7 ideas
| 18892 | Suppose a world where I'm from different gametes; add my gametes; which one is more me? [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It seems essential that you come from your gametes. Suppose (for reductio) that I come from Nixon's actual gametes. Now add my actual gametes to that possible world, and suppose they become an adult. Which has the stronger title to be me? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (On the Necessity of Origin [1976], p.132), quoted by Nathan Salmon - Reference and Essence (1st edn) 7.25.5 | |
| A reaction: [See Nathan Salmon 1981:209] Feels like the Ship of Theseus. You say 'that's Theseus Ship', until the rival ship appears around the headland. Confusion. If Nixon's gametes can produce McGinn, the second gametes could produce a Nixon! Then what? |
| 12019 | McGinn falsely claims necessity of origin is a special case of the necessity of identity [Forbes,G on McGinn] |
| Full Idea: McGinn assimilates the origin relation among organisms to the identity relation, so that the necessity of origin becomes a special case of the necessity of identity. We argue that this assimilation is illegitimate. | |
| From: comment on Colin McGinn (On the Necessity of Origin [1976]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1 | |
| A reaction: Not sure about this. I have long suspected what McGinn suspects. Once you have identified the organism with a particular origin, it hardly seems surprising that this particular origin has become inescapable. |
| 9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The notion of an abstract object comes from the notion of abstraction; it is in origin an epistemological rather than an ontological category. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.232) | |
| A reaction: Etymology doesn't prove anything. However, if you define abstract objects as not existing in space or time, you must recognise that this may only be because that is how humans imaginatively created them in the first place. |
| 9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Theists may find attractive a view popular among medieval philosophers from Augustine on: that abstract objects are really divine thoughts. More exactly, propositions are divine thoughts, properties divine concepts, and sets divine collections. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.233) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I pass this on because we should be aware that there is a theological history to discussions of abstract objects, and some people have vested interests in keeping them outside of the natural world. Aren't properties natural? Does God gerrymander sets? |
| 9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Someone who believes propositions are concrete cannot agree that some propositions are necessary. For propositions are contingent beings, and could have failed to exist. But if they fail to exist, then they fail to be true. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.230) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He implies the actual existence of an infinity of trivial, boring or ridiculous necessary truths. I suspect that he is just confusing a thought with its content. Or we might just treat necessary propositions as hypothetical. |
| 9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If propositions are brain inscriptions, then if there had been no human beings there would have been no propositions. But then 'there are no human beings' would have been true, so there would have been at least one truth (and thus one proposition). | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.229) | |
| A reaction: This would make 'there are no x's' true for any value of x apart from actual objects, which implies an infinity of propositions. Does Plantinga really believe that these all exist? He may be confusing propositions with facts. |
| 7667 | There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius. | |
| From: report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism | |
| A reaction: This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny. |