7 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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). |
| 9409 | Laws are the best axiomatization of the total history of world events or facts [Lewis, by Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The Mill-Ramsey-Lewis theory takes laws to be axioms (or theorems) of the best possible systematizations of the world's total history, where such a history is a history of events or facts. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Psychophysical and theoretical identifications [1972]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 1.3 |
| 9423 | If simplicity and strength are criteria for laws of nature, that introduces a subjective element [Mumford on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's simplicity and strength criteria introduce an element of subjectivity into the laws, because the best system seems to be determined by what we take to be simple and strong in a system. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Psychophysical and theoretical identifications [1972]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 3.5 | |
| A reaction: [Mumford cites Armstrong 1983:67 for this] |
| 9424 | A number of systematizations might tie as the best and most coherent system [Mumford on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Since the best system view is a coherence theory, the possibility could not be ruled out that a number of different systematizations of the same history might be tied for first place as equally best. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Psychophysical and theoretical identifications [1972]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 3.5 | |
| A reaction: [Mumord cites Armstrong 1983:70] Personally I am a fan of coherence theories, and this problem doesn't bother me. |