68 ideas
| 1606 | You have to be a Platonist to debate about reality, so every philosopher is a Platonist [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Everyone who enters into a debate about reality automatically becomes a Platonist. Since such debates are the essence of philosophy, every philosopher is a Platonist. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) | |
| A reaction: This is correct |
| 1595 | Philosophy aims to satisfy the chief human desire - the articulation of beauty itself [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.120) | |
| A reaction: A million miles away from modern philosophy, but still an ideal to be taken seriously. |
| 7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical problems are problems about how what is actual is possible, given that what is actual appears, because of some faulty argument, to be impossible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [She is discussing universals when she makes this comment] A very appealing remark, given that most people come into philosophy because of a mixture of wonder and puzzlement. It is a rather Wittgensteinian view, though, that we must cure our own ills. |
| 7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In 'She did it for the sake of her country' no one thinks that the expression 'the sake' refers to an individual thing, a sake. But given that, how can we work out what the ontological commitments of a theory actually are? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For these sorts of reasons it rapidly became obvious that ordinary language analysis wasn't going to reveal much, but it is also a problem for a project like Quine's, which infers an ontology from the terms of a scientific theory. |
| 9136 | The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The paradox of analysis says if a conceptual analysis states exactly what the original statement says, then the analysis is trivial; if it says something different from the original, then the analysis is mistaken. All analyses are trivial or false. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: [source is G.E. Moore] Good analyses typically give explanations, or necessary and sufficient conditions, or inferential relations. At their most trivial they at least produce a more profound dictionary than your usual lexicographer. Not guilty. |
| 1571 | 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos can mean i) a thought or reasoning, ii) the word which expresses a thought, iii) a rational structure outside human thought. These meanings give 'logos' an extraordinary range. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 12) |
| 1572 | In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or 'techné'). | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 15) |
| 1573 | The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: What is supposed to identify the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 17) |
| 1592 | Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos cannot refute the radical, consistent and self-conscious relativist. Therefore it must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and for others to agree. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.108) |
| 1593 | Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.109) |
| 1603 | Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos is not unconditionally good, but good contingent on there being some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.175) |
| 1598 | We prefer reason or poetry according to whether basics are intelligible or not [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Is the arché (basis) intelligible, or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.139) |
| 1584 | Modern science, by aiming for clarity about the external world, has abandoned rationality in the human world [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a flipside, …which is its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.74) |
| 1591 | Unfortunately for reason, argument can't be used to establish the value of argument [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Unfortunately for the logos there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.106) |
| 1599 | Attempts to suspend all presuppositions are hopeless, because a common ground must be agreed for the process [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: To debate about suspending all our presuppositions requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.144) |
| 9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If there is an upper bound on the length of understandable sentences, then two understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Not a huge paradox about the use of the word 'and', perhaps, but a nice little warning to be clear about what is being claimed before you cheerfully assert a screamingly obvious law of thought, such as conjunction. |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of composition makes the erroneous assumption that every property of the things that constitute a thing is a property of the thing as well. But every large object is constituted by small parts, and every red object by colourless parts. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: There are nice questions here like 'If you add lots of smallness together, why don't you get extreme smallness?' Colours always make bad examples in such cases (see Idea 5456). Distinctions are needed here (e.g. Idea 7007). |
| 9139 | If nothing exists, no truthmakers could make 'Nothing exists' true [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If nothing exists, then there are no truthmakers that could make 'Nothing exists' true. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites David Lewis] We may be confusing truth with facts. I take facts to be independent of minds, but truth only makes sense as a concept in the presence of minds which are endeavouring to think well. |
| 9140 | Which toothbrush is the truthmaker for 'buy one, get one free'? [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If I buy two toothbrushes on a 'buy one, get one free' offer, which one did I buy and which one did I get free? Those who believe that each contingent truth has a truthmaker are forced to believe that 'buy one, get one free' is false. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: Nice. There really is no fact of which toothbrush is the free one. The underlying proposition must presumably be 'two for the price of one'. But you could hardly fault the first slogan under the Trades Descriptions Act. |
| 9119 | No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The history of deviant logics is without a single success. Bivalence has been denied at least since Aristotle, yet no anti-bivalent theory has ever left the philosophical nursery. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is part of a claim that nothing in reality is vague - it is just our ignorance of the truth or falsity of some propositions. Personally I don't see why 'Grandad is bald' has to have a determinate truth value. |
| 9135 | We now see that generalizations use variables rather than abstract entities [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: As philosophers gradually freed themselves from the assumption that all words are names, ..they realised that generalizations really use variables rather than names of abstract entities. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a key thought in trying to understand abstraction - though I don't think you can shake it off that easily. (For all x)(x-is-a-bird then x-has-wings) seems to require a generalised concept of a bird to give a value to the variable. |
| 9125 | Denying problems, or being romantically defeated by them, won't make them go away [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: An unsolvable problem is still a problem, despite Wittgenstein's view that there are no genuine philosophical problems, and Kant's romantic defeatism in his treatment of the antinomies of pure reason. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I like the spin put on Kant, that he is a romantic in his defeatism. He certainly seems reluctant to slash at the Gordian knot, e.g. by being a bit more drastically sceptical about free will. |
| 9137 | Banning self-reference would outlaw 'This very sentence is in English' [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The old objection to the ban on self-reference is that it is too broad; it bans innocent sentences such as 'This very sentence is in English'. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.1) | |
| A reaction: Tricky. What is the sigificant difference between 'this sentence is in English' and 'this sentence is a lie'? The first concerns context and is partly metalinguistic. The second concerns semantics and truth. Concept and content.. |
| 7944 | Reduce by bridge laws (plus property identities?), by elimination, or by reducing talk [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are four kinds of reduction: the identifying of entities of two theories by means of bridge or correlation laws; the elimination of entities in favour of the other theory; reducing by bridge laws and property identities; and merely reducing talk. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3 n5) | |
| A reaction: [She gives references] The idea of 'bridge laws' I regard with caution. If bridge laws are ceteris paribus, they are not much help, and if they are strict, or necessary, then there must be an underlying reason for that, which is probably elimination. |
| 1605 | Reality can be viewed neutrally, or as an object of desire [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: There are two extremes: the Aristotelian views reality simply as reality, and the sophist or poet view reality only as an object of desire. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) |
| 9116 | Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Vague words have hidden boundaries. The subtraction of a single grain of sand might turn a heap into a non-heap. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The first sentence could be the slogan for the epistemic view of vagueness. The opposite view is Sainsbury's - that vague words are those which do not have any boundaries. Sorensen admits his view is highly counterintuitive. I think I prefer Sainsbury. |
| 7938 | Relational properties are clearly not essential to substances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In statements attributing relational properties ('Felix is my favourite cat'), it seems clear that the property truly attributed to the substance is not essential to it. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A fairly obvious point, but an important one when mapping out (cautiously) what we actually mean by 'property'. However, maybe the relational property is essential: the ceiling is ('is' of predication!) above the room. |
| 7967 | Being taller is an external relation, but properties and substances have internal relations [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The relation of being taller than is an external relation, since it relates two independent material substances, but the relation of instantiation or exemplification is internal, in that it relates a substance with a property. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: An interesting revival of internal relations. To be plausible it would need clear notions of 'property' and 'substance'. We are getting a long way from physics, and I sense Ockham stropping his Razor. How do you individuate a 'relation'? |
| 7965 | Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: An object's being two inches long seems to guarantee an infinite number of other properties, such as being less than three inches long. If we must understand the second property to understand the first, then there seems to be a vicious infinite regress. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: She dismisses this by saying that we don't need to know an infinity of numbers in order to count. I would say that we just need to distinguish between intrinsic and relational properties. You needn't know all a thing's relations to know the thing. |
| 7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are abstract entities, at least in the sense that more than one can be in the same place at the same time (e.g. redness and roundness). But they are not universals, because they have unique and particular locations. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about the reification involved in this kind of talk. Does a coin possess a thing called 'roundness', which then has to be individuated, identified and located? I am drawn to the two extreme views, and suspicious of compromise. |
| 7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope Nominalism says properties are classes or sets of exactly similar or resembling tropes, where tropes are what we might called 'property-tokens' or 'particularized properties'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We still seem to have the problem of 'resembling' here, and we certainly have the perennial problem of why any given particular should be placed in any particular set. See Idea 7959. |
| 7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope 'Nominalism' is not a version of nominalism, because tropes are abstract particulars, rather than concrete particulars. Of course, a trope account of the relations between particulars and their properties has ramifications for concrete particulars. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 7971. At this point the boundary between nominalist and realist theories seems to blur. Possibly that is bad news for tropes. Not many dilemmas can be solved by simply blurring the boundary. |
| 7959 | How do a group of resembling tropes all resemble one another in the same way? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how a group of resembling tropes can be of the same type, that is, that they can resemble one another in the same way. This problem is not settled simply by positing tropes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a fundamental fact that there is no resemblance unless the respect of resemblance is specified. Two identical objects could still said to be different because of their locations. Is resemblance natural or conventional? Consider atoms. |
| 7960 | Trope Nominalism is the only nominalism to introduce new entities, inviting Ockham's Razor [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Of all the nominalist solutions, Trope Nominalism is the only one that tries to solve the problem at issue by introducing entities; all the others try to get by with concrete particulars and sets of them. This might invite Ockham's Razor. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We could reply that tropes are necessities. The issue seems to be a key one, which is whether our fundamental onotology should include properties (in some form or other). I am inclined to exclude them (Ideas 3322, 3906, 4029). |
| 7951 | Numerical sameness is explained by theories of identity, but what explains qualitative identity? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can distinguish between numerical identity and qualitative identity. Numerical sameness is explained by a theory of identity, but what explains qualitative sameness? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The distinction is between type and token identity. Tokens are particulars, and types are sets, so her question comes down to the one of what entitles something to be a member of a set? Nothing, if sets are totally conventional, but they aren't. |
| 7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The 'one over many' problem is to explain how universals can unify their instances if they are wholly other than them. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If universals are self-predicating (beauty is beautiful) then they have a massive amount in common, despite one being general. You then have the regress problem of explaining the beauty of the beautiful. Baffling regress, or baffling participation. |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: All real forms of Nominalism should hold that the only objects relevant to the explanation of generality are concrete particulars, words (i.e. word-tokens, not word-types), and perhaps sets. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: The addition of sets seems controversial (see Idea 7970). The context is her rejection of the use of tropes in nominalist theories. I would doubt whether a theory still counted as nominalist if it admitted sets (e.g. Quine). |
| 7955 | Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain either new resemblances, or absence of resemblances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain the fact that we know when and in what way new objects resemble old ones, and that we know when and in what ways new objects do not resemble old ones. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear what sort of theory would be needed to 'explain' such a thing. Unless there is an explanation of resemblance waiting in the wings (beyond asserting that resemblance is a universal), then this is not a strong objection. |
| 7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'laws of thinghood' govern particulars, saying that one thing cannot be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Is this an empirical observation, or a tautology? Or might it even be a priori synthetic? What happens when two water drops or clouds merge? Or an amoeba fissions? In what sense is an image in two places at once? Se also Idea 2351. |
| 7926 | We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can usefully refer to 'individuation conditions', to distinguish objects of that kind from objects not of that kind, and to 'identity conditions', to distinguish objects within that kind from one another. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: So we individuate types or sets, and identify tokens or particulars. Sounds good. Should be in every philosopher's toolkit, and on every introductory philosophy course. |
| 7936 | Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances have a kind of unity that mere collocations of properties do not have, namely an instrinsic unity. So substances cannot be collocations - bundles - of properties. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A team is a unity. Compare a similar thought, Idea 1395, about personal identity. How can something which is a pure unity have more than one property? What distinguishes substances? Why can't a substance have a certain property? |
| 7930 | The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory of substance requires unconditional commitment to the truth of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: that things that are alike with respect to all of their properties are identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Since the identity of indiscernibles is very dubious (see Ideas 1365, 4476, 5746, 7928), this is bad news for the bundle theory. I suspect that all of these problems arise because no one seems to have a clear concept of a property. |
| 7932 | A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Commitment to the view that only what can be an object of possible sensory experience can exist eliminates the possibility of distinguishing between substance and attribute, leaving only one alternative, namely the bundle view. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Phenomenalism strikes me as a paradigm case of confusing ontology with epistemology. Presumably physicists (even empiricist ones) are committed to the 'interior' of quarks and electrons, but no one expects to experience them. |
| 7937 | When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory makes all true statements ascribing properties to substances uninformative, by making them logical truths. The property of being a feline animal is literally a constituent of a cat. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The solution would seem to a distinction between accidental and essential properties. Compare 'that plane is red' with 'that plane has wings'. 'Of course it does - it's a plane'. We might still survive without a plane-substance. |
| 7939 | Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances are capable of persisting through change, where this involves change in properties; but the bundle theory has the consequence that substances cannot survive change. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Her example is an apple remaining an apple when it turns brown. It doesn't look, though, as if there is a precise moment when the apple-substance ceases. The end of an apple seems to be more a matter of a loss of crucial properties. |
| 7940 | A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Maybe a substance is not itself a bundle of properties, but a sum or sequence of bundles of properties, a bundle of bundles of properties (which 'perdures' rather than 'endures'). | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: There remains the problem of deciding when the bundle has drifted too far away from the original to perdure correctly. A caterpillar can turn into a butterfly (which is pretty bizarre!), but not into a cathedral. Why? She says this idea denies change. |
| 7948 | A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Because a statue and the lump of matter that constitute it have different persistence conditions, they are not identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Maybe being a statue is a relational property? All the relational properties of a thing will have different persistence conditions. Suppose I see a face in a bowl of sugar, and you don't? |
| 9132 | An offer of 'free coffee or juice' could slowly shift from exclusive 'or' to inclusive 'or' [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes an exclusive 'or' gradually develops into an inclusive 'or'. A restaurant offers 'free coffee or juice'. The customers ask for both, and gradually they are given it, first as a courtesy, and eventually as an expectation. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A very nice example - of the rot of vagueness even seeping into the basic logical connectives. We don't have to accept it, though. Each instance of usage of 'or', by manager or customer, might be clearly one or the other. |
| 7929 | A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The three main theories of substance are the bundle theory (Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Ayer), the bare substratum theory (Locke and Bergmann), and the essentialist theory. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Macdonald defends the essentialist theory. The essentialist view immediately appeals to me. Properties must be OF something, and the something must have the power to produce properties. So there. |
| 7941 | Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: A rival to the bundle theory says that, for each substance, there is a constituent of it that is not a property but is both essential and unique to it, this constituent being referred to as a 'bare particular' or 'substratum'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound promising. It is unclear what existence devoid of all properties could be like. How could it 'have' its properties if it was devoid of features (it seems to need property-hooks)? It is an ontological black hole. How do you prove it? |
| 7942 | The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: If there is a substratum or bare particular within a substance, this gives an explanation of the unity of substances, and it is something which can survive intact when a substance changes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: [v. compressed wording] Many problems here. The one that strikes me is that when things change they sometimes lose their unity and identity, and that seems to be decided entirely from observation of properties, not from assessing the substratum. |
| 7943 | A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be no way of identifying a substratum as the bearer of qualities without qualifiying it as bare (having the property of being bare?), ..and they cannot be used to individuate things, because they are necessarily indiscernible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The defence would probably be a priori, claiming an axiomatic necessity for substrata in our thinking about the world, along with a denial that bareness is a property (any more than not being a contemporary of Napoleon is a property). |
| 7927 | At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are three distinct versions of Leibniz's Law, all traced to remarks made by Leibniz: the Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing), the Indiscernibility of Identicals (same thing, same properties), and the Substitution Principle. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The best view seems to be to treat the second one as Leibniz's Law (and uncontroversially true), and the first one as being an interesting but dubious claim. |
| 7928 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: One common argument to the conclusion that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is false is that it is not necessarily true. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2 n32) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a good argument. If you test the Principle with an example ('this butler is the murderer') then total identity does not seem to necessitate identity, though it strongly implies it (the butler may have a twin etc). |
| 9128 | It is propositional attitudes which can be a priori, not the propositions themselves [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The primary bearer of apriority is the propositional attitude (believing, knowing, guessing and so on) rather than the proposition itself. A proposition could be a priori to homo sapiens but a posteriori to Neandethals. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: A putative supreme being is quite useful here, who might even see the necessity of Arsenal beating Manchester United next Saturday. Unlike infants, adults know a priori that square pegs won't fit round holes. |
| 9130 | Attributing apriority to a proposition is attributing a cognitive ability to someone [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Every attribution of apriority to a proposition is tacitly an attribution of a cognitive ability to some thinker. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: The ability would include a range of background knowledge, as well as a sheer power of intellect. If you know all of Euclid's theorems, you will spot facts about geometrical figues quicker than me. His point is important. |
| 9118 | The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The bands of colour in a colour spectrum do not correspond to objective discontinuities in light wavelengths. These apparently external bands arise from our biology rather than simple physics. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If any more arguments are needed to endorse the fact that some qualities are clearly secondary (and, to my amazement, such arguments seem to be very much needed), I would take this to be one of the final conclusive pieces of evidence. |
| 9124 | We are unable to perceive a nose (on the back of a mask) as concave [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The human perceptual system appears unable to represent a nose as concave rather than convex. If you look at the concave side of a mask, you see the features as convex. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I don't think that is quite true. You wouldn't put a mask on if you thought it was convex. It is usually when seen at a distance with strong cross-lighting that the effect emerges. Nevertheless, it is an important point. |
| 9126 | Bayesians build near-certainty from lots of reasonably probable beliefs [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Bayesians demonstrate that a self-correcting agent can build an imposing edifice of near-certain knowledge from numerous beliefs that are only slightly more probable than not. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as highly significant for the coherence account of justification, even if one is sceptical about the arithmetical approach to belief of Bayesianism. It seems obvious that lots of quite likely facts build towards certainty, Watson. |
| 9121 | Illusions are not a reason for skepticism, but a source of interesting scientific information [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers tend to associate illusions with skepticism. But since illusions are signs of modular construction, they are actually reason for scientific hope. Illusions have been very useful in helping us to understand vision. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice reversal of the usual view. If I see double, it reveals to me that my eyes are not aligned properly. Anyone led to scepticism by illusions should pay more attention to themselves, and less to the reality they hope to know directly. |
| 1577 | Relativism is a disease which destroys the possibility of rational debate [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Relativism is disease, is pollution, for it negates the efficacy of logos. It destroys the possibility of a complete rational debate of fundamental questions. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.41) |
| 7947 | In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: What matters to continuity is not just the beginning and end states of the process by which a thing persists, perhaps through change, but the process itself. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a really important insight. Compare Idea 4931. If this is the key to understanding mind and personal identity, it means that the concept of a 'process' must be a central issue in ontology. How do you individuate a process? |
| 9134 | The negation of a meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The negation of any meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Compare 'there is another prime number beyond the highest one we have found' with its negation. The first seems verifiable in principle, but the second one doesn't. So the verificationist must deny Sorensen's idea? |
| 9133 | Propositions are what settle problems of ambiguity in sentences [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Propositions play the role of dis-ambiguators; they are the things between which utterances are ambiguous. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 7.7) | |
| A reaction: I have become a great fan of propositions, and I think this is one of the key reasons for believing in them. The proposition is what we attempt to pin down when asked 'what exactly did you mean by what you just said?' |
| 1578 | If relativism is the correct account of human values, then rhetoric is more important than reasoning [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: If relativism offers an accurate description of human values, then rhetoric replaces logos as the most fundamental human activity. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.47) | |
| A reaction: Or putting it another way, logos (reason) becomes meaningless. I suppose, though, that a relativist can conduct conditional reasoning (but must belief in some rules of reason). |
| 1596 | Reasoning aims not at the understanding of objects, but at the desire to give beautiful speeches [Roochnik] |
| Full Idea: Logos originates not in a cognitive capacity for the apprehension of objects, but in the desire to give birth to beautiful speeches. | |
| From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.124) | |
| A reaction: It is hard for us to grasp this, but it might be quite life-enhancing if we could return to that old way of thought. |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: I am entitled to buy any litre of water, but I am not entitled to buy every litre of water. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: A decent social system must somehow draw a line between buying up all the water and buying up all the paintings of Vermeer. Even the latter seems wicked, but it is hard to pin down the reason. |
| 9122 | God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Theologians worry that God may be an alien being. God cannot feel pain since pain is endured against one's will. God is all powerful and suffers nothing against His Will. To understand pain, one must experience pain. So God's power walls him off from us. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a good theological reply to this. God, and Jesus too (presumably), can only experience pain if they volunteer for it. It is inconceivable that they could be desperate for it to stop, but were unable to achieve that. |