Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson', 'Scientific Thought' and 'Time and Free Will'

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

---

8 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind

14082	No sortal could ever exactly pin down which set of particles count as this 'cup' [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Many decent candidates could the referent of this 'cup', differing over whether outlying particles are parts. No further sortal I could invoke will be selective enough to rule out all but one referent for it.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1 n8)
	A reaction: I never had much faith in sortals for establishing individual identity, so this point comes as no surprise. The implication is strongly realist - that the cup has an identity which is permanently beyond our capacity to specify it.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism

14759	A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad]
	Full Idea: A thing is simply a long event, throughout the course of which there is either qualitative similarity or continuous qualitative change, together with a characteristic spatio-temporal unity.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], 10 'Duration')
	A reaction: At least he is trying to give some sort of principle that links the stages of the event together.

11842	If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad]
	Full Idea: We call a lightning flash or a motor accident an event, but refuse to apply this to the cliffs of Dover. ...But quantitative differences (of time) give no good grounds for calling one bit of history an event, and refusing the name to another bit.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], p.54), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 2.3 n13
	A reaction: Wiggins calls this proposal a 'terrible absurdity', but it seems to me to demand attention. There is a case to be made for a 'process' to be the fundamental category of our ontology, with stable physical objects seen in that light.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects

14081	Identities can be true despite indeterminate reference, if true under all interpretations [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: There can be determinately true identity claims despite indeterminate reference of the terms flanking the identity sign; these will be identity claims true under all admissible interpretations of the flanking terms.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1)
	A reaction: In informal contexts there might be problems with the notion of what is 'admissible'. Is 'my least favourite physical object' admissible?

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 5. Causal Argument

22100	Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson]
	Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story.
	From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174
	A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / g. Growing block

8160	The present and past exist, but the future does not [Broad, by Dummett]
	Full Idea: Not only the present but also the past exist, but the future (so long as it is the future) does not.
	From: report of C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1
	A reaction: This is quite appealing, and seems right if you believe that every truth has a truthmaker, and that there are no truths about the future. And yet the whole misery of people dying is that they cease to exist.

14609	We could say present and past exist, but not future, so that each event adds to the total history [Broad]
	Full Idea: One theory accepts the reality of the present and the past, but holds that the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II)
	A reaction: This is now known as Broad's 'Growing Block' view of time. It is tempting to say that neither past nor future exist, but it seems undeniable that statements about the past can be wholly true, unlike those about the future.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / d. Time series

22933	We imagine the present as a spotlight, moving across events from past to future [Broad]
	Full Idea: We imagine presentness moving, like the spot of light from a policeman's bulls eye traversing the fronts of houses in a street. What is illuminated is present, what was illuminated is past, and what is not yet illuminated is the future.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II)
	A reaction: This is the 'moving spotlight' compromise theory, which retains the B-series eternal sequence of ordered events, but adds the A-series privileged present moment. Le Poidevin says Broad represents time twice over.