24 ideas
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers can sometimes be too fussy about the words they use, dismissing as 'unintelligible' or 'obscure' certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards, and which may be of some real use. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 01) | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophers are inclined to drop terms they can't formalise, but there is more to every concept than its formalisation (Frege's 'direction' for example). I want to rescue 'abstraction' and 'essence'. Rosen says distinguish, don't formalise. |
| 14001 | People who use science to make philosophical points don't realise how philosophical science is [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: When people give arguments from scientific theories to philosophical conclusions, there is usually a good deal of philosophy built into the relevant scientific theories. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.9) | |
| A reaction: I love this remark, being thoroughly fed up with knowledgeable scientists who are naïve about philosophy, and think their current theory demolishes long-lasting aporiai. They are up to their necks in philosophy. |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: From the simple fact that '1' figures in the definition of '2', it does not follow that 1 is part of 2. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: He observes that quite independent things can be mentioned on the two sides of a definition, with no parthood relation. You begin to wonder what a definition really is. A causal chain? |
| 13991 | Presentism has the problem that if Socrates ceases to exist, so do propositions about him [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Presentism has a problem with singular propositions about non-present objects. ...When Socrates popped out of existence, according to Presentism, all those singular propositions about him also popped out of existence. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: He seems to treat propositions in a Russellian way, as things which exist independently of thinkers, which I struggle to grasp. Markosian offers various strategies for this [§3.5]. |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The failure of monotonicity is a general feature of explanatory relations. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 05) | |
| A reaction: In other words, explanations can always shift in the light of new evidence. In principle this is right, but some explanations just seem permanent, like plate-tectonics as explanation for earthquakes. |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
| From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Our relation of 'in virtue of' is among facts or truths, whereas Fine's relation (if it is a relation at all) is a relation between a given truth and items whose natures ground that truth. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 07 n10) | |
| A reaction: This disagreement between two key players in the current debate on grounding looks rather significant. I think I favour Fine's view, as it seems more naturalistic, and less likely to succumb to conventionalism. |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Facts are structured entities built up from worldly items rather as sentences are built up from words. They might be identified with Russellian propositions. They are individuated by their constituents and composition, and are fine-grained. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 04) | |
| A reaction: I'm a little cautious about the emphasis on being sentence-like. We have Russell's continual warnings against imposing subject-predicate structure on things. I think we should happily talk about 'facts' in metaphysics. |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: One intuitive gloss on 'intrinsic' property is that a property is intrinsic iff whether or not a thing has it depends entirely on how things stand with it and its parts, and not on its relation to some distinct thing. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 02) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as a useful reward for reviving 'depends on' in metaphysical talk. The problem here would be to explain the 'thing' and its 'parts' without mentioning the target property. The thing certainly can't be a bundle of tropes. |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Many of our best words in philosophy do not admit of definition, the notion of metaphysical 'necessity' being one pertinent example. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 03) | |
| A reaction: Rosen is busy defending words in metaphysics which cannot be pinned down with logical rigour. We are allowed to write □ for 'necessary', and it is accepted by logicians as being stable in a language. |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Fine says a truth is necessary when it is a logical consequence of the essential truths, but maybe it is a consequence of the essential truths together with the basic grounding laws (the 'Moorean connections'). | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 13) | |
| A reaction: I'm with Fine all the way here, as we really don't need to clog nature up with things called 'grounding laws', which are both obscure and inexplicable. Fine's story is the one for naturalistically inclined philosophers. |
| 14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Possible worlds are just abstract objects that play a certain role in philosophers' talk about modality. They are ways things could be. That's why there are no two abstract possible worlds which are qualitatively identical. They count as one world. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: Brilliant! This looks like the best distinction between concrete and abstract. If two concreta are identical they remain two; if two abstracta are identical they are one (like numbers, or logical connectives with the same truth table). |
| 14000 | 'Grabby' truth conditions first select their object, unlike 'searchy' truth conditions [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: We can talk of 'grabby' truth conditions (where an object is grabbed before predication) and 'searchy' truth conditions (where the object is included in what is being asserted). | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Tom Ryckman with the terminology] I am inclined to think that the whole of language is 'searchy', even when it appears to be blatantly 'grabby'. Even ostensive reference is an act of hope rather than certainty. |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: It sounds right to say that Fred's being a bachelor consists in (reduces to) being an unmarried male, but slightly off to say that Fred's being an unmarried male consists in (or reduces to) being a bachelor. There is a corresponding explanatory asymmetry. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: This emerging understanding of the asymmetry of the idea shows that we are not just dealing with a simple semantic identity. Our concepts are richer than our language. He adds that a ball could be blue in virtue of being cerulean. |
| 13990 | Presentism is the view that only present objects exist [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: According to Presentism, if we were to make an accurate list of all the things that exist (within the range of our most unrestricted quantifiers) there would not be a single non-present object on the list. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 1) | |
| A reaction: An immediate problem that needs examing is what constitutes an 'object'. It had better not range over time (like an journey). It would be hard to fit a description like 'the oldest man in England'. |
| 13992 | Presentism says if objects don't exist now, we can't have attitudes to them or relations with them [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: If there are no non-present objects (according to Presentism), then no one can now stand in any relation to any non-present object. You cannot now 'admire' Socrates, and no present event has a causal relation to Washington crossing the Delaware. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: You can have an overlapping causal chain that gets you back to Washington, and a causal chain can connect Socrates to our thoughts about him (as in baptismal reference). A simple reply needs an 'overlap' though. |
| 13994 | Presentism seems to entail that we cannot talk about other times [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: It is very natural to talk about times, ...but Presentism seems to entail that we never say anything about any such times. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that Markosian is in the grips of a false notion of proposition, as something that exists independently of thinkers, and is entailed by the facts and objects of reality. This is not what language does. |
| 13995 | Serious Presentism says things must exist to have relations and properties; Unrestricted version denies this [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Mark Hinchliff distinguishes between 'Serious' Presentism (objects only have relations and properties when they exist) and 'Unrestricted' Presentism (objects can have relations and properties even when they don't exist). | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: [Hinchliff 1996:124-6] Markosian votes for the Serious version, as being the only true Presentism. I think he is muddling language and reality, predicates and properties. |
| 13996 | Maybe Presentists can refer to the haecceity of a thing, after the thing itself disappears [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Some Presentists (such as Adams) believe that a haecceity (a property unique to some entity) continues to exist even after its object ceases to exist. A sentence about Socrates still expresses a proposition, about 'Socraticity'. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: [Adams 1986] This is rather puzzling. In what sense could a haecceity 'exist' to be referred to? Existence, but not as we know it, Jim. This smacks of medieval theology. |
| 13997 | Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past, into purely general past- and future-tensed sentences. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why Markosian worries about singular propositions, but is happy with general ones. Surely the latter refer as much as the former to what doesn't exist? Markosian objects that the paraphrase has a different meaning. |
| 13993 | Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: The objection to Presentism from Special Relativity is this: 1) Relativity is true, 2) so there is no absolute simultaneity, 3) so there is no absolute presentness, but 4) Presentism entails absolute presentness, so 5) Presentism is false. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.9) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this objection. There may be accounts that can give Relativity one present (Idea 12689-90). Maybe Einstein was too instrumentalist in his account. Maybe we can have Presentism with multiple present moments. |
| 13998 | Objects in the past, like Socrates, are more like imaginary objects than like remote spatial objects [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Maybe putative non-present objects like Socrates have more in common with putative non-actual objects like Santa Claus than they have in common with objects located elsewhere in space, like Alpha Centauri. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: We can see Alpha Centauri, so we need an example beyond some 'event horizon'. He credits Arthur Prior with this line of thought. He seems to me to drift towards a Descriptive Theory of Reference (shock!). Does the nature of reference change with death? |
| 13999 | People are mistaken when they think 'Socrates was a philosopher' says something [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: People sometimes think that 'Socrates was a philosopher' expresses something like a true, singular proposition about Socrates. They're making a mistake, but still, this explains why they think it is true. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: A classic error theory, about our talk of the past. Personally I would say that the sentence really is true, and that needing a tangible object to refer to is a totally bogus requirement. 'I wonder if there are any scissors in the house?' |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: To be an acid just is to be a proton donor. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: My interest here is in whether we can say that we have found the 'essence' of an acid - so we want to know whether something 'deeper' explains the proton-donation. I suspect not. Being a proton donor happens to have a group of related consequences. |