16 ideas
14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
Full Idea: Philosophers can sometimes be too fussy about the words they use, dismissing as 'unintelligible' or 'obscure' certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards, and which may be of some real use. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 01) | |
A reaction: Analytic philosophers are inclined to drop terms they can't formalise, but there is more to every concept than its formalisation (Frege's 'direction' for example). I want to rescue 'abstraction' and 'essence'. Rosen says distinguish, don't formalise. |
14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
Full Idea: From the simple fact that '1' figures in the definition of '2', it does not follow that 1 is part of 2. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
A reaction: He observes that quite independent things can be mentioned on the two sides of a definition, with no parthood relation. You begin to wonder what a definition really is. A causal chain? |
14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
Full Idea: The failure of monotonicity is a general feature of explanatory relations. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 05) | |
A reaction: In other words, explanations can always shift in the light of new evidence. In principle this is right, but some explanations just seem permanent, like plate-tectonics as explanation for earthquakes. |
14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
Full Idea: Our relation of 'in virtue of' is among facts or truths, whereas Fine's relation (if it is a relation at all) is a relation between a given truth and items whose natures ground that truth. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 07 n10) | |
A reaction: This disagreement between two key players in the current debate on grounding looks rather significant. I think I favour Fine's view, as it seems more naturalistic, and less likely to succumb to conventionalism. |
14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
Full Idea: Facts are structured entities built up from worldly items rather as sentences are built up from words. They might be identified with Russellian propositions. They are individuated by their constituents and composition, and are fine-grained. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 04) | |
A reaction: I'm a little cautious about the emphasis on being sentence-like. We have Russell's continual warnings against imposing subject-predicate structure on things. I think we should happily talk about 'facts' in metaphysics. |
14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
Full Idea: One intuitive gloss on 'intrinsic' property is that a property is intrinsic iff whether or not a thing has it depends entirely on how things stand with it and its parts, and not on its relation to some distinct thing. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 02) | |
A reaction: He offers this as a useful reward for reviving 'depends on' in metaphysical talk. The problem here would be to explain the 'thing' and its 'parts' without mentioning the target property. The thing certainly can't be a bundle of tropes. |
14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
Full Idea: Many of our best words in philosophy do not admit of definition, the notion of metaphysical 'necessity' being one pertinent example. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 03) | |
A reaction: Rosen is busy defending words in metaphysics which cannot be pinned down with logical rigour. We are allowed to write □ for 'necessary', and it is accepted by logicians as being stable in a language. |
14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
Full Idea: Fine says a truth is necessary when it is a logical consequence of the essential truths, but maybe it is a consequence of the essential truths together with the basic grounding laws (the 'Moorean connections'). | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 13) | |
A reaction: I'm with Fine all the way here, as we really don't need to clog nature up with things called 'grounding laws', which are both obscure and inexplicable. Fine's story is the one for naturalistically inclined philosophers. |
14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
Full Idea: It sounds right to say that Fred's being a bachelor consists in (reduces to) being an unmarried male, but slightly off to say that Fred's being an unmarried male consists in (or reduces to) being a bachelor. There is a corresponding explanatory asymmetry. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
A reaction: This emerging understanding of the asymmetry of the idea shows that we are not just dealing with a simple semantic identity. Our concepts are richer than our language. He adds that a ball could be blue in virtue of being cerulean. |
8478 | Dewey argued long before Wittgenstein that there could not seriously be a private language [Dewey, by Orenstein] |
Full Idea: Dewey argued in the twenties that there could not be, in any serious sense, a private language. Wittgenstein also, years later, came to appreciate this point. | |
From: report of John Dewey (works [1926]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.6 | |
A reaction: A nice historical footnote to perhaps the most famous argument in twentieth century philosophy. Can anyone send me the Dewey reference? |
8430 | Causal statements are used to explain, to predict, to control, to attribute responsibility, and in theories [Kim] |
Full Idea: The function of causal statements is 1) to explain events, 2) for predictive usefulness, 3) to help control events, 4) with agents, to attribute moral responsibility, 5) in physical theory. We should judge causal theories by how they account for these. | |
From: Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], p.207) | |
A reaction: He suggests that Lewis's counterfactual theory won't do well on this test. I think the first one is what matters. Philosophy aims to understand, and that is achieved through explanation. Regularity and counterfactual theories explain very little. |
8396 | Many counterfactuals have nothing to do with causation [Kim, by Tooley] |
Full Idea: Kim has pointed out that there are a number of counterfactuals that have nothing to do with causation. If John marries Mary, then if John had not existed he would not have married Mary, but that is not the cause of their union. | |
From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], 5.2) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience | |
A reaction: One might not think that this mattered, but it leaves the problem of distinguishing between the causal counterfactuals and the rest (and you mustn't mention causation when you are doing it!). |
8429 | Counterfactuals can express four other relations between events, apart from causation [Kim] |
Full Idea: Counterfactuals can express 'analytical' dependency, or the fact that one event is part of another, or an action done by doing another, or (most interestingly) an event can determine another without causally determining it. | |
From: Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], p.205) | |
A reaction: [Kim gives example of each case] Counterfactuals can even express a relation that involves no dependency. Or they might just involve redescription, as in 'If Scott were still alive, then the author of "Waverley" would be too'. |
8428 | Causation is not the only dependency relation expressed by counterfactuals [Kim] |
Full Idea: The sort of dependency expressed by counterfactual relations is considerably broader than strictly causal dependency, and causal dependency is only one among the heterogeneous group of dependency relationships counterfactuals can express. | |
From: Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973], p.205) | |
A reaction: In 'If pigs could fly, one and one still wouldn't make three' there isn't even a dependency. Kim has opened up lines of criticism which make the counterfactual analysis of causation look very implausible to me. |
4781 | Many counterfactual truths do not imply causation ('if yesterday wasn't Monday, it isn't Tuesday') [Kim, by Psillos] |
Full Idea: Kim gives a range of examples of counterfactual dependence without causation, as: 'if yesterday wasn't Monday, today wouldn't be Tuesday', and 'if my sister had not given birth, I would not be an uncle'. | |
From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §3.3 | |
A reaction: This is aimed at David Lewis. The objection seems like commonsense. "If you blink, the cat gets it". Causal claims involve counterfactuals, but they are not definitive of what causation is. |
14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |
Full Idea: To be an acid just is to be a proton donor. | |
From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
A reaction: My interest here is in whether we can say that we have found the 'essence' of an acid - so we want to know whether something 'deeper' explains the proton-donation. I suspect not. Being a proton donor happens to have a group of related consequences. |