150 ideas
16281 | Honesty requires philosophical theories we can commit to with our ordinary commonsense [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The maxim of honesty: never put forward a philosophical theory that you yourself cannot believe in your least philosophical and most commonsensical moments. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.8) | |
A reaction: I take it as important that this test is according to the philosopher's commonsense, and not according to some populist idea. This would allow, for example, for commonsense to be sensitive to scientific knowledge, or awareness of the logic. |
2797 | As coherence expands its interrelations become steadily tighter, culminating only in necessary truth [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: As our system grows in coherence, the interrelations between its parts becomes tighter and tighter;… at the limit contingent truth vanishes, leaving only necessary truth. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 14.7) |
16288 | Analysis reduces primitives and makes understanding explicit (without adding new knowledge) [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The object of analysis is to reduce our burden of primitive notions, and to make tacit understanding explicit - not to bootstrap ourselves into understanding what we didn't understand at all beforehand. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
A reaction: I am particularly keen on the idea of 'making tacit understanding explicit'. I connect this with faith in intuition, and with the coherence view of justification. |
9651 | Verisimilitude might be explained as being close to the possible world where the truth is exact [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We might explain the closeness to the truth (or 'verisimilitude') in terms of closeness of possible worlds. A theory is close to the truth to the extent that our world resembles some world where that theory is exactly true. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.3) | |
A reaction: [Lewis cites Risto Hilpinen for this thought] I am always puzzled why Lewis and co. talk of whole worlds in their accounts. If I am close to the truth about cooking a good omelette, what has the rest of the world got to do with it? |
2768 | The correspondence theory also has the problem that two sets of propositions might fit the facts equally well [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The correspondence theory as well as the coherence theory has the problem of more than one set of truths. Why can't two sets of propositions "fit the facts" equally well? | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
2765 | Rescher says that if coherence requires mutual entailment, this leads to massive logical redundancy [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Rescher complains that if coherence requires mutual entailment, then what is entailed is logically redundant, and the whole system is infected with mutual redundancy. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.1) |
2769 | If one theory is held to be true, all the other theories appear false, because they can't be added to the true one [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: From the point of view of someone with a theory every other theory is false, because it cannot be added to the true theory. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
2766 | Even with a tight account of coherence, there is always the possibility of more than one set of coherent propositions [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: No matter how tight our account of coherence we have to admit that there may be more than one set of coherent propositions (as Russell pointed out (1907)). | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
15731 | Quantification sometimes commits to 'sets', but sometimes just to pluralities (or 'classes') [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I consider some apparent quantification over sets or classes of whatnots to carry genuine ontological commitment to 'sets' of them, but sometimes it is innocent plural quantification committed only to whatnots, for which I use 'class'. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n37) | |
A reaction: How do you tell whether you are committed to a set or not? Can I claim an innocent plurality each time, while you accuse me of a guilty set? Can I firmly commit to a set, to be told that I can never manage more than a plurality? |
10470 | There are only two kinds: sets, and possibilia (actual and possible particulars) [Lewis, by Oliver] |
Full Idea: Lewis's multi-purpose ontology seems to have only two kinds: sets and possibilia (actual and possible particulars). | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 3 | |
A reaction: This is awfully like the ontology of his teacher Quine, but with the wicked addition of modal properties. It is no wonder that Lewis was a bit vague about the concrete boundary, as both of his kinds seem to be abstract. His Achilles' Heel? |
9650 | Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The idea of supervenience is when there could be no difference of one sort without difference of another sort. ..Clearly this 'could' indicates modality, and without modality we have nothing of interest. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This might explain why philosophers are going to be more at home with the concept than neuroscientists would be. |
2781 | Realism says that most perceived objects exist, and have some of their perceived properties [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Realism in the theory of perception is that objects we perceive usually do exist, and retain some at least of the properties we perceive them as having. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
8909 | Abstractions may well be verbal fictions, in which we ignore some features of an object [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The inevitable hypothesis is that abstractions are verbal fictions. We say we are speaking about abstractions when we are speaking abstractly about the original thing. We are ignoring some features, not introducing a new thing lacking those features. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: Thus Lewis ends up pretty close to Locke and the traditional view. This makes abstraction not a feat of platonic perception, in which magical non-material objects are spotted, but a feat of counterfactual imagination. |
9057 | Vagueness is semantic indecision: we haven't settled quite what our words are meant to express [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I regard vagueness as semantic indecision: where we speak vaguely, we have not troubled to settle which of some range of precise meanings our words are meant to express. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4 n32) | |
A reaction: But that seems to leave the problem of how you are going to decide the boundaries of 'heap' or 'bald', if we all agree to become more precise. In law precise boundaries are often drawn a bit arbitrarily, simply because a boundary is needed. |
9671 | Whether or not France is hexagonal depends on your standards of precision [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Say that France is hexagonal, and you thereby set the standards of precision low, and you speak the truth; say that France is not hexagonal (preferably on some other occasion) and you set the standards high, and again you speak the truth. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.5) | |
A reaction: This is very persuasive. It fits with my views on justification, which are to do with how high I (or more often 'we') decide to set the standards, thereby defining knowledge for that occasion. Hm. Has Lewis cracked vagueness? [P.S. NO!] |
15751 | Surely 'slept in by Washington' is a property of some bed? [Lewis] |
Full Idea: That the most noteworthy property of this bed is that George Washington slept in it - surely this is true on some legitimate conception of properties? | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Wrong! This example is a nice clear test case. This is an absurd slippery slope. A bed he once looked at? I would have thought this was a relation the bed once entered into, and a relation isn't a property. |
15735 | Properties don't have degree; they are determinate, and things have varying relations to them [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I have made no place for properties that admit of degree, so that things may have more or less of the same property. There are plain properties, and then there are relations to them. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: An interesting question, little discussed. Elsewhere, Lewis ascribes all vagueness to our inadequate predicates, rather than to the world, which I find quite persuasive. |
9656 | The 'abundant' properties are just any bizarre property you fancy [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Properties are 'sparse' or 'abundant'. The abundant properties may be as extrinsic, as gruesomely gerrymandered, as miscellaneously disjunctive, as you please. They pay no heed to the qualitative joints, but carve things up every which way. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a logician's idea, which is needed for the notion of a set as pure extension, but it has very little to do with what I understand by the word 'property'. Better to call it a 'categorization'. E.g. filing George W. Bush under 'jackal'. |
15737 | To be a 'property' is to suit a theoretical role [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To deserve the name of 'property' is to be suited to play the right theoretical role. It is wrong to speak of 'the' role associated with the word 'property', as if it were fully and uncontroversially settled. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Once again I see a chicken-and-egg problem. Surely something has a theoretical role because of its intrinsic character, or its prior definition? How could you formulate a theory if you lacked properties? We don’t meet properties as gaps in theories. |
15741 | All of the natural properties are included among the intrinsic properties [Lewis] |
Full Idea: It cannot be said that all intrinsic properties are perfectly natural, ...but it can plausibly be said that all perfectly natural properties are intrinsic. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Idea 15742 give the example he uses to support this claim. I like the concept of 'intrinsic' properties, but cannot currently see any use for the concept of 'natural' ones. |
15742 | A disjunctive property can be unnatural, but intrinsic if its disjuncts are intrinsic [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A property can be unnatural by reason of disjunctiveness, as the property of being tripartite-or-liquid-or-cubical is, and it is intrinsic if its disjuncts are. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being utterly, shockingly and disgracefully wrong. A disjunction can't possibly be a property. Can a person have the property of being 'fat or thin'? A disjunction offers candidates for properties, not the properties themselves. |
15397 | If a global intrinsic never varies between possible duplicates, all necessary properties are intrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
Full Idea: Lewis defines a globally intrinsic property as one that never varies between duplicates across possible worlds. This has the immediate problem that any property that is necessarily had, or necessarily lacked, by every thing will be intrinsic. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.61-2) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties 'Analysis' | |
A reaction: [He also cites Langton and Lewis 1998] To me this is the sort of tangle you get into when you equate properties with predicates. The problem seems to concern necessary predicates (but those may not be necessary properties). |
15398 | Global intrinsic may make necessarily coextensive properties both intrinsic or both extrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
Full Idea: If a globally intrinsic properties are those that never vary between duplicates across possible worlds, then necessarily coextensive properties will either be both intrinsic or both extrinsic. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.61-2) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties 'Analysis' | |
A reaction: Presumably this problem would arise if some intrinsic property entailed an extrinsic property (or, less likely, vice versa). These sorts of problems arise when you try to define everything extensionally (even across possible worlds). |
15752 | We might try defining the natural properties by a short list of them [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We might try defining the natural properties by a short list, of the mass properties, charge properties, quark properties and flavours... | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n47) | |
A reaction: He rejects this because of possible natural properties in other possible worlds. Defining anything by a list seems like cheating. Does John, Paul, George and Ringo 'define' something? |
14996 | Natural properties give similarity, joint carving, intrinsicness, specificity, homogeneity... [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Sharing of [perfectly natural properties] makes for qualitative similarity, they carve at the joints, they are intrinsic, they are highly specific, the sets of their instances are ipso facto not highly miscellaneous. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: All this sounds like just what I want, but when I read Lewis he seems to be arriving at these natural properties by the wrong route. Too much Hume, too much extensionalism. |
15744 | We can't define natural properties by resemblance, if they are used to explain resemblance [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Shall we say that natural properties are the ones whose instances are united by resemblance? - Not if we are going to say that resemblance is the sharing of natural properties. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: The target of this appears to be the proposal of Quinton. By now I have totally given up on so-called 'natural' properties. Lewis says the circularity (also in Idea 15743) is a reason to treat 'natural' here as primitive (though he rejects that). |
15743 | Defining natural properties by means of laws of nature is potentially circular [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Shall we say that natural properties are the ones that figure in laws of nature? - Not if we are going to use naturalness of properties when we draw the line between laws of nature and accidental regularities. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Personally I wouldn't dream of defining anything by saying that it figured in laws of nature. The laws, if there be such (see Mumford) are built up from more fundamental components, such as (perhaps) properties. |
15740 | I don't take 'natural' properties to be fixed by the nature of one possible world [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Some people suppose my natural properties are distinguished by nature, and hence natural in one world and not another. I intend properties to be natural or unnatural simpliciter, not relative to one or another world. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n44) | |
A reaction: This is an important warning for the likes of me. I've have begun to doubt the utility of the term 'natural' property, and this reinforces my view. |
16262 | Sparse properties rest either on universals, or on tropes, or on primitive naturalness [Lewis, by Maudlin] |
Full Idea: Lewis surveys three accounts of sparse properties: a set of objects instantiating a single universal; a set of objects having as parts duplicates of some trope; and a set distinguished by a further unanalyzable, primitive characteristic of naturalness. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.60-) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics | |
A reaction: The very idea of suggesting that a property is some set of objects strikes me as bizarre. I present you with a table full of objects and say that is the complete set of some property. You then have to study the objects to find out what the property is. |
15739 | There is the property of belonging to a set, so abundant properties are as numerous as the sets [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The abundant properties far outrun the predicates of any language we could possibly possess. ...Properties are as abundant as the sets, because for any set whatever, there is the property of belonging to that set. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: The idea of calling such things 'properties' strikes me as preposterous, but it is interesting that we confront truths which outrun our predicates. We can't have all of these predicates together, but there is no impediment to any one of them. |
10723 | A property is the set of its actual and possible instances [Lewis, by Oliver] |
Full Idea: Lewis proposes that a property is the set of its actual and possible instances. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 10 | |
A reaction: I just can't make sense of any proposal that a property is a set. Things fall into natural sets because they have properties. Only a philosopher would believe such a weird proposal as this one. Triangular and trilateral? |
15399 | The property of being F is identical with the set of objects, in all possible worlds, which are F [Lewis, by Cameron] |
Full Idea: Lewis thought that the property of being F was identical with the set of objects, in all possible worlds, which are F. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], §1.5) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties | |
A reaction: I can't make head or tail of a theory which says that a property is a set of objects. I'll show you a room full of objects and tell you they are a property. How are you going to work out what the property is? 'Being F' is a predicate, not a property! |
15732 | Properties don't seem to be sets, because different properties can have the same set [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The usual objection to taking properties as sets is that different properties may happen to be coextensive. Creatures with hearts are creatures with kidneys. Talking donkeys are flying pigs (since there are none). Yet the properties differ. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This is the difficulty which Lewis proposes to solve by defining properties across possible situations as well as actual ones, so that the properties can come apart. Nice move. |
15733 | Accidentally coextensive properties come apart when we include their possible instances [Lewis] |
Full Idea: In modal realism, 'accidentally coextensive' properties are not coextensive. They only appear so when we ignore their other-worldly instances. If we consider all instances, then it never can happen that two properties are coextensive but might have been. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: It is not clear why this 'can never happen'. Maybe even God can't make a hearted creature without kidneys. Lewis is aware of this question. |
15734 | If a property is relative, such as being a father or son, then set membership seems relative too [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A property that is instantiated in a relative way (such as being a father or a son) could not be the set of its instances? Is the thing to be included in the set or not? | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: He says philosophers contrive ways to define properties as functions, but he prefers to call such properties 'relations', and define them that way. It never even occurred to me that 'being a son' was one of my properties, but what do I know? |
9655 | Trilateral and triangular seem to be coextensive sets in all possible worlds [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We can't take a property as sets of this-worldly instances, because two properties may be coextensive. Some say it is just as bad in all possible worlds, if the property is necessary, as when all triangles are trilateral, which seem different. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Renate/cordate is the standard example of the first problem. Lewis seems to equivocate over exactly what is meant by a property. I take the example to be a powerful objection to treating properties as sets. |
16290 | I believe in properties, which are sets of possible individuals [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I believe in properties. That is, I have my candidates for entities to play the role and deserve the name. My principal candidates are sets of possible individuals. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.4) | |
A reaction: I am bewildered by any claim that a property is a 'set'. The property of being a teaspoon is just a large pile of teaspoons (one pile in each possible world)? This is the tyranny of first-order logic in philosophy. Are sets more real than properties? |
9653 | It would be easiest to take a property as the set of its instances [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The simplest plan for properties is to take a property just as the set of all its instances. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: I find this a weird and counterintuitive proposal. I suppose if you think maths has been reduced to set theory, you might want to reduce everything else, and then we can all go home. I thought things were in sets because of their properties. |
9657 | You must accept primitive similarity to like tropes, but tropes give a good account of it [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If you will not countenance primitive similarity in any form, then trope theory is not for you. But if you will, then duplication of tropes is an especially satisfactory form of primitive similarity to take. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This presents the question about tropes in a beautifully simple form. Perfect similarities seem fine, but partial similarities (red and pink things) are hard, and abstract reference (pinkness and redness) is even harder. |
15750 | Tropes need a similarity primitive, so they cannot be used to explain similarity [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Trope theory cannot analyse similarity, because duplication of tropes is itself a primitive relation of similarity. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: A reasonable reply to this one, I think, is that no one can explain or analyse similarity. To say that the same universal (or bunch of graded universals) is instantiated explains nothing. Maybe type-identity must be primitive in any theory? |
15749 | Trope theory (unlike universals) needs a primitive notion of being duplicates [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Trope theory has the drawback that we need the primitive notion of duplicate tropes, whereas with universals we just say that it is one and the same universal through some charged particles. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: The normal term for this primitive is 'perfect resemblance', though that seems to make close resemblance a bit complicated and puzzling. I'm not sure if I understand resemblance as a feature of the world, rather than of our minds. |
15748 | Trope theory needs a primitive notion for what unites some tropes [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Trope theory needs a primitive notion - 'instantion' in yet another sense - to say how the tropes that comprise a particle are united. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Any theory which says that objects are just 'bundles' of tropes is asking for trouble. But if you say (with Lowe and others) that tropes are 'modes' of existing entities, you still have to give an account of the entity. |
15745 | Universals recur, are multiply located, wholly present, make things overlap, and are held in common [Lewis] |
Full Idea: One and the same universal recurs; it is multiply located; it is wholly present in both instances, a shared common part whereby the two instances overlap. Being alike by sharing a universal is 'having something in common' in an absolutely literal sense. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: A helpful spelling out of the commitment involved (in Armstrong and others) in belief in universals. To me this is a convenient list of reasons why the whole proposal is nonsense. Why does Lewis take them seriously? |
15746 | If particles were just made of universals, similar particles would be the same particle [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We cannot say that a particle is composed entirely of its several universals, because then another particle exactly like it would have the very same universals, and yet the two particles would not be the same. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This is an argument either (implausibly) for haecceities or characterless substrata, or else for tropes (which are all separate, unlike universals). Particles as bundles of universals is not a theory I take seriously. |
15747 | Universals aren't parts of things, because that relationship is transitive, and universals need not be [Lewis] |
Full Idea: It cannot be said that a universal is instantiated by anything that has it as a part, since the relation of part to whole is transitive. If charge is part of a particle, which is part of an atom, then charge is part of the atom, but an atom isn't charged. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Given the total mystery involved in 'instantiation', it wouldn't surprise me if someone appealed to the part-whole relation, but all moves to explain instantiation are desperate. Make it a primitive, if you must, then tiptoe away. |
9667 | Mereological composition is unrestricted: any class of things has a mereological sum [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I claim that mereological composition is unrestricted: any old class of things has a mereological sum. Whenever there are some things, even out of different possible worlds, there is something composed of just those things. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.3) | |
A reaction: To say the least, a rather unusual usage for the English word 'thing'. I presume that Lewis is in the grip of a slippery slope problem - that there is no way to define the borderline between things and non-things. Presumably 'class' is unrestricted too. |
13268 | There are no restrictions on composition, because they would be vague, and composition can't be vague [Lewis, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Lewis says that if not every class has a fusion then there must be a restriction on composition. The only plausible restrictions would be vague ones, which is impossible, because then whether composition occurs would be vague. So every class has a fusion. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.212-3) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 9.1 | |
A reaction: This is Lewis's key argument in favour of unrestricted composition, his Vagueness Argument. Why can't composition be vague? If you gradually reassemble a broken mirror, at what point does the mirror acquire its unity? |
13793 | An essential property is one possessed by all counterparts [Lewis, by Elder] |
Full Idea: For Lewis, if a property possessed by a given individual or kind is missing in some of the contextually relevant counterparts, that property is accidental to the individual or kind; if it is possessed by all of them, that property is essential. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 248-263) by Crawford L. Elder - Real Natures and Familiar Objects 1.4 | |
A reaction: This is a sophisticated version of the idea that essential properties are just necessary properties. It might make sense with a very sparse view of properties (mainly causal ones), but I think of essences as quite different from necessities. |
9663 | A thing 'perdures' if it has separate temporal parts, and 'endures' if it is wholly present at different times [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Something 'perdures' iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is wholly present at more than one time; whereas it 'endures' iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Only a philosopher would come up with a concept like perdurance. I'm thinking about this one, and will get back to you in a later-numbered idea... He compares perdurance to the way a road persists through space. |
14737 | Properties cannot be relations to times, if there are temporary properties which are intrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
Full Idea: The problem of 'temporary intrinsics' is that in one model we think of properties as relations to times (I am 'bent' relative to now), but change sometime involves intrinsic properties. I am just plain bent, not bent with respect to something else. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.202-4) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism | |
A reaction: [I've compressed Sider's summary] The question of whether intrinsic properties endure over time runs in parallel with the question of whether objects endure over time, and the two issues cannot be separated. |
9664 | Endurance is the wrong account, because things change intrinsic properties like shape [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The principal and decisive objection to endurance, as an account of the persistence of ordinary things, is the problem of temporary intrinsics. Persisting things change their intrinsic properties, such as their shape. My own shape keeps changing. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Presumably if something was going to endure through time it would need a shape. If it has no particular shape, it lacks identity? Lewis discusses the problem at length. Why is a precise shape essential to anything? |
9665 | There are three responses to the problem that intrinsic shapes do not endure [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The problem for the endurance view of temporary intrinsic properties like shape is met be either saying shape is a disguised relational property, or only present properties are intrinsic, or the shapes belong to different things (perdurance). | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly implausible to deny that shape is a feature of all physical objects. Or it appears to be. Shapes are hard to pin down at the quantum level. How do you sharply divide moments for the perdurance view? ... |
19280 | I can ask questions which create a context in which origin ceases to be essential [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If I ask how things would be if Saul Kripke had come from no sperm and egg, but was brought by a stork, that makes sense. I create a context that makes my question make sense, which is a context that makes origin not to be essential. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.5) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear why delivery by a stork doesn't just count as a different origin, and hence it turns out to be essential to Kripke. If Kripke were a necessary being (and he's a good candidate), then he would have no origin. |
15968 | Identity is simple - absolutely everything is self-identical, and nothing is identical to another thing [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is ever identical to anything except itself. There is never any problem about what makes something identical to itself; nothing can ever fail to be. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
A reaction: I have great problems with expressing this concept as a thing being 'identical to itself'. I will always say that it 'has an identity'. But then it is problematical, because what constitutes an identity? When do dispersing clouds lose it? |
15969 | Two things can never be identical, so there is no problem [Lewis] |
Full Idea: There is never any problem about what makes two things identical; two things can never be identical. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
A reaction: This expresses Lewis's preference for usage of the word 'identity', rather than a simple solution. It pays no attention to type-identity, which is an obvious phenomenon. In some sense, it is just obvious that two electrons are 'identical'. |
9660 | The impossible can be imagined as long as it is a bit vague [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Imaginability is a poor criterion of possibility. We can imagine the impossible provided we do not imagine it in perfect detail and all the time. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.8) | |
A reaction: In general I agree, but Williamson nicely opposes this view. The fact is that we derive most of our understanding of what is possible from imagination. We just have to realise that we can get it wrong, and so must attend to detail. |
9669 | There are no free-floating possibilia; they have mates in a world, giving them extrinsic properties [Lewis] |
Full Idea: There are no free-floating possibilia. Every possibility is part of a world - exactly one world - and thus comes surrounded by worldmates, and fully equipped with extrinsic properties in virtue of its relations to them. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is a key claim in the possible worlds understanding of modality, contrary to the more common sense and normal language claim that a possibility is an isolated thing. |
16133 | Possible worlds can contain contradictions if such worlds are seen as fictions [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If worlds were like stories or story-tellers, there would indeed be room for worlds according to which contradictions are true. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2 n3) | |
A reaction: Most existing fictions contain tiny contradictions, but we might ask whether that thereby disqualifies them from depicting genuinely 'possible' worlds. |
16132 | On mountains or in worlds, reporting contradictions is contradictory, so no such truths can be reported [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To tell the alleged truth about contradictory things that happen on a mountain is just contradicting yourself, but you can't tell the truth by contradicting yourself. There is no mountain where contradictions are true, and impossible worlds are no better. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2 n3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] He says this works for any 'restricted' domain like a mountain or a real world, but that it wouldn't apply in an unrestricted fictional world. |
12255 | For Lewis there is no real possibility, since all possibilities are actual [Oderberg on Lewis] |
Full Idea: Lewis-style modal realism eliminates all real possibility since on his account everything is actual relative to its own world. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by David S. Oderberg - Real Essentialism 6.2 | |
A reaction: Since it is possible for me to be in New York and in Chicago, but not both at once, his possibilities have to be kept apart, even though they are actual. I expect my visit to Chicago to remain as only a possibility. |
9219 | Lewis posits possible worlds just as Quine says that physics needs numbers and sets [Lewis, by Sider] |
Full Idea: Lewis's argument for possible worlds parallels Quine's for the existence of sets: our best overall empirical theory, mathematical physics, quantifies over real numbers, so we have reason to posit real numbers, or the sets to which they may be reduced. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.6 | |
A reaction: They both strike me as suspect. Indeed, the extreme implausibility of Lewis's conclusion throws doubt on Quine's original strategy. I'm happy to work with sets and possible worlds, and only worry about ontological commitment at a later stage. |
16283 | For me, all worlds are equal, with each being actual relative to itself [Lewis] |
Full Idea: For me, all the worlds are on an equal footing in that each is actual relative to itself and none is actual relative to any other. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
A reaction: Lewis says the world we call 'actual' is simply a matter of how our indexicals refer. That sounds the wrong way round to me (as so often with Lewis). |
15022 | If possible worlds really exist, then they are part of actuality [Sider on Lewis] |
Full Idea: The familiar complaint against Lewis is that if his worlds existed, they'd be part of actuality. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 11.5 | |
A reaction: Sider presents that as rather superficial, but it sounds a pretty good objection to me. Lewis would note that only our world has the indexical features which he says pick out actuality. Real possible worlds might lack indexical features? |
10469 | A world is a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A world is a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.6) | |
A reaction: (I wonder what Lewis's account of space was?) A mereological sum is "the least inclusive thing that includes all the parts" (p.69). It is maximal when all 'worldmates' are parts. But then 'worldmates' are defined as parts, so it threatens circularity. |
16441 | Lewis rejects actualism because he identifies properties with sets [Lewis, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It is the identification of properties with sets that rules out, for Lewis, an actualist account of possible worlds. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 1.1 | |
A reaction: I suppose the sets which are the properties have to include all the possible red things as well as the actual one. This escapes the renate/cordate problem. |
16282 | Ersatzers say we have one world, and abstract representations of how it might have been [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The ersatzers say that instead of an incredible plurality of concrete worlds, we can have one world only, and countless abstract entities representing ways that this world might have been. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
A reaction: Put me down as an ersatzer. They seem to be the same as Actualists. Are worlds other possible worlds, or ways 'this world might have been'? Not the same. Does actuality constrain what is possible? (Barcan formula?) |
16284 | Ersatz worlds represent either through language, or by models, or magically [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I distinguish three principal ways ersatz worlds represent: linguistic, in which they are like stories or theories; pictorial, like pictures or isomorphic scale models; or magical, in which it is just their nature to represent. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
A reaction: I think I incline to the 'model' view. The linguistic version means animals can't assess possibilities. I take modelling to be basic to what a mind is, and what a mind is for. |
16286 | Linguistic possible worlds need a complete supply of unique names for each thing [Lewis] |
Full Idea: There are two difficulties with Carnap's taking possible worlds as linguistic. Everything must have a name, or our state-descriptions will be silent about nameless things, and nothing may have two names, or we may affirm and deny a predicate of one thing. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
A reaction: The idea of possible worlds as linguistic has no appeal for me, so this problem doesn't surprise or bother me, but it sounds fairly terminal for the project. |
16287 | Maximal consistency for a world seems a modal distinction, concerning what could be true together [Lewis] |
Full Idea: An ersatz world must be maximally consistent (hence destroyed by an additional sentences), …but that is prima facie a modal distinction: a set of sentences is consistent iff those sentences, as interpreted, could all be true together. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
A reaction: This is indicative of Lewis's motivation for his project, which is to eliminate modal facts from the world. Only a vast multitude of non-modal concrete worlds can satisfy all the contraints. Cf many-worlds quantum mechanics for non-locality. |
9662 | Linguistic possible worlds have problems of inconsistencies, no indiscernibles, and vocabulary [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Linguistic representations of possible worlds have three problems: some descriptions are inconsistent (which worlds cannot be); we cannot have indiscernible descriptions (though some worlds might be so); and descriptions are limited by vocabulary. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
A reaction: Lewis is wonderful at getting problems clearly on the table. I take the idea of possible worlds as linguistic entities to be a non-starter, because (as usual) animals do it too, when they think of possibilities, which even the dimmest ones must do. |
7690 | If sets exist, then defining worlds as proposition sets implies an odd distinction between existing and actual [Jacquette on Lewis] |
Full Idea: If sets exist, then the conventional concept of a logically possible world as a proposition set requires a counterintuitive distinction between existence and actuality, between what exists and what is actual. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This pinpoints the obvious difficulty that most people have with Lewis's claim that possible worlds exist. Russell's claim that universals 'subsist' (Idea 5409) is a similar attempt to have two different sorts of existence in your ontology. |
5440 | A counterpart in a possible world is sufficiently similar, and more similar than anything else [Lewis, by Mautner] |
Full Idea: 'Jack could have been taller' implies a different Jack in a different world, so Lewis defines a counterpart in a possible world as an individual sufficiently similar to Jack, and more similar to Jack than anything else in that world. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.115 | |
A reaction: If we say something like "I could have been twins" or "I could have been a genius" in another world, it would need an odd concept of my personal identity for it to remain identical in those counterfactual situations. Lewis has a point. |
16291 | In counterpart theory 'Humphrey' doesn't name one being, but a mereological sum of many beings [Lewis] |
Full Idea: For the counterpart theorist, the trick is to say that 'Humphrey' names not the Humphrey of our world, and not the Humphrey of another, but rather the trans-world individual who is the mereological sum of all those local Humphreys. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
A reaction: On Lewis's perdurantism Humphrey is a 'spacetime worm' across his lifetime. Now we are adding all the possible Humphreys to the sum. I'm losing track of Humphrey's shape. |
14404 | The counterpart relation is sortal-relative, so objects need not be a certain way [Lewis, by Merricks] |
Full Idea: Lewis takes the counterpart relation to be sortal-relative, so he (no less than Quine) denies that objects, qua existing, are necessarily a certain way. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Trenton Merricks - Truth and Ontology 5.III n10 | |
A reaction: Does this mean that there could be two different versions of the same possible world (certainly not!), or that worlds are entirely created by our concepts rather than by what is actually possible. |
5441 | Why should statements about what my 'counterpart' could have done interest me? [Mautner on Lewis] |
Full Idea: If I only have counterparts in possible worlds who are not identical to me, statements about what I could have done will seem irrelevant to me, because they will be about someone else. | |
From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.115 | |
A reaction: We might rephrase the statement as "I could have been the person who did x". Presumably my counterpart is not just any stranger, but someone I could have been. "I could have been a brick" - now that seems irrelevant to me! |
11903 | Extreme haecceitists could say I might have been a poached egg, but it is too remote to consider [Lewis, by Mackie,P] |
Full Idea: Lewis's strategy for defending extreme haecceitism is that supposed impossibilities (that I might have been a poached egg) could be reconstrued as genuine possibilities that are so remote from reality that they are ignored. | |
From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 239-) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 9.3 | |
A reaction: Not a promising route. Wiggins asks: if you think I could have been a poached egg, start by defining more precisely this 'I' to which we are referring. The definition will blatantly exclude any possibility of my poachedegghood. |
15129 | Haecceitism implies de re differences but qualitative identity [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If two worlds differ in what they represent de re concerning some individual, but do not differ qualitatively in any way, I shall call that a haecceitist difference. Haecceitism, then, says there are at least some haecceitist differences between worlds. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Lewis bases this view on Kaplan. My brief summary of this is that 'identity may be hidden'. If all electrons are different, what distinguishes them? |
9670 | Extreme haecceitism says you might possibly be a poached egg [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The most extreme version of haecceitism says that anything could possibly have any qualitative character; for instance, there is a world according to which you are a poached egg. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Presumably a plausible haecceitist view would have to be combined with essentialism, given that the possibility that I might be a poached egg is beyond my intuitive grasp. |
2745 | A pupil who lacks confidence may clearly know something but not be certain of it [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Why isn't certainty required for knowledge? Because we are often prepared to allow that someone does in fact have knowledge when the person is so uncertain they would not claim knowledge for themselves (the 'diffident schoolboy'). | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.1) |
2755 | If senses are fallible, then being open to correction is an epistemological virtue [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: In my view, once we admit that our beliefs about our sensory states are not infallible, incorrigibility would be a vice rather than a virtue. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be axiomatic among modern philosophers, and I certainly agree with it. |
5677 | Naïve direct realists hold that objects retain all of their properties when unperceived [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The naïve direct realist holds that unperceived objects are able to retain properties of all the types we perceive them as having, which includes not only a shape and a size, but also a colour, a taste and a smell. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
A reaction: This I take to be a completely untenable view, if we are including the qualia of red, sweet or pungent among the properties. It seems uncontroversial that objects retain the capacity to cause redness etc. when they are unperceived. |
5678 | Scientific direct realism says we know some properties of objects directly [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The scientific direct realist accepts the directness of our perception of the world, but restricts his realism to a special group of properties, ..not including those which are dependent for their existence upon the existence of a perceiver. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
A reaction: Dancy goes on to say that this distinction is a 'close relative' of Locke's primary/secondary distinction. Am I a direct realist or a representative realist about primary properties? Maybe the distinction dissolves as we unravel the true process. |
5681 | Maybe we are forced from direct into indirect realism by the need to explain perceptual error [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Direct realism is unlikely to be able to provide an explanation of perceptual error without collapsing into indirect realism. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
A reaction: If there is an error, there must be two things which don't match: the perception, and the reality. This seems to me a powerful reason for preferring indirect or representative realism. I like the idea that we make mental 'models' (rather than inferences). |
5683 | Indirect realism depends on introspection, the time-lag, illusions, and neuroscience [Dancy,J, by PG] |
Full Idea: The four standard reasons for preferring indirect to direct realism are introspection of our mental processes, the time-lag argument, the argument from illusion, and the findings of neuroscience. | |
From: report of Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: Ultimately one's views about realism depend on one's views of the mind/brain, and it is the last of the four reasons that sways me. We know enough about the complexity of the brain to accept that it represents reality, with no additional ontology. |
5682 | Internal realism holds that we perceive physical objects via mental objects [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Indirect realism holds that in perception we are indirectly aware of the physical objects around us in virtue of a direct awareness of internal, non-physical objects. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.4) | |
A reaction: This may be a slightly prejudicial definition which invites insoluble questions about the ontological status of the internal 'objects'. It seems to me obvious that we create some sort of inner 'models' or constructions in the process of perception. |
2778 | Phenomenalism includes possible experiences, but idealism only refers to actual experiences [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Phenomenalism talks about actual and possible experiences, whereas idealism confines itself to the actual experiences. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) |
5684 | Eliminative idealists say there are no objects; reductive idealists say objects exist as complex experiences [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The eliminativist idealist holds that there is no such thing as a material object; there is nothing but experience (idea, sensation). The reductive idealist holds that there are material objects, but they are nothing other than complexes of experience. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.6) | |
A reaction: Dancy says Berkeley was of the latter type. The distinction doesn't strike me as entirely clear. I can't make much sense of the words 'are' or 'exist' in the second theory. To say it is only experiences translates (to me) as 'doesn't exist'. |
2777 | Extreme solipsism only concerns current experience, but it might include past and future [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Extreme solipsism only considers present experiences, but more relaxed solipsism may include past and possible future experiences. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) |
2794 | Knowing that a cow is not a horse seems to be a synthetic a priori truth [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The fact that a cow is not a horse is a candidate for a priori synthetic truth. It doesn't seem to be analytic, because you can know what a cow is without knowing what a horse is. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 14.3) |
2780 | Perception is either direct realism, indirect realism, or phenomenalism [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: There are three main families of theories of perception: direct realism, indirect realism, and phenomenalism. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
5679 | We can't grasp the separation of quality types, or what a primary-quality world would be like [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: There is doubt about whether our experience of the world is such that we can conceive of the sort of separation of primary and secondary qualities which the scientific view calls for, and can understand what the world is like with no secondary qualities. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
A reaction: Dancy attributes these doubts to Berkeley (e.g. Idea 3837). I think what is claimed here is false. Obviously we spend our whole lives immersed in secondary qualities, but separating the different aspects is precisely what scientists (and philosophers) do. |
5680 | For direct realists the secondary and primary qualities seem equally direct [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: For a direct realist our awareness of colour and heat can hardly be of a different order from our awareness of shape and size. Both sorts of properties are presented with equal directness. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
A reaction: This is a good objection to 'direct scientific realism', which claims direct apprehension of primary qualities alongside a totally relative view of secondary qualities. The best response seems to be to move to a representative view of primary properties. |
2782 | We can be looking at distant stars which no longer actually exist [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: An object such as a distant star can have ceased to exist by the moment at which we are directly aware of it. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
2775 | It is not clear from the nature of sense data whether we should accept them as facts [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The question whether something which appears as datum should remain as accepted fact is one which is not even partially determined by its origin as datum. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.5) |
2784 | Appearances don't guarantee reality, unless the appearance is actually caused by the reality [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: If I stare at a white wall with my brain wired to a virtual reality computer, and it generates a white wall, we wouldn't say I am seeing reality. It seems that the wall itself must in some way cause my perception of it. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.4) | |
A reaction: But suppose the computer generated in my mind an image of the wall which was actually in front of me? And suppose the computer got its image from the identical wall next door, not from mine? And it was only judged identical because the architect said so |
2785 | Perceptual beliefs may be directly caused, but generalisations can't be [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: A perceptual belief that p can have as its main cause the fact that p. More general facts (all men are mortal; e=mc2) cannot be the main cause of my belief, even if they do function causally in some way. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.5) | |
A reaction: Note that the perceptual belief can be the "main" cause; it seems to me that most beliefs are caused by judgements, though I may normally accept beliefs which are directly caused by perception, if I have no reason to challenge them. |
2790 | I can remember plans about the future, and images aren't essential (2+3=5) [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Memory is not solely concerned with the past, let alone one's own past (I remember that I must be in London next week), and need not involve images (2+2=4). | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.3) | |
A reaction: I can hardly remember the future, so I presume I am remembering my past commitment to go to London, even if I visualise the future with me in London. The non-necessity of images seems right. I can remember the Mona Lisa without a precise image. |
2791 | Phenomenalism about memory denies the past, or reduces it to present experience [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Eliminative phenomenalism about memory holds that there is no such thing as the past, just certain present experiences; reductive phenomenalism holds that there is a past, but it is no more than a complex of those present experiences. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.4) |
2787 | Memories aren't directly about the past, because time-lags and illusions suggest representation [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Direct realism about memory believes the memory is the past. But the time-lag argument and various illusions are powerful here, suggesting indirect realism involving a memory image. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.2) |
2788 | If perception and memory are indirect, then two things stand between mind and reality [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: If perception is indirect as well as memory, this means there are two direct objects of awareness between the remembering mind and the original object. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.2) |
2754 | Foundations are justified by non-beliefs, or circularly, or they need no justification [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Foundationalism can get rid of the regress argument with one of three types of belief: those justified by something other than beliefs, those which justify themselves, or those which need no justification. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
A reaction: A nice clear trilemma, and none of them will do, which is why foundationalism is false. I vote for Davidson's view, that only a belief can justify another belief. |
2749 | For internalists we must actually know that the fact caused the belief [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The internalist would claim that even if the belief is caused by the true fact to which it refers, it is also necessary that the believer believes that this is how their belief arose, and not some other way. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 3.5) | |
A reaction: I'm converted to internalism. If the belief is externally supported in the right way, then it may well be a true belief, but knowledge needs critical faculties, and justifications which can be articulated. |
2770 | Internalists tend to favour coherent justification, but not the coherence theory of truth [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Internalists such as Keith Lehrer tend to suggest that we adopt a coherence theory of justification but reject the coherence theory of truth. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
A reaction: I agree with Lehrer. Truth just isn't coherence, for all sorts of well known reasons (found in this database!). High coherence can be totally false. For justification, though, it is the best we have. |
2752 | Foundationalism requires inferential and non-inferential justification [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The core of any form of foundationalism is the view that there are two forms of justification - inferential and non-inferential - and that non-inferential justification must be possible to avoid a sceptical regress. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.1) | |
A reaction: The foundation may be non-inferential, but is it also non-evidential, or devoid of any support at all, apart from its own eloquent self? I can't buy that, I'm afraid. |
2771 | Foundationalists must accept not only the basic beliefs, but also rules of inference for further progress [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Foundationalists suppose we need not only basic beliefs, but also principles of inference to move to the more sophisticated superstructure. We may understand what justifies the basic beliefs, but what about the inference principles? | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
A reaction: Very nice question. Of course, you can't justify everything, but each part of a system can be scrutinised in turn by the other parts (with scrutinising principles tested pragmatically). |
2756 | If basic beliefs can be false, falsehood in non-basic beliefs might by a symptom [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Falsehood in a non-basic belief would be a reason to doubt the basic beliefs which support it, once we have admitted that basic beliefs can be false. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
A reaction: The yearning for foundations arises from the yearning for certainty. If one embraces the fallibilist view of knowledge, as I do, then there is little motivation for foundationalism. |
2753 | Beliefs can only be infallible by having almost no content [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Infallible beliefs must have vanishingly small content. No belief with enough content to support the superstructure in which we are really interested is going to be infallible. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I see no reason why a foundationalist should not be a fallibilist, rather than insisting on the infallibility of their basic beliefs. I don't, though, see how basic beliefs can count as knowledge. |
2773 | Coherentism gives a possible justification of induction, and opposes scepticism [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Coherentists feel that their approach provides a possible justification for induction, and offers a general stance from which the sceptic can be defused, if not rebutted. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
A reaction: These are two good reasons why I vote for coherentism (about justification, NOT about truth). Coherence is the main tool for leading us to the best explanation. |
2779 | Idealists must be coherentists, but coherentists needn't be idealists [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: An idealist should perhaps be a coherentist, but there seems to be no reason why the coherentist should be an idealist; the link between the two is all one-way. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) | |
A reaction: I don't see why an idealist shouldn't be a rationalist foundationalist, with a private reality full of certainties founded on simple a priori truths. Personally I'm an empiricist coherentist, this week. |
2786 | For coherentists justification and truth are not radically different things [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The coherentist idea is that justification and truth are not properties of radically different types. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.6) | |
A reaction: Oh. And I thought I was a coherentist. It take it that keeping coherence for foundations separate from coherence as truth is absolutely basic. The latter is nonsense. |
2767 | If it is empirical propositions which have to be coherent, this eliminates coherent fiction [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: If coherence is grounded in, and is trying to make sense of, a set of empirical propositions, this will eliminate some of the more fanciful sets of coherent propositions, such as the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) | |
A reaction: Interestingly, I suspect that embracing the coherence view of justification drives one back to empiricisim (pace Bonjour), because that is the most authoritative part of the pattern of beliefs. |
2776 | Externalism could even make belief unnecessary (e.g. in animals) [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: One reading of the externalist approach may lead to a rejection of the belief condition for knowledge (in animals, perhaps). | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.3) | |
A reaction: At this point the concept of 'knowledge' seems to disperse into the mist. This pushes me to a 'setting the bar high' view of knowledge. Otherwise plants will have it, and we don't want that. |
2746 | How can a causal theory of justification show that all men die? [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: How can a causal analysis of justification show that I know that all men die? | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.3) | |
A reaction: I presume he means that inductive generalisations can't be purely causal. The claim that men are immortal is absurd because it is 'unconnected' to what actually happens. |
16279 | General causal theories of knowledge are refuted by mathematics [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Causal accounts of knowledge are all very well in their place, but if they are put forward as general theories, then mathematics refutes them. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.4) | |
A reaction: You might have some sort of notion of an abstraction from causation which mimicked it in the mathematics case. Lots of things seem to be 'forced' in mathematics. Call it 'ersatz causation'. Necessities are enforcers. |
2747 | Causal theories don't allow for errors in justification [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Causal accounts of justification do not allow for the possibility that a false belief may still be justified. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.4) | |
A reaction: Good. If you switch to what you only think is the cause of your belief, you have gone internalist and ruined the party. You can't deny that a falsehood can be justified, or justification is vacuous. |
2772 | Coherentism moves us towards a more social, shared view of knowledge [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: An advantage of coherentism is that it directs attention away from the individual's struggle to achieve knowledge (the classical conception), and points to knowledge as a social phenomenon, shared, and increased by means of sharing. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
A reaction: This is exactly the view which I now embrace. Internal coherence is the basis, but that spills out into the community, and into books, and into the relativity of social acceptance. |
2743 | What is the point of arguing against knowledge, if being right undermines your own argument? [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: What is the point of arguing that justified belief is impossible, for if you were right there could be no reasons for your conclusion? | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 1.3) |
9661 | Induction is just reasonable methods of inferring the unobserved from the observed [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I use the word 'induction' broadly, to cover all the methods we deem reasonable for forming beliefs about the unobserved parts of our world on the basis of experience with the observed parts. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.5) | |
A reaction: Good. Attempts to be precise about it seem to be hopeless and invite paradoxes. Personally I just define it as 'learning from experience', because that makes what we do continuous with the behaviour of other sensible animals. |
9652 | To just expect unexamined emeralds to be grue would be totally unreasonable [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Some beliefs are just unreasonable in a strong sense. Think of the man who, for no special reason, expects unexamined emeralds to be grue. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.4) | |
A reaction: This is a nice converse way of seeing the point that 'grue' is such an totally artificial predicate. I still say that the most illuminating point is that grue is not a colour, so seeing a grue thing is no confirmation at all. |
2751 | Probabilities can only be assessed relative to some evidence [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: In Probability Calculus probability is only assessed relative to some evidence. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.1) |
9658 | An explanation tells us how an event was caused [Lewis] |
Full Idea: An explanation, I think, is an account of etiology: it tells us something about how an event was caused. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Will this cover mathematical explanations? Numbers would have to have causal powers. |
16280 | Often explanaton seeks fundamental laws, rather than causal histories [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Sometimes the pursuit of explanation is more the pursuit of unified and general fundamental laws than of information about the causal histories of events. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.7) | |
A reaction: It is hard to disagree, given the 'sometimes'. I don't think that Newton's Law of Gravity (say), with its lovely equation, actually explained anything at all about gravity. Finding the law closes the quest for an accurate description of what happens. |
16274 | If the well-ordering of a pack of cards was by shuffling, the explanation would make it more surprising [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Suppose you find in a hotel room a pack of cards in exactly standard order. Not surprising - maybe it's a new deck, or someone arranged them. Not so. They got that way by being fairly shuffled. The explanation would make the explanandum more surprising. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.7) | |
A reaction: [compressed] A lovely Lewisian example, that instantly makes big trouble for the (implausible) view that a cause is something which increases the likelihood of a thing. |
2757 | The argument from analogy rests on one instance alone [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: As an inductive argument Mill's argument from analogy (other people have inputs and outputs like mine, so the intermediate explanation must be the same) is weak because it is based on a single instance. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3) | |
A reaction: The argument may be 'weak' as a piece of pure logic, but when faced with a strange situation, one's own case seems like crucial evidence, like a single eye-witness to a crime. |
2758 | You can't separate mind and behaviour, as the analogy argument attempts [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The analogy argument makes the error (as Wittgenstein showed) of assuming that mind is quite separate from behaviour, and yet I can understand what it is for others to have mental states, which is contradictory. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3) | |
A reaction: It has always seemed to me that Wittgenstein is excessively behaviourist, and he always seems to be flirting with eliminative views of mind, so he was never bothered about other minds. Minds aren't separate from behaviour, but they are distinct. |
8901 | Abstraction is usually explained either by example, or conflation, or abstraction, or negatively [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Abstraction is usually explained in one of four ways: the Way of Example (cf. donkeys and numbers), the Way of Conflation (same as sets), the Negative Way (non-spatial and non-causal) or the Way of Abstraction (incomplete descriptions). | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: [Compressed; a footnote dismisses Dummett's fifth way] Example has blurred boundaries, and explains nothing. Gerrymandered sets don't produce concepts. Negative accounts explain nothing. So it's the Way of Abstraction! |
8904 | The Way of Abstraction says an incomplete description of a concrete entity is the complete abstraction [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The Way of Abstraction says abstract entities are abstractions from concrete entities; they result from somehow subtracting specificity, so that an incomplete description of the original concrete entity is a complete description of the abstraction. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: Defined like this, it rather looks as if abstractions would be entirely verbal - which may well be the correct situation, except that higher animals seem capable of minimal levels of abstraction. This Way is denigrated by Frege and Geach. |
8938 | The Way of Example compares donkeys and numbers, but what is the difference, and what are numbers? [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The Way of Example says concrete entities are things like donkeys and puddles, but abstract entities are things like numbers. That gives us little guidance. There are no uncontroversial accounts of numbers, and donkeys and number differ in too many ways. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: That demolishes that fairly swiftly. It may be unfair to demand an agreed account of numbers, but the respect(s) in which donkeys and numbers differ needs to be spelled out before anything useful has been said. |
8903 | Abstracta can be causal: sets can be causes or effects; there can be universal effects; events may be sets [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Is it true that sets or universals cannot enter into causal interaction? Why can't we say that a set of things causes something, or something causes a set of effects? Or positive charge has characteristic effects? Or an event is a sort of set? | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: This idea, and 8902, form a devastating critique of attempts to define abstraction in a purely negative way, as non-spatial and non-causal. Only a drastic revision of widely held views about sets, universals and events could save that account. |
8902 | If abstractions are non-spatial, then both sets and universals seem to have locations [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If abstract entities are not located, then a set of things does seem to have a location, though perhaps a divided one; and universals, if they are wholly present in each particular, are where their instances are, so negation can't define abstraction. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: He admits that non-spatial accounts of sets and universals are possible, but the jury is out on both of them, and more cautious theories, even if they are realist, will give them both locations. A good argument. |
8905 | If universals or tropes are parts of things, then abstraction picks out those parts [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A theory of non-spatiotemporal parts of things, whether recurring universals or non-recurring tropes, makes good sense of some abstractions. Unit negative charge is a universal common to particles, and an abstraction by being part of them. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: He cautiously refers to 'some' abstractions. It is one of Donald Williams's proud boasts concerning his trope theory that it will handle this problem well. I'm not sure that we should be saying that abstractions are actually concrete bits of things. |
8906 | If we can abstract the extrinsic relations and features of objects, abstraction isn't universals or tropes [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Why can't we abstract a highly extrinsic aspect of something, say its surname, or its spatiotemporal location, or its role in a causal network, or its role in some body of theory? But these are unsuitable candidates for being genuine universals or tropes. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: (This is a criticism of the proposal in Idea 8905) Obviously we can abstract such things. In particular the role in a causal network is a function, which is a central example of an abstract idea. Russell keeps reminding us that relations are universals. |
8907 | The abstract direction of a line is the equivalence class of it and all lines parallel to it [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We can abstract the direction of a line by taking the direction as the equivalence class of that line and all lines parallel to it. There is no subtraction of detail, but a multiplication of it; by swamping it, the specifics of the original line get lost. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: You can ask how wide a line is, but not how wide a direction is, so a detail IS being subtracted. I don't see how you can define the concept of a banana by just saying it is 'every object which is equivalent to a banana'. 'Parallel' is an abstraction. |
8908 | For most sets, the concept of equivalence is too artificial to explain abstraction [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Most sets cannot be regarded as abstractions by equivalence: most sets are equivalence classes only under thoroughly artificial equivalence. (And the empty set is not an equivalence class at all). | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
A reaction: [Recorded for further investigation..] My intuitions certainly cry out against such a thin logical notion giving a decent explanation of such a rich activity as abstraction. |
16289 | We can't account for an abstraction as 'from' something if the something doesn't exist [Lewis] |
Full Idea: We cannot really be talking about the things whence an abstraction-like entity is abstracted if there are no such things. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Sounds like a killer blow, but I don't think so. I can't think of a concept which doesn't have a possible basis in reality, assuming that it might be a complex assemblage of abstracted components. |
2744 | Verificationism (the 'verification principle') is an earlier form of anti-realism [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Verificationism (the 'verification principle') is an earlier form of anti-realism. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 1.note) | |
A reaction: If the one true God announced that there is a real world out there, I might take that as a verification of the fact. |
2760 | Logical positivism implies foundationalism, by dividing weak from strong verifications [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: The foundationalist claim that there are inferential and non-inferential justifications is mirrored by the claim of logical empiricism (the verification principle) that all significant statements are either strongly or weakly verifiable. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 6.2) | |
A reaction: I take it to be characteristic of both to divide the support for something into two types, one of which is basic, and the other built up on the basics. The first step is to decide what is basic. |
2761 | If the meanings of sentences depend on other sentences, how did we learn language? [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: It is clearly possible to learn a language from scratch, because we have all done it, but if holism is true and the meaning of each sentence depends on the meanings of others, how did we do it? | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.2) | |
A reaction: The question of 'how did it ever get started?' actually seems to block almost every explanation of everything that ever happens. How do I begin to move my hand? |
16278 | A particular functional role is what gives content to a thought [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Anything that is a thinker at all has a thought with a certain content in virtue of being in a state which occupies a certain functional role. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.3) | |
A reaction: So often Lewis seems to get things the wrong way round. Maybe if you invert his entire (fabulously consistent) philosophy, you get the right answer? I take the content to be what makes the role possible. |
9654 | A proposition is a set of entire possible worlds which instantiate a particular property [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I identify propositions with certain properties - namely, with those that are instantiated only by entire possible worlds. Then if properties generally are the sets of their instances, a proposition is a set of possible worlds. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: I don't get this. How can the proposition that tomatoes are edible be an entire set of possible worlds? The proposition seems to be about tomatoes, and nothing else. Should we talk of 'possibilities', rather than of 'possible worlds'? |
15736 | A proposition is the property of being a possible world where it holds true [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I identify propositions with properties that are instantiated only by entire possible worlds. If properties are the sets of their instances, a proposition is a set of possible worlds. A proposition is the property of being a world where it holds. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: This is so far away from my concept of a proposition (as a truth-evaluable representational mental event) that I struggle to compute it. So the proposition that I am sitting here is the property of 'being the actual world'. Eh? |
15738 | Propositions can't have syntactic structure if they are just sets of worlds [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If it is central to 'proposition' that there be quasi-syntactic structure, so that there are subject-predicate, or negative, or conjunctive, or quantified propositions, then sets of possible worlds will not do. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
A reaction: He proposes 'more complicated set-theoretic constructions out of possibilia' instead. I am very much committed to propositions having quasi-syntactic structure. |
2763 | There is an indeterminacy in juggling apparent meanings against probable beliefs [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: Indeterminacy stems from an interplay between belief and meaning, as with a man who tells you he keeps two rhinoceri in the fridge and squeezes the juice of one for a drink each morning. | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.4) | |
A reaction: I don't understand why an 'interplay' is called an 'indeterminacy'. Typical philosophers. Close examination will usually show whether the change is just in belief, or just in meaning, or in both. |
2762 | Charity makes native beliefs largely true, and Humanity makes them similar to ours [Dancy,J] |
Full Idea: One criterion for successful translation is that it show native beliefs to be largely true (Principle of Charity), and another is that it imputes to natives beliefs we can make sense of them having (Principle of Humanity). | |
From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.4) | |
A reaction: The trouble with such guidelines is that they always have to be 'all things being equal'. Sometimes the natives are really idiotic, and sometimes their attitudes seem quite inhuman. |
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. |
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! |
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. |
9659 | Causation is when at the closest world without the cause, there is no effect either [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If it is the case at world W that if event C had not occurred, E would not have occurred either, then the counterfactual means that at the closest worlds to W at which C does not occur, E does not occur either. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.6) | |
A reaction: This is a very Humean account, though updated, which sees nothing more to causation than transworld regularities. To me that is just describing the evidence for causation, not giving an account of it (even if the latter is impossible). |
9666 | It is quite implausible that the future is unreal, as that would terminate everything [Lewis] |
Full Idea: It is hard to believe that any philosopher means it when they say the future is unreal. If anyone is right that there is no future, that moment is their last, and it is the end of everything. | |
From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
A reaction: A bit simplistic. I might say 'there will be a future time, but it doesn't exist now'. That's the peculiar thing about time. If I say New York doesn't exist, then clearly I can't visit it. The London 2012 Olympic Stadium is going to exist. |