20 ideas
| 15544 | If what is actual might have been impossible, we need S4 modal logic [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong says what is actual (namely a certain roster of universals) might have been impossible. Hence his modal logic is S4, without the 'Brouwersche Axiom'. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978]) by David Lewis - Armstrong on combinatorial possibility 'The demand' | |
| A reaction: So p would imply possibly-not-possibly-p. |
| 23548 | Indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I now believe that the existence of indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: I think that prior to this Fine had defended classical logic. Presumably the difficulty is over Bivalence. Nietzsche spotted this problem, despite not being a logician. Logic has to simplify the world. Hence philosophy is quite different from logic. |
| 23539 | Classical semantics has referents for names, extensions for predicates, and T or F for sentences [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A precise language is often assigned a classical semantics, in which the semantic value of a name is its referent, the semantic value of a predicate is its extension (the objects of which it is true), and the value of a sentence is True or False. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Helpful to have this clear statement of how predicates are treated. This extensionalism in logic causes trouble when it creeps into philosophy, and people say that 'red' just means all the red things. No it doesn't. |
| 23544 | Local indeterminacy concerns a single object, and global indeterminacy covers a range [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Vagueness concerns 'local' indeterminacy, such as whether one man in the lineup is bald, and 'global' indeterminacy, applying to a range of cases, as when it is indeterminate how 'bald' applies to the lineup. But how do these relate? | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: This puts the focus either on objects or on predicates which are vague. |
| 23540 | Conjoining two indefinites by related sentences seems to produce a contradiction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If 'P is red' and 'P is orange' are indefinite, then 'P is red and P is orange' seems false, because red and orange are exclusive. But if two conjoined indefinite sentences are false, that makes 'P is red and P is red' false, when it should be indefinite. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the problem of 'penumbral connection', where two indefinite values are still logically related, by excluding one another. Presumably 'P is red and P is of indefinite shape' can be true? Doubtful about this argument. |
| 23546 | Standardly vagueness involves borderline cases, and a higher standpoint from which they can be seen [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Standard notions of vagueness all accept borderline cases, and presuppose a higher standpoint from which a judgement of being borderline F, rather than simply being F or being not F, can be made. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: He says that the concept of borderline cases is an impediment to understanding vagueness. Proposing a third group when you are struggling to separate two other groups doesn't seem helpful, come to think of it. Limbo cases. |
| 23542 | Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We can see Epistemicism [vagueness as ignorance] as a common and misguided tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. We are unsure how to characterise vagueness, and identify it with the resulting ignorance, instead of explaining it. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Love it. This echoes my repeated plea in these reactions to stop identifying features of reality with the functions which embody them or the patterns they create. We need to explain them, and must dig deeper. |
| 23541 | Supervaluation can give no answer to 'who is the last bald man' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Under supervaluation there should always be someone who is the last bald man in the sequence, but there is always an acceptable way to make some other man the last bald man. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Fine seems to take this as a conclusive refutation of the supervaluation approach. Fine says (p.41) that supervaluation says there is a precisification for every instance. |
| 7024 | Properties are universals, which are always instantiated [Armstrong, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong takes properties to be universals, and believes there are no 'uninstantiated' universals. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978]) by John Heil - From an Ontological Point of View §9.3 | |
| A reaction: At first glance this, like many theories of universals, seems to invite Ockham's Razor. If they are always instantiated, perhaps we should perhaps just try to talk about the instantiations (i.e. tropes), and skip the universal? |
| 9478 | Even if all properties are categorical, they may be denoted by dispositional predicates [Armstrong, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong says all properties are categorical, but a dispositional predicate may denote such a property; the dispositional predicate denotes the categorical property in virtue of the dispositional role it happens, contingently, to play in this world. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 3.1 | |
| A reaction: I favour the fundamentality of the dispositional rather than the categorical. The world consists of powers, and we find ourselves amidst their categorical expressions. I could be persuaded otherwise, though! |
| 10729 | Universals explain resemblance and causal power [Armstrong, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong thinks universals play two roles, namely grounding objective resemblances and grounding causal powers. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978]) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 11 | |
| A reaction: Personally I don't think universals explain anything at all. They just add another layer of confusion to a difficult problem. Oliver objects that this seems a priori, contrary to Armstrong's principle in Idea 10728. |
| 4031 | It doesn't follow that because there is a predicate there must therefore exist a property [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that we reject the notion that just because the predicate 'red' applies to an open class of particulars, therefore there must be a property, redness. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978], p.8), quoted by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §6 | |
| A reaction: At last someone sensible (an Australian) rebuts that absurd idea that our ontology is entirely a feature of our language |
| 23545 | We do not have an intelligible concept of a borderline case [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We simply have no intelligible notion of local indeterminacy or of a borderline case. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 2) | |
| A reaction: He mentions cases which are near a borderline, and cases which are hard to decide, but denies that these are intrinsically borderline. If there are borderline cases between red and orange, what are the outer boundaries of the border? |
| 13230 | Particular essence is often captured by generality [Steiner,M] |
| Full Idea: Generality is often necessary for capturing the essence of a particular. | |
| From: Mark Steiner (Mathematical Explanation [1978], p.36) | |
| A reaction: The most powerful features of an entity are probably those which are universal, like intelligence or physical strength in a human. Those characteristics are powerful because they compete with the same characteristic in others (perhaps?). |
| 10024 | The type-token distinction is the universal-particular distinction [Armstrong, by Hodes] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong conflates the type-token distinction with that between universals and particulars. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978], xiii,16/17) by Harold Hodes - Logicism and Ontological Commits. of Arithmetic 147 n23 | |
| A reaction: This seems quite reasonable, even if you don’t believe in the reality of universals. I'm beginning to think we should just use the term 'general' instead of 'universal'. 'Type' also seems to correspond to 'set', with the 'token' as the 'member'. |
| 10728 | A thing's self-identity can't be a universal, since we can know it a priori [Armstrong, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong says that if it can be proved a priori that a thing falls under a certain universal, then there is no such universal - and hence there is no universal of a thing being identical with itself. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978], II p.11) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 11 | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctively Armstrongian view, based on his belief that universals must be instantiated, and must be discoverable a posteriori, as part of science. I'm baffled by self-identity, but I don't think this argument does the job. |
| 13229 | Maybe an instance of a generalisation is more explanatory than the particular case [Steiner,M] |
| Full Idea: Maybe to deduce a theorem as an instance of a generalization is more explanatory than to deduce it correctly. | |
| From: Mark Steiner (Mathematical Explanation [1978], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Steiner eventually comes down against this proposal, on the grounds that some proofs are too general, and hence too far away from the thing they are meant to explain. |
| 13231 | Explanatory proofs rest on 'characterizing properties' of entities or structure [Steiner,M] |
| Full Idea: My proposal is that an explanatory proof makes reference to the 'characterizing property' of an entity or structure mentioned in the theorem, where the proof depends on the property. If we substitute a different object, the theory collapses. | |
| From: Mark Steiner (Mathematical Explanation [1978], p.34) | |
| A reaction: He prefers 'characterizing property' to 'essence', because he is not talking about necessary properties, since all properties are necessary in mathematics. He is, in fact, reverting to the older notion of an essence, as the core power of the thing. |
| 23547 | It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Pace Parfit and others, it boggles the mind that survival could be independent of any relation of identity between the currently existing object and the objects that subsequently exist. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: Yes. If the self or mind just consists of a diachronic trail of memories such that the two ends of the trail have no connection at all, that isn't the kind of survival that any of us want. I want to live my life, not a life. |
| 23543 | We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is a common tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. Hence we are not sure how to characterise a law, and so we identify it with the regularities to which it gives rise. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: A lovely clear identification of my pet hate, which is superficial accounts of things, which claim to be the last word, but actually explain nothing. |