Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Against Coherence', 'Comments on a Certain Broadsheet' and 'Analyzing Modality'

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23 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 3. Objectual Quantification
'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2)
     A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2)
     A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2)
     A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien]
     Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5)
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4)
     A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff.
Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien]
     Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
     A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds.
Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
     A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds
We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien]
     Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily?
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien]
     Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent?
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien]
     Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not).
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien]
     Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
     A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one.
Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien]
     Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
     A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien!
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / c. Counterparts
We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien]
     Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning.
     From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
What experience could prove 'If a=c and b=c then a=b'? [Descartes]
     Full Idea: Please tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming some common notion to the effect that 'things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other'.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.366)
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / a. Coherence as justification
Incoherence may be more important for enquiry than coherence [Olsson]
     Full Idea: While coherence may lack the positive role many have assigned to it, ...incoherence plays an important negative role in our enquiries.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 10.1)
     A reaction: [He cites Peirce as the main source for this idea] We can hardly by deeply impressed by incoherence if we have no sense of coherence. Incoherence is just one of many markers for theory failure. Missing the target, bad concepts...
Coherence is the capacity to answer objections [Olsson]
     Full Idea: According to Lehrer, coherence should be understood in terms of the capacity to answer objections.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 9)
     A reaction: [Keith Lehrer 1990] We can connect this with the Greek requirement of being able to give an account [logos], which is the hallmark of understanding. I take coherence to be the best method of achieving understanding. Any understanding meets Lehrer's test.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / c. Coherentism critique
Mere agreement of testimonies is not enough to make truth very likely [Olsson]
     Full Idea: Far from guaranteeing a high likelihood of truth by itself, testimonial agreement can apparently do so only if the circumstances are favourable as regards independence, prior probability, and individual credibility.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 1)
     A reaction: This is Olson's main thesis. His targets are C.I.Lewis and Bonjour, who hoped that a mere consensus of evidence would increase verisimilitude. I don't see a problem for coherence in general, since his favourable circumstances are part of it.
Coherence is only needed if the information sources are not fully reliable [Olsson]
     Full Idea: An enquirer who is fortunate enough to have at his or her disposal fully reliable information sources has no use for coherence, the need for which arises only in the context of less than fully reliable informations sources.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 2.6.2)
     A reaction: I take this to be entirely false. How do you assess reliability? 'I've seen it with my own eyes'. Why trust your eyes? In what visibility conditions do you begin to doubt your eyes? Why do rational people mistrust their intuitions?
A purely coherent theory cannot be true of the world without some contact with the world [Olsson]
     Full Idea: The Input Objection says a pure coherence theory would seem to allow that a system of beliefs be justified in spite of being utterly out of contact with the world it purports to describe, so long as it is, to a sufficient extent, coherent.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 4.1)
     A reaction: Olson seems impressed by this objection, but I don't see how a system could be coherently about the world if it had no known contact with the world. Olson seems to ignore meta-coherence, which evaluates the status of the system being studied.
Extending a system makes it less probable, so extending coherence can't make it more probable [Olsson]
     Full Idea: Any non-trivial extension of a belief system is less probable than the original system, but there are extensions that are more coherent than the original system. Hence more coherence does not imply a higher probability.
     From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 6.4)
     A reaction: [Olson cites Klein and Warfield 1994; compressed] The example rightly says the extension could have high internal coherence, but not whether the extension is coherent with the system being extended.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / c. Nativist concepts
The mind's innate ideas are part of its capacity for thought [Descartes]
     Full Idea: I have never written or taken the view that the mind requires innate ideas which are something distinct from its own faculty of thinking.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
Qualia must be innate, because physical motions do not contain them [Descartes]
     Full Idea: The ideas of pains, colours, sounds etc. must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
     A reaction: Simple and brilliant! We know perfectly well that there is no redness zooming through the air from a tomato (or the air would be pink!). Redness occurs when the light arrives, so we add the redness, so it is innate.