18470
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Maybe truth-making is an unanalysable primitive, but we can specify principles for it [Smith,B]
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Full Idea:
The signs are that truth-making is not analysable in terms of anything more primitive, but we need to be able to say more than just that. So we ought to consider it as specified by principles of truth-making.
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From:
Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory [2000], p.20), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.5
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A reaction:
This is the axiomatic approach to such problems - treat the target concept as an undefinable, unanalysable primitive, and then give rules for its connections. Maybe all metaphysics should work like that, with a small bunch of primitives.
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16984
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I don't think possible worlds reductively reveal the natures of modal operators etc. [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
I do not think of 'possible worlds' as providing a reductive analysis in any philosophically significant sense, that is, as uncovering the ultimate nature, from either an epistemological or a metaphysical view, of modal operators, propositions etc.
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.19 n18)
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A reaction:
I think this remark opens the door for Kit Fine's approach, of showing what modality is by specifying its sources. Possible worlds model the behaviour of modal inferences.
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9385
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The very act of designating of an object with properties gives knowledge of a contingent truth [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
If a speaker introduced a designator into a language by a ceremony, then in virtue of his very linguistic act, he would be in a position to say 'I know that Fa', but nevertheless 'Fa' would be a contingent truth (provided F is not an essential property).
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.14)
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A reaction:
If someone else does the designation, I seem to have contingent knowledge that the ceremony has taken place. You needn't experience the object, but you must experience the ceremony, even if you perform it.
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16983
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Probability with dice uses possible worlds, abstractions which fictionally simplify things [Kripke]
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Full Idea:
In studying probabilities with dice, we are introduced at a tender age to a set of 36 (miniature) possible worlds, if we (fictively) ignore everything except the two dice. …The possibilities are abstract states of the dice, not physical entities.
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From:
Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity preface [1980], p.16)
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A reaction:
Interesting for the introduction by the great man of the words 'fictional' and 'abstract' into the discussion. He says elsewhere that he takes worlds to be less than real, but more than mere technical devices.
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20713
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God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
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Full Idea:
Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God.
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From:
report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality'
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A reaction:
Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist?
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