33 ideas
| 17275 | Realist metaphysics concerns what is real; naive metaphysics concerns natures of things [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We may broadly distinguish between two main branches of metaphysics: the 'realist' or 'critical' branch is concerned with what is real (tense, values, numbers); the 'naive' or 'pre-critical' branch concerns natures of things irrespective of reality. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The 'natures' of things are presumably the essences. He cites 3D v 4D objects, and the status of fictional characters, as examples of the second type. Fine says ground is central to realist metaphysics. |
| 13838 | A decent modern definition should always imply a semantics [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Today we expect that anything worth calling a definition should imply a semantics. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §10) | |
| A reaction: He compares this with Gentzen 1935, who was attempting purely syntactic definitions of the logical connectives. |
| 17282 | Truths need not always have their source in what exists [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason in principle why the ultimate source of what is true should always lie in what exists. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.03) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the weak point of the truthmaker theory, since truths about non-existence are immediately in trouble. Saying reality makes things true is one thing, but picking out a specific bit of it for each truth is not so easy. |
| 17283 | If the truth-making relation is modal, then modal truths will be grounded in anything [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The truth-making relation is usually explicated in modal terms, ...but this lets in far too much. Any necessary truth will be grounded by anything. ...The fact that singleton Socrates exists will be a truth-maker for the proposition that Socrates exists. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.03) | |
| A reaction: If truth-makers are what has to 'exist' for something to be true, then maybe nothing must exist for a necessity to be true - in which case it has no truth maker. Or maybe 2 and 4 must 'exist' for 2+2=4? |
| 13833 | 'Thinning' ('dilution') is the key difference between deduction (which allows it) and induction [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: 'Dilution' (or 'Thinning') provides an essential contrast between deductive and inductive reasoning; for the introduction of new premises may spoil an inductive inference. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.2) | |
| A reaction: That is, inductive logic (if there is such a thing) is clearly non-monotonic, whereas classical inductive logic is monotonic. |
| 13834 | Gentzen's Cut Rule (or transitivity of deduction) is 'If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C' [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C. This generalises to: If Γ|-A,Θ and Γ,A |- Θ, then Γ |- Θ. Gentzen called this 'cut'. It is the transitivity of a deduction. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.3) | |
| A reaction: I read the generalisation as 'If A can be either a premise or a conclusion, you can bypass it'. The first version is just transitivity (which by-passes the middle step). |
| 13835 | Only Cut reduces complexity, so logic is constructive without it, and it can be dispensed with [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Only the cut rule can have a conclusion that is less complex than its premises. Hence when cut is not used, a derivation is quite literally constructive, building up from components. Any theorem obtained by cut can be obtained without it. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §08) |
| 13845 | The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe English is by nature classical or intuitionistic etc. These are abstractions made by logicians. Logicians attend to numerous different objects that might be served by 'If...then', like material conditional, strict or relevant implication. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §15) | |
| A reaction: The idea that they are 'abstractions' is close to my heart. Abstractions from what? Surely 'if...then' has a standard character when employed in normal conversation? |
| 13840 | First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with a Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 13844 | A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Henkin proved that there is no first-order treatment of branching quantifiers, which do not seem to involve any idea that is fundamentally different from ordinary quantification. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: See Hacking for an example of branching quantifiers. Hacking is impressed by this as a real limitation of the first-order logic which he generally favours. |
| 13842 | Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Second-order logic has no chance of a completeness theorem unless one ventures into intensional entities and possible worlds. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 17286 | Logical consequence is verification by a possible world within a truth-set [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Under the possible worlds semantics for logical consequence, each sentence of a language is associated with a truth-set of possible worlds in which it is true, and then something is a consequence if one of these worlds verifies it. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: [compressed, and translated into English; see Fine for more symbolic version; I'm more at home in English] |
| 13837 | With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: My doctrine is that the peculiarity of the logical constants resides precisely in that given a certain pure notion of truth and consequence, all the desirable semantic properties of the constants are determined by their syntactic properties. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §09) | |
| A reaction: He opposes this to Peacocke 1976, who claims that the logical connectives are essentially semantic in character, concerned with the preservation of truth. |
| 13839 | Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: For some purposes the variables of first-order logic can be regarded as prepositions and place-holders that could in principle be dispensed with, say by a system of arrows indicating what places fall in the scope of which quantifier. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §11) | |
| A reaction: I tend to think of variables as either pronouns, or as definite descriptions, or as temporary names, but not as prepositions. Must address this new idea... |
| 13843 | If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: A Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for anything which, on my delineation, is a logic. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an unusually conservative view. Shapiro is the chap who can give you an alternative view of these things, or Boolos. |
| 15540 | You can't deny temporary intrinsic properties by saying the properties are relations (to times) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To say that properties are really relations to times is to treat temporary intrinsics (such as my changing shape) as a matter of relations, but then 'intrinsic properties' would not deserve the name, and it is untenable if it denies temporary intrinsics. | |
| From: David Lewis (Rearrangement of Particles [1988], 1) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed a paragraph; he refers to his 1986:204] If a property is meant to be a 'relation to a time', I am not sure what the relata are meant to be, and I agree with Lewis that this seems a long way from properties. |
| 17272 | 2+2=4 is necessary if it is snowing, but not true in virtue of the fact that it is snowing [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that if it is snowing then 2+2=4, but the fact that 2+2=4 does not obtain in virtue of the fact that it is snowing. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: Critics dislike 'in virtue of' (as vacuous), but I can't see how you can disagree with this obvervation of Fine's. You can hardly eliminate the word 'because' from English, or say p is because of some object. We demand the right to keep asking 'why?'! |
| 17276 | If you say one thing causes another, that leaves open that the 'other' has its own distinct reality [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It will not do to say that the physical is causally determinative of the mental, since that leaves open the possibility that the mental has a distinct reality over and above that of the physical. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: The context is a defence of grounding, so that if we say the mind is 'grounded' in the brain, we are saying rather more than merely that it is caused by the brain. A ghost might be 'caused' by a bar of soap. Nice. |
| 17284 | An immediate ground is the next lower level, which gives the concept of a hierarchy [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is the notion of 'immediate' ground that provides us with our sense of a ground-theoretic hierarchy. For any truth, we can take its immediate grounds to be at the next lower level. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.05 'Mediate') | |
| A reaction: Are the levels in the reality, the structure or the descriptions? I vote for the structure. I'm defending the idea that 'essence' picks out the bottom of a descriptive level. |
| 17285 | 'Strict' ground moves down the explanations, but 'weak' ground can move sideways [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We might think of strict ground as moving us down in the explanatory hierarchy. ...Weak ground, on the other hand, may also move us sideways in the explanatory hierarchy. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.05 'Weak') | |
| A reaction: This seems to me rather illuminating. For example, is the covering law account of explanation a 'sideways' move in explanation. Are inductive generalities mere 'sideways' accounts. Both fail to dig deeper. |
| 17288 | We learn grounding from what is grounded, not what does the grounding [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is the fact to be grounded that 'points' to its ground and not the grounds that point to what they ground. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: What does the grounding may ground all sorts of other things, but what is grounded only has one 'full' (as opposed to 'partial', in Fine's terminology) ground. He says this leads to a 'top-down' approach to the study of grounds. |
| 17281 | If grounding is a relation it must be between entities of the same type, preferably between facts [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In so far as ground is regarded as a relation it should be between entities of the same type, and the entities should probably be taken as worldly entities, such as facts, rather than as representational entities, such as propositions. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: That's more like it (cf. Idea 17280). The consensus of this discussion seems to point to facts as the best relata, for all the vagueness of facts, and the big question of how fine-grained facts should be (and how dependent they are on descriptions). |
| 17280 | Ground is best understood as a sentence operator, rather than a relation between predicates [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Ground is perhaps best regarded as an operation (signified by an operator on sentences) rather than as a relation (signified by a predicate) | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: Someone in this book (Koslicki?) says this is to avoid metaphysical puzzles over properties. I don't like the idea, because it makes grounding about sentences when it should be about reality. Fine is so twentieth century. Audi rests ground on properties. |
| 17290 | Only metaphysical grounding must be explained by essence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If the grounding relation is not metaphysical (such as normative or natural grounding), there is no need for there to be an explanation of its holding in terms of the essentialist nature of the items involved. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: He accepts that some things have partial grounds in different areas of reality. |
| 17274 | Philosophical explanation is largely by ground (just as cause is used in science) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For philosophers interested in explanation - of what accounts for what - it is largely through the notion of ontological ground that such questions are to be pursued. Ground, if you like, stands to philosophy as cause stands to science. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: Why does the ground have to be 'ontological'? It isn't the existence of the snow that makes me cold, but the fact that I am lying in it. Better to talk of 'factual' ground (or 'determinative' ground), and then causal grounds are a subset of those? |
| 17278 | We can only explain how a reduction is possible if we accept the concept of ground [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is only by embracing the concept of a ground as a metaphysical form of explanation in its own right that one can adequately explain how a reduction of the reality of one thing to another should be understood. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I love that we are aiming to say 'how' a reduction should be understood, and not just 'that' it exists. I'm not sure about Fine's emphasis on explaining 'realities', when I think we are after more like structural relations or interconnected facts. |
| 17287 | Facts, such as redness and roundness of a ball, can be 'fused' into one fact [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Given any facts, there will be a fusion of those facts. Given the facts that the ball is red and that it is round, there is a fused fact that it is 'red and round'. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: This is how we make 'units' for counting. Any type of thing which can be counted can be fused, such as the first five prime numbers, forming the 'first' group for some discussion. Any objects can be fused to make a unit - but is it thereby a 'unity'? |
| 17279 | Even a three-dimensionalist might identify temporal parts, in their thinking [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Even the three-dimensionalist might be willing to admit that material things have temporal parts. For given any persisting object, he might suppose that 'in thought' we could mark out its temporal segments or parts. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: A big problem with temporal parts is how thin they are. Hawley says they are as fine-grained as time itself, but what if time has no grain? How thin can you 'think' a temporal part to be? Fine says imagined parts are grounded in things, not vice versa. |
| 17273 | Each basic modality has its 'own' explanatory relation [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I am inclined to the view that ....each basic modality should be associated with its 'own' explanatory relation. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that 'grounding' connects the various explanatory relations of the different modalities. I like this a lot. Why assert any necessity without some concept of where the necessity arises, and hence where it is grounded? You've got to eat. |
| 17289 | Every necessary truth is grounded in the nature of something [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It might be held as a general thesis that every necessary truth is grounded in the nature of certain items. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: [He cites his own 1994 for this] I'm not sure if I can embrace the 'every' in this. I would only say, more cautiously, that I can only make sense of necessity claims when I see their groundings - and I don't take a priori intuition as decent grounding. |
| 17291 | We explain by identity (what it is), or by truth (how things are) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I think it should be recognised that there are two fundamentally different types of explanation; one is of identity, or of what something is; and the other is of truth, or of how things are. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11) |
| 17271 | Is there metaphysical explanation (as well as causal), involving a constitutive form of determination? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In addition to scientific or causal explanation, there maybe a distinctive kind of metaphysical explanation, in which explanans and explanandum are connected, not through some causal mechanism, but through some constitutive form of determination. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm unclear why determination has to be 'constitutive', since I would take determination to be a family of concepts, with constitution being one of them, as when chess pieces determine a chess set. Skip 'metaphysical'; just have Determinative Explanation. |
| 17277 | If mind supervenes on the physical, it may also explain the physical (and not vice versa) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is not enough to require that the mental should modally supervene on the physical, since that still leaves open the possibility that the physical is itself ultimately to be understood in terms of the mental. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: See Horgan on supervenience. Supervenience is a question, not an answer. The first question is whether the supervenience is mutual, and if not, which 'direction' does it go in? |