21 ideas
| 14092 | Philosophers are often too fussy about words, dismissing perfectly useful ordinary terms [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers can sometimes be too fussy about the words they use, dismissing as 'unintelligible' or 'obscure' certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards, and which may be of some real use. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 01) | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophers are inclined to drop terms they can't formalise, but there is more to every concept than its formalisation (Frege's 'direction' for example). I want to rescue 'abstraction' and 'essence'. Rosen says distinguish, don't formalise. |
| 14100 | Figuring in the definition of a thing doesn't make it a part of that thing [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: From the simple fact that '1' figures in the definition of '2', it does not follow that 1 is part of 2. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: He observes that quite independent things can be mentioned on the two sides of a definition, with no parthood relation. You begin to wonder what a definition really is. A causal chain? |
| 10633 | 'Some critics admire only one another' cannot be paraphrased in singular first-order [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The Geach-Kaplan sentence 'Some critics admire only one another' provably has no singular first-order paraphrase using only its predicates. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a choice of either going second-order (picking out a property), or going plural (collectively quantifying), or maybe both. |
| 10638 | A pure logic is wholly general, purely formal, and directly known [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The defining features of a pure logic are its absolute generality (the objects of discourse are irrelevant), and its formality (logical truths depend on form, not matter), and its cognitive primacy (no extra-logical understanding is needed to grasp it). | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This strikes me as very important. The above description seems to contain no ontological commitment at all, either to the existence of something, or to two things, or to numbers, or to a property. Pure logic seems to be 'if-thenism'. |
| 10635 | Second-order quantification and plural quantification are different [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Second-order quantification and plural quantification are generally regarded as different forms of quantification. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2) |
| 10641 | Traditionally we eliminate plurals by quantifying over sets [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The traditional view in analytic philosophy has been that all plural locutions should be paraphrased away by quantifying over sets, though Boolos and other objected that this is unnatural and unnecessary. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 5) |
| 10640 | Instead of complex objects like tables, plurally quantify over mereological atoms tablewise [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Plural quantification can be used to eliminate the commitment of science and common sense to complex objects. We can use plural quantification over mereological atoms arranged tablewise or chairwise. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hossack and van Ingwagen] |
| 10636 | Plural plurals are unnatural and need a first-level ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Higher-order plural quantification (plural plurals) is often rejected because plural quantification is supposedly ontological innocent, with no plural things to be plural, and because it is not found in ordinary English. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: [Summary; he cites Boolos as a notable rejector] Linnebo observes that Icelandic contains a word 'tvennir' which means 'two pairs of'. |
| 10639 | Plural quantification may allow a monadic second-order theory with first-order ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Plural quantification seems to offer ontological economy. We can pay the price of a mere first-order theory and then use plural quantification to get for free the corresponding monadic second-order theory, which would be an ontological bargain. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He mentions Hellman's modal structuralism in mathematics] |
| 14096 | Explanations fail to be monotonic [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The failure of monotonicity is a general feature of explanatory relations. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 05) | |
| A reaction: In other words, explanations can always shift in the light of new evidence. In principle this is right, but some explanations just seem permanent, like plate-tectonics as explanation for earthquakes. |
| 14097 | Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Our relation of 'in virtue of' is among facts or truths, whereas Fine's relation (if it is a relation at all) is a relation between a given truth and items whose natures ground that truth. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 07 n10) | |
| A reaction: This disagreement between two key players in the current debate on grounding looks rather significant. I think I favour Fine's view, as it seems more naturalistic, and less likely to succumb to conventionalism. |
| 14095 | Facts are structures of worldly items, rather like sentences, individuated by their ingredients [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Facts are structured entities built up from worldly items rather as sentences are built up from words. They might be identified with Russellian propositions. They are individuated by their constituents and composition, and are fine-grained. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 04) | |
| A reaction: I'm a little cautious about the emphasis on being sentence-like. We have Russell's continual warnings against imposing subject-predicate structure on things. I think we should happily talk about 'facts' in metaphysics. |
| 10643 | We speak of a theory's 'ideological commitments' as well as its 'ontological commitments' [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers speak about a theory's 'ideological commitments' and not just about its 'ontological commitments'. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a third strategy for possibly evading one's ontological duty, along with fiddling with the words 'exist' or 'object'. An ideological commitment to something to which one is not actually ontologically committed conjures up stupidity and dogma. |
| 10637 | Ordinary speakers posit objects without concern for ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Maybe ordinary speakers aren't very concerned about their ontological commitments, and sometimes find it convenient to posit objects. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the whole truth about the ontological commitment of ordinary language. We bring abstraction under control by pretending it is a world of physical objects. The 'left wing' in politics, 'dark deeds', a 'huge difference'. |
| 14093 | An 'intrinsic' property is one that depends on a thing and its parts, and not on its relations [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: One intuitive gloss on 'intrinsic' property is that a property is intrinsic iff whether or not a thing has it depends entirely on how things stand with it and its parts, and not on its relation to some distinct thing. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 02) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as a useful reward for reviving 'depends on' in metaphysical talk. The problem here would be to explain the 'thing' and its 'parts' without mentioning the target property. The thing certainly can't be a bundle of tropes. |
| 14094 | The excellent notion of metaphysical 'necessity' cannot be defined [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Many of our best words in philosophy do not admit of definition, the notion of metaphysical 'necessity' being one pertinent example. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 03) | |
| A reaction: Rosen is busy defending words in metaphysics which cannot be pinned down with logical rigour. We are allowed to write □ for 'necessary', and it is accepted by logicians as being stable in a language. |
| 14101 | Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: Fine says a truth is necessary when it is a logical consequence of the essential truths, but maybe it is a consequence of the essential truths together with the basic grounding laws (the 'Moorean connections'). | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 13) | |
| A reaction: I'm with Fine all the way here, as we really don't need to clog nature up with things called 'grounding laws', which are both obscure and inexplicable. Fine's story is the one for naturalistically inclined philosophers. |
| 10634 | Predicates are 'distributive' or 'non-distributive'; do individuals do what the group does? [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The predicate 'is on the table' is 'distributive', since some things are on the table if each one is, whereas the predicate 'form a circle' is 'non-distributive', since it is not analytic that when some things form a circle, each one forms a circle. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The first predicate can have singular or plural subjects, but the second requires a plural subject? Hm. 'The rope forms a circle'. The second is example is not true, as well as not analytic. |
| 14099 | 'Bachelor' consists in or reduces to 'unmarried' male, but not the other way around [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: It sounds right to say that Fred's being a bachelor consists in (reduces to) being an unmarried male, but slightly off to say that Fred's being an unmarried male consists in (or reduces to) being a bachelor. There is a corresponding explanatory asymmetry. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: This emerging understanding of the asymmetry of the idea shows that we are not just dealing with a simple semantic identity. Our concepts are richer than our language. He adds that a ball could be blue in virtue of being cerulean. |
| 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'). |
| 14098 | An acid is just a proton donor [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: To be an acid just is to be a proton donor. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: My interest here is in whether we can say that we have found the 'essence' of an acid - so we want to know whether something 'deeper' explains the proton-donation. I suspect not. Being a proton donor happens to have a group of related consequences. |