48 ideas
| 7689 | The modal logic of C.I.Lewis was only interpreted by Kripke and Hintikka in the 1960s [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The modal syntax and axiom systems of C.I.Lewis (1918) were formally interpreted by Kripke and Hintikka (c.1965) who, using Z-F set theory, worked out model set-theoretical semantics for modal logics and quantified modal logics. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A historical note. The big question is always 'who cares?' - to which the answer seems to be 'lots of people', if they are interested in precision in discourse, in artificial intelligence, and maybe even in metaphysics. Possible worlds started here. |
| 7681 | Logic describes inferences between sentences expressing possible properties of objects [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: It is fundamental that logic depends on logical possibilities, in which logically possible properties are predicated of logically possible objects. Logic describes inferential structures among sentences expressing the predication of properties to objects. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: If our imagination is the only tool we have for assessing possibilities, this leaves the domain of logic as being a bit subjective. There is an underlying Platonism to the idea, since inferences would exist even if nothing else did. |
| 7682 | Logic is not just about signs, because it relates to states of affairs, objects, properties and truth-values [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: At one level logic can be regarded as a theory of signs and formal rules, but we cannot neglect the meaning of propositions as they relate to states of affairs, and hence to possible properties and objects... there must be the possibility of truth-values. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Thus if you define logical connectives by truth tables, you need the concept of T and F. You could, though, regard those too as purely formal (like 1 and 0 in electronics). But how do you decide which propositions are 1, and which are 0? |
| 7697 | On Russell's analysis, the sentence "The winged horse has wings" comes out as false [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: It is infamous that on Russell's analysis the sentences "The winged horse has wings" and "The winged horse is a horse" are false, because in the extant domain of actual existent entities there contingently exist no winged horses | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the best objection I have heard to Russell's account of definite descriptions. The connected question is whether 'quantifies over' is really a commitment to existence. See Idea 6067. |
| 7701 | Can a Barber shave all and only those persons who do not shave themselves? [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The Barber Paradox refers to the non-existent property of being a barber who shaves all and only those persons who do not shave themselves. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: [Russell spotted this paradox, and it led to his Theory of Types]. This paradox may throw light on the logic of indexicals. What does "you" mean when I say to myself "you idiot!"? If I can behave as two persons, so can the barber. |
| 7707 | To grasp being, we must say why something exists, and why there is one world [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: We grasp the concept of being only when we have satisfactorily answered the question why there is something rather than nothing and why there is only one logically contingent actual world. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Conclusion) | |
| A reaction: See Ideas 7688 and 7692 for a glimpse of Jacquette's answer. Personally I don't yet have a full grasp of the concept of being, but I'm sure I'll get there if I only work a bit harder. |
| 7692 | Being is maximal consistency [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Being is maximal consistency. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Ch.2 of Jacquette to see what this is all about, but as it stands it is a lovely slogan, and a wonderful googly/curve ball to propel at Parmenides or Heidegger. |
| 7687 | Existence is completeness and consistency [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: A combinatorial ontology holds that existence is nothing more or less than completeness and consistency, or what is also called 'maximal consistency'. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Jacquette to understand this one! The claim is that existence is to be defined in terms of logic (and whatever is required for logic). I take this to be a bit Platonist (rather than conventionalist) about logic. |
| 7679 | Ontology is the same as the conceptual foundations of logic [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The principles of pure philosophical ontology are indistinguishable ... from the conceptual foundations of logic. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I would take Russell to be an originator of this view. If the young Wittgenstein showed that the foundations of logic are simply conventional (truth tables), this seems to make ontology conventional too, which sounds very odd indeed (to me). |
| 7678 | Ontology must include the minimum requirements for our semantics [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The entities included in a theoretical ontology are those minimally required for an adequate philosophical semantics. ...These are the objects that we say exist, to which we are ontologically committed. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Worded with exquisite care! He does not say that ontology is reducible to semantics (which is a silly idea). We could still be committed, as in a ghost story, to existence of some 'nameless thing'. Things utterly beyond our ken might exist. |
| 7683 | Logic is based either on separate objects and properties, or objects as combinations of properties [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Logic involves the possibilities of predicating properties of objects in a conceptual scheme wherein either objects and properties are included in altogether separate categories, or objects are reducible to combinations of properties. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: In the first view, he says that objects are just 'logical pegs' for properties. Objects can't be individuated without properties. But combinations of properties would seem to need essences, or else they are too unstable to count as objects. |
| 7684 | Reduce states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and possible worlds to states-of-affairs [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: We can reduce references to states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and we can reduce logically possible worlds to logically possible states-of-affairs combinations. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: If we further reduce object-property combinations to mere combinations of properties (Idea 7683), then we have reduced our ontology to nothing but properties. Wow. We had better be very clear, then, about what a property is. I'm not. |
| 7703 | If classes can't be eliminated, and they are property combinations, then properties (universals) can't be either [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If classes alone cannot be eliminated from ontology on Quine's terms, and if classes are defined as property combinations, then neither are all properties, universals in the tradition sense, entirely eliminable. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: If classes were totally conventional (and there was no such things as a 'natural' class) then you might admit something to a class without knowing its properties (as 'the thing in the box'). |
| 7685 | An object is a predication subject, distinguished by a distinctive combination of properties [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: To be an object is to be a predication subject, and to be this as opposed to that particular object, whether existent or not, is to have a distinctive combination of properties. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: The last part depends on Leibniz's Law. The difficulty is that two objects may only be distinguishable by being in different places, and location doesn't look like a property. Cf. Idea 5055. |
| 7699 | Numbers, sets and propositions are abstract particulars; properties, qualities and relations are universals [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Roughly, numbers, sets and propositions are assumed to be abstract particulars, while properties, including qualities and relations, are usually thought to be universals. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: There is an interesting nominalist project of reducing all of these to particulars. Numbers to patterns, sets to their members, propositions to sentences, properties to causal powers, relations to, er, something else. |
| 7691 | The actual world is a consistent combination of states, made of consistent property combinations [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The actual world is a maximally consistent state-of-affairs combination involving all and only the existent objects, which in turn exist because they are maximally consistent property combinations. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: [This extends Idea 7688]. This seems to invite the standard objections to the coherence theory of truth, such as Ideas 5422 and 4745. Is 'maximal consistency' merely a test for actuality, rather than an account of what actuality is? |
| 7688 | The actual world is a maximally consistent combination of actual states of affairs [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The actual world can be defined as a maximally consistent combination of actual states of affairs, or maximally consistent states-of-affairs combination. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A key part of Jacquette's program of deriving ontological results from the foundations of logic. Is the counterfactual situation of my pen being three centimetres to the left of its current position a "less consistent" situation than the actual one? |
| 7695 | Do proposition-structures not associated with the actual world deserve to be called worlds? [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Many modal logicians in their philosophical moments have raised doubts about whether structures of propositions not associated with the actual world deserved to be called worlds at all. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: A good question. Consistency is obviously required, but we also need a lot of propositions before we would consider it a 'world'. Very remote but consistent worlds quickly become unimaginable. Does that matter? |
| 7694 | We must experience the 'actual' world, which is defined by maximally consistent propositions [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Conventional modal semantics, in which all logically possible worlds are defined in terms of maximally consistent proposition sets, has no choice except to allow that the actual world is the world we experience in sensation, or that we inhabit. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Jacquette dislikes this because he is seeking an account of ontology that doesn't, as so often, merely reduce to epistemology (e.g. Berkeley). See Idea 7691 for his preferred account. |
| 7706 | If qualia supervene on intentional states, then intentional states are explanatorily fundamental [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If qualia supervene on intentional states, then intentionality is also more explanatorily fundamental than qualia. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 7272 for opposite view. Maybe intentional states are large mental objects of which we are introspectively aware, but which are actually composed of innumerable fine-grained qualia. Intentional states would only explain qualia if they caused them. |
| 5495 | Instances of pain are physical tokens, but the nature of pain is more abstract [Putnam, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: In machine functionalism, pain tokens (individual instances of pain) are identical with particular neurophysiological states, but pain itself, the kind, universal, or 'type', can be identified only with something more abstract. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Mental Life of Some Machines [1967]) by William Lycan - Introduction - Ontology p.6 | |
| A reaction: This is where the "what is it like?" question seems important. Pain doesn't seem like a physical object, or an abstract idea. Personally I think the former is more likely to be correct than the latter. Causation by pain is not like causation by gravity. |
| 7704 | Reduction of intentionality involving nonexistent objects is impossible, as reduction must be to what is actual [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: If intentionality sometimes involves a relation to nonexistent objects, like my dreamed-of visit to a Greek island, then such thoughts cannot be explained physically or causally, because only actual physical entities and events can be mentioned. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Unimpressive. Thoughts of a Greek island will obviously reduce to memories of islands and Greece and travel brochures. Memory clearly retains past events in the present, and hence past events can be part of the material used in reductive accounts. |
| 7702 | The extreme views on propositions are Frege's Platonism and Quine's extreme nominalism [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: The extreme ontological alternatives with respect to the metaphysics of propositions are a Fregean Platonism (his "gedanken", 'thoughts'), and a radical nominalism or inscriptionalism, as in Quine, where they are just marks related to stimuli. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would want something between the two - that propositions are brain events of a highly abstract kind. I say that introspection reveals pre-linguistic thoughts, which are propositions. A proposition is an intentional state. |
| 7222 | It is a crime for someone with a violent disposition to get drunk [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This principle (based on knowing your own dispositions) is a very good account of the ethics drunkenness. We have a moral duty to know and remember our own dispositions. Violent people should avoid arguments as well as alcohol. |
| 7214 | Ethics rests on utility, which is the permanent progressive interests of people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Mill, writing in praise of personal liberty, is desperate to introduce a paternalistic element into his politics, and the 'maximisation of happiness' will justify such paternalism, while his basic liberal principle (Idea 7211) won't. Mill's Dilemma. |
| 7212 | Individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies and minds [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I should not even think about evil deeds, then neither should you. I would prevent you if I could. I would prevent you from drinking yourself to death, if I could. It is just that intrusions into private lives leads to greater trouble. |
| 7210 | The will of the people is that of the largest or most active part of the people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the nicely coined modern phrase 'the silent majority', on whose behalf certain politicians, usually conservative, offer to speak. It is unlikely that the silent majority are actually deeply opposed to the views of the very active part. |
| 7227 | It is evil to give a government any more power than is necessary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government interference should be restricted because of the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This would need justification, because it might be replied that individuals should not have unnecessary power either. The main problem is that governments have armies, police and money. |
| 7228 | Individuals often do things better than governments [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government power should be restricted because things are often done better by individuals. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This contains some truth, but it is obvious that innumerable things can be done better by governments, and also (and more importantly) that innumerable other good things might be done by governments which individuals can't be bothered to do. |
| 7230 | Aim for the maximum dissemination of power consistent with efficiency [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The safest practical ideal is to aim for the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice principle, which I would think desirable within an institution as well as on the scale of the state. I am becoming a fan of Mill's politics. I still say that freedom is an overrated virtue, so efficiency must be underrated. |
| 20515 | Maximise happiness by an area of strict privacy, and an area of utilitarian interventions [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: For Mill the greatest happiness will be achieved by giving people a private sphere of interests where no intervention is permitted, while allowing a public sphere where intervention is possible, but only on utilitarian grounds. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Liberty' | |
| A reaction: This is probably standard liberal practice nowadays. Freely consenting adult sexual activity is agreed to be wholly private. At least some lip-service is paid to increasing happiness when government intervenes. |
| 7229 | People who transact their own business will also have the initiative to control their government [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A people accustomed to transacting their own business is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes reference to Americans. This is an important idea, because it shows that democratic control is not just a matter of elections (which can be abolished or suborned), but is also a characteristic of a certain way of life. |
| 7211 | Prevention of harm to others is the only justification for exercising power over people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others; his own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea in Mill's liberalism, though he goes on to offer some qualifications of this absolute prohibition. I don't disagree with this principle, but there may be a lot more indirect harm than we realise (eg. in allowing liberal sex or drugs). |
| 7231 | The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, opposed to any idea that we should abandon our own value to that of our state. I agree, but communitarians can subscribe to this too, while disagreeing that maximum freedom is the strategy to follow. |
| 7217 | The main argument for freedom is that interference with it is usually misguided [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also a well known objection to capital punishment. Generalised, well established, legal interferences are perhaps more likely to get it right than ad hoc decisions about individuals by individual officials. |
| 7213 | Liberty arises at the point where people can freely and equally discuss things [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a Victorian (and Enlightenment) optimism here which a glimpse of the freedoms of the early twenty-first century might dampen. I doubt if Mill expected British tabloid newspapers, or porn on cable TV. Education and freedom connect. |
| 20517 | Utilitarianism values liberty, but guides us on which ones we should have or not have [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism provides an account of what liberties we should and should not have. Mill argues we should be free to compete in trade, but not to use another's property without consent. Thus he sets limits to liberty, while paying it great respect. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' |
| 20516 | Mill defends freedom as increasing happiness, but maybe it is an intrinsic good [Wolff,J on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill has presented liberty as instrumentally valuable, as a way of achieving the greatest possible happiness in society. But perhaps he should have argued that liberty is an intrinsic good, good in itself. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' | |
| A reaction: If freedom is intrinsically good, does this leave us (as Wolff warned earlier) unable to defend its value? Freedom isn't an intrinsic good for infants, so why should it be so for adults? Good because it brings happiness, or fulfils our nature? |
| 7215 | True freedom is pursuing our own good, while not impeding others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This principle will probably lead up a Prisoner's Dilemma cul-de-sac. The only freedom which deserves the name is the collective agreed freedom of a whole community to live well, when citizens volunteer to restrict their individual freedoms. |
| 7218 | Individuals are not accountable for actions which only concern themselves [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My first maxim is that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, and one which communitarians have doubts about (because it is almost impossible to perform an action which is of no interest, in the short or long term, to others). I share these doubts. |
| 7221 | Blocking entry to an unsafe bridge does not infringe liberty, since no one wants unsafe bridges [Mill] |
| Full Idea: An official could turn a person back from an unsafe bridge without infringeing their liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Seems fair enough, but it justifies paternalist interference. The tricky one is where the official and the citizen disagree over what the citizen 'truly' desires. Asking people may involve too much time, but it could also involve too much effort. |
| 7223 | Pimping and running a gambling-house are on the border between toleration and restraint [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A person being free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house, lies on the exact boundary line between two principles, of toleration and of restraint. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Nothing illuminates a philosopher's principles more than for them to specify cases that lie on their borderlines. Both professions seem, unfortunately, to lead people into worse activities, such as violent bullying, or theft. Tricky.. |
| 7220 | Restraint for its own sake is an evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All restraint, qua restraint, is an evil. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The ultimate justification for this is (presumably) utilitarian, but that would mean that there was nothing wrong with restraint if the person did not mind, or was not aware of the restraint. What is intrinsically wrong with restraint? |
| 7219 | Society can punish actions which it believes to be prejudicial to others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My second maxim is that for actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and subject to social or legal punishment, if society believes that this is requisite for its protection. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: (wording compressed). The trouble with this would seem to be the possible disagreement between the individual and the society over whether the actions actually are prejudicial to others. It would justify a conservative society in being repressive. |
| 7226 | Benefits performed by individuals, not by government, help also to educate them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is often desirable that beneficial things should be done by individuals, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This raises the important danger, which even those on the political left must acknowledge, of the 'nanny state'. It offers a nicely paternalistic, and even patronising reason for giving people freedom, just as a parent might to a child. |
| 7224 | We need individual opinions and conduct, and State education is a means to prevent that [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves diversity of education; a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being particularly true with the advent in Britain of the National Curriculum in the early 1990s. However, if there is a pressure towards conformity in state education, private education is dominated by class and money. |
| 7225 | It is a crime to create a being who lacks the ordinary chances of a desirable existence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To bestow a life on someone which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard utilitarian attitude to engendering people. I think I have to agree. It is no argument against this to say that we value people with poor life prospects, once they have arrived. Altruism towards children may disguise selfish parents. |
| 7216 | The ethics of the Gospel has been supplemented by barbarous Old Testament values [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To extract from the Gospel a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible withouth eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Barbarous' has a quaint Victorian ring to it, but his point is that the surviving teachings of Jesus are very thin and generalised. Christians would do better to expand their implications, than to borrow from the Old Testament. |