Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity', 'A Dictionary of Philosophy' and 'Anti-essentialism'

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12 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 1. Ontology of Logic

12766	Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it.
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85)
	A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality.

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding

17304	As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
	A reaction: Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels.

17306	If ground is transitive and irreflexive, it has a strict partial ordering, giving structure [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: By treating grounding as transitive (and irreflexive), one generates a strict partial ordering that induces metaphysical structure.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
	A reaction: Schaffer's paper goes on to attach the claim that grounding is transitive, but I didn't find his examples very convincing.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 7. Substratum

12764	For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped.
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76)
	A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties

12761	An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists.
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71)
	A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities

12763	Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos).
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73)
	A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential!

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

12762	Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic.
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71)
	A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg.

10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity

12765	Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker]
	Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him.
	From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79)
	A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth?

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / a. Sense-data theory

6456	Sense-data are neutral uninterpreted experiences, separated from objects and judgements [Angeles]
	Full Idea: Sense-data are that which is given to us directly and immediately such as colour, shape, smell, without identification of them as specific material objects; they are usually thought to be devoid of judgment, interpretation, bias, preconception.
	From: Peter A. Angeles (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1981], p.254)
	A reaction: This definition makes them clearly mental (rather than being qualities of objects), and they sound like Hume's 'impressions'. They are not features of the external world, but the first steps we make towards experience.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / b. Contrastive explanations

17308	Explaining 'Adam ate the apple' depends on emphasis, and thus implies a contrast [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Explaining why ADAM ate the apple is a different matter from explaining why he ATE the apple, and from why he ate THE APPLE. ...In my view the best explanations incorporate ....contrastive information.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
	A reaction: But why are the contrasts Eve, or throwing it, or a pear? It occurs to me that this is wrong! The contrast is with anything else which could have gone in subject, verb or object position. It is a matter of categories, not of contrasts.

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature

17305	I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: I myself would prefer to speak of what is fundamental in terms of the whole spatiotemporal manifold and the fields that permeate it, with parts counting as derivative of the whole.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.1.1)
	A reaction: Not quite the Parmenidean One, since it has parts, but a nice try at updating the great man. Note the reference to 'fields', suggesting that this view is grounded in the physics rather than metaphysics. How many fields has it got?

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation

17307	Nowadays causation is usually understood in terms of equations and variable ranges [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: The leading treatments of causation work within 'structural equation models', with events represented via variables each of which is allotted a range of permitted values, which constitute a 'contrast space'.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
	A reaction: Like Woodward's idea that causation is a graph, this seems to be a matter of plotting or formalising correlations between activities, which is a very Humean approach to causation.