5 ideas
14742 | It can't be indeterminate whether x and y are identical; if x,y is indeterminate, then it isn't x,x [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: Insofar as identity seems vague, it is provably mistaken. If it is vague whether x and y are identical (as in the Ship of Theseus), then x,y is definitely not the same as x,x, since the first pair is indeterminate and the second pair isn't. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence: seven appendices [2005], App I) | |
A reaction: [compressed; Gareth Evans 1978 made a similar point] This strikes me as begging the question in the Ship case, since we are shoehorning the new ship into either the slot for x or the slot for y, but that was what we couldn’t decide. No rough identity? |
18885 | Kripke and Putnam made false claims that direct reference implies essentialism [Salmon,N] |
Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam made unsubstantiated claims, indeed false claims, to the effect that the theory of direct reference has nontrivial essentialist import. | |
From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence: seven appendices [2005], Pref to Exp Ed) | |
A reaction: Kripke made very few claims, and is probably innocent of the charge. Most people agree with Salmon that you can't derive metaphysics from a theory of reference. |
22237 | The Greeks had a single word meaning both 'beautiful' and 'good' [Pormann] |
Full Idea: The later Greeks coined the term 'kalokagathia' for the fact of being both beautiful [kalos] and good [agathos], thus linking moral and physical health. | |
From: Peter E. Pormann (Medical Conceptions of Health pre-Renaissance [2019], p.44) | |
A reaction: In their literature good people are often handsome, and bad people ugly. Socrates was famous for being an exception. |
8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
Full Idea: Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2) | |
A reaction: I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns. |
8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
Full Idea: Quantum physics seems to lend strong support to the idea that the basic laws of nature may well be probabilistic. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 3.2.1) | |
A reaction: Groan. Quantum physics should be outlawed from all philosophical discussions. The scientists don't understand it themselves. I'm certainly not going to build my worldview on it. I don't accept that these probabilities could count as 'laws'. |