3 ideas
| 18946 | Unreflectively, we all assume there are nonexistents, and we can refer to them [Reimer] |
| Full Idea: As speakers of the language, we unreflectively assume that there are nonexistents, and that reference to them is possible. | |
| From: Marga Reimer (The Problem of Empty Names [2001], p.499), quoted by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 4 | |
| A reaction: Sarah Swoyer quotes this as a good solution to the problem of empty names, and I like it. It introduces a two-tier picture of our understanding of the world, as 'unreflective' and 'reflective', but that seems good. We accept numbers 'unreflectively'. |
| 14665 | We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius] |
| Full Idea: Let the incommunicable property of Plato be called 'Platonity'. For we can call this quality 'Platonity' by a fabricated word, in the way in which we call the quality of man 'humanity'. Therefore this Platonity is one man's alone - Plato's. | |
| From: Boethius (Librium de interpretatione editio secunda [c.516], PL64 462d), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - Actualism and Possible Worlds 5 | |
| A reaction: Plantinga uses this idea to reinstate the old notion of a haecceity, to bestow unshakable identity on things. My interest in the quotation is that the most shocking confusions about properties arose long before the invention of set theory. |
| 16383 | Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1 | |
| A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…). |