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All the ideas for 'Analyzing Modality', 'talk' and 'Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals'

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34 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 3. Objectual Quantification
'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.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
To explain object qualities, primary qualities must be more than mere sources of experience [McGinn]
     Full Idea: In order that we have available an explanation of the qualities of objects we need to be able to conceive primary qualities as consisting in something other than powers to produce experiences.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6 n 52)
     A reaction: I suppose if the qualities are nothing more than the source of the experiences, that is Kant's noumenon. Nothing more could be said. The seems to be a requirement for tacit inference here. We infer the interior of the tomato.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
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.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
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.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
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)
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
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.
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.
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.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds
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.
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)
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)
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!
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)
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)
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / c. Counterparts
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)
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / b. Primary/secondary
Being red simply consists in looking red [McGinn]
     Full Idea: What we should claim is that being red consists in looking red.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: A very nice simple account. There is more to being square than looking square (which may not even guarantee that it is square). That's the primary/secondary distinction in a nut shell. But red things don't look red in the dark. Sufficient, not necessary.
Relativity means differing secondary perceptions are not real disagreements [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Relativity permits differences in the perceived secondary qualities not to imply genuine disagreement, whereas perceived differences of primary qualities imply that at least one perceiver is in error.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: An example of 'relativity' is colour blindness. Sounds good, but what of one perceiver seeing a square as square, and another seeing it obliquely as a parallelogram? The squareness then seems more like a theory than a perception.
Phenomenalism is correct for secondary qualities, so scepticism is there impossible [McGinn]
     Full Idea: We might say that scepticism is ruled out for secondary qualities because (roughly) phenomenalism is correct for them; but phenomenalism is not similarly correct for primary qualities, and scepticism cannot get a foothold.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: An odd idea, if phenomenalism says that reality consists entirely of phenomena. I should think phenomenalism is a commitment to the absence of primary qualities.
Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities [McGinn]
     Full Idea: The inseparability thesis about perception says that for any actual and possible sense the content of experiences delivered by that sense must be both of secondary qualities and of primary qualities.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: That would mean that all possible experience must have a mode of presentation, and also must be 'of' something independent of experience. So a yellow after-image would not count as an 'experience'?
You understood being red if you know the experience involved; not so with thngs being square [McGinn]
     Full Idea: To grasp what it is to be red is to know the kind of sensory experience red things produce; ...but it is not true that to grasp what it is to be square one needs to know what kinds of sensory experience square things produce.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 8)
     A reaction: Are any experiences involved in the understanding of squareness? We don't know squareness by a priori intuition (do we?). To grasp squareness if may be necessary to have a variety of experiences of it. Or to grasp that it is primary.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / c. Primary qualities
You don't need to know how a square thing looks or feels to understand squareness [McGinn]
     Full Idea: To grasp what it is for something to be square it is not constitutively necessary to know how square things look or feel, since what it is to be square does not involve any such relation to experience.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: You could even describe squareness verbally, unlike redness. It seems crucial that almost any sense (such as bat echoes) can communicate primary qualities, but secondary qualities are tied to a sense, and wouldn't exist without it.
Touch doesn't provide direct experience of primary qualities, because touch feels temperature [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Bennett's claim that touch provides experience of primary qualities without experience of any secondary qualities strikes me as false, because tactile experience includes felt temperature, which is a dispositional secondary quality.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: [J.Bennett 1971 pp. 90-4] Fair point. What about shape and texture? We experience forces, but the shape is assembled in imagination rather than in experience. So do we meet primary qualities directly in forces, such as acceleration? No secondary quality?
We can perceive objectively, because primary qualities are not mind-created [McGinn]
     Full Idea: I hold that experience succeeds in representing the world objectively, since primary quality perceptual content is not contributed by the mind.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: My new example of a direct perception of a primary quality is acceleration in a lift. What would we say to one passenger who denied feeling the acceleration? It took an effort to see that mind contributes to secondary qualities (so make more effort?).
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities
Lockean secondary qualities (unlike primaries) produce particular sensory experiences [McGinn]
     Full Idea: In the Lockean tradition, secondary qualities are defined as those whose instantiation in an object consists in a power or disposition of the object to produce sensory experiences in perceivers of a certain phenomenological character.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: Primary qualities are said to lack such dispositions. Not sure about these definitions. Primaries offer no experiences? With these definitions, comparing them would be a category mistake. I take it primaries reflect reality and secondaries do not.
Could there be a mind which lacked secondary quality perception? [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Can we form a conception of a type of mind whose representations are free of secondary quality perceptions?
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: Nice question. Minds must have experiences, and there has to be a 'way' or 'mode' for those experiences. A mind which directly grasped the primary quality of sphericity would seem to be visionary rather than sensual or experiential.
Secondary qualities contain information; their variety would be superfluous otherwise [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Surely we learn something about an object when we discover its secondary qualities? ...If secondary quality experience were informationally inert, its variety would be something of a puzzle. Why not employ the same medium for all primary informaton?
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: This is important. We can't just focus on the primary qualities, and ignore the secondary. But diverse colours draw attention to information, which can then be translated into neutral data, as in spectroscopic analysis. Locke agrees with this.
The utility theory says secondary qualities give information useful to human beings [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Secondary quality perception, according to the utility theory, gives information about the relation between the perceptual object and the perceiver's needs and interests.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: Almost the only example I can think of is whether fruit is ripe or rotten. ...Also 'bad' smells. We recognise aggressive animal noises, but that is not the same as dangerous (e.g. rustling snake). Divine design is behind this theory, I think.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation
We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn]
     Full Idea: My view is that we see objects 'directly' by representing them in visual experience.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], Ch.8 n1)
     A reaction: [Quoted by Maund] This rejects both inference in perception and sense-data, while retaining the notion of representation. It is a view which has gained a lot of support. But how can it be direct if it represents? Photographs can't do that.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / a. Consciousness
If the present does not exist, then consciousness must be memory of the immediate past [Marshall]
     Full Idea: Given the paradoxical nature of the 'present' moment, maybe we should understand ALL consciousness as memory, with the split second of the 'specious present' being very vivid and very brief memory, with the rest of the mind remembering in lower degrees.
     From: David Marshall (talk [2004]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: This strikes me as a highly plausible, and very illuminating remark. For the time paradox, see Ideas 1904 and 5102. Anyone researching consciousness in the brain should think about this, because it will just be a special sort of memory neurons.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 9. Indexical Thought
The indexical perspective is subjective, incorrigible and constant [McGinn]
     Full Idea: I attribute three properties to the indexical perspective: it is subjective, incorrigible, and constant.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 5)
     A reaction: That is as good an idea as any for summarising the view (associated with John Perry) that the indexical perspective is an indispensable feature of reality. For a good attack on this, which I favour, see Cappelen and Dever.
Indexical thought is in relation to my self-consciousness [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Very roughly, we can say that to think of something indexically is to think of it in relation to me, as I am presented to myself in self-consciousness.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: So it is characterised relationally, which doesn't mean it has a distinctive intrinsic character. If I'm lost, and I overhear someone say 'Peter is in Hazlemere', I get the same relational information (in a different mode) without the indexicality.
Indexicals do not figure in theories of physics, because they are not explanatory causes [McGinn]
     Full Idea: Indexicals are like secondary qualities in not figuring in causal explanations of the interactions of objects: physics omits them not because they are relative and egocentric, but because they do not constitute explanatory predicates of a causal theory.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2)
     A reaction: They are outside explanatory physics, but not outside explanation. The object moved because a force acted on it; or the object moved because I wanted it moved.
Indexical concepts are indispensable, as we need them for the power to act [McGinn]
     Full Idea: The present suggestion is that indexical concepts are ineliminable because without them agency would be impossible: when I imagine myself divested of indexical thoughts employing only centreless mental representations, I am deprived of the power to act.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)
     A reaction: A nice clear statement of the view developed by Perry and Lewis. I agree with Cappelen and Dever that it is entirely wrong, and that indexical thought is entirely eliminable, and nothing special.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 9. Indexical Semantics
I can know indexical truths a priori, unlike their non-indexical paraphrases [McGinn]
     Full Idea: I know the truth of the sentence 'I am here now' a priori, but I do not know a priori 'McGinn is in London on 15th Nov 1981'.
     From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 3)
     A reaction: I'm not convinced that I can grasp the concepts of 'here' and 'now' (i.e. space and time) by purely a priori means. But he certainly shows that you can't glibly dismiss indexicals by paraphrasing them in that way.