Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Individuals without Sortals', 'What is an Idea?' and 'Moral Arguments'

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20 ideas

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / d. Counting via concepts
Counting 'coin in this box' may have coin as the unit, with 'in this box' merely as the scope [Ayers]
     Full Idea: If we count the concept 'coin in this box', we could regard coin as the 'unit', while taking 'in this box' to limit the scope. Counting coins in two boxes would be not a difference in unit (kind of object), but in scope.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting')
     A reaction: This is a very nice alternative to the Fregean view of counting, depending totally on the concept, and rests more on a natural concept of object. I prefer Ayers. Compare 'count coins till I tell you to stop'.
If counting needs a sortal, what of things which fall under two sortals? [Ayers]
     Full Idea: If we accepted that counting objects always presupposes some sortal, it is surely clear that the class of objects to be counted could be designated by two sortals rather than one.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii)
     A reaction: His nice example is an object which is both 'a single piece of wool' and a 'sweater', which had better not be counted twice. Wiggins struggles to argue that there is always one 'substance sortal' which predominates.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / a. Nature of events
Events do not have natural boundaries, and we have to set them [Ayers]
     Full Idea: In order to know which event has been ostensively identified by a speaker, the auditor must know the limits intended by the speaker. ...Events do not have natural boundaries.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl')
     A reaction: He distinguishes events thus from natural objects, where the world, to a large extent, offers us the boundaries. Nice point.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
To express borderline cases of objects, you need the concept of an 'object' [Ayers]
     Full Idea: The only explanation of the power to produce borderline examples like 'Is this hazelnut one object or two?' is the possession of the concept of an object.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting')
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind
Speakers need the very general category of a thing, if they are to think about it [Ayers]
     Full Idea: If a speaker indicates something, then in order for others to catch his reference they must know, at some level of generality, what kind of thing is indicated. They must categorise it as event, object, or quality. Thinking about something needs that much.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro)
     A reaction: Ayers defends the view that such general categories are required, but not the much narrower sortal terms defended by Geach and Wiggins. I'm with Ayers all the way. 'What the hell is that?'
We use sortals to classify physical objects by the nature and origin of their unity [Ayers]
     Full Idea: Sortals are the terms by which we intend to classify physical objects according to the nature and origin of their unity.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl')
     A reaction: This is as opposed to using sortals for the initial individuation. I take the perception of the unity to come first, so resemblance must be mentioned, though it can be an underlying (essentialist) resemblance.
Seeing caterpillar and moth as the same needs continuity, not identity of sortal concepts [Ayers]
     Full Idea: It is unnecessary to call moths 'caterpillars' or caterpillars 'moths' to see that they can be the same individual. It may be that our sortal concepts reflect our beliefs about continuity, but our beliefs about continuity need not reflect our sortals.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vi)
     A reaction: Something that metamorphosed through 15 different stages could hardly required 15 different sortals before we recognised the fact. Ayers is right.
Recognising continuity is separate from sortals, and must precede their use [Ayers]
     Full Idea: The recognition of the fact of continuity is logically independent of the possession of sortal concepts, whereas the formation of sortal concepts is at least psychologically dependent upon the recognition of continuity.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro)
     A reaction: I take this to be entirely correct. I might add that unity must also be recognised.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / a. Intrinsic unification
Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers]
     Full Idea: The abstract question arises of whether the same matter could be subject to more than one principle of unity simultaneously, or unified by more than one 'form'.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii)
     A reaction: He suggests that the unity of the sweater is destroyed by unravelling, and the unity of the thread by cutting.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
If there are two objects, then 'that marble, man-shaped object' is ambiguous [Ayers]
     Full Idea: The statue is marble and man-shaped, but so is the piece of marble. So not only are the two objects in the same place, but two marble and man-shaped objects in the same place, so 'that marble, man-shaped object' must be ambiguous or indefinite.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob')
     A reaction: It strikes me as basic that it can't be a piece of marble if you subtract its shape, and it can't be a statue if you subtract its matter. To treat a statue as an object, separately from its matter, is absurd.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
Sortals basically apply to individuals [Ayers]
     Full Idea: Sortals, in their primitive use, apply to the individual.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl')
     A reaction: If the sortal applies to the individual, any essence must pertain to that individual, and not to the class it has been placed in.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts
You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers]
     Full Idea: It would be impossible for anyone to have the concept of a stage who did not already possess the concept of a physical object.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl')
Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers]
     Full Idea: Temporally extended 'parts' are still mysteriously inseparable and not subject to rearrangement: a thing cannot be cut temporally in half.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob')
     A reaction: A nice warning to anyone accepting a glib analogy between spatial parts and temporal parts.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 1. Concept of Identity
Some say a 'covering concept' completes identity; others place the concept in the reference [Ayers]
     Full Idea: Some hold that the 'covering concept' completes the incomplete concept of identity, determining the kind of sameness involved. Others strongly deny the identity itself is incomplete, and locate the covering concept within the necessary act of reference.
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro)
     A reaction: [a bit compressed; Geach is the first view, and Quine the second; Wiggins is somewhere between the two]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
If diachronic identities need covering concepts, why not synchronic identities too? [Ayers]
     Full Idea: Why are covering concepts required for diachronic identities, when they must be supposed unnecessary for synchronic identities?
     From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob')
18. Thought / C. Content / 2. Ideas
By an 'idea' I mean not an actual thought, but the resources we can draw on to think [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: What I mean by an idea is not a certain act of thinking, but a power or faculty such that we have an idea of a thing even if we are not thinking about it but know that we can think it when the occasion arises.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (What is an Idea? [1676], p.281)
     A reaction: 'Idea' tends to be used in the seventeenth century to mean an actual mental event. It is because Leibniz believes in the unconscious mind that he can offer this rather different, and probably superior, notion of an 'idea'.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / k. Ethics from nature
Moral judgements need more than the relevant facts, if the same facts lead to 'x is good' and 'x is bad' [Foot]
     Full Idea: It is suggested that anyone who has considered all the facts which could bear on his moral position has ipso facto produced a 'well founded' moral judgement, ...How 'x is good' can be well founded when 'x is bad' is equally well founded is hard to see.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.96)
     A reaction: This seems to be a warning to particularists, if they hope that moral judgements just emerge from the facts. It doesn't rule out physicalist naturalism about morality, if the attitudes we bring to the facts have arisen out of further facts.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / b. Fact and value
We can't affirm a duty without saying why it matters if it is not performed [Foot]
     Full Idea: I do not know what could be meant by saying it was someone's duty to do something unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.105)
     A reaction: The Kantian idea assumes that duty is an absolute, and yet each duty rests on a particular maxim which is going to be universalised. So why should that maxim be universalised, and not some other?
Whether someone is rude is judged by agreed criteria, so the facts dictate the value [Foot]
     Full Idea: Whether a man is speaking of behaviour as rude or not rude, he must use the same criteria as anyone else. ...We have here an example of a non-evaluative premise from which an evaluative conclusion can be deduced.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.104)
     A reaction: We would now call 'rude' a 'thick' ethical concept (where 'good' is 'thin'). Her powerful point is, I take it, that evidence is always relevant to judgements of thick concepts, so there is no fact-value gap. 'Rude' has criteria, but 'good' may not.
Facts and values are connected if we cannot choose what counts as evidence of rightness [Foot]
     Full Idea: To show that facts and values are connected we must show that some things do and some things don't count in favour of a moral conclusion, and that no one can choose what counts as evidence for rightness or wrongness.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.99)
     A reaction: But what sort of facts might do the job? I can only think of right functioning and health as facts which seem to imply value. Pleasure and misery don't quite get there.