Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Events and Their Names', 'Letters to Hugo Boxel' and '26: Oracles in Decline'

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

---

4 ideas

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events

8978	Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1
	A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism

5958	The sun is always bright; it doesn't become bright when it emerges [Plutarch]
	Full Idea: The sun doesn't become bright when it emerges from the clouds; it always is bright.
	From: Plutarch (26: Oracles in Decline [c.85], §39)
	A reaction: Not an argument, but a nice appeal to common sense, like Russell's example of the cat that disappears behind the furniture and then reappears. To disagree with Plutarch here strikes me as the road to philosophical absurdity.

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty

4870	The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible [Spinoza]
	Full Idea: The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible.
	From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Hugo Boxel [1674], 1674?)
	A reaction: Spinoza offers this nicely expressed point to support his view that beauty is strictly relative to observers, but I am unconvinced. If the outline of the hand is its key aesthetic feature, the viewer through the microscope cannot see it.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata

10364	Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.22), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1
	A reaction: Compare 10361. Good argument, but maybe 'fact' is ambiguous. See Idea 10365. Events are said to be more concrete, and so can do the job, but their individuation also seems to depend on a description (as Davidson has pointed out).