Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Freedom and Action' and 'Reference and Essence (1st edn)'

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9 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 11. Ostensive Definition
18889 Ostensive definitions needn't involve pointing, but must refer to something specific [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: So-called ostensive definitions need not literally involve ostension, e.g. pointing, but they must involve genuine reference of some sort (in this case reference to a sample of water).
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 4.11.2)
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / h. System S5
14627 S4, and therefore S5, are invalid for metaphysical modality [Salmon,N, by Williamson]
     Full Idea: Salmon argues that S4 and therefore S5 are invalid for metaphysical modality.
     From: report of Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 238-40) by Timothy Williamson - Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 4
     A reaction: [He gives references for Salmon, and for his own reply] Salmon's view seems to be opposed my most modern logicians (such as Ian Rumfitt).
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
18888 Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The metaphysical doctrine of essentialism says that certain properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have, except by not existing.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 3.8.2)
     A reaction: A bad account of essentialism, and a long way from Aristotle. It arises from the logicians' tendency to fix objects entirely in terms of a 'flat' list of predicates (called 'properties'!), which ignore structure, constitution, history etc.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention
1556 By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias]
     Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.
     From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
18886 Frege's 'sense' solves four tricky puzzles [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: Reference via sense solves Frege's four puzzles, of the informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitutivity in attitude contexts, of negative existentials, and the truth-value of statements using nondenoting singular terms.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.1)
     A reaction: These must then be compared with Kripke's three puzzles about referring via sense, and the whole debate is then spread before us.
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference
18887 The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works.
20. Action / A. Definition of Action / 1. Action Theory
20062 If a desire leads to a satisfactory result by an odd route, the causal theory looks wrong [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: If someone wants to kill his uncle to inherit a fortune, and having this desire makes him so agitated that he loses control of his car and kills a pedestrian, who turns out to be his uncle, the conditions of the causal theory seem to be satisfied.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966]), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Deviant'
     A reaction: This line of argument has undermined all sorts of causal theories that were fashionable in the 1960s and 70s. Explanation should lead to understanding, but a deviant causal chain doesn't explain the outcome. The causal theory can be tightened.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / c. Agent causation
20054 There has to be a brain event which is not caused by another event, but by the agent [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: There must be some event A, presumably some cerebral event, which is not caused by any other event, but by the agent.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966], p.20), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 4 'Agent'
     A reaction: I'm afraid this thought strikes me as quaintly ridiculous. What kind of metaphysics can allow causation outside the natural nexus, yet occuring within the physical brain? This is a relic of religious dualism. Let it go.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 5. Reference to Natural Kinds
18891 Nothing in the direct theory of reference blocks anti-essentialism; water structure might have been different [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: There seems to be nothing in the theory of direct reference to block the anti-essentialist assertion that the substance water might have been the very same entity and yet have had a different chemical structure.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 6.23.1)
     A reaction: Indeed, water could be continuously changing its inner structure, while retaining the surface appearance that gets baptised as 'water'. We make the reasonable empirical assumption, though, that structure-change implies surface-change.