5 ideas
| 15102 | S4 says there must be some necessary truths (the actual ones, of which there is at least one) [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: S4 says there must be some necessary truths, because the actual necessary truths must be necessary. (It says if there are some actual necessary truths then that is so - but the S4 axiom is an actual necessary truth, if true). | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 2) |
| 15103 | Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I conclude that Blackburn has not shown that any grounding of the necessary in the contingent (the Contingency Horn of his dilemma) is doomed to failure. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: [You must read the article for details of Cameron's argument!] He goes on to also reject the Necessity Horn (that there is a regress if necessities must rely on necessities). |
| 22456 | Maybe virtues conflict with each other, if some virtue needs a vice for its achievement [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Maybe so far from forming a unity ...., the virtues actually conflict with each other: that is, if someone has one of them he inevitably fails to have some other. ...Maybe he a man can only be good in one way be being bad in another. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma [1983], p.57) | |
| A reaction: She suggests the self-loathing needed to rein in evil desires. She cites Nietzsche having a similar thought. Presumably the ideal virtuous person has no such conflicts, and the self-loathing undermines eudaimonia. Unity in theory but not in practice? |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |
| 15104 | The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: What seems so wrong about the 'moving spotlight' theory is that here one time is privileged, but all the times are on a par ontologically. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 4) | |
| A reaction: The whole thing is baffling, but this looks like a good point. All our intuitions make presentism (there's only the present) look like a better theory than the moving spotlight (that the present is just 'special'). |