7 ideas
| 16186 | The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) |
| 16187 | The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things). | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual. |
| 16190 | BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5) | |
| A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing? |
| 579 | Cratylus said you couldn't even step into the same river once [Cratylus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Cratylus was appalled that Heraclitus said you could not step twice into the same river, because it was already going too far to admit stepping into the same river once. | |
| From: report of Cratylus (fragments/reports [c.425 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1010a | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 427. |
| 16188 | Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners. |
| 578 | Cratylus decided speech was hopeless, and his only expression was the movement of a finger [Cratylus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Cratylus thought speech of any kind was radically inappropriate and that expression should be restricted exclusively to the movement of the finger. | |
| From: report of Cratylus (fragments/reports [c.425 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1010a |
| 8130 | Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459 | |
| A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale? |