66 ideas
| 16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are skilled at resisting even the most inviting thoughts. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: Not exactly 'despair', but it does show how far philosophers are able to stray from common sense. Monads, real possible worlds, real sets… Thomas Reid, the philosopher of common sense, might be the antidote. |
| 16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean dictum is that part of the sense of proper name is a criterion of identity for the thing in question. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: [She quotes Dummett 1981:545] We are asked to choose between this and the Kripke rigid/dubbing/causal account, with effectively no content. |
| 9912 | There are no such things as numbers [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: There are no such things as numbers. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: Mill said precisely the same (Idea 9794). I think I agree. There has been a classic error of reification. An abstract pattern is not an object. If I coin a word for all the three-digit numbers in our system, I haven't created a new 'object'. |
| 9901 | Numbers can't be sets if there is no agreement on which sets they are [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Zermelo and Von Neumann disagree on which particular sets the numbers are is fatal to the view that each number is some particular set. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A brilliantly simple argument. There is the possibility that one of the two accounts is correct (I would vote for Zermelo), but it is not actually possible to prove it. |
| 9151 | Benacerraf says numbers are defined by their natural ordering [Benacerraf, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf thinks of numbers as being defined by their natural ordering. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §5 | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that cardinality is logically prior to ordinality, since that connects better with the experienced physical world of objects. Just as the fact that people have different heights must precede them being arranged in height order. |
| 13891 | To understand finite cardinals, it is necessary and sufficient to understand progressions [Benacerraf, by Wright,C] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf claims that the concept of a progression is in some way the fundamental arithmetical notion, essential to understanding the idea of a finite cardinal, with a grasp of progressions sufficing for grasping finite cardinals. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 3.xv | |
| A reaction: He cites Dedekind (and hence the Peano Axioms) as the source of this. The interest is that progression seems to be fundamental to ordianls, but this claims it is also fundamental to cardinals. Note that in the first instance they are finite. |
| 17904 | A set has k members if it one-one corresponds with the numbers less than or equal to k [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Any set has k members if and only if it can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of numbers less than or equal to k. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: This is 'Ernie's' view of things in the paper. This defines the finite cardinal numbers in terms of the finite ordinal numbers. He has already said that the set of numbers is well-ordered. |
| 17906 | To explain numbers you must also explain cardinality, the counting of things [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: I would disagree with Quine. The explanation of cardinality - i.e. of the use of numbers for 'transitive counting', as I have called it - is part and parcel of the explication of number. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I n2) | |
| A reaction: Quine says numbers are just a progression, with transitive counting as a bonus. Interesting that Benacerraf identifies cardinality with transitive counting. I would have thought it was the possession of numerical quantity, not ascertaining it. |
| 9898 | We can count intransitively (reciting numbers) without understanding transitive counting of items [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Learning number words in the right order is counting 'intransitively'; using them as measures of sets is counting 'transitively'. ..It seems possible for someone to learn the former without learning the latter. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: Scruton's nice question (Idea 3907) is whether you could be said to understand numbers if you could only count intransitively. I would have thought such a state contained no understanding at all of numbers. Benacerraf agrees. |
| 17903 | Someone can recite numbers but not know how to count things; but not vice versa [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: It seems that it is possible for someone to learn to count intransitively without learning to count transitively. But not vice versa. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf favours the priority of the ordinals. It is doubtful whether you have grasped cardinality properly if you don't know how to count things. Could I understand 'he has 27 sheep', without understanding the system of natural numbers? |
| 9897 | The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The application of a system of numbers is counting and measurement. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], I) | |
| A reaction: A simple point, but it needs spelling out. Counting seems prior, in experience if not in logic. Measuring is a luxury you find you can indulge in (by imagining your quantity) split into parts, once you have mastered counting. |
| 9900 | For Zermelo 3 belongs to 17, but for Von Neumann it does not [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Ernie's number progression is [φ],[φ,[φ]],[φ,[φ],[φ,[φ,[φ]]],..., whereas Johnny's is [φ],[[φ]],[[[φ]]],... For Ernie 3 belongs to 17, not for Johnny. For Ernie 17 has 17 members; for Johnny it has one. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf's point is that there is no proof-theoretic way to choose between them, though I am willing to offer my intuition that Ernie (Zermelo) gives the right account. Seventeen pebbles 'contains' three pebbles; you must pass 3 to count to 17. |
| 9899 | The successor of x is either x and all its members, or just the unit set of x [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: For Ernie, the successor of a number x was the set consisting of x and all the members of x, while for Johnny the successor of x was simply [x], the unit set of x - the set whose only member is x. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 9900. Benacerraf's famous point is that it doesn't seem to make any difference to arithmetic which version of set theory you choose as its basis. I take this to conclusively refute the idea that numbers ARE sets. |
| 8697 | Disputes about mathematical objects seem irrelevant, and mathematicians cannot resolve them [Benacerraf, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: If two children were brought up knowing two different set theories, they could entirely agree on how to do arithmetic, up to the point where they discuss ontology. There is no mathematical way to tell which is the true representation of numbers. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Benacerraf ends by proposing a structuralist approach. If mathematics is consistent with conflicting set theories, then those theories are not shedding light on mathematics. |
| 8304 | No particular pair of sets can tell us what 'two' is, just by one-to-one correlation [Benacerraf, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Principle can't tell us what a cardinal number is (this is one lesson of Benacerraf's well-known problem). An infinity of pairs of sets could actually be the number two (not just the simplest sets). | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 10.3 | |
| A reaction: The drift here is for numbers to end up as being basic, axiomatic, indefinable, universal entities. Since I favour patterns as the basis of numbers, I think the basis might be in a pre-verbal experience, which even a bird might have, viewing its eggs. |
| 9906 | If ordinal numbers are 'reducible to' some set-theory, then which is which? [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: If a particular set-theory is in a strong sense 'reducible to' the theory of ordinal numbers... then we can still ask, but which is really which? | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIB) | |
| A reaction: A nice question about all reductions. If we reduce mind to brain, does that mean that brain is really just mind. To have a direction (up/down?), reduction must lead to explanation in a single direction only. Do numbers explain sets? |
| 9907 | If any recursive sequence will explain ordinals, then it seems to be the structure which matters [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: If any recursive sequence whatever would do to explain ordinal numbers suggests that what is important is not the individuality of each element, but the structure which they jointly exhibit. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This sentence launched the whole modern theory of Structuralism in mathematics. It is hard to see what properties a number-as-object could have which would entail its place in an ordinal sequence. |
| 9908 | The job is done by the whole system of numbers, so numbers are not objects [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: 'Objects' do not do the job of numbers singly; the whole system performs the job or nothing does. I therefore argue that numbers could not be objects at all. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This thought is explored by structuralism - though it is a moot point where mere 'nodes' in a system (perhaps filled with old bits of furniture) will do the job either. No one ever explains the 'power' of numbers (felt when you do a sudoku). Causal? |
| 9909 | The number 3 defines the role of being third in a progression [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Any object can play the role of 3; that is, any object can be the third element in some progression. What is peculiar to 3 is that it defines that role, not by being a paradigm, but by representing the relation of any third member of a progression. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: An interesting early attempt to spell out the structuralist idea. I'm thinking that the role is spelled out by the intersection of patterns which involve threes. |
| 9911 | Number words no more have referents than do the parts of a ruler [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Questions of the identification of the referents of number words should be dismissed as misguided in just the way that a question about the referents of the parts of a ruler would be seen as misguided. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: What a very nice simple point. It would be very strange to insist that every single part of the continuum of a ruler should be regarded as an 'object'. |
| 8925 | Mathematical objects only have properties relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical objects have no properties other than those relating them to other 'elements' of the same structure. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.285), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Structuralism Reconsidered §3 n13 | |
| A reaction: Suppose we only had one number - 13 - and we all cried with joy when we recognised it in a group of objects. Would that be a number, or just a pattern, or something hovering between the two? |
| 9938 | How can numbers be objects if order is their only property? [Benacerraf, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Benacerraf raises the question how numbers can be 'objects' if they have no properties except order in a particular ω-sequence. | |
| From: report of Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], p.301) by Hilary Putnam - Mathematics without Foundations | |
| A reaction: Frege certainly didn't think that order was their only property (see his 'borehole' metaphor in Grundlagen). It might be better to say that they are objects which only have relational properties. |
| 9910 | Number-as-objects works wholesale, but fails utterly object by object [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The identification of numbers with objects works wholesale but fails utterly object by object. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], IIIC) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a glaring problem for platonists. You can stare at 1728 till you are blue in the face, but it only begins to have any properties at all once you examine its place in the system. This is unusual behaviour for an object. |
| 9903 | Number words are not predicates, as they function very differently from adjectives [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: The unpredicative nature of number words can be seen by noting how different they are from, say, ordinary adjectives, which do function as predicates. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: He points out that 'x is seventeen' is a rare construction in English, unlike 'x is happy/green/interesting', and that numbers outrank all other adjectives (having to appear first in any string of them). |
| 9904 | The set-theory paradoxes mean that 17 can't be the class of all classes with 17 members [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: In no consistent theory is there a class of all classes with seventeen members. The existence of the paradoxes is a good reason to deny to 'seventeen' this univocal role of designating the class of all classes with seventeen members. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], II) | |
| A reaction: This was Frege's disaster, and seems to block any attempt to achieve logicism by translating numbers into sets. It now seems unclear whether set theory is logic, or mathematics, or sui generis. |
| 16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a perfectly homogeneous non-atomistic disc. A record of all the non-relational information about the world at that moment will not reveal whether the disc is rotating about a vertical axis through. This tells against Humean supervenience. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [Armstrong 1980 originated this, and it is famously discussed by Kripke in lectures] There will, of course, be dispositions present because of the rotation, but Lewis excludes any such modal truths. |
| 16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Non-linguistic objects, properties, and states of affairs cannot be indeterminate because they cannot have determinate truth-values either. No cloud is indeterminate, just as no cloud is either determinately true or determinately false. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: If vagueness must be linguistic, this means animals can never experience it, which I doubt. Presumably 'this is a cloud' is only made vague by the vagueness of the object, rather than by the vagueness of the sentence? |
| 16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: There is a question of whether there must be 'vagueness all the way down' for the world to be vague. One view is that if there is a base level of precisely describably facts, upon which all the others supervene, then the world is not really vague. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: My understanding of the physics is that it is non-vague all the way down, and then you get to the base level which is hopelessly vague! |
| 16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: The epistemic account of vagueness is particularly attractive where persons are concerned. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.14) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to see her text for details. Interesting that there might be different views of what vagueness is for different cases. Or putting it another way, absolutely everything (said, thought, existing or done) might be vague in some way! |
| 16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Supervaluationists take a present-tense predication as concerning a single, but vaguely specified, moment. …It is indeterminate which of a range of moments enters into the truth conditions, but it is true if satisfied by every member of the range. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: She is discussing stage theory, but this is a helpful clarification of the idea of supervaluation. Something can be satisfied by a whole bunch of values, even though you are not sure which one. |
| 16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: A supervaluationist approach involves consideration of what the truth value of the utterance would have been if semantic indecision had been resolved in this way or that. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: At last, a lovely account of supervaluation in plain English that anyone can understand! Why don't they all do that? Well, done Katherine Hawley! ['semantic indecision' is uncertainty about what your words mean!] |
| 16230 | Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers suspect that properties are few and far between, that there are only properties like charge, mass, spin, and so on. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I think properties are very sparse, and mainly consist of physical powers, but I am not sure what I think of this. It may be 'mere semantics'. Complex properties still seem to be properties. Powers combine to make properties, I suggest. |
| 8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The whole theory of particulars and universals is due to mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality what is merely a characteristic of language. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.13) | |
| A reaction: [Fraser MacBride has pursued this idea] It is rather difficult to deny the existence of particulars, in the sense of actual objects, so this appears to make Ramsey a straightforward nominalist, of some sort or other. |
| 8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The two obvious methods of abolishing the distinction between particulars and universals are by holding either that universals are collections of particulars, or that particulars are collections of their qualities. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.8) | |
| A reaction: Ramsey proposes an error theory, arising out of language. Quine seems to offer another attempt, making objects and predication unanalysable and basic. Abstract reference seems to make the strongest claim to separate out the universals. |
| 8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me as clear as anything can be in philosophy that the two sentences 'Socrates is wise' and 'wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates' assert the same fact and express the same proposition. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.12) | |
| A reaction: Could be challenged. One says Socrates is just the way he is, the other says he is attached to an abstract entity greater than himself. The squabble over universals has become a squabble over logical form. Finding logical form needs metaphysics! |
| 16232 | An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that our distinction between natural and unnatural (gerrymandered) objects corresponds to a distinction between series of stages which are and are not linked by certain non-supervenient relations. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 16213 for the nature of these 'relations'. I don't understand how an abstraction (as I take it) like a relation can unify a physical object. A trout-turkey is unified by a relation of some sort. Hawley defends Stage Theory. |
| 16200 | Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers believe that sortal predicates are spatially maximal - for example, that no cat can be a proper spatial part of a cat. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds reasonable until you cut the tail off a cat. Presumably what remains is a cat? So presumably that smaller part was always a cat? Only essentialism can make sense of this! You can't just invent rules for sortals. |
| 16237 | The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: It is difficult to establish a consensus about the modal features of the statue and the lump. Could that statue be made of a different lump? Could that statue of Goliath have been spherical? Not a realistic statue of Goliath, but still the same statue? | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: The problem is with a wild wacky sculptor, who might say it is a statue of Goliath no matter what shape the lump takes. 'Goliath had a spherical character'. Sometimes we will say (pace Evans) it is 'roughly identical' to the original statue. |
| 16238 | Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Perdurance theory claims that lumps and statues differ modally whilst always being made of the same parts. A natural way to make this less mysterious is for perdurantists to adopt counterpart theory, where objects in different worlds are never identical. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: This, of course, is exactly the system created by David Lewis. Personally I rather like counterparts, but perdurance seems a tad crazy. |
| 16220 | Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: There are three main views of vagueness: the Epistemic view says we talk precisely, but don't know what we talk precisely about; the Semantic view is that it is loose talk, or semantic indecision; the Ontic view says it is part of how the world is. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [My summary of two paragraphs] She associates Williamson with the first view, Lewis with the second, and Van Inwagen with the third. |
| 16222 | Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: There is no important distinction to be drawn between cases where indeterminacy is due to the object involved and cases where indeterminacy is due to the property involved. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: You could always paraphrase the object's situation propertywise, or the property's situation objectwise. 'His baldness is indeterminate'; 'where does the mountainous terrain end?' |
| 16228 | The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Constitution theorists are endurance theorists who believe that there can be more than one object exactly occupying a spatial region at a certain moment. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I increasingly think that this is a ridiculous view. The constitution of an object isn't a further object. A constitution is a necessary requirement for a physical object. Hylomorphism! Constitutions can't be separate - they must constitute something! |
| 16229 | Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Constitution theorists need to posit sortal properties of 'being a thread' or 'being a sweater', as grounds for the differences betwween the sweater and the thread that constitutes it. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is further grounds for thinking the constitution view ridiculous, because there are no such properties. 'Being a sweater' is a category, which something belongs in if it has all the properties of a sweater. The final property triggers sweaterhood. |
| 14492 | If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: The constitution theorists, who claim that the sweater and the thread are different things, should offer some explanation of why we tend to say that there is just one thing there. They must simply claim that we 'do not count by identity'. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Her example is a sweater knitted from a single piece of thread. Presumably we could count by sortal identity, so there is one thread here, and there is one sweater here. We just can't add the two together. No ontological arithmetic. |
| 16193 | 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Another strategy for the problem of change says that instantiation - the having of properties - is time-indexed, or relative to times, although properties themselves are not. This 'adverbialism' says that object has-at-t some property. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Johnson, Lowe and Haslanger for this] Promising. The question is whether the time index is attached to the object, to the property, or to the instantiation. The middle one is wrong. There aren't two properties - green-at-t1 and green-at-t2. |
| 16195 | Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Adopting presentism solves the problem of change, since it means that, once the banana is yellow, there just is no green banana, and the question of the relationship between yesterday's green banana and today's yellow one therefore does not arise. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Change remains kind of odd, but it is no longer the puzzlement of two things being the same when they are admitted to be different. There is only ever one thing. This is my preferred account, I think. I certainly hope past bananas don't exist. |
| 16202 | The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: It is the insistence on identity between objects wholly present at different times which gives rise to the problem of change. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: My solution is to say things are the 'same', in a slightly loose non-transitive way, rather than formally identical, which is a concept from maths, not from reality. |
| 16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Endurance theory might claim a banana stands (atemporally) in different relations to different times (being-green-at to Monday), ..or has different instantiation relations to different properties (instantiates-on-Monday to being green). | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: She suggests that the first approach is more plausible for endurantists. I think she is right (assuming these are the only two options). Monday awaits a banana, but yellow doesn't. |
| 16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Endurance theory is not just a default 'no-theory' theory, for it must incorporate a sophisticated account of properties and instantiation, and requires a certain view of time if it is even to be formulable. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: A bit odd to claim it is a sophisticated theory when it is held (at least in our culture) by absolutely everyone apart from a few philosophers and physicists. The sophistication may come with trying to describe it using current metaphysical vocabulary. |
| 16197 | How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: A question for perdurance theory is whether it can account for the special concern we feel for our own future selves. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: That is one of those questions that begins to look very mysterious whatever your theory. I favour endurantism, but me next year looks a very remote person for me to be concerned about, in comparison with the people around me now. |
| 16191 | Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Perdurance relies on our having an 'atemporal' perspective from which we can truly say a banana has both yellow and green parts, where this 'has' is not in the present tense. ..Perdurance theory cannot be expressed straightforwardly in the present tense. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to require the tenseless B-series view of time. It seems to need a tenseless view of the past, but what does it have to say about the future? |
| 16199 | If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: The mass of an object is the sum of its nonoverlapping parts. Analogy would suggest that a persisting banana has, atemporally speaking, a mass that is the sum of all the masses of the 100g temporal parts, a worryingly large figure. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is an objection to the Perdurance view that an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts. Their duration tends towards instantaneous, so the aggregate mass tends towards infinity. She says they should deny atemporal mass. |
| 16201 | Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: According to Perdurance Theory, it is long-lived sums of stages which are tennis balls, whereas according to Stage Theory, it is the stages themselves which are tennis balls. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: These seem to be the two options if you are a four-dimensionalist, though Fine says you could be a weird three-dimensionalist and choose stage theory. |
| 16240 | If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: It seems that perdurance theory should identify Descartes with the sum of his temporal parts, but that means Descartes essentially lived for 54 years, which seems absurd, as he could have lived longer or less long than he in fact did. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.10) | |
| A reaction: [She credits Van Inwagen with this] I'm not clear why a counterpart of Descartes could not have a shorter or longer sum of parts, and still be Descartes. If the sum is rigidly designated, that is a problem for endurance too. |
| 16203 | Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: The first worry for Stage Theory is that many present stages are bananas, and many stages tomorrow are bananas, but this seems to omit the important fact that some of those stages are intimately linked, that certain stages are the same banana. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Hawley has a theory to do with external relations, which I didn't find very persuasive. Just to say stages have a 'relation' seems too abstract. Stages of disparate things can also have 'relations', but presumably the wrong sort. |
| 16204 | Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: The second worry for Stage Theory is that there are far too many bananas in the world on this account. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that each (instantaneous) stage is considered to be a whole banana (as opposed to one sum of all the stages of the banana, in the Perdurance view). A pretty serious problem, which she tries to deal with. |
| 16212 | An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: A single isolated stage could not be a banana, because in order to be a banana a stage must be suitably related to other stages with appropriate properties. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems at odds with the claim that each stage is the whole thing (rather than the long temporal 'worm' of perdurance theory). Isolated stages are instantaneous, so can't be anything, really. Her 'relations' seem hand-wavy to me. Connections? |
| 16213 | Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: I claim that there are relations between the distinct stages of a persisting object which are not determined by the intrinsic properties of those stages. …The later stages depend, counterfactually and causally, upon the earlier stages. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the heart of her theory. How can there be a causal link between two stages which is not the result of intrinsic properties of the stages? This begins to sound like Malebranche's Occasionalism. |
| 16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: A third worry for Stage Theory is that the momentary stages themselves are just too thin to populate the world, and too thin to be the objects of reference. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Her three objections to her own theory add up to sufficient to refute it, in my view, though a large chunk of her book is spent trying to refute the objections. |
| 16206 | Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: To account for change, stages and temporal parts must be as fine-grained as change: a material thing must have as many stages or parts as it is in incompatible states during its lifetime. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a dilemma for stages here, of being so fat that they are divisible and change, or so thin that they barely exist. Lose-lose, I'd say. |
| 9905 | Identity statements make sense only if there are possible individuating conditions [Benacerraf] |
| Full Idea: Identity statements make sense only in contexts where there exist possible individuating conditions. | |
| From: Paul Benacerraf (What Numbers Could Not Be [1965], III) | |
| A reaction: He is objecting to bizarre identifications involving numbers. An identity statement may be bizarre even if we can clearly individuate the two candidates. Winston Churchill is a Mars Bar. Identifying George Orwell with Eric Blair doesn't need a 'respect'. |
| 16225 | If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: We can call the 'transference principle' the claim that if it is indeterminate whether two objects are identical, then nothing determinately true of one can be determinately false of the other. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.9) | |
| A reaction: The point is that Leibniz's Law could immediately be invoked to show there is no possibility of their identity. |
| 16239 | To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: When asked whether a possible object is a counterpart of something, we need to specify which sortal we are interested in. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: The compares this to the 'respect' in which two things are similar. For example, what would count as a counterpart of the current British Prime Minister? De re or de dicto reference? |
| 16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: It is rather difficult to say why one should care about one's future self, even on an endurance theory account of the self. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.9) | |
| A reaction: A nice passing remark, that strikes me forcibly as one of those basic mysteries of experience that philosophers can only gawp at, and have no theory to offer. |
| 16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Counterfactual accounts of causation say that a causal connection is exhausted by the counterfactuals it appears to ground. | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: I am bewildered as to how this became a respectable view in philosophy. I quite understand that this might exhaust the 'logic' of causal relations. Presumably you can have counterfactuals in mathematics which are not causal? |
| 16207 | Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley] |
| Full Idea: There seem to be three possible ways for time to be fine-grained. The ordering of instants could be discrete (like the integers), dense (like the rational numbers) or continuous (like the real numbers). | |
| From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: She seems to assume that time must be 'grained', but I would take the continuous view to imply that there is no grain at all (which is bad news for her version of stage theory). |