49 ideas
| 19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Slippery slope arguments are not intended as demonstrative arguments, but rather as a challenge to show where a boundary is, and to show that the boundary is not arbitrary. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: [extracted from details of its context] You could respond by saying that a slippery slope levels off, rather than hitting a wall or plunging to perdition. |
| 19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Deontic modality can be divided into sentence-modifying 'ought-to-be' modals, and predicate-modifying 'ought-to-do' modals. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.9.2) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Brennan 1993] These two seem to correspond to what is 'good' (ought to be), and what is 'right' (ought to do). Since I like that distinction, I also like this one. |
| 19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Wedgwood (2007:220) argues that S5 is undesirable because it excludes that necessary truths may have contingent grounds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4 n5) | |
| A reaction: Cameron defends the possibility of necessity grounded in contingency, against Blackburn's denial of it. It's interesting that we choose the logic on the basis of the metaphysics. Shouldn't there be internal reasons for a logic's correctness? |
| 19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Subscribers to the Barcan formula must either be committed to the existence of mere possibilia (such as possible unicorns), or deny many unactualised possibilities of existence. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the implications of the Barcan formula are ridiculous. Williamson is its champion, but I'm blowed if I can see why. What could a possible unicorn be like? Without them, must we say unicorns are impossible? |
| 7785 | The use of plurals doesn't commit us to sets; there do not exist individuals and collections [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: We should abandon the idea that the use of plural forms commits us to the existence of sets/classes… Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. There are not two sorts of things in the world, individuals and collections. | |
| From: George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]), quoted by Henry Laycock - Object | |
| A reaction: The problem of quantifying over sets is notoriously difficult. Try http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/index.html. |
| 10699 | Does a bowl of Cheerios contain all its sets and subsets? [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: Is there, in addition to the 200 Cheerios in a bowl, also a set of them all? And what about the vast number of subsets of Cheerios? It is haywire to think that when you have some Cheerios you are eating a set. What you are doing is: eating the Cheerios. | |
| From: George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], p.72) | |
| A reaction: In my case Boolos is preaching to the converted. I am particularly bewildered by someone (i.e. Quine) who believes that innumerable sets exist while 'having a taste for desert landscapes' in their ontology. |
| 10225 | Monadic second-order logic might be understood in terms of plural quantifiers [Boolos, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Boolos has proposed an alternative understanding of monadic, second-order logic, in terms of plural quantifiers, which many philosophers have found attractive. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 3.5 |
| 10736 | Boolos showed how plural quantifiers can interpret monadic second-order logic [Boolos, by Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: In an indisputable technical result, Boolos showed how plural quantifiers can be used to interpret monadic second-order logic. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], Intro) by Øystein Linnebo - Plural Quantification Exposed Intro |
| 10780 | Any sentence of monadic second-order logic can be translated into plural first-order logic [Boolos, by Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Boolos discovered that any sentence of monadic second-order logic can be translated into plural first-order logic. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], §1) by Øystein Linnebo - Plural Quantification Exposed p.74 |
| 10697 | Identity is clearly a logical concept, and greatly enhances predicate calculus [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: Indispensable to cross-reference, lacking distinctive content, and pervading thought and discourse, 'identity' is without question a logical concept. Adding it to predicate calculus significantly increases the number and variety of inferences possible. | |
| From: George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], p.54) | |
| A reaction: It is not at all clear to me that identity is a logical concept. Is 'existence' a logical concept? It seems to fit all of Boolos's criteria? I say that all he really means is that it is basic to thought, but I'm not sure it drives the reasoning process. |
| 13671 | Second-order quantifiers are just like plural quantifiers in ordinary language, with no extra ontology [Boolos, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Boolos proposes that second-order quantifiers be regarded as 'plural quantifiers' are in ordinary language, and has developed a semantics along those lines. In this way they introduce no new ontology. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]) by Stewart Shapiro - Foundations without Foundationalism 7 n32 | |
| A reaction: This presumably has to treat simple predicates and relations as simply groups of objects, rather than having platonic existence, or something. |
| 10267 | We should understand second-order existential quantifiers as plural quantifiers [Boolos, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Standard second-order existential quantifiers pick out a class or a property, but Boolos suggests that they be understood as a plural quantifier, like 'there are objects' or 'there are people'. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.4 | |
| A reaction: This idea has potential application to mathematics, and Lewis (1991, 1993) 'invokes it to develop an eliminative structuralism' (Shapiro). |
| 10698 | Plural forms have no more ontological commitment than to first-order objects [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: Abandon the idea that use of plural forms must always be understood to commit one to the existence of sets of those things to which the corresponding singular forms apply. | |
| From: George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], p.66) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be an open question whether plural quantification is first- or second-order, but it looks as if it is a rewriting of the first-order. |
| 7806 | Boolos invented plural quantification [Boolos, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Boolos virtually patented the new device of plural quantification. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]) by José A. Benardete - Logic and Ontology | |
| A reaction: This would be 'there are some things such that...' |
| 19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We can think of the world as a 'whole' that has everything as its parts, like raisins in a cake, or we can think of the world as a 'container', which is disjoint from everything there is, like a bottle containing water. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Space and time seem to have a special role here, and it is hard to think of any other candidates for being the 'container'. I think I will apply my 'what's it made of' test to ontology, and opt for the world as a 'whole'. |
| 19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: 'Relational' grounding is between entities, best expressed by the two-place predicate 'x grounds y'. 'Operational' grounding is between sentences, best expressed by the two-place sentence operator read as 'because of' or 'in virtue of'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) |
| 19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience excludes modality - the whole modal package - from the supervenience base. The Humean world is, at root, thoroughly non-modal. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This sums up my problem with David Lewis with perfect clarity. He is just excessively empirical. Hume himself also excluded modality from the basic impressions. Locke allows powerful essences (even if they are well hidden). |
| 10700 | First- and second-order quantifiers are two ways of referring to the same things [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: Ontological commitment is carried by first-order quantifiers; a second-order quantifier needn't be taken to be a first-order quantifier in disguise, having special items, collections, as its range. They are two ways of referring to the same things. | |
| From: George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], p.72) | |
| A reaction: If second-order quantifiers are just a way of referring, then we can see first-order quantifiers that way too, so we could deny 'objects'. |
| 19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The crucial feature of the determinates / determinables relation is that to possess the determinable property, an object must possess exactly one of the determinate properties. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a determinable being a function, and the determinate being its output. If 'scarlet' is a determinate of the determinables 'red' or 'coloured', it is not obvious that there is only one possible shade of scarlet. This schema oversimplifies. |
| 19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: I do not have the ability to play the violin. Nor does my desk. Unlike my desk, however, I possess the ability to learn to play the violin - the ability, that is, to acquire the ability to play the violin. I have an 'iterated ability' to play the violin. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, though the examples are more likely to come from human behaviour than from the non-human physical world. |
| 19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think in terms of dispositions in terms of the manifestation alone - not as a disposition to ...if..., but as a disposition to ..., full stop. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: This way of individuating dispositions seems plausible. Some dispositions only have one trigger, but others have many. All sorts of things are inclined to trigger a human smile, but we are just disposed to smile. Some people smile at disasters. |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Nomological dispositions such as electric charge seem different from ordinary dispositions. A particle's being electrically charged is not just a possibility of exerting a certain force. Rather, the particle has to exert a force in certain circumstances. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: I can only pull when there is something to pull, but a magnet seems to have a 'field' of attraction which is pullish in character. Does it detect something to pull (like a monad)? Can there be a force which has no object? |
| 19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Spatiotemporal relations are a prime example of properties that are difficult to understand in dispositional terms. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [Vetter refers to A.Bird 2007 Ch.8 for an attempt] One approach would be to question whether they are 'properties'. I don't think of relations as properties, even if they are predicates. Is space a property of something? |
| 23647 | Objects have an essential constitution, producing its qualities, which we are too ignorant to define [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Individuals and objects have a real essence, or constitution of nature, from which all their qualities flow: but this essence our faculties do not comprehend. They are therefore incapable of definition. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: Aha - he's one of us! I prefer the phrase 'essential nature' of an object, which is understood, I think, by everyone. I especially like the last bit, directed at those who mistakenly think that Aristotle identified the essence with the definition. |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting. |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us. |
| 19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessity and possibility had a revival with the development of modal logic, treating them as special cases of the existential and universal quantifiers, ranging over an infinity of possible worlds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The problem seems to be that possible worlds offer a very useful and interesting 'model' of modality, but say nothing at all about its nature. Any more than a weather map will show you what weather is. |
| 19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessities mark the limits of the potentialities that objects have. More precisely, it is necessary that p just in case nothing has, or had, or will have a potentiality to be such that not-p. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [See Vetter's other ideas for her potentiality account of modality] If we wish to build a naturalistic account of modality (and if you don't want that then your untethered metaphysics will drift away in logical space) then this is the way to go. |
| 19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of possibility, we speak of potentiality in abstraction from its possessor; a possibility is a potentiality somewhere or other in the world, no matter where. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: I note that, as so often, this is psychological abstraction, which is usually sneered at by modern philosophers (e.g. Geach), and yet is employed all the time. This is Vetter's key thesis, which I like. |
| 19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality is, metaphorically speaking, possibility anchored in individual objects; I claim that all possibility is thus anchored in some individual object(s) or other. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This will be fine for specific physical possibilities, but may become tricky for possibilities that are increasingly abstract, or universal, or idealised. I agree with the general approach. Anchor modality in reality (which is physical!). |
| 19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think of possibility as potentiality in abstraction from its bearer. So 'it is possible that p' is defined as 'something has an iterated potentiality for it to be the case that p'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: If possibilities are abstractions from potentialities, I am inclined the treat potentialities as abstractions from dispositions, and dispositions (and properties) as abstractions from powers. Powers are not abstractions - they are the reality. |
| 19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality can now be recognised as the common genus of dispositions and such related properties as abilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Vetter defends a metaphysics of modality based on potentialities, rather than on narrower concepts such as dispositions, powers or essences. She can evade the problems which those narrower concepts raise. |
| 19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Water has no potentiality to break. But water has a potentiality to be frozen and turn into ice, which does have a potentiality to break. So water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Thus potentially has an 'iterated' character to it, and an appropriate modal logic for it will have to allow for those iterations. She suggests a version of System T modal logic. |
| 23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Although not all potentialities are dispositions, Vetter claims that all dispositions are potentialities which are had to a sufficiently high degree. | |
| From: report of Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015]) by Friend/Kimpton-Nye - Dispositions and Powers 2.4.2 | |
| A reaction: This sounds plausible. A potentiality could be faint or negligible, but once it is a serious possibility it becomes a 'disposition'. ...I suppose. But if the meteor is probably going to hit my house, it doesn't mean it has a disposition to do so. |
| 19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: This book is a plea for recognising potentiality as an explanans in the metaphysics of modality, rather than as something in need of explanation or reduction. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Something has to do the explaining, and it is obviously much better to have some aspect of the real world do the job, rather than remote abstractions such as laws, possible worlds or Forms. Personally I like the potentiality of 'powers'. |
| 19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The logic for potentiality corresponds to modal system T, the minimum for metaphysics. The S4 axiom ◊◊φ → ◊φ says iterated potentialities collapse, and the S5 ◊φ → □◊φ says potentialities can't be lost. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems persuasive. I nice example of modern analytic metaphysics, that you have to find a logic that suits your theory. N.Salmon defends system T for all of metaphysics, though most people favour S5. |
| 19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities are 'potentialities to ....', while possibilities are 'possibilities that ....'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This feels a bit like a stipulation, rather than a precise description of normal usage. That said, it is quite a nice distinction. It sounds as if an event follows a potentiality, and a state of affairs follows a possibility. Active and passive? |
| 19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities may get exercised despite having a degree that is too low for them to qualify as dispositions. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.4) | |
| A reaction: The key reason why her book is called 'Potentialities', rather than 'Dispositions'. She still wants to offer a naturalistic picture which ties potentialities to individual objects, but I am wondering whether potentialities are too abstract for the job. |
| 11958 | Impossibilites are easily conceived in mathematics and geometry [Reid, by Molnar] |
| Full Idea: Reid pointed out how easily conceivable mathematical and geometric impossibilities are. | |
| From: report of Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], IV.III) by George Molnar - Powers 11.3 | |
| A reaction: The defence would be that you have to really really conceive them, and the only way the impossible can be conceived is by blurring it at the crucial point, or by claiming to conceive more than you actually can |
| 19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: If possible worlds are sets of propositions, we need some way to distinguish those sets of propositions that do from those that do not correspond to genuine possibilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea of a 'genuine' possibility does not seem to play a role in the conceptual scheme of those who treat possibility entirely in terms of possible worlds. If possibility is primitive, or is a set of worlds, there can be no criterion for 'genuine'. |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Is it not possible that there be objects with (natural) properties that no actual thing ever had the potentiality to have, to produce, or constitute? (Call such properties 'super-alien properties'). | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem for her potentiality account of possibility. Her solution is (roughly) to either deny the super-aliens, or have chains of iterated possibility which take this case back to actuality. That sounds OK to me. |
| 19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Patterns of behaviour may be explained by circumstances external to the individual, but dispositional explanations, based on the instrinsic make-up of individuals are typically more reliable and stable. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is very nice support for the view I have been defending. She doesn't deal in essences, and prefers 'potentialities' (as broader) to 'dispositions'. The point is to explain events by the natures of the ingredients. |
| 19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Grounding is a kind of explanation - and specifically, the kind of metaphysical explanation that metaphysicians are after. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Depending on how you interpret 'grounding', it is plausible that it is the sort of explanation that physicists and economists are after as well. If the aim is to understand the structure of everything, the target is to know what grounds what. |
| 23646 | Reference is by name, or a term-plus-circumstance, or ostensively, or by description [Reid] |
| Full Idea: An individual is expressed by a proper name, or by a general word joined to distinguishing circumstances; if unknown, it may be pointed out to the senses; when beyond the reach of the senses it may be picked out by an imperfect but true description. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If Putnam, Kripke and Donnellan had read this paragraph they could have save themselves a lot of work! I take reference to be the activity of speakers and writers, and these are the main tools of the trade. |
| 23645 | A word's meaning is the thing conceived, as fixed by linguistic experts [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a word (such as 'felony') is the thing conceived; and that meaning is the conception affixed to it by those who best understand the language. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: He means legal experts. This is precisely that same as Putnam's account of the meaning of 'elm tree'. His discussion here of reference is the earliest I have encountered, and it is good common sense (for which Reid is famous). |
| 19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The Armstrong/Tooley/Dretske view, which takes laws to be substantial but grounded in a relation of nomic necessitation external to the properties themselves, is not an attractive option for the dispositionalist. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the dispositionalist sees laws as grounded in the properties. I prefer her other option, of dispositionalism plus a 'shallow' view of laws (which she attributes to Mumford). The laws are as Lewis says, but powers explain them. |
| 19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Even on the dispositional essentialist view the world might have been governed by different laws, if those laws involved different properties. What is excluded is the possibility of different laws involving the same properties as our actual laws. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: Important. Critics of dispositional essentialism accuse it of promoting the idea that the laws of nature are necessary, a claim for which we obviously have no evidence. I prefer to say they are necessary given that 'stuff', rather than those properties. |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Any defender of the symmetry of time will have to provide some explanation of the obstinate appearance that the future is very different from the past. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you have to say that it is all there, but only one end of the time spectrum is revealed to us, namely the past. But how do we get this uniquely lopsided view? Being an ominiscient god is more obvious than being a lopsided human. |
| 19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Presentists usually deal with the lack of cross-temporal relations by the construction of a surrogate, by way of paraphrasing the objectionable relation ascriptions. 'I admire Socrates' becomes 'I admire the Socrates properties'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. The cites Markosian 2004:63] Why can't I just say 'I admire Socrates, who no longer exists'? The present includes tensed facts, and memories and evidence-based theories. Admiring is not a direct relation between objects. |