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15510
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Classes are a host of ethereal, platonic, pseudo entities [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
I will not willingly use apparatus that peoples the world with a host of ethereal, platonic, pseudo entities.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951], II.2), quoted by David Lewis - Parts of Classes 2.1
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A reaction:
This represents the big gap that opened up with Goodman's former comrade in arms, Quine. Lewis quotes it in order to ask whether he means ethereal or platonic, as they are very different. I sympathise with Goodman.
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9920
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Two objects can apparently make up quite distinct arrangements in sets [Goodman, by Burgess/Rosen]
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Full Idea:
Goodman argues that the set or class {{a}},{a,b}} is supposed to be distinct from the set or class {{b},{a,b}}, even though both are ultimately constituted from the same a and b.
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by JP Burgess / G Rosen - A Subject with No Object I.A.2.a
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A reaction:
I'm with Goodman all the way here, even though it is deeply unfashionable, particularly in the circles I move in. If there are trillion grains of sand on a beach, how many sets are we supposed to be committed to?
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10657
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The counties of Utah, and the state, and its acres, are in no way different [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
A class (counties of Utah) is different neither from the individual (state of Utah) that contains its members, nor from any other class (acres of Utah) whose members exhaust the whole. For nominalists, distinction of entity means distinction of content.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951], p.26), quoted by Achille Varzi - Mereology 3.1
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A reaction:
This is a nice credo for the nominalist version of mereology. You can still have a mereology that commits you to the wholes as well as the parts. Cf. Lewis in Idea 10660.
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10690
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Formal logic is invariant under permutations, or devoid of content, or gives the norms for thought [Beall/Restall]
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Full Idea:
Logic is purely formal either when it is invariant under permutation of object (Tarski), or when it has totally abstracted away from all contents, or it is the constitutive norms for thought.
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From:
JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Consequence [2005], 2)
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A reaction:
[compressed] The third account sounds rather woolly, and the second one sounds like a tricky operation, but the first one sounds clear and decisive, so I vote for Tarski.
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7956
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If all and only red things were round things, we would need to specify the 'respect' of the resemblance [Goodman, by Macdonald,C]
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Full Idea:
According to Goodman's 'companionship difficulty', resemblance nominalism has a problem if, say, all and only the red things were the round things, because we cannot distinguish the two different respects in which the things resemble one another.
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6
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A reaction:
Goodman opts for extreme linguististic nominalism in response to this (Idea 7952), whereas Russell opts for a sort of Platonism (4441). The current idea gives Russell a further problem, of needing a universal of the respect of the resemblance.
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7957
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Without respects of resemblance, we would collect blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock together [Goodman, by Macdonald,C]
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Full Idea:
Goodman's 'imperfect community' problem for Resemblance Nominalism says that without mention of respects in which things resemble, we end up with a heterogeneous collection with nothing wholly in common (blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock).
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6
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A reaction:
This suggests Wittgenstein's 'family' resemblance as a way out (Idea 4141), but a blue book and a red clock seem totally unrelated. Nice objection! At this point we start to think that the tropes resemble, rather than the objects.
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20064
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Actions are not mere effects of reasons, but are under their control [Audi,R]
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Full Idea:
An action for a reason is one that is, in a special way, under the control of reason. It is a response to, not a mere effect of, a reason.
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From:
Robert Audi (Action, Intention and Reason [1992], p.177), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Alien'
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A reaction:
This modifies Davidson's 'reasons are causes'. Audi has a deviant causal chain which causes trouble for his idea, but Stout says he is right to focus on causal 'processes' (an Aristotelian idea) rather than causal 'chains'.
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