Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'God and Human Attributes', 'Journals' and 'Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori'

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8 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 5. Modern Philosophy / c. Modern philosophy mid-period

13966	Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames]
	Full Idea: The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour.
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166)
	A reaction: Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of.

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis

13974	If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames]
	Full Idea: If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both.
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
	A reaction: He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties

13969	Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames]
	Full Idea: By (Kripkean) 'essential' properties and relations I mean simply properties and relations that hold necessarily of objects (in all genuinely possible world-states in which the objects exist).
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.168 n5)
	A reaction: This is the standard modern view of essences which I find so unsatisfactory. Kit Fine has helped to take us back to the proper Aristotelian view, where 'necessary' and 'essential' actually have different meanings. Note the inclusion of relations.

10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 3. Necessity by Convention

13973	A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames]
	Full Idea: None of Kripke's many achievements is more important than his breaking the spell of the linguistic as the source of philosophically important modalities.
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
	A reaction: Put like that, Kripke may have had the single most important thought of modern times. I take good philosophy to be exactly the same as good scientific theorising, in that it all arises out of the nature of reality (and I include logic in that).

10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds

13968	Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames]
	Full Idea: For the Kripkean possible states of the world are not alternate concrete universes, but abstract objects. Metaphysically possible world-states are maximally complete ways the real concrete universe could have been.
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.167)
	A reaction: This is probably clearer about the Kripkean view than Kripke ever is, but then that is part of Soames's mission. It sounds like the right way to conceive possible worlds. At least there is some commitment there, rather than instrumentalism about them.

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 10. Two-Dimensional Semantics

13972	Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames]
	Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age.
	From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183)
	A reaction: I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that?

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 7. Later Matter Theories / b. Corpuscles

16707	Cold and hot are the swiftness and slowness of corpuscular motion [Beeckman]
	Full Idea: There is no doubt that the nature of cold and hot are taken from the swiftness and slowness of the motion of corpuscules.
	From: Isaac Beeckman (Journals [1617], I:132), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 19.6
	A reaction: This is so right it takes your breath away. For 'corpuscles' we should normally read 'molecules'. Atomism is a further refinement. This is the rejection of the orthodox view of separate qualities.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / c. Moral Argument

20713	God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
	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.
	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'
	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?