64 ideas
| 12330 | In ontology, logic dominated language, until logic was mathematized [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: From Aristotle to Hegel, logic was the philosophical category of ontology's dominion over language. The mathematization of logic has authorized language to become that which seizes philosophy for itself. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 8) |
| 12318 | The female body, when taken in its entirety, is the Phallus itself [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: The female body, when taken in its entirety, is the Phallus itself. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998]) | |
| A reaction: Too good to pass over, too crazy to file sensibly, too creepy to have been filed under humour, my candidate for the weirdest remark I have ever read in a serious philosopher, but no doubt if you read Lacan etc for long enough it looks deeply wise. |
| 12325 | Philosophy has been relieved of physics, cosmology, politics, and now must give up ontology [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy has been released from, even relieved of, physics, cosmology, and politics, as well as many other things. It is important for it to be released from ontology per se. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 3) | |
| A reaction: A startling proposal, for anyone who thought that ontology was First Philosophy. Badiou wants to hand ontology over to mathematicians, but I am unclear what remains for the philosophers to do. |
| 11832 | We learn a concept's relations by using it, without reducing it to anything [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can achieve a lot by elucidations that put a concept to use without attempting to reduce it but, in using the concept, exhibit its connexions with other concepts that are established. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the best line of defence for analytic philosophy, given the much-cited observation that no one has successful reduced any concept by pure analysis. |
| 12324 | Consensus is the enemy of thought [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Consensus is the enemy of thought. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 2) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for bringing Enlightenment optimists to a halt. I am struck. Do I allow my own thinking to always be diverted towards something which might result in a consensus? Do I actually (horror!) prefer consensus to truth? |
| 12337 | There is 'transivity' iff membership ∈ also means inclusion ⊆ [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: 'Transitivity' signifies that all of the elements of the set are also parts of the set. If you have α∈Β, you also have α⊆Β. This correlation of membership and inclusion gives a stability which is the sets' natural being. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 11) |
| 12321 | The axiom of choice must accept an indeterminate, indefinable, unconstructible set [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: The axiom of choice actually amounts to admitting an absolutely indeterminate infinite set whose existence is asserted albeit remaining linguistically indefinable. On the other hand, as a process, it is unconstructible. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 2) | |
| A reaction: If only constructible sets are admitted (see 'V = L') then there is a contradiction. |
| 12342 | Topos theory explains the plurality of possible logics [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Topos theory explains the plurality of possible logics. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 14) | |
| A reaction: This will because logic will have a distinct theory within each 'topos'. |
| 12341 | Logic is a mathematical account of a universe of relations [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Logic should first and foremost be a mathematical thought of what a universe of relations is. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 14) |
| 11863 | (λx)[Man x] means 'the property x has iff x is a man'. [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The Lambda Abstraction Operator: We can write (λx)[Man x], which may be read as 'the property that any x has just if x is a man'. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This technical device seems to be a commonplace in modern metaphysical discussions. I'm assuming it can be used to discuss properties without venturing into second-order logic. Presumably we could call the property here 'humanity'. |
| 12335 | Numbers are for measuring and for calculating (and the two must be consistent) [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Number is an instance of measuring (distinguishing the more from the less, and calibrating data), ..and a figure for calculating (one counts with numbers), ..and it ought to be a figure of consistency (the compatibility of order and calculation). | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 11) |
| 12334 | There is no single unified definition of number [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Apparently - and this is quite unlike old Greek times - there is no single unified definition of number. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 11) |
| 12333 | Each type of number has its own characteristic procedure of introduction [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: There is a heterogeneity of introductory procedures of different classical number types: axiomatic for natural numbers, structural for ordinals, algebraic for negative and rational numbers, topological for reals, mainly geometric for complex numbers. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 11) |
| 12322 | Must we accept numbers as existing when they no longer consist of units? [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Do we have to confer existence on numbers whose principle is to no longer consist of units? | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 2) | |
| A reaction: This very nicely expresses what seems to me perhaps the most important question in the philosophy of mathematics. I am reluctant to accept such 'unitless' numbers, but I then feel hopelessly old-fashioned and naïve. What to do? |
| 12327 | The undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis may have ruined or fragmented set theory [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: As we have known since Paul Cohen's theorem, the Continuum Hypothesis is intrinsically undecidable. Many believe Cohen's discovery has driven the set-theoretic project into ruin, or 'pluralized' what was once presented as a unified construct. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 6) | |
| A reaction: Badiou thinks the theorem completes set theory, by (roughly) finalising its map. |
| 12329 | If mathematics is a logic of the possible, then questions of existence are not intrinsic to it [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: If mathematics is a logic of the possible, then questions of existence are not intrinsic to it (as they are for the Platonist). | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 7) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 12328. I file this to connect it with Hellman's modal (and nominalist) version of structuralism. Could it be that mathematics and modal logic are identical? |
| 12328 | Platonists like axioms and decisions, Aristotelians like definitions, possibilities and logic [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: A Platonist's interest focuses on axioms in which the decision of thought is played out, where an Aristotelian or Leibnizian interest focuses on definitions laying out the representation of possibilities (...and the essence of mathematics is logic). | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 7) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 12323 for the significance of the Platonist approach. So logicism is an Aristotelian project? Frege is not a true platonist? I like the notion of 'the representation of possibilities', so will vote for the Aristotelians, against Badiou. |
| 12331 | Logic is definitional, but real mathematics is axiomatic [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Logic is definitional, whereas real mathematics is axiomatic. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 10) |
| 12340 | There is no Being as a whole, because there is no set of all sets [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental theorem that 'there does not exist a set of all sets' designates the inexistence of Being as a whole. ...A crucial consequence of this property is that any ontological investigation is irremediably local. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 14) | |
| A reaction: The second thought pushes Badiou into Topos Theory, where the real numbers (for example) have a separate theory in each 'topos'. |
| 12323 | Existence is Being itself, but only as our thought decides it [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Existence is precisely Being itself in as much as thought decides it. And that decision orients thought essentially. ...It is when you decide upon what exists that you bind your thought to Being. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 2) | |
| A reaction: [2nd half p.57] Helpful for us non-Heideggerians to see what is going on. Does this mean that Being is Kant's noumenon? |
| 12332 | The modern view of Being comes when we reject numbers as merely successions of One [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: The saturation and collapse of the Euclidean idea of the being of number as One's procession signs the entry of the thought of Being into modern times. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 11) | |
| A reaction: That is, by allowing that not all numbers are built of units, numbers expand widely enough to embrace everything we think of as Being. The landmark event is the acceptance of the infinite as a number. |
| 12326 | The primitive name of Being is the empty set; in a sense, only the empty set 'is' [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: In Set Theory, the primitive name of Being is the void, the empty set. The whole hierarchy takes root in it. In a certain sense, it alone 'is'. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the key to Badiou's view that ontology is mathematics. David Lewis pursued interesting enquiries in this area. |
| 14746 | What exists can't depend on our conceptual scheme, and using all conceptual schemes is too liberal [Sider on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It would be incredible if what there is, rather than what we select for attention, depends on human activity and our conceptual scheme. One might expand to possible sortal concepts, rather than our language, but that amounts to four-dimensionalism. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: [compression of a nice anti-Wiggins paragraph] He suggests that Wiggins is seeking an intermediate course (between narrow chauvinism about concepts, and excessive liberalism) in a discussion of natural kinds versus artifacts. |
| 12320 | Ontology is (and always has been) Cantorian mathematics [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: Enlightened by the Cantorian grounding of mathematics, we can assert ontology to be nothing other than mathematics itself. This has been the case ever since its Greek origin. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 1) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be quite a strong feeling among mathematicians that new 'realms of being' are emerging from their researches. Only a Platonist, of course, is likely to find this idea sympathetic. |
| 11900 | We can accept criteria of distinctness and persistence, without making the counterfactual claims [Mackie,P on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We might agree with Wiggins's theory of individuation, but reject his thesis that a thing's principle of individuation (of distinctness and persistence) must be preserved in all counterfactual situations. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 8.7 | |
| A reaction: I'm not even convinced that initial individuation consists of falling under a sortal, and I prefer to discuss the powers of the thing, rather than counterfactual facts about behaviour. |
| 11870 | Activity individuates natural things, functions do artefacts, and intentions do artworks [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: What a principle of activity does completely for a natural thing, and the function does imperfectly for an ordinary artefact, the artist's conception of his own making of the work must do for the painting. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.12) | |
| A reaction: This nicely sums up Wiggins on individuation, and he seems to effectively elide individuation with essence. I certainly feel uneasy that a work of art needs a quite separate account from other artefacts. Surely it is just that we are fussier about them? |
| 11866 | The idea of 'thisness' is better expressed with designation/predication and particular/universal [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to think of anything true and significant that could not be said using the idea of thisness not better said while respectiving the distinctions designation/predication and particular/universal. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: Politis calls 'thisness' the 'ultimate subject of predication', so it is covered in logic by the name for an object. But we need to understand objects, and not just refer to them, and I'm not sure that 'universals' advance our understanding. |
| 11896 | A sortal essence is a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins bases sortal essentialism on the notion that a thing's principle of individuation is essential to it. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: This idea has failed to make much impression on me. I seem to be the only person who doesn't understand the concept of 'individuation'. Please let me know exactly what it means. Type individuation is not individual individuation, I presume. |
| 15835 | Wiggins's sortal essentialism rests on a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins bases sortal essentialism on the notion that a thing's principle of individuation is essential to it. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: My problem with this is that individuation is a human activity, not an intrinsic feature of the entities in the external world. Entities presumably have a 'unity', but I'm not sure about a 'principle' that does that job, though Aristotle is sympathetic. |
| 11841 | The evening star is the same planet but not the same star as the morning star, since it is not a star [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The evening star is the same planet but not the same star as the morning star. For Venus is not a star. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice objection to the idea that identity is entirely a matter of falling under the same sortal category. |
| 10679 | 'Sortalism' says parts only compose a whole if it falls under a sort or kind [Wiggins, by Hossack] |
| Full Idea: 'Sortalism' endorses the view that some things have parts, but denies that every collection of things composes something. Whenever there is a particular, there must be a sort or kind to which it belongs. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Keith Hossack - Plurals and Complexes 7 | |
| A reaction: What is the status of 'the first of its kind'? This seems to say that a token only has identity if it has type-identity. This sounds wildly wrong to me. I've made a 'thing' for you, but I haven't decided what it is yet. |
| 14363 | Identity a=b is only possible with some concept to give persistence and existence conditions [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins says an identity a=b stands no chance of being true unless there is some concept f under which a falls and under which b falls, which 'determines identity, persistence and existence conditions for members of its extension'. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.604 | |
| A reaction: This is the first clear statement I have met of Wiggins's central idea, upon which his sortal essentialism is built. Strawson's exposition adds that each thing necessarily falls under the 'highest' appropriate sortal ('dog', rather than 'terrier'). |
| 14364 | A thing is necessarily its highest sortal kind, which entails an essential constitution [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: In Wiggins's theory, necessity carries over from the kind to constitution. If Toby is necessarily a dog and 'dog' is a natural kind term, then Toby necessarily has the constitution of a dog, the features of which make up the real essence of being a dog. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.605 | |
| A reaction: The essence will then presumably consist of all and only the characteristics which are shared by all dogs whatsoever. So how do you decide the borderline between wolf and dog? Why isn't a wolf a dog? |
| 11851 | Many predicates are purely generic, or pure determiners, rather than sortals [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: There are countless predicates in English that have the appearance of sortal predicates but are purely generic (animal, machine, artefact), or are pure determinables for sortal determination (space-occupier, entity, substance). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: This is preparing the ground for a specification of a sortal which defines something essential as being the hallmark of identity. It is never quite clear to me whether Wiggins's case rests on a nominal or a real essence. |
| 11865 | The possibility of a property needs an essential sortal concept to conceive it [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A thing could have a property only if its having the property could be conceived, and that requires some sortal concept which adequately answers the Aristotelian question what the thing is. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Algebra omitted!] The core idea of Wiggins's theory. It seems at first glance to be a revival of Aristotelian essentialism, but his view of that seems to merely involve falling into a category. He treats sortal concepts as Aristotle's 'primary being'. |
| 14744 | Objects can only coincide if they are of different kinds; trees can't coincide with other trees [Wiggins, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins says that coincidence is possible only between objects of different kinds. Trees and cats coincide with aggregates of matter, but never trees with trees or cats with cats. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: At first glance this sounds quite plausible, but I think this commitment to the priority of kinds produces huge confusion, given that we only derive our notions of kinds from inductions derived from individuals. Language perpetuates old inductions. |
| 11852 | Is the Pope's crown one crown, if it is made of many crowns? [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The Pope's crown is made of crowns. There is no definite answer, when the Pope is wearing his crown, to the question 'how many crowns does he have on his head?' | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: A very nice example, in which the identity of the item seems clear enough, until you try to apply a sortal to it. I can't get excited about it, though, because calling it one 'crown' creates uncertainty, but calling it the 'Pope's crown' doesn't. |
| 11875 | Boundaries are not crucial to mountains, so they are determinate without a determinate extent [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It can be perfectly determinate which mountain x is without x's extent's being determinate. A mountain is not, after all, something essentially demarcated by its extent or boundary. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: This endorses something I have always wanted to assert ('a vague boundary is still a boundary'), but with the interesting addition that one might think about vagueness in terms of what is essential to a thing. Hm.... |
| 14749 | Identity is an atemporal relation, but composition is relative to times [Wiggins, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins points out that identity is an atemporal relation whereas composition, like parthood, holds only relative to times. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: If David Cameron is identical to the Prime Minister, that doesn't seem to be atemporal. If x=7 in this problem, I can change x to something else in the next problem. x had better not be equal to 7 and to 9. |
| 11844 | If I destroy an item, I do not destroy each part of it [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: If I repair or destroy an item, I do not repair or destroy each part of it (and since each part of a part is a part this would be difficult). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a nice refutation of any attempt to claim that a thing is no more than the sum of its parts, but one could analyse the notion of 'destroy', and find it just meant introducing gaps between parts. |
| 11861 | We can forget about individual or particularized essences [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Let us be realistic, and forget about individual or particularized essences. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the rather weird position you reach if you follow Wiggins's 'modest' essentialism, deriving from a thing merely falling under a sortal, or into a category. What is a natural kind, if its members don't each have a shared essence? |
| 11871 | Essences are not explanations, but individuations [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Essences of natural things are not fancified vacuities parading themselves ...as the ultimate explanation of everything that happens in the world. They are natures whose possession is a precondition of their owners being divided from the rest of reality. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus Wiggins rejects the explanation account of essence, with an assertion of his own (highly implausible) view that essence is about individuation rather than about behaviour. Individuation strikes me as an entirely human activity, and not 'real'. |
| 11879 | Essentialism is best represented as a predicate-modifier: □(a exists → a is F) [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins's proposal of a predicate-modifier account is the best formal representation of essential statements. ...This simple version is perfectly adequate to represent the claim that a is essentially-F: □(a exists → a is F). | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Ch.4) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I suppose that is right. Having an essence is a feature of an entity, but it has to boil done to characteristics that define the entity, and which it must presumably always have. Could an entity ever lack its essence? |
| 11835 | The nominal essence is the idea behind a name used for sorting [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Things being ranked under Names into sorts only as they agree with certain abstract ideas, to which we have annexed the Names, the essence of each sort comes to nothing but that abstract idea which the sortal name stands for. This is the nominal Essence. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], III.iii.15) | |
| A reaction: He contrasts 'nominal essence' with 'real essence'. A key passage for David Wiggins. One shouldn't put too much emphasis on nominal essence, since it means that someone referred to as 'that idiot over there' (you, perhaps) is necessarily an idiot. |
| 11876 | It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: If horse-stages made sense at all, it would be easier to go from horses to horse-stages than to go from horse-stages to horses. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 6.9) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark, analogous to 'it is easier to break a vase than to mend it'. Going from horse-stages to horses is the classic difficulty for 'bundle theories' (of objects, or persons): what is it that unites the bundle? |
| 11858 | The question is not what gets the title 'Theseus' Ship', but what is identical with the original [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Let us remember that the title in question is not the title to the sobriquet 'Theseus' Ship'; it is the title to identity with Theseus' ship, a particular ship originating from the eighth century B.C. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: There is an assumption here that identity is defined by origin. What is the origin of the identity of those huge football clubs that began under the name of some village team in 1875? What is the origin of 'England' as a single entity? |
| 11843 | Identity over a time and at a time aren't different concepts [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: People often speak of identity over time and distinguish it from identity at a time. But identity is just identity. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I myself am guilty of such usage, but it doesn't imply a commitment to a multivocal concept. The epistemological issues (of explaining what it is now, and simply reidentifying it later) seem profoundly different. Hume only admits identity over time. |
| 11864 | Hesperus=Hesperus, and Phosphorus=Hesperus, so necessarily Phosphorus=Hesperus [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The simple proof (from Ruth Barcan Marcus) is: Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, so if Phosphorus is Hesperus, then Phosphorus is necessarily Hesperus. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the famous idea which she noticed well before Kripke. The point is that the simple logic of the case bestows a necessity on the identity. We shouldn't be confused by the a posteriori and contingent nature of the discovery. |
| 11831 | The formal properties of identity are reflexivity and Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The formal properties of identity are the reflexivity of identity, and Leibniz's Law (if x is the same as y, then whatever is true of one is true of the other). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably transitivity will also apply, and, indeed, symmetry. He seems to mean something like the 'axiomatic formal properties'. |
| 14362 | Relative Identity is incompatible with the Indiscernibility of Identicals [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins argues that Geach's Relative Identity is incompatible with the formal properties of identity, which include, besides transitivity, symmetry and reflexivity, the complete community of properties defined by the Indiscernibility of Identicals. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.603 | |
| A reaction: The tricky part is that Wiggins then goes on to say that identity depends on sortals, which sounds very close to the Geach view. I find disentangling them tricky. See Idea 14363 for a helpful comment from Strawson. |
| 11838 | Relativity of Identity makes identity entirely depend on a category [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of Relativity of Identity (which I steadfastly oppose) ..suggests that it makes all the difference to keeping track of continuants through space and time which concept one subsumes something under. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [Geach I take to be the villain of this idea] The point is that identity is entirely relative to the sortal concept, where Wiggins wants to make identity a combination of the object itself and our concept of it (I think). |
| 11847 | To identify two items, we must have a common sort for them [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: As a necessary condition of the truth of an identity claim, some common sort f will have to be found to which they each belong. That is the point at which the primary question of identity can come into focus. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the plainest English expression I can find of Wiggins's main thesis. He maintains this thesis, while adamantly denying the idea that identity consists entirely of falling under a concept. |
| 11839 | Do both 'same f as' and '=' support Leibniz's Law? [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Is Leibniz's Law as true for 'is the same as' as it is for '='? | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [By Leibniz's Law he means if they are the same, they support the same truths] |
| 11845 | Substitutivity, and hence most reasoning, needs Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law underwrites the substitutivity of identity and this is a principle not long dispensable in any form of reasoning. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern fashion of deriving our metaphysics from our logic. Presumably we can derive it from our epistemology too, or even from our intuitions, if we thought they were good enough as evidence. |
| 11869 | Possible worlds rest on the objects about which we have suppositions [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Worlds are the shadows of our suppositions and they take on their identity from these. Suppositions take on their identity from (inter alia) the objects they relate to. If they sever themselves from these objects, then they collapse. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.11) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. My picture is of possibilities which are suggested by objecfs in the actual world, with extreme possibilities being at fifth-remove from actuality. Any worlds that go beyond natural possibility are just there for fun. |
| 11850 | Not every story corresponds to a possible world [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It is perfectly notorious that not every story corresponds to a possible world. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Thus a fantasy castle might be decorated with 'beautiful circular squares', or be threatened by a lump of enriched uranium twenty feet in diameter. Wiggins is replying to the claim that a possible world represents a 'story'. |
| 11848 | Asking 'what is it?' nicely points us to the persistence of a continuing entity [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The special effectiveness of the 'what is it?' question is that, in the case of continuants, it refers us back to our constantly exercised idea of the persistence and life-span of an entity. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Compare 'this is a human' with 'this is a member of a family noted for its longevity'. We can't simply answer 'what is it?' by tossing it into the nearest category. I say we need an individual essence for explanation, not just a sortal. |
| 11859 | The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I like this piece of simple common sense. I personally don't think you can reach first base in a sensible discussion if you don't face up to both sides of this idea (especially the second half, which many philosophers, especially of language, neglect). |
| 11836 | We can use 'concept' for the reference, and 'conception' for sense [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can use the Fregean 'concept' on the level of reference and naming, and prefer the word 'conception' for the Kantian idea of the sense, or the information needed to understand the concept. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice suggestion, and at first blush I think it should be adopted. Sometimes philosophers regret adopting a terminology several hundred years after it has been agreed. |
| 12338 | We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: There can be nothing intermediate to an assertion and a denial. We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 1011b24) | |
| A reaction: The first sentence seems to be bivalence, and the second sentence excluded middle. |
| 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'). |
| 12316 | For Enlightenment philosophers, God was no longer involved in politics [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: For the philosophers of the Enlightenment politics is strictly the affair of humankind, an immanent practice from which recourse to the All Mighty's providential organization had to be discarded. | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], Prol) |
| 11860 | Lawlike propensities are enough to individuate natural kinds [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: For all the purposes of identity and individuation of things that belong to natural kinds..., it is enough to have regard for the lawlike propensities of members of the kind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This may have got things in reverse, since it is hard to see how you could pick out any laws if you didn't assume the existence of natural kinds which were causing the regularities in the behaviour. |
| 12317 | The God of religion results from an encounter, not from a proof [Badiou] |
| Full Idea: The God of metaphysics makes sense of existing according to a proof, while the God of religion makes sense of living according to an encounter | |
| From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], Prol) |