25 ideas
| 9921 | 'True' is only occasionally useful, as in 'everything Fermat believed was true' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: In the disquotational view of truth, what saves truth from being wholly redundant and so wholly useless, is mainly that it provides an ability to state generalisations like 'Everything Fermat believed was true'. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], I.A.2.c) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like the thin end of the wedge. Presumably we can infer that the first thing Fermat believed on his last Christmas Day was true. |
| 9924 | Modal logic gives an account of metalogical possibility, not metaphysical possibility [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: If you want a logic of metaphysical possibility, the existing literature was originally developed to supply a logic of metalogical possibility, and still reflects its origins. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.B.3.b) | |
| A reaction: This is a warning shot (which I don't fully understand) to people like me, who were beginning to think they could fill their ontology with possibilia, which could then be incorporated into the wider account of logical thinking. Ah well... |
| 9933 | The paradoxes are only a problem for Frege; Cantor didn't assume every condition determines a set [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The paradoxes only seem to arise in connection with Frege's logical notion of extension or class, not Cantor's mathematical notion of set. Cantor never assumed that every condition determines a set. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], III.C.1.b) | |
| A reaction: This makes the whole issue a parochial episode in the history of philosophy, not a central question. Cantor favoured some sort of abstractionism (see Kit Fine on the subject). |
| 9928 | Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Mereology has ontological implications. The acceptance of some initial entities involves the acceptance of many further entities, arbitrary wholes having the entities as parts. It must accept conglomerates. Geometric points imply geometric regions. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.C.1.b) | |
| A reaction: Presumably without the wholes being entailed by the parts, there is no subject called 'mereology'. But if the conglomeration is unrestricted, there is not much left to be said. 'Restricted' composition (by nature?) sounds a nice line. |
| 9926 | A relation is either a set of sets of sets, or a set of sets [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: While in general a relation is taken to be a set of ordered pairs <u, v> = {{u}, {u, v}}, and hence a set of sets of sets, in special cases a relation can be represented by a set of sets. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.C.1.a) | |
| A reaction: [See book for their examples, which are <, symmetric, and arbitrary] The fact that a relation (or anything else) can be represented in a certain way should never ever be taken to mean that you now know what the thing IS. |
| 9932 | The paradoxes no longer seem crucial in critiques of set theory [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Recent commentators have de-emphasised the set paradoxes because they play no prominent part in motivating the most articulate and active opponents of set theory, such as Kronecker (constructivism) or Brouwer (intuitionism), or Weyl (predicativism). | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], III.C.1.b) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a sad illustration of the way most analytical philosophers have to limp along behind the logicians and mathematicians, arguing furiously about problems that have largely been abandoned. |
| 9923 | We should talk about possible existence, rather than actual existence, of numbers [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The modal strategy for numbers is to replace assumptions about the actual existence of numbers by assumptions about the possible existence of numbers | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.B.3.a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be quite a good way of dealing with very large numbers and infinities. It is not clear whether 5 is so regularly actualised that we must consider it as permanent, or whether it is just a prominent permanent possibility. |
| 9925 | Structuralism and nominalism are normally rivals, but might work together [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Usually structuralism and nominalism are considered rivals. But structuralism can also be the first step in a strategy of nominalist reconstrual or paraphrase. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.C.0) | |
| A reaction: Hellman and later Chihara seem to be the main proponents of nominalist structuralism. My sympathies lie with this strategy. Are there objects at the nodes of the structure, or is the structure itself platonic? Mill offers a route. |
| 9934 | Number words became nouns around the time of Plato [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The transition from using number words purely as adjectives to using them extensively as nouns has been traced to 'around the time of Plato'. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], III.C.2.a) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Kneale and Kneale VI,§2 for this] It is just too tempting to think that in fact Plato (and early Platonists) were totally responsible for this shift, since the whole reification of numbers seems to be inherently platonist. |
| 10369 | How fine-grained Kim's events are depends on how finely properties are individuated [Kim, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: How fine-grained Kim's events are depends on how finely properties are individuated. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I don't actually buy the idea that an event could just be an 'exemplification'. Change seems to be required, and processes, or something like them, must be mentioned. Degrees of fine-graining sound good, though, for processes too. |
| 8976 | If events are ordered triples of items, such things seem to be sets, and hence abstract [Simons on Kim] |
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Full Idea:
If Kim's events are just the ordered triple of |
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| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: You might reply that the object, and maybe the attribute, are concrete, and the time is natural, but the combination really is an abstraction, even though it is located (like the equator). Where is the set of my books located? |
| 8975 | Events cannot be merely ordered triples, but must specify the link between the elements [Kim, by Simons] |
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Full Idea:
Kim's events cannot just be the ordered triple of |
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| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: Why should they even be in that particular order? This requirement rather messes up Kim's plan for a very streamlined, Ockhamised ontology. Circles have symmetry at all times. Is 'near Trafalgar Square' a property? |
| 8974 | Events are composed of an object with an attribute at a time [Kim, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Kim's events are exemplifications by an object of an attribute at a time...It does not make events basic entities, as the three constituents are more basic, but it gives identity conditions (two events are the same if object, attribute and time the same). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: [Aristotle is said to be behind this] I am more sympathetic to this view than the claim that events are primitive. If a pebble is ellipsoid for a million years, is that an event? I think the concept of a 'process' is the most fruitful one to investigate. |
| 8977 | Since properties like self-identity and being 2+2=4 are timeless, Kim must restrict his properties [Simons on Kim] |
| Full Idea: Since some tautologously universal properties such as self-identity or being such that 2+2=4 apply to all things at all times, that is stretching Kim's events too far. Candidate properties need to be realistically restricted, and it is unclear how. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: You could deploy Schoemaker's concept of natural properties in terms of the source of causal powers, but the problem would be that you were probably hoping to then use Kim's events to define causation. Answer: treat causation as the primitive. |
| 8980 | Kim's theory results in too many events [Simons on Kim] |
| Full Idea: The criticism most frequently levelled against Kim's theory is that it results in an unacceptable plurality of finely differentiated events, because of the requirement for identity of the constituent property. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 4.4 | |
| A reaction: This may mean that the Battle of Waterloo was several trillion events, which seems daft to the historian, but it doesn't to the physicist. A cannon firing is indeed an accumulation of lots of little events. |
| 9918 | Abstract/concrete is a distinction of kind, not degree [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The distinction of abstract and concrete is one of kind and not degree. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], I.A.1.a) | |
| A reaction: I think I must agree with this. If there is a borderline, it would be in particulars that seem to have an abstract aspect to them. A horse involves the abstraction of being a horse, and it involves be one horse. |
| 9929 | Much of what science says about concrete entities is 'abstraction-laden' [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Much of what science says about concrete entities is 'abstraction-laden'. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], III.A.1.d) | |
| A reaction: Not just science. In ordinary conversation we continually refer to particulars using so-called 'universal' predicates and object-terms, which are presumably abstractions. 'I've just seen an elephant'. |
| 9927 | Mathematics has ascended to higher and higher levels of abstraction [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: In mathematics, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, there has been an ascent to higher and higher levels of abstraction. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.C.1.b) | |
| A reaction: I am interested in clarifying what this means, which might involve the common sense and psychological view of the matter, as well as some sort of formal definition in terms of equivalence (or whatever). |
| 9930 | Abstraction is on a scale, of sets, to attributes, to type-formulas, to token-formulas [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: There is a scale of abstractness that leads downwards from sets through attributes to formulas as abstract types and on to formulas as abstract tokens. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], III.B.2.c) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the 'abstract tokens' at the bottom must have some interpretation, to support the system. Presumably one can keep going upwards, through sets of sets of sets. |
| 9919 | The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The original debate was over abstract ideas; thus it was mental (or linguistic) representations that were classified as abstract or otherwise, and not the entities represented. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], I.A.1.b) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question of whether there are any such entities. It is equally plausible to talk of the entities that are 'constructed', rather than 'represented'. |
| 20416 | By 1790 aestheticians were mainly trying to explain individual artistic genius [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: By 1790 the idea that a central task for the aesthetician was to explain or at least adequately to describe the phenomenon of the individual artistic genius had definitely taken hold. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Kant and Hegel write about art, though are only really thinking of the greatest art (which might be in touch with the sublime or Spirit etc.). Nowadays I think we expect accounts of art to cover modest amateur efforts as well. |
| 20417 | Expression can be either necessary for art, or sufficient for art (or even both) [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: Seeing art as expression has two components: 1) if something is a work of art, then it is expressive, 2) if something is expressive, then it is a work of art. So expression can be necessary or sufficient for art. (or both, for Croce and Collingwood). | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: I take the idea that art 'expresses' the feelings of an artist to be false. Artists are more like actors. Nearly all art has some emotional impact, which is of major importance, but I don't think 'expression' is a very good word for that. |
| 20419 | We don't already know what to express, and then seek means of expressing it [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: One cannot really know, or be conscious of, what it is that one is going to express, and then set about expressing it; indeed if one is genuinely conscious of it then one has already expressed it. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: That pretty conclusively demolishes the idea that art is expression. I picture Schubert composing at the piano: he doesn't feel an emotion, and then hunt for its expression on the keyboard; he seeks out expressive phrases by playing. |
| 20418 | The horror expressed in some works of art could equallly be expressed by other means [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: The horror or terror of Edvard Much's 'The Scream' could in principle be expressed by different paintings, or even by works of music. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: A very good simple point against the idea that the point of art is expression. It leaves out the very specific nature of each work of art! |
| 9922 | If space is really just a force-field, then it is a physical entity [Burgess/Rosen] |
| Full Idea: According to many philosophical commentators, a force-field must be considered to be a physical entity, and as the distinction between space and the force-field may be considered to be merely verbal, space itself may be considered to be a physical entity. | |
| From: JP Burgess / G Rosen (A Subject with No Object [1997], II.A.1) | |
| A reaction: The ontology becomes a bit odd if we cheerfully accept that space is physical, but then we can't give the same account of time. I'm not sure how time could be physical. What's it made of? |