27 ideas
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
| A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
| 17518 | 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'. |
| 17516 | 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. |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
| 17520 | 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. |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
| 17519 | 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') |
| 17511 | 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. |
| 17510 | 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?' |
| 17522 | 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. |
| 17515 | 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. |
| 17517 | 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. |
| 17513 | 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. |
| 17523 | 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. |
| 17521 | 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') |
| 17514 | 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. |
| 17509 | 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] |
| 17512 | 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') |
| 22419 | 'I' is a subject in 'I am in pain' and an object in 'I am bleeding' [Wittgenstein, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: 'I' is used as a subject in 'I am in pain', ....and used as an object in 'I am bleeding'. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (The Blue and Brown Notebooks [1936], pp. 66-7) by Colin McGinn - Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals 4 | |
| A reaction: How about 'my wound is painful'? Does that have the logical form of a conversation? This idea is incorrect. Shoemaker (1968) suggests that the subjective use is immune to error, unlike the object use. |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
| A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
| 6318 | The doctrine of indeterminacy of translation seems implied by the later Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation will have little air of paradox for readers familiar with Wittgenstein's latter-day remarks on meaning. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (The Blue and Brown Notebooks [1936], II.§16 n) by Willard Quine - Word and Object II.§16 n | |
| A reaction: This may be right, and I am inclined to link the names of Wittgenstein and Quine among those who led philosophy up a relativistic and sceptical cul-de-sac for many years. You can think too hard, you know. |