Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet', 'Perceptual Content and Monadic Truth' and 'Ways Worlds Could Be'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences

15990	Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke]
	Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species.

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

15432	Structural universals might serve as possible worlds [Forrest, by Lewis]
	Full Idea: Forrest proposed that structural universals should serve as ersatz possible worlds.
	From: report of Peter Forrest (Ways Worlds Could Be [1986]) by David Lewis - Against Structural Universals 'Intro'
	A reaction: I prefer powers to property universals. Perhaps a possible world is a maximal set of co-existing dispositions?

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

15994	If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke]
	Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it.

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 9. Indexical Thought

18424	If two people can have phenomenally identical experiences, they can't involve the self [Brogaard]
	Full Idea: It is plausible that you and I can have perceptual experiences with the same phenomenology of two trees at different distances from us (perhaps at different times). ..So our perceptual experiences cannot contain you or me in the content of representation.
	From: Berit Brogaard (Perceptual Content and Monadic Truth [2009], p.223), quoted by Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh - The Inessential Indexical 08.2
	A reaction: If you accept the example, which seems reasonable, then that pretty conclusively shows that perception is not inherently indexical.