8 ideas
| 14596 | Call 'nominalism' the denial of numbers, properties, relations and sets [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: Just as there are no numbers or properties, there are no relations (like 'being heavier than' or 'betweenness'), or sets. I will provisionally use 'nominalism' for the conjunction of these four claims. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: If you are going to be a nominalist, do it properly! My starting point in metaphysics is strong sympathy with this view. Right now [Tues 22nd Nov 2011, 10:57 am GMT] I think it is correct. |
| 14597 | Natural Class Nominalism says there are primitive classes of things resembling in one respect [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: Natural Class Nominalists take as primitive the notion of a 'natural' class - a class of things that all resemble one another in some one respect and resemble nothing else in that respect. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4) | |
| A reaction: Dorr rejects this view because he doesn't believe in 'classes'. How committed to classes do you have to be before you are permitted to talk about them? All vocabulary (such as 'resemble') seems metaphysically tainted in this area. |
| 14598 | Abstracta imply non-logical brute necessities, so only nominalists can deny such things [Dorr] |
| Full Idea: If there are abstract objects, there are necessary truths about these things that cannot be reduced to truths of logic. So only the nominalist, who denies that there are any such things, can adequately respect the idea that there are no brute necessities. | |
| From: Cian Dorr (There Are No Abstract Objects [2008], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is where two plates of my personal philosophy grind horribly against one another. I love nominalism, and I love natural necessities. They meet like a ring-species in evolution. I'll just call it a 'paradox', and move on (swiftly). |
| 9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The notion of an abstract object comes from the notion of abstraction; it is in origin an epistemological rather than an ontological category. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.232) | |
| A reaction: Etymology doesn't prove anything. However, if you define abstract objects as not existing in space or time, you must recognise that this may only be because that is how humans imaginatively created them in the first place. |
| 9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Theists may find attractive a view popular among medieval philosophers from Augustine on: that abstract objects are really divine thoughts. More exactly, propositions are divine thoughts, properties divine concepts, and sets divine collections. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.233) | |
| A reaction: Hm. I pass this on because we should be aware that there is a theological history to discussions of abstract objects, and some people have vested interests in keeping them outside of the natural world. Aren't properties natural? Does God gerrymander sets? |
| 9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Someone who believes propositions are concrete cannot agree that some propositions are necessary. For propositions are contingent beings, and could have failed to exist. But if they fail to exist, then they fail to be true. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.230) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He implies the actual existence of an infinity of trivial, boring or ridiculous necessary truths. I suspect that he is just confusing a thought with its content. Or we might just treat necessary propositions as hypothetical. |
| 9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If propositions are brain inscriptions, then if there had been no human beings there would have been no propositions. But then 'there are no human beings' would have been true, so there would have been at least one truth (and thus one proposition). | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.229) | |
| A reaction: This would make 'there are no x's' true for any value of x apart from actual objects, which implies an infinity of propositions. Does Plantinga really believe that these all exist? He may be confusing propositions with facts. |
| 7607 | Nagarjuna and others pronounced the world of experience to be an illusion [Nagarjuna, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: Many later Buddhists (after Nagarjuna, c.120 CE) developed a belief that everything we experience is an illusion: in the West we would call them idealists. | |
| From: report of Nagarjuna (teachings [c.120]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is just one step beyond Plato (who at least hung onto the immediate world as an inferior reality), and is presumably intended to motivate meditators to break out of the misery of existence into a higher realm. Personally I am against it. |