39 ideas
19275 | You cannot understand what exists without understanding possibility and necessity [Hale] |
Full Idea: I defend the thesis that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
A reaction: Good. I would say that this is a growing realisation in contemporary philosophy. The issue is focused when we ask what are the limitations of Quine's approach to metaphysics. If you don't see possibilities around you, you are a fool. |
19291 | A canonical defintion specifies the type of thing, and what distinguish this specimen [Hale] |
Full Idea: One might think of a full dress, or canonical, definition as specifying what type of thing it is, and what distinguishes it from everything else within its type. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.4) | |
A reaction: Good! At last someone embraces the Aristotelian ideas that definitions are a) quite extensive and detailed (unlike lexicography), and b) they aim to get right down to the individual. In that sense, an essence is captured by a definition. |
19297 | The two Barcan principles are easily proved in fairly basic modal logic [Hale] |
Full Idea: If the Brouwersche principle, p ⊃ □◊p is adjoined to a standard quantified vesion of the weakest modal logic K, then one can prove both the Barcan principle, and its converse. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2) | |
A reaction: The Brouwersche principle (that p implies that p must be possible) sounds reasonable, but the Barcan principles strike me as false, so something has to give. They are theorems of S5. Hale proposes giving up classical logic. |
19301 | With a negative free logic, we can dispense with the Barcan formulae [Hale] |
Full Idea: I reject both Barcan and Converse Barcan by adopting a negative free logic. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3) | |
A reaction: See section 9.2 of Hale's book, where he makes his case. I can't evaluate this bold move, though I don't like the Barcan Formulae. We can anticipate objections to Hale: are you prepared to embrace the unexpected consequences of your new logic? |
19296 | If second-order variables range over sets, those are just objects; properties and relations aren't sets [Hale] |
Full Idea: Contrary to what Quine supposes, it is neither necessary nor desirable to interpret bound higher-order variables as ranging over sets. Sets are a species of object. They should range over entities of a completely different type: properties and relations. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 08.2) | |
A reaction: This helpfully clarifies something which was confusing me. If sets are objects, then 'second-order' logic just seems to be the same as first-order logic (rather than being 'set theory in disguise'). I quantify over properties, but deny their existence! |
19289 | Maybe conventionalism applies to meaning, but not to the truth of propositions expressed [Hale] |
Full Idea: An old objection to conventionalism claims that it confuses sentences with propositions, confusing what makes sentences mean what they do with what makes them (as propositions) true. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.2) | |
A reaction: The conventions would presumably apply to the sentences, but not to the propositions. Since I think that focusing on propositions solves a lot of misunderstandings in modern philosophy, I like the sound of this. |
19298 | Unlike axiom proofs, natural deduction proofs needn't focus on logical truths and theorems [Hale] |
Full Idea: In contrast with axiomatic systems, in natural deductions systems of logic neither the premises nor the conclusions of steps in a derivation need themselves be logical truths or theorems of logic. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2 n7) | |
A reaction: Not sure I get that. It can't be that everything in an axiomatic proof has to be a logical truth. How would you prove anything about the world that way? I'm obviously missing something. |
19295 | Add Hume's principle to logic, to get numbers; arithmetic truths rest on the nature of the numbers [Hale] |
Full Idea: The existence of the natural numbers is not a matter of pure logic - it cannot be proved in pure logic. It can be proved in second-order logic plus Hume's principle. Truths of arithmetic are not logic - they depend on the nature of natural numbers. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.4) | |
A reaction: Hume's principles needs entities which can be matched to one another, so a certain ontology is needed to get neo-logicism off the ground. |
19281 | Interesting supervenience must characterise the base quite differently from what supervenes on it [Hale] |
Full Idea: Any intereresting supervenience thesis requires that the class of facts on which the allegedly supervening facts supervene be characterizable independently, without use or presupposition of the notions involved in stating the supervening facts. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.1) | |
A reaction: There might be intermediate cases here, since having descriptions which are utterly unconnected (at any level) might be rather challenging. |
19278 | There is no gap between a fact that p, and it is true that p; so we only have the truth-condtions for p [Hale] |
Full Idea: There is no clear gap between its being a fact that p and its being true that p, no obvious way to individuate the fact a true statement records other than via that statement's truth-conditions. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.2) | |
A reaction: Typical of philosophers of language. The concept of a fact is of something mind-independent; the concept of a truth is of something mind-dependent. They can't therefore be the same thing (by the contrapositive of the indiscernability of identicals!). |
19302 | If a chair could be made of slightly different material, that could lead to big changes [Hale] |
Full Idea: How shall we prevent a sorites taking us to the conclusion that a chair might have originated in a completely disjoint lot of wood, or even in some other material altogether? | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3.7) | |
A reaction: This seems a good criticism of Kripke's implausible claim that his lectern is necessarily (or essentially) made of the piece of wood it is made of. Could his lectern have had a small piece of plastic inserted in it? |
11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
19290 | Absolute necessities are necessarily necessary [Hale] |
Full Idea: I argue that any absolute necessity is necessarily necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.5.2) | |
A reaction: This requires the principle of S4 modal logic, that necessity implies necessary necessity. He argues that S5 is the logical of absolute necessity. |
19286 | 'Absolute necessity' is when there is no restriction on the things which necessitate p [Hale] |
Full Idea: The strength of the claim that p is 'absolutely necessary' derives from the fact that in its expression as a universally quantified counterfactual ('everything will necessitate p'), the quantifier ranges over all propositions whatever. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
A reaction: Other philosophers don't seem to use the term 'absolute necessity', but it seems a useful concept, in contrast to conditional or local necessities. You can't buy chocolate on the sun. |
19288 | Logical and metaphysical necessities differ in their vocabulary, and their underlying entities [Hale] |
Full Idea: The difference between logical and metaphysical necessities lies, not in the range of possibilities for which they hold, but - at the linguistic level - in the kind of vocabulary essential to their expression, and the kinds of entities that explain them. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
A reaction: I don't think much of the idea that the difference is just linguistic, and I don't like the idea of 'entities' as grounding them. I see logical necessities as arising from natural deduction rules, and metaphysical ones coming from the nature of reality. |
19285 | Logical necessity is something which is true, no matter what else is the case [Hale] |
Full Idea: We can identify the belief that the proposition that p is logically necessary, where p may be of any logical form, with the belief that, no matter what else was the case, it would be true that p. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
A reaction: I find this surprising. I take it that logical necessity must be the consequence of logic. That all squares have corners doesn't seem to be a matter of logic. But then he seems to expand logical necessity to include conceptual necessity. Why? |
19287 | Maybe each type of logic has its own necessity, gradually becoming broader [Hale] |
Full Idea: We can distinguish between narrower and broader kinds of logical necessity. There are, for example, the logical necessities of propostional logic, those of first-order logic, and so on. Maybe they are necessities expressed using logical vocabulary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
A reaction: Hale goes on to prefer a view that embraces conceptual necessities. I think in philosophy we should designate the necessities according to their sources. This might clarify a currently rather confused situation. First-order includes propositional logic. |
11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
19282 | It seems that we cannot show that modal facts depend on non-modal facts [Hale] |
Full Idea: I think we may conclude that there is no significant version of modal supervenience which both commands acceptance and implies that all modal facts depend asymmetrically on non-modal ones. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.3) | |
A reaction: This is the conclusion of a sustained and careful discussion, recorded here for interest. I'm inclined to think that there are very few, if any, non-modal facts in the world, if those facts are accurately characterised. |
19276 | The big challenge for essentialist views of modality is things having necessary existence [Hale] |
Full Idea: Whether the essentialist theory can account for all absolute necessities depends in part on whether the theory can explain the necessities of existence (of certain objects, properties and entities). | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
A reaction: Hale has a Fregean commitment to all sorts of abstract objects, and then finds difficulty in explaining them from his essentialist viewpoint. His book didn't convince me. I'm more of a nominalist, me, so I sleep better at nights. |
19293 | Essentialism doesn't explain necessity reductively; it explains all necessities in terms of a few basic natures [Hale] |
Full Idea: The point of the essentialist theory is not to provide a reductive explanation of necessities. It is, rather, to locate a base class of necessities - those which directly reflect the natures of things - in terms of which the remainder may be explained. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.6) | |
A reaction: My picture is of most of the necessities being directly explained by the natures of things, rather than a small core of natures generating all the derived ones. All the necessities of squares derive from the nature of the square. |
19294 | If necessity derives from essences, how do we explain the necessary existence of essences? [Hale] |
Full Idea: If the essentialist theory of necessity is to be adequate, it must be able to explain how the existence of certain objects - such as the natural numbers - can itself be absolutely necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.1) | |
A reaction: Hale and his neo-logicist pals think that numbers are 'objects', and they necessarily exist, so he obviously has a problem. I don't see any alternative for essentialists to treating the existing (and possible) natures as brute facts. |
19279 | What are these worlds, that being true in all of them makes something necessary? [Hale] |
Full Idea: We need an explanation of what worlds are that makes clear why being true at all of them should be necessary and sufficient for being necessary (and true at one of them suffices for being possible). | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.3.2) | |
A reaction: Hale is introducing combinatorial accounts of worlds, as one possible answer to this. Hale observes that all the worlds might be identical to our world. It is always assumed that the worlds are hugely varied. But maybe worlds are constrained. |
19299 | Possible worlds make every proposition true or false, which endorses classical logic [Hale] |
Full Idea: The standard conception of worlds incorporates the assumption of bivalence - every proposition is either true or false. But it is infelicitous to build into one's basic semantic machinery a principle endorsing classical logic against its rivals. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 10.3) | |
A reaction: No wonder Dummett (with his intuitionist logic) immediately spurned possible worlds. This objection must be central to many recent thinkers who have begun to doubt possible worlds. I heard Kit Fine say 'always kick possible worlds where you can'. |
11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
19300 | The molecules may explain the water, but they are not what 'water' means [Hale] |
Full Idea: What it is to be (pure) water is to be explained in terms of being composed of H2O molecules, but this is not what the word 'water' means. | |
From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.2) | |
A reaction: Hale says when the real and verbal definitions match, we can know the essence a priori. If they come apart, presumably we need a posteriori research. Interesting. It is certainly dubious to say a stuff-word means its chemical composition. |
23418 | Liberal state legitimacy is based on a belief in justice, not in some conception of the good life [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: For liberals the basis of state legitimacy is a shared sense of justice, not a shared conception of the good. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'legitimacy') | |
A reaction: For a liberal state to work, the citizens have to roughly believe in the core values of liberalism, which are primarily freedom and equality (and hence justice). |
23414 | Liberals say state intervention in culture restricts people's autonomy [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: According to liberal theory, a state which intervenes in the cultural market place to encourage any particular way of life restricts people's autonomy. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'social') | |
A reaction: The communitarian idea is that the state should intervene, in order to foster the best aspects of communal culture. The dangers are obvious, and can be seen in any totalitarian state. A gentle hand on the tiller, perhaps? Increase the options? |
23410 | Modern liberals see a community as simply a society which respects freedom and equality [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: Most contemporary liberal philosophers have little to say about the ideal of community. …It is often seen as derivative of liberty and equality - a society lives up to the ideal of community if its members are treated as free and equal persons. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: He cites Rawls as an example. This is the central idea which was attacked by modern communitarians. A collection of scattered self-seeking isolated individuals doesn't seem to amount to a healthy communal life. Maybe community needs further rights? |
23409 | Community can focus on class or citizenship or ethnicity or culture [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: In recent centuries the ideal of community has taken many forms, from class solidarity or shared citizenship to a common ethnic descent or cultural identity. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: Language and religion are not explicitly mentioned, but must be implied. Supporting a major sports team is also worth mentioning. |
23419 | Communitarianism struggles with excluded marginalised groups [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: The problem of the exclusion of historically marginalised groups is endemic to the communitarian project. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'legitimacy') | |
A reaction: Put simply, old-fashioned styles of community are probably impossible in large modern states, some with rather arbitrary borders. |
23413 | Feminism has shown that social roles are far from fixed (as communitarians tend to see them) [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: Communitarians say that some of our social roles must be regarded as fixed when planning our lives, …but the women's movement has shown how deeply entrenched social roles can be questioned and rejected. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Embedded') | |
A reaction: True, but parents walking out on young children also shows that. The ideal must be some sort of balance. |
23415 | Participation aids the quest for the good life, but why should that be a state activity? [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: Communitarians rarely distinguish between collective activities and political activities. Shared participation aids intelligent decisions about the good life, but why should that be organised through the state, rather than by free individuals? | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'need') | |
A reaction: Kylicka points out later that local groups can be very unintelligent or prejudiced. Modern media have changed that picture, because participation can be with geographically remote people. |
23411 | Communitarians see justice as primarily a community matter, rather than a principle [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: Communitarians believe either that community replaces the need for principles of justice, or that the community is either the source of such principles or should play a greater role in deciding their content. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: [compressed] The idea that a racist or chauvinist or puritanical or insular community should decide justice for all its members sounds horrible. It drives you to liberal individualism, just thinking about it. |
23412 | Justice resolves conflicts, but may also provoke them [Kymlicka] |
Full Idea: Justice can help mediate conflicts, but it also tends to creat conflicts, and to decrease the natural expression of sociability. | |
From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'limits') | |
A reaction: [He is discussing Michael Sandel on liberalism] Family life might not go well if all of its members continually demanded justice for themselves as individuals. Maybe our concept of justice is too individualistic? Do we need a sense of 'group' justice? |