22 ideas
| 8525 | Relations need terms, so they must be second-order entities based on first-order tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Because there cannot be relations without terms, in a meta-physic that makes first-order tropes the terms of all relations, relational tropes must belong to a second, derivative order. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §8) | |
| A reaction: The admission that there could be a 'derivative order' may lead to trouble for trope theory. Ostrich Nominalists could say that properties themselves are derivative second-order abstractions from indivisible particulars. Russell makes them first-order. |
| 18935 | Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: A semantic theory of names should deliver a specification of the conditions under which a name names an individual, and hence a specification of the conditions under which a name is empty. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Naming can be private, like naming my car 'Bertrand', but never tell anyone. I like Plato's remark that names are 'tools'. Do we specify conditions for successful spanner-usage? The first step must be individuation, preparatory to naming. |
| 18945 | Millians say a name just means its object [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: The Millian view of direct reference says that the meaning of a name is the object named. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 4) | |
| A reaction: Any theory that says meaning somehow is features of the physical world strikes me as totally misguided. Napoleon is a man, so he can't be part of a sentence. He delegates that job to words (such as 'Napoleon'). |
| 18934 | Sentences with empty names can be understood, be co-referential, and even be true [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Some empty names sentences can be understood, so appear to be meaningful ('Pegasus was sired by Poseidon'), ...some appear to be co-referential ('Santa Claus'/'Father Christmas'), and some appear to be straightforwardly true ('Pegasus doesn't exist'). | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Hang on to this, when the logicians arrive and start telling you that your talk of empty names is vacuous, because there is no object in the 'domain' to which a predicate can be attached. Meaning, reference and truth are the issues around empty names. |
| 18938 | Frege's compositional account of truth-vaues makes 'Pegasus doesn't exist' neither true nor false [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: In Frege's account sentences such as 'Pegasus does not exist' will be neither true nor false, since the truth-value of a sentence is its referent, and the referent of a complex expression is determined by the referent of its parts. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: We can keep the idea of 'sense', which is very useful for dealing with empty names, but tweak his account of truth-values to evade this problem. I'm thinking that meaning is compositional, but truth-value isn't. |
| 18947 | Definites descriptions don't solve the empty names problem, because the properties may not exist [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: If it were possible for a definite description to be empty - not in the sense of there being no object that satisfies it, but of there being no set of properties it refers to - the problem of empty names would not have been solved. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 5) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer is thinking of properties like 'is a unicorn', which are clearly just as vulnerable to being empty as 'the unicorn' was. It seems unlikely that 'horse', 'white' and 'horn' would be empty. |
| 8518 | Events are trope-sequences, in which tropes replace one another [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Events are widely acknowledged to be particulars, but they are plainly not ordinary concrete particulars. They are best viewed as trope-sequences, in which one condition gives way to another. They are changes in which tropes replace one another. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: If nothing exists except bundles of tropes, it is worth asking WHY one trope would replace another. Some tropes are active (i.e. they are best described as 'powers'). |
| 14979 | Being alone doesn't guarantee intrinsic properties; 'being alone' is itself extrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: The property of 'being alone in the world' is an extrinsic property, even though it has had by an object that is alone in the world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 01.2 | |
| A reaction: I always choke on my cornflakes whenever anyone cites a true predicate as if it were a genuine property. This is a counterexample to Idea 14978. Sider offers another more elaborate example from Lewis. |
| 15454 | Extrinsic properties come in degrees, with 'brother' less extrinsic than 'sibling' [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties may be more or less intrinsic; being a brother has more of an admixture of intrinsic structure than being a sibling does, yet both are extrinsic. | |
| From: David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the point is that a brother is intrinsically male - but then a sibling is intrinsically human. A totally extrinsic relation would be one between entities which shared virtually no categories of existence. |
| 8513 | Two red cloths are separate instances of redness, because you can dye one of them blue [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If we have two cloths of the very same shade of redness, we can show there are two cloths by burning one and leaving the other unaffected; we show there are two cases of redness in the same way: dye one blue, leaving the other unaffected. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This has to be one of the basic facts of the problem accepted by everyone. If you dye half of one of the pieces, was the original red therefore one instance or two? Has it become two? How many red tropes are there in a red cloth? |
| 8514 | Red could only recur in a variety of objects if it was many, which makes them particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If there are a varied group of red objects, the only element that recurs is the colour. But it must be the colour as a particular (a 'trope') that is involved in the recurrence, for only particulars can be many in the way required for recurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This claim seems to depend on the presupposition that rednesses are countable things, but it is tricky trying to count the number of blue tropes in the sky. |
| 8522 | Tropes solve the Companionship Difficulty, since the resemblance is only between abstract particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'companionship difficulty' cannot arise if the members of the resemblance class are tropes rather than whole concrete particulars. The instances of having a heart, as abstract particulars, are quite different from instances of having a kidney. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: The companionship difficulty seems worst if you base your account of properties just on being members of a class. Any talk of resemblance eventually has to talk about 'respects' of resemblance. Is a trope a respect? Is a mode an object? |
| 8523 | Tropes solve the Imperfect Community problem, as they can only resemble in one respect [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'problem of imperfect community' cannot arise where our resemblance sets are sets of tropes. Tropes, by their very nature and mode of differentiation can only resemble in one respect. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: You arrive at very different accounts of what resemblance means according to how you express the problem verbally. We can only find a solution through thinking which transcends language. Heresy! |
| 8524 | Trope theory makes space central to reality, as tropes must have a shape and size [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysics of abstract particulars gives a central place to space, or space-time, as the frame of the world. ...Tropes are, of their essence, regional, which carries with it the essential presence of shape and size in any trope occurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §7) | |
| A reaction: Trope theory has a problem with Aristotle's example (Idea 557) of what happens when white is mixed with white. Do two tropes become one trope if you paint on a second coat of white? How can particulars merge? How can abstractions merge? |
| 8521 | Nominalism has the problem that without humans nothing would resemble anything else [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The objection to nominalism is its consequence that if there were no human race (or other living things), nothing would be like anything else. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: Anti-realists will be unflustered by this difficulty. Personally it strikes me as obvious that some aspects of resemblance are part of reality which we did not contribute. This I take to be a contingent fact, founded on the existence of natural kinds. |
| 8515 | Tropes are basic particulars, so concrete particulars are collections of co-located tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If tropes are basic particulars, then concrete particulars count as dependent realities. They are collections of co-located tropes, depending on these tropes as a fleet does upon its component ships. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §2) | |
| A reaction: If I sail my yacht through a fleet, do I become part of it? Presumably trope theory could avoid a bundle view of objects. A bare substratum could be a magnet which attracts tropes. |
| 8519 | Bundles must be unique, so the Identity of Indiscernibles is a necessity - which it isn't! [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Each individual is distinct from each other individual, so the bundle account of objects requires each bundle to be different from every other bundle. So the Identity of Indiscernibles must be a necessary truth, which, unfortunately, it is not. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
| A reaction: Clearly the Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth (consider just two identical spheres). Location and time must enter into it. Could we not add a further individuation requirement to the necessary existence of a bundle? (Quinton) |
| 15455 | Total intrinsic properties give us what a thing is [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The way something is is given by the totality of its intrinsic properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: No. Some properties are intrinsic but trivial. The 'important' ones fix the identity (if the identity is indeed 'fixed'). |
| 4033 | Two pure spheres in non-absolute space are identical but indiscernible [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth. It fails in possible worlds where there are two identical spheres in a non-absolute space, or worlds without beginning or end where events are exactly cyclically repeated. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
| A reaction: The principle was always very suspect, and these seem nice counterexamples. As so often, epistemology and ontology had become muddled. |
| 8512 | Abstractions come before the mind by concentrating on a part of what is presented [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: An item is abstract if it is got before the mind by an act of abstraction, that is, by concentrating attention on some, but not all, of what is presented. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: I think this point is incredibly important. Pure Fregean semantics tries to leave out the psychological component, and yet all the problems in semantics concern various sorts of abstraction. Imagination is the focus of the whole operation. |
| 8516 | Davidson can't explain causation entirely by events, because conditions are also involved [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Not all singular causal statements are of Davidson's event-event type. Many involve conditions, so there are condition-event (weakness/collapse), event-condition (explosion/movement), and condition-condition (hot/warming) causal connections. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: Fans of Davidson need to reduce conditions to events. The problem of individuation keeps raising its head. Davidson makes it depend on description. Kim looks good, because events, and presumably conditions, reduce to something small and precise. |
| 8517 | Causal conditions are particular abstract instances of properties, which makes them tropes [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The conditions in causal statements are usually particular cases of properties. A collapse results from the weakness of this cable (not any other). This is specific to a time and place; it is an abstract particular. It is, in short, a trope. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
| A reaction: The fan of universals could counter this by saying that the collapse results from this unique combination of universals. Resemblance nominalist can equally build an account on the coincidence of certain types of concrete particulars. |