82 ideas
| 13786 | Wisdom is called 'beautiful', because it performs fine works [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom [phronesis] is correctly given the name 'kalon' [beautiful], since it performs the works that we say are beautiful and welcome as such. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 416d) | |
| A reaction: 'Phronesis' in Aristotle is more like prudence, or common sense, rather than wisdom ['sophia']. 'Kalon' also means fine or noble. This translation seems fair enough, though. |
| 13780 | Good people are no different from wise ones [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: Are good people any different from wise ones? No, they aren't. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 398b) | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates's 'intellectualism', his view that being good is entirely a matter of reason and knowledge, and not a matter of habit or emotion. Do we still accept the traditional assumption that wise people are thereby morally good? |
| 13778 | A dialectician is someone who knows how to ask and to answer questions [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn't you call him a dialectician? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 390c) | |
| A reaction: Asking good questions and giving good answers sound like two very different skills. I presume dialectic is the process of arriving at answers by means of asking the right questions. |
| 6052 | Definitions identify two concepts, so they presuppose identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Any definition must presuppose the notion of identity precisely because a definition affirms the identity of two concepts. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: McGinn is arguing that identity is fundamental to thought, and this seems persuasive. It may be, though, that while identities are inescapable, definitions are impossible. |
| 6064 | Regresses are only vicious in the context of an explanation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Regresses are only vicious in the context of some explanatory aim, not in themselves. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n11) | |
| A reaction: A nice point. It is not quite clear how 'pure' reason could ever be vicious, or charming, or sycophantic. The problem about a vicious regress is precisely that it fails to explain anything. Now benign regresses are something else… (see Idea 2523) |
| 13252 | Some truths have true negations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Dialetheism is the view that some truths have true negations. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: The important thing to remember is that they are truths. Thus 'Are you feeling happy?' might be answered 'Yes and no'. |
| 6088 | Truth is a method of deducing facts from propositions [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Truth is essentially a method of deducing facts from propositions. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Very persuasive. McGinn is offering a disquotational account of truth, but in a robust form. Of course, deduction normally takes the form of moving infallibly from one truth to another, but that model of deduction won't fit this particular proposal. |
| 13247 | A truthmaker is an object which entails a sentence [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker thesis is that an object is a truthmaker for a sentence if and only if its existence entails the sentence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.3) | |
| A reaction: The use of the word 'object' here is even odder than usual, and invites many questions. And the 'only if' seems peculiar, since all sorts of things can make a sentence true. 'There is someone in the house' for example. |
| 13776 | Truths say of what is that it is, falsehoods say of what is that it is not [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those statements that say of the things that are that they are, are true, while those that say of the things that are that they are not, are false. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385b) | |
| A reaction: It was quite a shock to discover this, because the famous Aristotle definition (Idea 586) is always quoted, and no modern writers seem to have any awareness of the Plato remark. Classical scholarship is very poor in analytic philosophy. |
| 6084 | 'Snow does not fall' corresponds to snow does fall [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We can say that the proposition that snow does not fall from the sky corresponds to the fact that snow does fall from the sky - in the sense that there is a mapping from fact to proposition. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice difficulty for the correspondence theory. It becomes essential to say how the two things correspond before it can offer any sort of account of the truth-relation. |
| 6085 | The idea of truth is built into the idea of correspondence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory has an air of triviality, and hence undeniability, but this is because it implicitly builds the idea of truth into the notion of correspondence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: If this is accepted, it is a really fatal objection to the theory. Russell tried to use the idea of 'congruency' between beliefs and reality, but that may be open to the same objection. McGinn is claiming that truth is essentially indefinable. |
| 6083 | The coherence theory of truth implies idealism, because facts are just coherent beliefs [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If 'snow falls from the sky' is true iff it coheres with other beliefs, this is a form of idealism; snow could surely fall from sky even if there were no beliefs in the world to cohere with each other. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The coherence theory of truth strikes me as yet another blunder involving a confusion of ontology and epistemology. Of course, idealism may be true, but I have yet to hear a good reason why I should abandon commonsense realism. |
| 6086 | Truth is the property of propositions that makes it possible to deduce facts [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a property of a proposition from which one can deduce the fact stated by the proposition. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is McGinn's explanation of the disquotational account of truth ('p' is true iff p). The redundancy theorist would reply that you can deduce p from 'p' without mentioning truth, but it remains to ask why this deduction is possible. |
| 6087 | Without the disquotation device for truth, you could never form beliefs from others' testimony [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Imagine being in a community which had no concept of truth; ..you cannot disquote on p and hence form beliefs about the world as a result of testimony, since you lack the device of disquotation that is the essence of truth. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Whether his theory is right or not, the observation that testimony is the really crucial area where we must have a notion of truth is very good. How about 'truth is what turns propositions into beliefs'? |
| 13249 | (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The inference of 'distribution' (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically. It is straightforward to construct a 'stage' at which the LHS is true but the RHS is not. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to parallel the iterative notion in set theory, that you must construct your hierarchy. All part of the general 'constructivist' approach to things. Is some kind of mad platonism the only alternative? |
| 13243 | Excluded middle must be true for some situation, not for all situations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant logic endorses excluded middle, ..but says instances of the law may fail. Bv¬B is true in every situation that settles the matter of B. It is necessary that there is some such situation. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: See next idea for the unusual view of necessity on which this rests. It seems easier to assert something about all situations than just about 'some' situation. |
| 13242 | It's 'relevantly' valid if all those situations make it true [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The argument from P to A is 'relevantly' valid if and only if, for every situation in which each premise in P is true, so is A. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that proper inference should have an element of relevance to it. A falsehood may allow all sorts of things, without actually implying them. 'Situations' sound promising here. |
| 13246 | Relevant logic does not abandon classical logic [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We have not abandoned classical logic in our acceptance of relevant logic. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: It appears that classical logic is straightforwardly accepted, but there is a difference of opinion over when it is applicable. |
| 13245 | Relevant consequence says invalidity is the conclusion not being 'in' the premises [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant consequence says the conclusion of a relevantly invalid argument is not 'carried in' the premises - it does not follow from the premises. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this appealing. It need not invalidate classical logic. It is just a tougher criterion which is introduced when you want to do 'proper' reasoning, instead of just playing games with formal systems. |
| 13254 | A doesn't imply A - that would be circular [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We could reject the inference from A to itself (on grounds of circularity). | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [Martin-Meyer System] 'It's raining today'. 'Are you implying that it is raining today?' 'No, I'm SAYING it's raining today'. Logicians don't seem to understand the word 'implication'. Logic should capture how we reason. Nice proposal. |
| 13255 | Relevant logic may reject transitivity [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Some relevant logics reject transitivity, but we defend the classical view. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [they cite Neil Tennant for this view] To reject transitivity (A?B ? B?C ? A?C) certainly seems a long way from classical logic. But in everyday inference Tennant's idea seems good. The first premise may be irrelevant to the final conclusion. |
| 13250 | Free logic terms aren't existential; classical is non-empty, with referring names [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: A logic is 'free' to the degree it refrains from existential import of its singular and general terms. Classical logic must have non-empty domain, and each name must denote in the domain. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that logic should have no ontology at all, so I like the sound of 'free' logic. We can't say 'Pegasus does not exist', and then reason about Pegasus just like any other horse. |
| 13235 | Logic studies consequence; logical truths are consequences of everything, or nothing [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays we think of the consequence relation itself as the primary subject of logic, and view logical truths as degenerate instances of this relation. Logical truths follow from any set of assumptions, or from no assumptions at all. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems exactly right; the alternative is the study of necessities, but that may not involve logic. |
| 13238 | Syllogisms are only logic when they use variables, and not concrete terms [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: According to the Peripatetics (Aristotelians), only syllogistic laws stated in variables belong to logic, and not their applications to concrete terms. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [from Lukasiewicz] Seems wrong. I take it there are logical relations between concrete things, and the variables are merely used to describe these relations. Variables lack the internal powers to drive logical necessities. Variables lack essence! |
| 13234 | The view of logic as knowing a body of truths looks out-of-date [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Through much of the 20th century the conception of logic was inherited from Frege and Russell, as knowledge of a body of logical truths, as arithmetic or geometry was a knowledge of truths. This is odd, and a historical anomaly. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I have always taken this idea to be false. I presume logic has minimal subject matter and truths, and preferably none at all. |
| 13232 | Logic studies arguments, not formal languages; this involves interpretations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Logic does not study formal languages for their own sake, which is formal grammar. Logic evaluates arguments, and primarily considers formal languages as interpreted. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hodges seems to think logic just studies formal languages. The current idea strikes me as a much more sensible view. |
| 13241 | The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics if anything is. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting contrast to the claim of logicism, that mathematics reduces to logic. This idea explains why students of logic are surprised to find themselves involved in mathematics. |
| 13253 | There are several different consequence relations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We are pluralists about logical consequence because we take there to be a number of different consequence relations, each reflecting different precisifications of the pre-theoretic notion of deductive logical consequence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: I don't see how you avoid the slippery slope that leads to daft logical rules like Prior's 'tonk' (from which you can infer anything you like). I say that nature imposes logical conquence on us - but don't ask me to prove it. |
| 13240 | A sentence follows from others if they always model it [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The sentence X follows logically from the sentences of the class K if and only if every model of the class K is also a model of the sentence X. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This why the symbol |= is often referred to as 'models'. |
| 6051 | In 'x is F and x is G' we must assume the identity of x in the two statements [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If we say 'for some x, x is F and x is G' we are making tacit appeal to the idea of identity in using 'x' twice here: it has to be the same object that is both F and G. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This may well be broadened to any utterances whatsoever. The only remaining question is to speculate about whether it is possible to think without identities. The Hopi presumably gave identity to processes rather objects. How does God think? |
| 6055 | Both non-contradiction and excluded middle need identity in their formulation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: To formulate the law of non-contradiction ('nothing can be both F and non-F') and the law of excluded middle ('everything is either F or it is not-F'), we need the concept of identity (in 'nothing' and 'everything'). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Two good examples in McGinn's argument that identity is basic to all thinking. But the argument also works to say that necessity is basic (since both laws claim it) and properties are basic. Let's just declare everything 'basic', and we can all go home. |
| 6059 | Identity is unitary, indefinable, fundamental and a genuine relation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: I have endorsed four main theses about identity: it is unitary, it is indefinable, it is fundamental, and it is a genuine relation | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: That it is fundamental to our thinking seems certain (but to all possible thought?). That it is a relation looks worth questioning. One might challenge unitary by comparing the identity of numbers, values, electrons and continents. I can't define it. |
| 13777 | A name is a sort of tool [Plato] |
| Full Idea: A name is a sort of tool. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 388a) | |
| A reaction: Idea 13775 gives a background for this metaphor, from earlier in the text. Wittgenstein has a famous toolkit metaphor for language. The whole of this text, 'Cratylus', is about names. |
| 13790 | A name-giver might misname something, then force other names to conform to it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names to be consistent with it. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 436c) | |
| A reaction: Lovely. This is Gareth Evans's 'Madagascar' example. See Idea 9041. |
| 13791 | Things must be known before they are named, so it can't be the names that give us knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters have knowledge before any names had been given for them to know? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 438b) | |
| A reaction: Running through this is a hostility to philosophy of language, so I find it very congenial. We are animals who relate to the world before language takes a grip. We have full-blown knowledge of things, with no intervention of words. |
| 13789 | Anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 435d) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan, but it seems to be blatantly false. The best example is Gareth Evans's of joining in a conversation about a person ('Louis'?), and only gradually tuning in to the person to which the name refers. |
| 6067 | Existential quantifiers just express the quantity of things, leaving existence to the predicate 'exists' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: What the existential quantifier does is indicate the quantity of things in question - it says that some are; it is left up to the predicate 'exists' to express existence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. The whole quantification business seems like a conjuring trick to conceal the embarrassingly indefinable and 'metaphysical' notion of 'existence'. Cf Idea 7697. |
| 6042 | The quantifier is overrated as an analytical tool [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The quantifier has been overrated as a tool of logical and linguistic analysis. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I find this proposal quite thrilling. Twentieth century analytical philosophy has been in thrall to logic, giving the upper hand in philosophical discussion to the logicians, who are often not very good at philosophy. |
| 6069 | 'Partial quantifier' would be a better name than 'existential quantifier', as no existence would be implied [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We would do much better to call 'some' the 'partial quantifier' (rather than the 'existential quantifier'), on analogy with the universal quantifier - as neither of them logically implies existence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Like McGinn's other suggestions in this chapter, this strikes me as a potentially huge clarification in linguistic analysis. I wait with interest to see whether the philosophical logicians take it up. I bet they don't. |
| 6068 | We need an Intentional Quantifier ("some of the things we talk about.."), so existence goes into the proposition [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We could introduce an 'intentional quantifier' (Ix) which means 'some of the things we talk about..'; we could then say 'some of the things we talk about are F and exist' (Ix, x is F and x exists). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a promising contribution to the analytical toolkit. McGinn is supporting his view that existence is a predicate, and so belongs inside the proposition, not outside. |
| 13236 | Logical truth is much more important if mathematics rests on it, as logicism claims [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: If mathematical truth reduces to logical truth then it is important what counts as logically true, …but if logicism is not a going concern, then the body of purely logical truths will be less interesting. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Logicism would only be one motivation for pursuing logical truths. Maybe my new 'Necessitism' will derive the Peano Axioms from broad necessary truths, rather than from logic. |
| 13237 | Preface Paradox affirms and denies the conjunction of propositions in the book [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The Paradox of the Preface is an apology, that you are committed to each proposition in the book, but admit that collectively they probably contain a mistake. There is a contradiction, of affirming and denying the conjunction of propositions. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems similar to the Lottery Paradox - its inverse perhaps. Affirm all and then deny one, or deny all and then affirm one? |
| 6070 | Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Existence is like a primary quality; non-existence is like a secondary quality. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n29) | |
| A reaction: Since McGinn thinks existence really is a property, and hence, presumably, a predicate, I don't quite see why he uses the word "like". A nicely pithy and thought-provoking remark. |
| 6062 | Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Paraphrasing existence statements into statements about the instantiation of a property does not establish that existence is not a predicate, since the notion of instantiation must be taken to have existence built into it. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Thank you, Colin McGinn! This now strikes me as so obvious that it is astonishing that for the whole of the twentieth century no one seems to have said it. For a century philosophers had swept the ontological dirt under the mat. |
| 6065 | We can't analyse the sentence 'something exists' in terms of instantiated properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The problems of the orthodox view are made vivid by analysis of the sentence 'something exists'; this is meaningful and true, but what property are we saying is instantiated here? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A very nice point. McGinn claims that existence is a property, a very generalised one. Personally I don't think anyone is even remotely clear what a property is, so the whole discussion is a bit premature. Must properties have causal powers? |
| 2063 | How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e) |
| 6082 | If causal power is the test for reality, that will exclude necessities and possibilities [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Whether my body weight is necessary or contingent makes no difference at all to my causal powers, so modality is epiphenomenal; if you took causal potential as a test of reality you would have to declare modes unreal. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: We could try analysing modality into causal terms, as Lewis proposes with quantification across worlds, or as Quine proposes by reduction to natural regularities. I am not sure what it would mean to declare that modes are 'real'. |
| 6075 | Facts are object-plus-extension, or property-plus-set-of-properties, or object-plus-property [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: A fact may be an object and an extension (Quine's view), or a property and a set of properties, or an object and a property; the view I favour is the third one, which seems the most natural. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Personally I tend to use the word 'fact' in a realist and non-linguistic way. There must be innumerable inexpressible facts, such as the single pattern made by all the particles of the universe. McGinn seems to be talking of 'atomic facts'. See Idea 6111. |
| 13775 | We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a) | |
| A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover. |
| 13787 | Doesn't each thing have an essence, just as it has other qualities? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Don't you think that just as each thing has a colour or some of those other qualities we mentioned, it also has a being or essence? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 423e) | |
| A reaction: The Greek here seems to be 'ousia', which I increasingly think should be translated as 'distinct identity', rather than as 'existence' or as 'essence'. Maybe the philosophical term 'haecceity' captures it best. |
| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 13772 | Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is the being or essence of each of the things that are something private to each person, as Protagoras tells us? | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 385e) | |
| A reaction: This kind of drastic personal relativism about essences doesn't sound very plausible, but the idea that essences are private to each culture, or to each language, must certainly be taken seriously. |
| 6058 | Identity propositions are not always tautological, and have a key epistemic role [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Identity propositions are not always analytic or a priori (as Frege long ago taught us) so there is nothing trivial about such propositions; the claim of redundancy ignores the epistemic role that the concept of identity plays. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to Frege's Morning Star/Evening Star distinction (Idea 4972). Wittgenstein wanted to eliminate our basic metaphysics by relabelling it as analytic or tautological, but his project failed. Long live metaphysics! |
| 6053 | Identity is as basic as any concept could ever be [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Identity has a universality and basicness that is hard to overstate; concepts don't get more basic than this - or more indispensable. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. It seems to me to follow that the natural numbers are just as basic, because they are entailed by the separateness of the identities of things. And the whole of mathematics is the science of the patterns within these numbers. |
| 6043 | Type-identity is close similarity in qualities [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Two things are said to be type-identical when they are similar enough to be declared qualitatively identical. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A simple point which brings out the fact that type-identity is unlikely to be any sort of true identity (unless there is absolutely no different at all between two electrons, say). |
| 6044 | Qualitative identity is really numerical identity of properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: A statement of so-called qualitative identity is really a statement of numerical identity (that is, identity tout court) about the properties of the objects in question - assuming that there are genuine universals. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: We might agree that two cars are type-identical, even though (under the microscope) we decided that none of their properties were absolutely identical. |
| 6046 | Qualitative identity can be analysed into numerical identity of the type involved [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We can analyse qualitative identity in terms of numerical identity, by saying that x and y are type-identical if there is a single type T that x and y both are, i.e. they both exemplify the same type. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This just seems to shift the problem onto the words 'are' and 'exemplify'. This takes us back to the problem of things 'partaking' of Plato's Forms. Better to say that qualitative identity isn't identity - it is resemblance (see Idea 6045). |
| 6045 | It is best to drop types of identity, and speak of 'identity' or 'resemblance' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It would be better to drop talk of 'numerical' and 'qualitative' identity altogether, speaking instead simply of identity and resemblance. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n4) | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of beautifully simple proposal I pay analytical philosophers to come up with. I will attempt in future to talk either of 'identity' (which is strict), or 'resemblance' (which comes in degrees). |
| 6066 | Existence is a property of all objects, but less universal than self-identity, which covers even conceivable objects [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Existence is a property universal to all objects that exist, somewhat like self-identity, but less universal, because self-identity holds of all conceivable objects, not merely those that happen to exist. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendidly defiant response to the Kantian slogan that 'existence is not a predicate', and I find McGinn persuasive. I can still not find anyone to explain to me exactly what a property is, so I will reserve judgement. |
| 6054 | Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical (he is certainly not indentical to Dr Watson). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Most significant. Identity does not entail existence; identity is necessary for existence (I think) but not sufficient. But the notion of existence might be prior to the notion of identity, and the creation of Holmes be parasitic on real existence. |
| 6047 | All identity is necessary, though identity statements can be contingently true [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: All identity is necessary, although there can be contingently true identity statements - those that contain non-rigid designators. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n5) | |
| A reaction: A nice case of the need to keep epistemology and ontology separate. An example might be 'The Prime Minister wears a wig', where 'Prime Minister' may not be a rigid designator. 'Winston wears a wig' will be necessary, if true (which it wasn't). |
| 13788 | If we made a perfect duplicate of Cratylus, there would be two Cratyluses [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Soc: Suppose we made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you; would there then be two Cratyluses, or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus? Crat: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 432c) | |
| A reaction: Don't think that science fiction examples are a modern development in philosophy. Plato has just invented the Startrek transporter. The two Cratyluses are the two spheres in Max Black's famous example. |
| 6049 | Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py'. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, two things are the same if when we say that one thing (x) has a property (P), then we are saying that the other thing (y) also has the property. A usefully concise statement of the Law. |
| 6048 | Leibniz's Law is so fundamental that it almost defines the concept of identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law, which a defender of relative identity might opt to reject, is so fundamental to the notion of identity that rejecting it amounts to changing the subject. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n8) | |
| A reaction: The Law here is the 'indiscernibility of identicals'. I agree with McGinn, and anyone who loses their grip on this notion of identity strikes me as losing all grip on reality, and threatening their own sanity (well, call it their 'philosophical sanity'). |
| 6050 | Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A very important observation, because it leads to recognition of the way in which basic concepts and categories of thought interconnect. Which is more metaphysically basic, identity or properties? It is not easy to say… |
| 13244 | Relevant necessity is always true for some situation (not all situations) [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: In relevant logic, the necessary truths are not those which are true in every situation; rather, they are those for which it is necessary that there is a situation making them true. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to rest on the truthmaker view of such things, which I find quite attractive (despite Merricks's assault). Always ask what is making some truth necessary. This leads you to essences. |
| 6080 | Modality is not objects or properties, but the type of binding of objects to properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Modality has a special ontological category: it consists neither in objects (possible worlds theory) nor in properties (predicate modifier view), but items I have called 'modes', ..which can be hard/soft/rigid/pliable binding of objects to properties. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: As so often, McGinn is very persuasive. Essentially he is proposing that modality is adverbial. He associates the middle view with David Wiggins. |
| 6079 | If 'possible' is explained as quantification across worlds, there must be possible worlds [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If we replace modal words like 'possible' with quantification across worlds, clearly the notion of 'world' must exclude impossible worlds, otherwise 'possibly p' will be true if 'p' holds in an impossible world. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The point here, of course, is that the question is being begged of what 'possible' and 'impossible' actually mean. |
| 6081 | Necessity and possibility are big threats to the empiricist view of knowledge [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It is clear that modality is a prima-facie threat to the usual kind of naturalistic-causal-empiricist theory of knowledge. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is why modern empiricists spend of a lot of energy on trying to analyse counterfactuals and laws of nature. Rationalists are much happier to assert necessities a priori, but then they often don't have much basis for their claims. |
| 13792 | There can't be any knowledge if things are constantly changing [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It isn't even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 440a) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates Plato's horror at Heraclitus scepticism about the stable identity of things. It leads to the essentialism of Aristotle and Leibniz, who fear that there is no knowledge if we can't pin down individual identities. Know processes? |
| 6071 | Scepticism about reality is possible because existence isn't part of appearances [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Scepticism about the external world is possible because you can never build existence into the appearances, so it must always be inferred or assumed. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: When McGinn's claim that existence is a very universal property begins to produce interesting observations like this, I think we should take it very seriously. |
| 13781 | Soul causes the body to live, and gives it power to breathe and to be revitalized [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Those who named the soul thought that when the soul is present in the body, it causes it to live and gives it the power to breathe the air and be revitalized [anapsuchon]. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 399d) | |
| A reaction: I quote this to emphasis that Greek psuché is very different from the consciousness which is largely discussed in modern philosophy of mind. I find it helpful to make a real effort to grasp the Greek concept. The feeling of life within you. |
| 13239 | Judgement is always predicating a property of a subject [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: All judgement, for Kant, is essentially the predication of some property to some subject. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the denial of a predicate could be a judgement, or the affirmation of ambiguous predicates? |
| 6077 | Semantics should not be based on set-membership, but on instantiation of properties in objects [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Semantics should not employ the relationship of set-membership between objects and extensions, but rather the relation of instantiation between objects and properties. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: At least this means that philosophers won't be required to read fat books on set theory, but they will have to think very carefully about 'instantiation'. A good start is the ideas on 'Partaking' of Platonic Forms in this database (in 'Universals'). |
| 6074 | Clearly predicates have extensions (applicable objects), but are the extensions part of their meaning? [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We are taught that predicates have extensions - the class of objects of which the predicate is true - which seems hard to deny; but a stronger claim is also made - that extensions are semantically relevant features of predicates. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Quine as a spokesman for this view. McGinn is going on to challenge it, by defending universals. It seems to fit in with other externalist theories of concepts and meanings, none of which seems very appealing to me. |
| 13248 | We can rest truth-conditions on situations, rather than on possible worlds [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Situation semantics is a variation of the truth-conditional approach, taking the salient unit of analysis not to be the possible world, or some complete consistent index, but rather the more modest 'situation'. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.4) | |
| A reaction: When I read Davidson (and implicitly Frege) this is what I always assumed was meant. The idea that worlds are meant has crept in to give truth conditions for modal statements. Hence situation semantics must cover modality. |
| 13233 | Propositions commit to content, and not to any way of spelling it out [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Our talk of propositions expresses commitment to the general notion of content, without a commitment to any particular way of spelling this out. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of propositions I like this. It leaves open the question of whether the content belongs to the mind or the language. Animals entertain propositions, say I. |
| 13785 | 'Arete' signifies lack of complexity and a free-flowing soul [Plato] |
| Full Idea: 'Areté' signifies lack of perplexity [euporia, ease of movement], and that the flow of a good soul is unimpeded. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 415d) | |
| A reaction: Some highly dubious etymology going on here, and throughout 'Cratylus', but it gives a nice feeling for the way Socrates and Plato saw virtue. |
| 13779 | The natural offspring of a lion is called a 'lion' (but what about the offspring of a king?) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that it is right to call a lion's offspring a 'lion' and a horse's offspring a 'horse' (I'm talking about natural offspring, not some monster). ...but by the same argument any offspring of a king should be called a 'king'. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 393b) | |
| A reaction: The standard modern difficulty is whether all descendants of dinosaurs are still called 'dinosaur', which they are not. |
| 13783 | Even the gods love play [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Even the gods love play. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c) |
| 6072 | If Satan is the most imperfect conceivable being, he must have non-existence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Satan cannot exist because he is the most imperfect conceivable being, and existence is one of the perfections. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The logic of this seems right to me. Presumably the theologians would hastily deny this as a definition of Satan; he must have some positive qualities (like power) in order to enact his supreme moral imperfections. NIce, though. |
| 6073 | I think the fault of the Ontological Argument is taking the original idea to be well-defined [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: My own suspicion about the Ontological Argument is that the fault lies in taking notions like 'the most perfect, impressive and powerful being conceivable' to be well-defined. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm tempted to put it more strongly: the single greatest challenge for the theist with intellectual integrity is to give a clear and coherent definition of God. There must be no internal contradictions, and it must be within the bounds of possibility. |