | We judge weakness of will by an assessment after the event is concluded [Williams,B, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Williams has shown that whether an action was weakness of will depends on an evaluation after the event, as in the question of whether Gauguin was right to abandon his family to pursue his art. | |
| From: report of Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993]) by John Cottingham - Reason, Emotions and Good Life p.1 | |
| A reaction: The 'Gauguin Problem' is that Gauguin's actions only become weakness of will if the pictures are no good, and he can't know that till he's painted them. Good point. |
| 2174 | Responsibility involves cause, intention, state of mind, and response after the event [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: The four elements of any conception of responsibility are cause, intention, state of mind, and response after the event. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.53) |
| 2178 | In bad actions, guilt points towards victims, and shame to the agent [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: In what I have done, the guilt points in one direction towards what has happened to others, and the shame in another direction to what I am. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.92) | |
| A reaction: Not convinced. I think shame has the fear of being observed as an inescapable component. Even when alone shame involves imagining what others might think. |
| 2169 | Greek moral progress came when 'virtue' was freed from social status [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There was moral progress in the ancient Greek world, notably to the extent that the idea of areté, human excellence, was freed to some extent from determination by social position. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], I - p.7) |
| 2172 | The modern idea of duty is unknown in archaic Greece [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Duty in some abstract modern sense is largely unknown to the Greeks, in particular to archaic Greeks. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], II - p.41) |
| 2179 | If the moral self is seen as characterless, then other people have a very limited role in our moral lives [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: The conception of the moral self as characterless leaves only a limited positive role to other people in one's moral life. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.95) |
| 2180 | If reason cannot lead people to good, we must hope they have an internal voice [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: If we think the power of reason is not enough by itself to distinguish good and bad, then we would hope that people have limited autonomy, that there is an internalised other in them that carries some social weight. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], IV - p.100) |
| 2175 | There is a problem of evil only if you expect the world to be good [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There is a "problem of evil" only for those who expect the world to be good. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.68) |