19 ideas
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Some deep essentialists resist the need to explain the structure under de re modal properties, taking them as primitive. One version (which we can call 'substance theory') takes them to fall under a sortal concept, with no further explanation. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: A very helpful identification of what Wiggins stands for, and why I disagree with him. The whole point of essences is to provide a notion that fits in with sciences, which means they must have an explanatory role, which needs structures. |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: If the substance essentialist holds that the sort an object belongs to determines its de re modal properties (rather than the other way round), then he needs to give an (ontological, not conceptual) explanation of what determines an object's sort. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14193 for 'substance essentialism'. I find it quite incredible that anyone could think that a thing's sort could determine its properties, rather than the other way round. Even if sortals are conventional, they are not arbitrary. |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of material constitution given by substance essentialism is that there are multiple objects. A person is essentially human-shaped (falling under the human sort), while their hunk of tissue is accidentally human-shaped (as tissue). | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: At this point sortal essentialism begins to look crazy. Persons are dubious examples (with sneaky dualism involved). A bronze statue is essentially harder to dent than a clay one, because of its bronze. If you remake it of clay, it isn't the same statue. |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would imply that objects with incompatible properties and objects such as winged pigs or golden mountains were actual. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §5) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is 'qualitative' composition, and not composition of parts. The objection seems to rule out unrestricted qualitative composition, since you could hardly combine squareness with roundness. |
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism says that objects have their properties essentially. 'Deep' essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature. 'Shallow' essentialists substitute context-dependent truths for the independent ones. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If the deep essence determines a things nature, we should not need to say 'nontrivial'. This is my bete noire, the confusion of essential properties with necessary ones, where necessary properties (or predicates, at least) can indeed be trivial. |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The deep essentialist holds that most objects have essential properties such that there are many ways they could not be, or many changes through which they could not persist. Objects' modal profiles characterize their natures. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I like, especially the last bit. If your modal profile doesn't determine your nature, then what does? Think of how you sum up a person at a funeral. Your modal profile is determined by dispositions and powers. |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Two objections to deep essentialism are that it falters when faced with a skeptical objection concerning arbitrariness, and the need for a reductive account of de re modality. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: An immediate response to the second objection might be to say that modal facts about things are not reducible. The charge of arbitrariness (i.e. total arbitrariness, not just a bit of uncertainty) is the main thing a theory of essences must deal with. |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that an object's de re modal properties determine its relations to possibilia. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §3) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Paul to see why, but I flat disagree with her on this. The whole point of accepting such properties is to determine the modal profile of the thing, and hence see how it can fit into and behave in the world. |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world. |
| 8353 | Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: Freedom at least involves the power of acting according to an idea. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §2) | |
| A reaction: Since 'you' presumably have to sit above the idea and pass a judgement on it, then the same principle should apply to acting on a desire, which presumably 'you' could reject because it just wasn't attractive enough. |
| 8352 | To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: 'The ball's path is determined' must mean 'there is only one possible path for the ball (assuming no air currents)', but what ground could one have for believing this, if one does not believe in some system for which it is a consequence? | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §2) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but it doesn't follow that one has to know the full details of the system. The system might just be the best explanation, or even a matter of vague faith. It might, though, be just that you can't imagine any other outcome. |
| 22480 | Possessing the virtue of justice disposes a person to good practical rationality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If justice is a virtue it must make action good by disposing its possessor to goodness in practical rationality; the latter consisting of the right recognition of reasons, and corresponding action. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.174) | |
| A reaction: This somewhat inverts Aristotle, who says the possessing of good practical reason is the key to acquiring the virtues. Foot suggests that possessing the virtue promotes the practical rationality. Someone can be sensible without being virtuous. |
| 22477 | Calling a knife or farmer or speech or root good does not involve attitudes or feelings [Foot] |
| Full Idea: No one thinks that calling a knife a good knife, a farmer a good farmer, a speech a good speech, a root a good root, necessarily expresses or even involves an attitude or feeling towards it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.163) | |
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian idea (which I favour) that good derives from function. In such a case it seems obvious that it has nothing to do with expressing emotions. |
| 22478 | The essential thing is the 'needs' of plants and animals, and their operative parts [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The key notion is the concept of need, …as when we say what a plant or animal of a certain species needs to have, …and what its operative features, such roots, leaves, hearts and lungs, need to do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.164) | |
| A reaction: Good. That takes it away from the idea of a function, which could be possessed by an inanimate machine (even though that still entails success and failure). Strictly, we need oxygen, but the goodness resides in the lungs. |
| 22479 | Observing justice is necessary to humans, like hunting to wolves or dancing to bees [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The teaching and observing of the rules of justice is as necessary a part of the life of human beings as hunting together in packs with a leader is a necessary part of the lives of wolves, or dancing part of the life of the dancing bee. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.168) | |
| A reaction: So why are some men unjust? All wolves hunt, and all appropriate bees dance. A few men even thrive on injustice. |
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: It is much easier to trace effects back to causes with certainty than to predict effects from causes. If I have one contact with someone with a disease and I get it, we suppose I got it from him, but a doctor cannot predict a disease from one contact. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §1) | |
| A reaction: An interesting, and obviously correct, observation. Her point is that we get more certainty of causes from observing a singular effect than we get certainty of effects from regularities or laws. |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: The word "cause" can be added to a language in which are already represented many causal concepts; a small selection: scrape, push, wet, carry, eat, burn, knock over, keep off, squash, make, hurt. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], p.93) | |
| A reaction: An interesting point, perhaps reinforcing the Humean idea of causation as a 'natural belief', or the Kantian view of it as a category of thought. Or maybe causation is built into language because it is a feature of reality… |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Anscombe has inspired the view that causation is an intensional relation, and takes it to be relative to the descriptions of the primary relata. | |
| From: report of G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], 1) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1 | |
| A reaction: It seems too linguistic to say that there is nothing more to it. It seems relevant in human examples, but if a landslide crushes a tree, what difference does the description make? 'It was just a few rocks and some miserable little tree'. No excuse! |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: Since Mill it has been fairly common to explain causation one way or another in terms of 'necessary' and 'sufficient' conditions. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §1) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see what Hume implies about these criteria. Anscombe is going to propose that causal events are fairly self-evident and self-explanatory, and don't need analyses of conditions. Another approach is regularities and laws. |