17 ideas
| 14650 | Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the notion of a proper name itself involves essentialism. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.43) | |
| A reaction: This is just before Kripke's announcement of 'rigid designation', which seems to have relaunched modern essentialism. The thought is that you can't name something, if you don't have a stable notion of what is (and isn't) being named. |
| 14648 | Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Can't I name all the real numbers in the interval (0,1) at once? Couldn't I name them all 'Charley', for example? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga is nervous about such a sweeping move, but can't think of an objection. This addresses a big problem, I think - that you are supposed to accept the real numbers when we cannot possibly name them all. |
| 14647 | Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If anything is essential to Socrates, surely self-identity is. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.37) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern move of Plantinga and Adams, to make 'is identical with Socrates' the one property which assures the identity of Socrates (his 'haecceity'). My view is that self-identity is not a property. Plantinga wonders about that on p.44. |
| 14646 | An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: An object has a property essentially just in case it couldn't conceivably have lacked that property. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Making it depend on what we can conceive seems a bit dubious, for someone committed to real essences. The key issue is how narrowly or broadly you interpret the word 'property'. The word 'object' needs a bit of thought, too! |
| 14649 | Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To explain the 'de re' via the 'de dicto' is to provide a rule enabling us to find, for each de re proposition, an equivalent de dicto proposition. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.41) | |
| A reaction: Many 'de dicto' paraphrases will change the modality of a 'de re' statement, so the challenge is to find the right equivalent version. Plantinga takes up this challenge. The 'de dicto' statement says the object has the property, and must have it. |
| 14642 | Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Some statements predicate modality of another statement (modality 'de dicto'); but others predicate of an object the necessary or essential possession of a property; these latter express modality 'de re'. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.26) | |
| A reaction: The distinction seems to originate in Aquinas, concerning whether God knows the future (or, how he knows the future). 'De dicto' is straightforward, but possibly the result of convention. 'De re' is controversial, and implies deep metaphysics. |
| 14643 | 'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Aquinas says if a 'de dicto' statement is true, the 'de re' version may be false. The opposite also applies: 'What I am thinking of [17] is essentially prime' is true, but 'The proposition "what I am thinking of is prime" is necessarily true' is false. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.27) | |
| A reaction: In his examples the first is 'de re' (about the number), and the second is 'de dicto' (about that proposition). |
| 14651 | What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Is there a difference between what Socrates could have been, and what he could have become? | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.44) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, 1) how different might he have been in the past, given how he is now?, and 2) how different might he have been in the past, and now, if he had permanently diverged from how he is now? 1) has tight constraints on it. |
| 7630 | Ryle's dichotomy between knowing how and knowing that is too simplistic [Maund] |
| Full Idea: There is a convincing claim that we need to leave behind Ryle's dichotomy between knowing how and knowing that as being too simplistic. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: [John Campbell is mentioned as source of this idea] I find this proposal immediately appealing. I was taught that riding a bicycle shows the division, as hardly anyone knows the theory, but I am sure children need some propositional information. |
| 7632 | Perception is sensation-then-concept, or direct-concepts, or sensation-saturated-in-concepts [Maund] |
| Full Idea: Three forms of (cognitive) direct realism are: two stages - non-conceptual sensory experience, then a non-sensory conceptual state; directly acquiring non-sensuous conceptual states; and sensuous states saturated with concepts. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: [First: Reid, Dretske, Evans, Sellars. Second: Armstrong, Heil, Pitcher, Clark. Third: Kant, McDowell, Strawson, McGinn, Searle]. I find the first one plausible, because of the ambiguity in language, and because unusual experiences separate them. |
| 7635 | Sense-data have an epistemological purpose (foundations) and a metaphysical purpose (explanation) [Maund] |
| Full Idea: Sense-data have an epistemological purpose (to serve as foundations on which the edifice of knowledge is to be constructed), and a metaphysical purpose (to provide an accurate account of the phenomenology of perceptual experience). | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This is very important, because there is a real danger (e.g. in Russell) that the epistemological convenience of sense-data for giving reliability in knowledge means that we are too quick in making the assumption that they actually exist. |
| 7638 | One thesis says we are not aware of qualia, but only of objects and their qualities [Maund] |
| Full Idea: The representationalist/intentionalist thesis about perception is that we are not aware of the intrinsic qualities of experience in normal perception; we are instead aware of those objects and their qualities that are specified in the content. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: If secondary qualities are in the mind, not in objects, how come people always thought they were in objects? Answer: because this thesis is right? The primary mode of the mind is projected outwards, though we can introspect about colours. [Dretske] |
| 7642 | The Myth of the Given claims that thought is rationally supported by non-conceptual experiences [Maund] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'myth of the given' is the view that conceptual content can be rationally supported by experiences construed as states with non-conceptual content. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: The myth is attacked by Sellars and McDowell, the latter claiming that concepts must be embedded in the experiences. Maybe only realism is required to make the Given work. The experiences are definitely of something, and off we go... |
| 7640 | Mountains are adverbial modifications of the earth, but still have object-characteristics [Maund] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysically, mountains are only adverbial modifications of the Earth's belt. They have no existence independent of being part of the earth. Yet for all that, they have some rather strong 'object'-characteristics. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: The point being that you don't give up all the advantages of a sense-data view if you switch to adverbialism. I'm not convinced by the analogy, but we can only be aware of adverbial qualities if they have causal powers. |
| 7641 | Adverbialism tries to avoid sense-data and preserve direct realism [Maund] |
| Full Idea: The two primary motivations of the adverbialist analysis are thought to be to avoid commitment to sensory particulars such as sense-data, and to allow us to hold on to a version of direct realism. | |
| From: Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Maund says that the adverbialist's fears about indirect/representative theories are unfounded. My feeling is that neither account will do the job properly once we get a better account of consciousness. Maybe adverbialism is only for secondary qualities. |
| 7637 | Thought content is either satisfaction conditions, or exercise of concepts [Maund, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The content of thought can either be expressed as satisfaction conditions (e.g. truth-conditions for beliefs), or as the exercise of at least two concepts. | |
| From: report of Barry Maund (Perception [2003], Ch. 8) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: I think I favour the first view, because not all conjunctions of concepts would count as thoughts (e.g. rhubarb-plus-contradiction). A bunch of concepts becomes a thought when it connects in some way to reality? |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |