12 ideas
| 12766 | Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality. |
| 12764 | For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76) | |
| A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property. |
| 12761 | An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something. |
| 12763 | Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73) | |
| A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential! |
| 12762 | Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg. |
| 12765 | Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79) | |
| A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth? |
| 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'). |
| 21733 | The right-wing conception of freedom is based on the idea of self-ownership [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing conception of freedom is, I think, founded on the idea that each person is the morally rightful owner of himself, even if existing legal systems do not acknowledge it. Let us call that the 'self-ownership' thesis. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Nozick as articulating this view. At the end Cohen rejects self-ownership, though he agrees that no one would accept that the state could be the owner of your eyes. Do I own my hair after it is cut? |
| 21739 | Plenty of people have self-ownership, but still lack autonomy [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: Universal self-ownership fails to ensure autonomy, since it tends to produce proletarians, who lack it. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that autonomy is not a property of individuals but a social phenomenon. Self-owning people can still be imprisoned. What about autonomy without self-ownership? A bright slave who is given extensive responsibility? |
| 21736 | It is doubtful whether any private property was originally acquired legitimately [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to doubt that much actually existing private property was formed in what anyone could think was a legitimating way. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: What if I created an artificial island out of unwanted raw materials? What about the first humans to reach some remote territory? |
| 21734 | It is plausible that no one has an initial right to own land and natural resources [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: One may plausibly say of external things in their initial state, of raw land and natural resources, that no person has a greater right to them than any other does. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: How about if your group has lived on that plot for fifty generations, and some interlopers arrive and claim part of it. No one thought of 'owning' it till the interlopers arrived. Native Americans and Australians. |
| 21735 | Every thing which is now private started out as unowned [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: In the prehistory of anything that is now private property there was at least one moment at which something privately unowned was taken into private ownership. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He is obviously talking about land and natural resources. Presumably a table which I made and own was always private property, although the land where the trees were grown was not. Though in some communities what I make could be automatically communal. |