33 ideas
| 3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: In contemporary metaphysics the major areas of discussion are Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], After) |
| 3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: At least since Russell, one has routinely distinguished between the 'is' of predication ('Socrates is wise', Fx), the 'is' of identity ('Morning Star is Evening Star', =), and the 'is' of existence ('the cat is under the bed', Ex). | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: This seems horribly nitpicking to many people, but I love it - because it is just true, and it is a truth right at the basis of the confusions in our talk. Analytic philosophy forever! [P.S. 'Tiddles is a cat' - the 'is' membership] |
| 3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Analytical philosophy excels in the piecemeal analysis of causation, perception, knowledge and so on, but there is a striking poverty of any synoptic vision of these independent studies. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.22) |
| 3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: As our bible, the Book of Science is presumed to contain only true sentences, but it is less clear how they are to be construed, which literally and which non-literally. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.13) |
| 6222 | If a decision is in accord with right reason, everyone can agree with it [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: No decision can be in accord with right reason unless all can agree on it. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.V.XLVI) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think anyone who disagrees with this should get out of philosophy (and into sociology, fantasy fiction, ironic game-playing, crime…). Of course 'can' agree is not the same as 'will' agree. You must have faith that good reasons are persuasive. |
| 3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Set theory offers the promise of a complete mathematization of the 'is' of predication. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.13) |
| 3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Set inclusion is sharply distinguished from set membership (as the set of Greeks is found to be included in, but not a member of, the set of men). | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.13) |
| 3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Zermelo proposed seven axioms for set theory, with Fraenkel adding others, to produce the standard Z-F Intuition. | |
| From: report of José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.17) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The Greeks saw the independent science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.15) |
| 3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: The Negative numbers are postulated (magic word) to solve x=5-8, Rationals postulated to solve 2x=3, Irrationals for x-squared=2, and Imaginaries for x-squared=-1. (…and Zero for x=5-5) …and x/0 remains eternally open. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.14) |
| 3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: One approaches the natural numbers in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory). | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.17) |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Once we conceded that Tom can walk slowly or quickly, and that the slowness and quickness is a property of the walking and not of Tom, we can hardly refrain from quantifying over events (such as 'a walking') in our ontology. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 6) |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: With their 'mass-noun' ontologies, the early pre-Socratics were blind to plurality ...but the count-noun ontologists came to dominate the field forever after. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: The mass-nouns are such things as earth, air, fire and water. This is a very interesting historical observation (cited by Laycock). Our obsession with identity seems tied to formal logic. There is a whole other worldview waiting out there. |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: How can you learn of the existence of transcendent Platonic objects if there is no causal interaction with them? | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.22) |
| 3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Why suppose these particles packed together constitute a macro-entity (namely, Mt Everest), whereas those, of equal number, scattered around, fail to add up to anything beyond themselves? | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 2) |
| 3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Is being a horse an essential property of a horse? Can we so much as conceive the abstract possibility of a horse's ceasing to be a horse even while continuing to exist? | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.20) |
| 3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: If a soldier need not cease to exist merely because he ceases to be a soldier, there is room to doubt that the wind ceases to exist when it ceases to be a wind. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 6) |
| 3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: One can step into the same river twice, but one must not expect to step into the same water. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.21) |
| 3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: 'Existence' can't be glossed as self-identical (critics say) because Pegasus, even while being self-identical, fails to exist. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.11) |
| 3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: With the thesis that to be as such is to be relative, the absolutist may be found to concur, but the issue turns on what it might be that a thing is supposed to be relative to. Why not itself? | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 8) |
| 3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: One proves non-existence (e.g. of round squares) by using logic to derive a contradiction from the concept; it is precisely here, in such proofs, that we find the clearest example of a priori knowledge. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 4) |
| 3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Appeals to intuition - no matter how informal - can hardly fail to smack of the synthetic a priori. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.18) |
| 3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Assume that we know to be true propositions of the form 'There are exactly x prime numbers between y and z', and synthetic a priori truths about Platonic objects are delivered to us on a silver platter. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.18) |
| 3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Logical positivism has been concisely summarised as 'there is no synthetic a priori'. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.18) |
| 3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: No one thinks that the proposition that something exists that transcends all possible experience harbours a logical inconsistency. Its denial cannot therefore be an analytic proposition, so it must be synthetic, though only knowable on a priori grounds. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.18) |
| 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. |
| 6217 | Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: Some truths of natural law, concerning guides to moral good and evil, and duties not laid down by civil law and government, are necessarily supplied ot the human mind by the nature of things and of men. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I) | |
| A reaction: I agree that some moral truths have the power of self-evidence. If you say they are built into the mind, we now ask what did the building, and evolution is the only answer, and hence we distance ourselves from the truths, seeing them as strategies. |
| 6221 | If there are different ultimate goods, there will be conflicting good actions, which is impossible [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: If there be posited different ultimate ends, whose causes are opposed to each other, then there will be truly good actions likewise opposed to each other, which is impossible. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.V.XVI) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting argument for there being one good rather than many, and an argument which I don't recall in any surviving Greek text. A response might be to distinguish between what is 'right' and what is 'good'. See David Ross. |
| 6218 | The happiness of individuals is linked to the happiness of everyone (which is individuals taken together) [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: The happiness of each person cannot be separated from the happiness of all, because the whole is no different from the parts taken together. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.VI) | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like the fallacy of composition (Idea 6219). An objection to utilitarianism is its assumption that a group of people have a 'total happiness' that is different from their individual states. Still, Cumberland is on to utilitarianism. |
| 6220 | The happiness of all contains the happiness of each, and promotes it [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: The common happiness of all contains the greatest happiness for each, and most effectively promotes it. …There is no path leading anyone to his own happiness, other than the path which leads all to the common happiness. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.VI) | |
| A reaction: I take this as a revolutionary idea, which leads to utilitarianism. It is doing what seemed to the Greeks unthinkable, which is combining hedonism with altruism. There is no proof for it, but it is a wonderful clarion call for building a civil society. |
| 6216 | Natural law is immutable truth giving moral truths and duties independent of society [Cumberland] |
| Full Idea: Natural law is certain propositions of immutable truth, which guide voluntary actions about the choice of good and avoidance of evil, and which impose an obligation to act, even without regard to civil laws, and ignoring compacts of governments. | |
| From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I) | |
| A reaction: Not a popular view, but I am sympathetic. If you are in a foreign country and find a person lying in pain, there is a terrible moral deficiency in anyone who just ignores such a thing. No legislation can take away a person's right of self-defence. |
| 3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Rationalists have been happier with an ontology of points, and empiricists with an ontology of regions. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.16) |
| 3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: In the ontological argument a deep enough understanding of the very concept of God allows one to derive by logic a contradiction from the statement 'There is no God'. | |
| From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 4) |