8 ideas
23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
18889 | Ostensive definitions needn't involve pointing, but must refer to something specific [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: So-called ostensive definitions need not literally involve ostension, e.g. pointing, but they must involve genuine reference of some sort (in this case reference to a sample of water). | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 4.11.2) |
14627 | S4, and therefore S5, are invalid for metaphysical modality [Salmon,N, by Williamson] |
Full Idea: Salmon argues that S4 and therefore S5 are invalid for metaphysical modality. | |
From: report of Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 238-40) by Timothy Williamson - Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 4 | |
A reaction: [He gives references for Salmon, and for his own reply] Salmon's view seems to be opposed my most modern logicians (such as Ian Rumfitt). |
18888 | Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: The metaphysical doctrine of essentialism says that certain properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have, except by not existing. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 3.8.2) | |
A reaction: A bad account of essentialism, and a long way from Aristotle. It arises from the logicians' tendency to fix objects entirely in terms of a 'flat' list of predicates (called 'properties'!), which ignore structure, constitution, history etc. |
19284 | Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn] |
Full Idea: To say that we dignify a truth as necessary we are expressing our own mental attitudes - our own inability to make anything of a possible way of thinking which denies it. It is this blank unimaginability which we voice when we use the modal vocabulary. | |
From: Simon Blackburn (Spreading the Word [1984], 6.5) | |
A reaction: Yes, but why are we unable to imagine it? I accept that the truth or falsity of Goldbach's Conjecture may well be necessary, but I have no imagination one way or the other about it. Philosophers like Blackburn are very alien to me! |
18886 | Frege's 'sense' solves four tricky puzzles [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: Reference via sense solves Frege's four puzzles, of the informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitutivity in attitude contexts, of negative existentials, and the truth-value of statements using nondenoting singular terms. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.1) | |
A reaction: These must then be compared with Kripke's three puzzles about referring via sense, and the whole debate is then spread before us. |
18887 | The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2) | |
A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works. |
18891 | Nothing in the direct theory of reference blocks anti-essentialism; water structure might have been different [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: There seems to be nothing in the theory of direct reference to block the anti-essentialist assertion that the substance water might have been the very same entity and yet have had a different chemical structure. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 6.23.1) | |
A reaction: Indeed, water could be continuously changing its inner structure, while retaining the surface appearance that gets baptised as 'water'. We make the reasonable empirical assumption, though, that structure-change implies surface-change. |