Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion', 'Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori' and 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 5. Modern Philosophy / c. Modern philosophy mid-period
13966 Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames]
     Full Idea: The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166)
     A reaction: Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of.
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis
13974 If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames]
     Full Idea: If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
     A reaction: He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
14508 A 'thisness' is a thing's property of being identical with itself (not the possession of self-identity) [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: A thisness is the property of being identical with a certain particular individual - not the property that we all share, of being identical with some individual, but my property of being identical with me, your property of being identical with you etc.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1)
     A reaction: These philosophers tell you that a thisness 'is' so-and-so, and don't admit that he (and Plantinga) are putting forward a new theory about haecceities, and one I find implausible. I just don't believe in the property of 'being-identical-to-me'.
14511 There are cases where mere qualities would not ensure an intrinsic identity [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: I have argued that there are possible cases in which no purely qualitative conditions would be both necessary and sufficient for possessing a given thisness.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6)
     A reaction: Are we perhaps confusing our epistemology with our ontology here? We can ensure that something has identity, or ensure that its identity is knowable. If it is 'something', then it has identity. Er, that's it?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
13969 Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames]
     Full Idea: By (Kripkean) 'essential' properties and relations I mean simply properties and relations that hold necessarily of objects (in all genuinely possible world-states in which the objects exist).
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.168 n5)
     A reaction: This is the standard modern view of essences which I find so unsatisfactory. Kit Fine has helped to take us back to the proper Aristotelian view, where 'necessary' and 'essential' actually have different meanings. Note the inclusion of relations.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 9. Essence and Properties
12031 Essences are taken to be qualitative properties [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: Essences have normally been understood to be constituted by qualitative properties.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1)
     A reaction: I add this simple point, because it might be challenged by the view that an essence is a substance, rather than the properties of anything. I prefer that, and would add that substances are individuated by distinctive causal powers.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects
12034 If the universe was cyclical, totally indiscernible events might occur from time to time [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: There is a temporal argument for the possibility of non-identical indiscernibles, if there could be a cyclical universe, in which each event was preceded and followed by infinitely many other events qualitatively indiscernible from itself.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
     A reaction: The argument is a parallel to Max Black's indiscernible spheres in space. Adams offers the reply that time might be tightly 'curved', so that the repetition was indeed the same event again.
14510 Two events might be indiscernible yet distinct, if there was a universe cyclical in time [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: Similar to the argument from spatial dispersal, we can argue against the Identity of Indiscernibles from temporal dispersal. It seems there could be a cyclic universe, ..and thus there could be distinct but indiscernible events, separated temporally.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
     A reaction: See Idea 14509 for spatial dispersal. If cosmologists decided that a cyclical universe was incoherent, would that ruin the argument? Presumably there might even be indistinguishable events in the one universe (in principle!).
16455 Black's two globes might be one globe in highly curved space [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: If God creates a globe reached by travelling two diameters in a straight line from another globe, this can be described as two globes in Euclidean space, or a single globe in a tightly curved non-Euclidean space.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
     A reaction: [my compression of Adams's version of Hacking's response to Black, as spotted by Stalnaker] Hence we save the identity of indiscernibles, by saying we can't be sure that two indiscernibles are not one thing, unusually described.
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 3. Necessity by Convention
13973 A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames]
     Full Idea: None of Kripke's many achievements is more important than his breaking the spell of the linguistic as the source of philosophically important modalities.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
     A reaction: Put like that, Kripke may have had the single most important thought of modern times. I take good philosophy to be exactly the same as good scientific theorising, in that it all arises out of the nature of reality (and I include logic in that).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds
14507 Are possible worlds just qualities, or do they include primitive identities as well? [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: Is the world - and are all possible worlds - constituted by purely qualitative facts, or does thisness hold a place beside suchness as a fundamental feature of reality?
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], Intro)
     A reaction: 'Thisness' and 'suchness' aim to capture Aristotelian notions of the entity and its attributes. Aristotle talks of 'a this'. Adams is after adding 'haecceities' to the world. My intuitive answer is no, there are no 'pure' identities. We add those.
13968 Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames]
     Full Idea: For the Kripkean possible states of the world are not alternate concrete universes, but abstract objects. Metaphysically possible world-states are maximally complete ways the real concrete universe could have been.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.167)
     A reaction: This is probably clearer about the Kripkean view than Kripke ever is, but then that is part of Soames's mission. It sounds like the right way to conceive possible worlds. At least there is some commitment there, rather than instrumentalism about them.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / b. Worlds as fictions
11964 Possible worlds are world-stories, maximal descriptions of whole non-existent worlds [Adams,RM, by Molnar]
     Full Idea: According to a theory proposed by Adams, possible worlds are world-stories, that is maximally complete consistent sets of propositions which between them describe non-existent whole worlds.
     From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by George Molnar - Powers 12.2.2
     A reaction: Presumably this places an additional constraint on the view that a world is just a maximal set of propositions. It seems to require coherence as well as consistency. Suppose an object destroys all others objects. Is that a world?
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / d. Haecceitism
16451 Adams says anti-haecceitism reduces all thisness to suchness [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: The anti-haecceitist thesis (according to Adams's version) is that all thisnesses are reducible to, or supervenient upon, suchnesses.
     From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 3.5
11901 Haecceitism may or may not involve some logical connection to essence [Adams,RM, by Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: Moderate Haecceitism says that thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive, but logically connected with suchnesses. ..Extreme Haecceitism involves the rejection of all logical connections between suchness and thisness, for persons.
     From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been
     A reaction: I am coming to the conclusion that they are not linked. That thisness is a feature of our conceptual thinking, and is utterly atomistic and content-free, while suchness is rich and a feature of reality.
14512 Moderate Haecceitism says transworld identities are primitive, but connected to qualities [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: My position, according to which thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive but logically connected to suchnesses, we may call 'Moderate Haecceitism'.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6)
     A reaction: The rather tentative connection to qualities is to block the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg, which he (quite reasonably!) holds to be counterintuitive. It all feels like a mess to me.
16. Persons / A. Concept of a Person / 1. Existence of Persons
20618 Persons must be conscious, reasoning, motivated, communicative, self-aware [Warren, by Tuckness/Wolf]
     Full Idea: Suggested characteristics of personhood: consciousness (esp. of pain); reasoning and problem solving; self-motivated activity; varied communication on many topics; self-concepts and self-awareness.
     From: report of Mary Anne Warren (On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion [1973], p.55) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 8 'Standing'
     A reaction: [a 'famous' article] A number of non-human animals come very close to passing these tests. I suspect the complex communication is only in there to disqualify them from getting the full certificate. (But she wrote on animal rights).
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference
12032 Direct reference is by proper names, or indexicals, or referential uses of descriptions [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: Direct reference is commonly effected by the use of proper names and indexical expressions, and sometimes by what has been called (by Donnellan) the 'referential' use of descriptions.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 2)
     A reaction: One might enquire whether the third usage should be described as 'direct', but then I am not sure that there is much of a distinction between references which are or are not 'direct'. Either you (or a sentence) refer or you (or it) don't.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 10. Two-Dimensional Semantics
13972 Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames]
     Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183)
     A reaction: I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that?