Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Categories' and 'There Are No Abstract Objects'

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5 ideas

2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes
18004 We can't do philosophy without knowledge of types and categories [Ryle]
     Full Idea: We are in the dark about the nature of philosophical problems and methods if we are in the dark about types and categories.
     From: Gilbert Ryle (Categories [1938], p.189), quoted by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.2
     A reaction: Magidor and others take this to be an assertion about language and logic, but I take it to be an assertion about reality. It is an early assertion of Schaffer's claim that ontology concerns the structure of existence, and not just what exists.
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / c. Nominalism about abstracta
14596 Call 'nominalism' the denial of numbers, properties, relations and sets [Dorr]
     Full Idea: Just as there are no numbers or properties, there are no relations (like 'being heavier than' or 'betweenness'), or sets. I will provisionally use 'nominalism' for the conjunction of these four claims.
     From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 1)
     A reaction: If you are going to be a nominalist, do it properly! My starting point in metaphysics is strong sympathy with this view. Right now [Tues 22nd Nov 2011, 10:57 am GMT] I think it is correct.
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 5. Class Nominalism
14597 Natural Class Nominalism says there are primitive classes of things resembling in one respect [Dorr]
     Full Idea: Natural Class Nominalists take as primitive the notion of a 'natural' class - a class of things that all resemble one another in some one respect and resemble nothing else in that respect.
     From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4)
     A reaction: Dorr rejects this view because he doesn't believe in 'classes'. How committed to classes do you have to be before you are permitted to talk about them? All vocabulary (such as 'resemble') seems metaphysically tainted in this area.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
14598 Abstracta imply non-logical brute necessities, so only nominalists can deny such things [Dorr]
     Full Idea: If there are abstract objects, there are necessary truths about these things that cannot be reduced to truths of logic. So only the nominalist, who denies that there are any such things, can adequately respect the idea that there are no brute necessities.
     From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4)
     A reaction: This is where two plates of my personal philosophy grind horribly against one another. I love nominalism, and I love natural necessities. They meet like a ring-species in evolution. I'll just call it a 'paradox', and move on (swiftly).
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
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.