70 ideas
| 1695 | Without extensive examination firm statements are hard, but studying the difficulties is profitable [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to make firm statements on these questions without having examined them many times, but to have gone through the various difficulties is not unprofitable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 08b23) | |
| A reaction: Suggesting that philosophy is more like drawing the map than completing the journey. |
| 1697 | The contrary of good is bad, but the contrary of bad is either good or another evil [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is contrary to a good thing is necessarily bad, as we see with health and sickness. But the contrary of bad is sometimes good, sometimes not, as we see with excess, opposed by both deficiency and moderation. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 13b36) |
| 1698 | Both sides of contraries need not exist (as health without sickness, white without black) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With contraries it is not necessary if one exists for the other to exist too, for if everyone were well health would exist but not sickness, and if everything were white whiteness would exist but not black. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14a06) |
| 11034 | The differentiae of genera which are different are themselves different in kind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The differentiae of genera which are different and not subordinate one to the other are themselves different in kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 01b16) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be indicating a category mistake, as he warns us not to attribute the wrong kind of differentiae to something we are picking out. |
| 16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'. |
| 18367 | A true existence statement has its truth caused by the existence of the thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whereas the true statement [that there is a man] is in no way the cause of the actual thing's existence, the actual thing does seem in some way the cause of the statement's being true. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14b18) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong offers this as the earliest statement of the truthmaker principle. Notice the cautious qualification 'seem in some way'. The truthmaker dependence seems even clearer in falsemaking, where the death of the man falsifies the statement. |
| 16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' arise, in practice, in four ways: as generalisations of disjunctions; when an instance suggests compatibility of terms we thought incompatible; as steps to a generalisation; and in cases of imperfect memory. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: Modern logicians seem to have no interest in the question Russell is investigating here, but I love his attempt, however vague the result, to connect logic to real experience and thought. |
| 16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The non-mental world can be completely described without the use of any logical word, …but when it comes to the mental world, there are facts which cannot be mentioned without the use of logical words. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: He adds that logical words are not needed for physics, but are needed for psychology. I love Russell's interest in the psychology of logic (in defiance of the anti-psychologism of Frege). See also the ideas of Robert Hanna. |
| 11033 | Predications of predicates are predications of their subjects [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whenever one thing is predicated of another as of a subject, all things said of what is predicated will be said of the subject also. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 01b10) |
| 2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Without the law of excluded middle, we could not ask the questions that give rise to discoveries. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], c.p.88) |
| 16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A disjunction is the verbal expression of indecision, or, if a question, of the desire to reach a decision. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: Russell is fishing here for Grice's conversational implicature. If you want to assert a simple proposition, you don't introduce it into an irrelevant disjunction, because that would have a particular expressive purpose. |
| 16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Psychologically, 'or' corresponds to a state of hesitation. A dog waits at a fork in the road, to see which way you are going. For crumbs on a windowsill, birds behave in a manner we would express by 'shall I be brave, or go hungry?'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: I love two facts here - first, that Russell wants to link the connective to the psychology of experience, and second, that a great logician wants to connect his logic to the minds of animals. |
| 16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When we assert 'p or q' we are in a state which is derivative from two previous states, and we express this state, not something about the world. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: His example: at a junction this road or that road goes to Oxford, but the world only contains the roads, not some state of 'this or that road'. He doesn't deny that in one sense 'p or q' tells you something about the world. |
| 16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It might be contended that, in describing what happens when a man believes 'p or q', the 'or' that we must use is not the same as the 'or' of logic. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the general verdict on Russell's enquiries in this chapter, but I love any attempt, however lacking in rigour etc., to connect formal logic to how we think, and thence to the world. |
| 16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Another situation in which a disjunction may arise is practice is imperfect memory. 'Either Brown or Jones told me that'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A predicate is 'heterological' when it cannot be predicated of itself; thus 'long' is heterological because it is not a long word, but 'short' is homological. So is 'heterological' heterological? Either answer leads to a contradiction. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: [Grelling's Paradox] Yes: 'heterological' is heterological because it isn't heterological; No: it isn't, because it is. Russell says we therefore need a hierarchy of languages (types), and the word 'word' is outside the system. |
| 11044 | One is prior to two, because its existence is implied by two [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One is prior to two because if there are two it follows at once that there is one, whereas if there is one there is not necessarily two. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14a29) | |
| A reaction: The axiomatic introduction of a 'successor' to a number does not seem to introduce this notion of priority, based on inclusiveness. Introducing order by '>' also does not seem to indicate any logical priority. |
| 11042 | Parts of a line join at a point, so it is continuous [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A line is a continuous quantity. For it is possible to find a common boundary at which its parts join together, a point. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 04b33) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the essential concept of a Dedekind cut. It seems to be an open question whether a cut defines a unique number, but a boundary seems to be intrinsically unique. Aristotle wins again. |
| 11041 | Some quantities are discrete, like number, and others continuous, like lines, time and space [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Of quantities, some are discrete, others continuous. ...Discrete are number and language; continuous are lines, surfaces, bodies, and also, besides these, time and place. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 04b20) | |
| A reaction: This distinction seems to me to be extremely illuminating, when comparing natural numbers with real numbers, and it is the foundation of the Greek view of mathematics. |
| 11286 | Primary being must be more than mere indeterminate ultimate subject of predication [Politis on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: He criticises his 'Categories' view, because if primary being is simply the ultimate subject of predication the primary being is, in virtue of itself, something indeterminate; it would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for primary being. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: Thus, Politis argues, primary being is essence in the later work. The words 'substance' and 'ousia' cause confusion here, and must be watched closely. Wedin argues that Aristotle merely develops his 'Categories' view, but most disagree. |
| 1700 | There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place. A change in our affections would be an example of alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 15a13) |
| 1699 | A thing is prior to another if it implies its existence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That from which the implication of existence does not hold reciprocally is thought to be prior. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14a32) | |
| A reaction: shadows and objects |
| 18366 | Of interdependent things, the prior one causes the other's existence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For of things which reciprocate as to implication of existence, that which is in some way the cause of the other's existence might reasonably by called prior by nature. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14b12) | |
| A reaction: Not so clear when you seek examples. The bus is prior to its redness, but you can't have a colourless bus, so being coloured is prior to being a bus. Aristotle's example is a man being prior to the truths about him. |
| 13121 | Substance,Quantity,Quality,Relation,Place,Time,Being-in-a-position,Having,Doing,Being affected [Aristotle, by Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's list of ten categories proved to be the most influential scheme found in his works: Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Being-in-a-position, Having, Doing, Being affected. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §01 |
| 3311 | The categories (substance, quality, quantity, relation, action, passion, place, time) peter out inconsequentially [Benardete,JA on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian schedule of categories - substance, quality, quantity, relation, action, passion, place, time, and so forth - appears to peter out inconsequentially. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 5544 for Kant's attempt to classify categories. Personally I like the way Aristotle's 'peter out'. That seems to me a more plausible character for good metaphysics. |
| 11035 | There are ten basic categories for thinking about things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 01b25) | |
| A reaction: This sums up the earlier of Aristotle's two metaphysical view, and each of this categories is discussed in the present text. |
| 16116 | Aristotle derived categories as answers to basic questions about nature, size, quality, location etc. [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle seems to have worked out his list of categories by considering various questions that one might ask about a particular object, such as What is it? How big is it? How is it qualified? And Where is it? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance | |
| A reaction: Of course, to think of his questions, Aristotle already had categories in his mind. How would he approach a proposal to recategorise reality more efficiently? |
| 21345 | Aristotle said relations are not substances, so (if they exist) they must be accidents [Aristotle, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle categorised relations as accidents - Socrates's whiteness, the sphericity of this ball - entities dependent on substances. Relations are not substances, so they must be, if anything at all, accidents. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], §7) by John Heil - Relations 'Historical' | |
| A reaction: Heil says this thought encouraged anti-realist views of relations, which became the norm until Russell. |
| 16155 | Aristotle promoted the importance of properties and objects (rather than general and particular) [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: In 'Categories' Aristotle is taking a first step in making the distinction between objects and properties central to ontology. This plays virtually no role in Plato, and was overshadowed by the distinction between general and particular. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Individuals in Aristotle I | |
| A reaction: Frede says he gets in a tangle because he mixes the earlier and the new views. Because we are nowadays in a total muddle about properties, I'm thinking we should go back to the earlier view! Modern commentators make him a trope theorist. |
| 11032 | Some things said 'of' a subject are not 'in' the subject [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Of things there are, some are said of a subject, but are not in any subject. For example, man is said of a subject, the individual man, but is not in any subject. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 01a20) | |
| A reaction: See? 'Being a man' is not a property of a man! Only the properties which are 'in' the man are properties of the man. The rest are things which are said 'of' men, usually as classifications. A classification is not a property. |
| 11038 | We call them secondary 'substances' because they reveal the primary substances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is reasonable that, after the primary substances, their species and genera should be the only other things called (secondary) substances. For only they, of things predicated, reveal the primary substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 02b29) | |
| A reaction: This is the key passage in all of Aristotle for sortal essentialists like Wiggins, especially the word 'only'. I take it that this observation is superseded by the Metaphysics. Definition is the route to substance (which involves general terms). |
| 16739 | Four species of quality: states, capacities, affects, and forms [Aristotle, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: In Categories 8 there are four species of qualities: States and conditions, Natural capacities and incapacities, Affective qualities or affections, and Shape and external form. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], Ch.8) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5 |
| 11037 | Colour must be in an individual body, or it is not embodied [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Colour is in body and therefore also in an individual body; for were it not in some individual body it would not be in body at all. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 02b02) | |
| A reaction: This may be just a truism, or it may be the Aristotelian commitment to universals only existing if they are instantiated. |
| 16154 | Aristotle gave up his earlier notion of individuals, because it relied on universals [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Aristotle abandons the notion of an individual which he had relied on in the 'Categories', since it presupposes that there are general things, that there are universals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Individuals in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: Ah, very illuminating. So all the way through we have a concept of individuals, first relying on universals, and then relying on hylomorphism? I suppose a bundle theory of individuals would need universals. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 12351 | Genus and species are substances, because only they reveal the primary substance [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: The reason Aristotle gives for calling species and genera substances is that of what is predicated only they reveal what the primary substance is. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 02b29-37) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance III.6 | |
| A reaction: Thus we should not be misled into thinking that the genus and species ARE the essence. We edge our way towards the essence of an individual by subdividing its categories. |
| 1694 | Substances have no opposites, and don't come in degrees (including if the substance is a man) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing contrary to substances,…. and a substance does not admit of a more and a less. If this substance is a man, it will not be more a man or less a man either than itself or than another man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 03b33) |
| 16091 | Is primary substance just an ultimate subject, or some aspect of a complex body? [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: 'Categories' treats something's being an ultimate subject as a test for being a primary substance, but it does not treat its primary objects as complex bodies consisting of matter and form. In that case, is the composite or a feature the ultimate subject? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Gill is trying to throw light on the difference between 'Categories' and 'Metaphysics'. Once you have hylomorphism (form-plus-matter) you have a new difficulty in explaining unity. The answer is revealed once we understand 'form'. |
| 11280 | Primary being is 'that which lies under', or 'particular substance' [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: In 'Categories' Aristotle argues the primary being (proté ousia) is the ultimate subject of predication (to hupokeimenon, meaning 'that which lies under'), nowadays referred to as the 'particular substance' view. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 4.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis says that Aristotle shifts to the quite different view in 'Metaphysics', that primary being is essence, rather than mere subject of predication. |
| 11040 | A single substance can receive contrary properties [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It seems distinctive of substance that what is numerically one and the same is able to receive contraries. ...For example, an individual man - one and the same - becomes pale at one time and dark at another. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 04a10/20) |
| 16140 | Secondary substances do have subjects, so they are not ultimate in the ontology [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The concept of substance applies to secondary substances only with some deletions; ..it is not true that they have no subjects, and hence they are not ultimate subjects for all other elements of the ontology. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes that to treat secondary substance (roughly, species) as essence is a shocking misreading of Aristotle. Frede says they are substances, because they do indeed 'underlie'. |
| 10965 | In earlier Aristotle the substances were particulars, not kinds [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Aristotle changed his view, as in 'Categories' the substances, the basic realities, were particular items, notably individual men, horses, cabbages etc. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Introductions to 'Metaphysics' p.178 | |
| A reaction: The charge is that having successfully rebelled against Plato, Aristotle gradually succumbed to his teacher's influence, and ended up with a more platonist view. For anti-platonists like myself, the 'Categories' seems to be the key text. |
| 11036 | A 'primary' substance is in each subject, with species or genera as 'secondary' substances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A substance, in its most primary sense, is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g. the individual man or horse. The species in which things primarily called substances are, are called secondary substances, as are the genera. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 02a11) | |
| A reaction: This distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' substances is characteristic of Aristotle's earlier metaphysical view, with the later view (more unified and Platonic) in the 'Metaphysics'. |
| 8287 | Earlier Aristotle had objects as primary substances, but later he switched to substantial form [Aristotle, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: In 'Categories' primary substances are individual concrete objects, such as a particular horse, whereas in 'Metaphysics' such things are combinations of matter and substantial form, with the latter being the primary substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 9.1 | |
| A reaction: Lowe claims there is no real difference. Aristotle came to think that matter was not part of primary substance, so the shift seems to be that substance was concrete, but then he decided it was abstract. Physicists will prefer 'Metaphysics'. |
| 12350 | Things are called 'substances' because they are subjects for everything else [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is because the primary substances are subjects for everything else that they are called substances [ousiai] most strictly. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 03a04) | |
| A reaction: This points to a rather minimal account of substance, as possibly the 'bare particular' which has no other role than to have properties. This expands in 'Metaphysics' to be matter which has form, making properties possible. |
| 11039 | A primary substance reveals a 'this', which is an individual unit [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every substance seems to signify a certain 'this'. As regards the primary substances, it is indisputably true that each of them signifies a certain 'this'; for the thing revealed is individual and numerically one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 03b10) | |
| A reaction: The notion of 'primary' substance is confined to this earlier metaphysics of Aristotle. |
| 12361 | Primary substances are ontological in 'Categories', and explanatory in 'Metaphysics' [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: The primacy of 'Categories' primary substances is a kind of ontological primacy, whereas the primacy of form is a kind of structural or explanatory primacy. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance X.9 | |
| A reaction: 'Structural' and 'explanatory' sound very different, since the former sounds ontological and the latter epistemological (and more subjective). |
| 3315 | Aristotle denigrates the category of relation, but for modern absolutists self-relation is basic [Benardete,JA on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle denigrates the whole category of relations, but modern logical absolutists single out self-relation (in the mode of identity) as metaphysically privileged. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: I think this refers to Plantinga and Merrihew Adams, who make identity-with-itself the basic component of individual existences. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
| Full Idea: All our knowledge about the world, in so far as it is expressed in words, is more or less general, because every sentence contains at least one word that is not a proper name, and all such words are general. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: I really like this, especially because it addresses the excessive reliance of some essentialists on sortals, categories and natural kinds, instead of focusing on the actual physical essences of individual objects. |
| 4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Naïve realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naïve realism is false. Therefore naïve realism, if true, is false, therefore it is false. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], p.13) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to agree with this, though once you have gone off and explored representation and sense data you may be driven back to naïve realism again. |
| 16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
| Full Idea: So long as a man avoids words which are condensed inductions (such as 'dog'), and confines himself to words that can describe a single experience, it is possible for a single experience to show that his words are true. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: One might question whether a line can be drawn between the inductive and the non-inductive in this way. I'm inclined just to say that the simpler the proposition the less room there is for error in confirming it. |
| 16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' may be proved empirically, but propositions about 'all' are difficult to know, and can't be proved unless such propositions are in the premisses. These aren't in perception, so forgo general propositions, or abandon empiricism? | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously related to the difficulty empiricists have with induction. You could hardly persuade logicians to give up the universal quantifier, because it is needed in mathematics. Do we actually know any universal empirical truths? |
| 12349 | Only what can be said of many things is a predicable [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle reminds us that nothing is to count as predicable that cannot be said-of many things. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE]) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance III.1 | |
| A reaction: Thus there wouldn't be any predicates if there were not universals. Could we have proper names for individual qualities (tropes), in the way that we have them for individual objects? |
| 11837 | Some predicates signify qualification of a substance, others the substance itself [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'White' signifies nothing but a qualification, whereas the species ('man') and the genus ('animal') mark off the qualification of substance - they signify substance of a certain qualification. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 03b18) | |
| A reaction: This is making a fundamental distinction between two different types of predication. I would describe them as one attributing a real property, and the other attributing a category (as a result of the properties). I don't think 'substance' helps here. |
| 16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I once, to test the story of Buridan's Ass, put a cat exactly half-way between her two kittens, both too young to move: for a time she found the disjunction paralysing. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: Buridan's Ass is said to have starved between two equal piles of hay. Reason can't be the tie-breaker; reason obviously says 'choose one!', but intellectualism demands a reason for the one you choose. |
| 11043 | It is not possible for fire to be cold or snow black [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible for fire to be cold or snow black. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 12b01) |
| 1696 | Change goes from possession to loss (as in baldness), but not the other way round [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Change occurs from possession to privation, but from privation to possession is impossible; one who has gone blind does not recover sight nor does a bald man regain his hair nor does a toothless man grow new ones. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 13a35) | |
| A reaction: Although this seems like an insight into entropy, it isn't an accurate observation, since trees lose their leaves, and then regain them in spring. Maybe somewhere men regrow their hair each spring. |