23 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 23651 | Universals are not objects of sense and cannot be imagined - but can be conceived [Reid] |
| Full Idea: A universal is not an object of any sense, and therefore cannot be imagined; but it may be distinctly conceived. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785], 6) | |
| A reaction: If you try to imagine whiteness, what size is it, and what substance embodies it? Neither are needed to think of whiteness, so Reid is right. A nice observation. |
| 23650 | Only individuals exist [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Everything that really exists is an individual. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785], 6) | |
| A reaction: Locke is the probable inspiration for this nominalist affirmation. Not sure how high temperature plasma, or the oceans of the world, fit into this. On the whole I agree with him. He is mainly rejecting abstract universals. |
| 23649 | No one thinks two sheets possess a single whiteness, but all agree they are both white [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If we say that the whiteness of this sheet is the whiteness of another sheet, every man perceives this to be absurd; but when he says both sheets are white, this is true and perfectly understood. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785], 3) | |
| A reaction: Well said. Only a philosopher could think the whiteness of one sheet is exactly the same entity as the whiteness of a different sheet. We seem to have brilliantly and correctly labelled them both as white, and then thought that one word implies one thing. |
| 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') |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 11874 | Real identity admits of no degrees [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Wherever identity is real, it admits of no degrees. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785]), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 6 epig | |
| A reaction: Wiggins quotes this with strong approval. Personally I am inclined to think that identity may admit of no degrees in human thought, because that is the only way we can do it, but the world is full of uncertain identities, at every level. |
| 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') |
| 10486 | If we are rebuilding our ship at sea, we should jettison some cargo [Boolos on Neurath] |
| Full Idea: If we are sailors rebuilding our ship plank by plank on the open sea, then I know of some cargo we might want to jettison. | |
| From: comment on Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]) by George Boolos - Must We Believe in Set Theory? p.128 | |
| A reaction: This may just be an assertion of Ockham's Razor, but the interest is that the Neurath image demands internal standards of economy etc, whereas reality itself seems to be a right mess. |
| 8485 | We must always rebuild our ship on the open sea; we can't reconstruct it properly in dry-dock [Neurath] |
| Full Idea: We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship out on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in a dry-dock and reconstruct it there out of the best materials. | |
| From: Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of the anti-foundationalist picture of knowledge. It is often quoted by Quine. A tricky issue. I have a lot of sympathy with Bonjour's rationalist foundationalism. |
| 23652 | We must first conceive things before we can consider them [Reid] |
| Full Idea: No man can consider a thing which he does not conceive. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785], 6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply concepts, but we should not take this to be linguistic, since animals obviously consider things and make judgements. |
| 23648 | First we notice and name attributes ('abstracting'); then we notice that subjects share them ('generalising') [Reid] |
| Full Idea: First we resolve or analyse a subject into its known attributes, and give a name to each attribute. Then we observe one or more attributes to be common to many subjects. The first philosophers call 'abstraction', and the second is 'generalising'. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 5: Abstraction [1785], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is very unfashionable in analytic philosophy to view universals in this way, but it strikes me as obviously correct. There are not weird abstract entities awaiting a priori intuition. There are just features of the world to be observed and picked out. |