7 ideas
| 18892 | Suppose a world where I'm from different gametes; add my gametes; which one is more me? [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It seems essential that you come from your gametes. Suppose (for reductio) that I come from Nixon's actual gametes. Now add my actual gametes to that possible world, and suppose they become an adult. Which has the stronger title to be me? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (On the Necessity of Origin [1976], p.132), quoted by Nathan Salmon - Reference and Essence (1st edn) 7.25.5 | |
| A reaction: [See Nathan Salmon 1981:209] Feels like the Ship of Theseus. You say 'that's Theseus Ship', until the rival ship appears around the headland. Confusion. If Nixon's gametes can produce McGinn, the second gametes could produce a Nixon! Then what? |
| 12019 | McGinn falsely claims necessity of origin is a special case of the necessity of identity [Forbes,G on McGinn] |
| Full Idea: McGinn assimilates the origin relation among organisms to the identity relation, so that the necessity of origin becomes a special case of the necessity of identity. We argue that this assimilation is illegitimate. | |
| From: comment on Colin McGinn (On the Necessity of Origin [1976]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1 | |
| A reaction: Not sure about this. I have long suspected what McGinn suspects. Once you have identified the organism with a particular origin, it hardly seems surprising that this particular origin has become inescapable. |
| 12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
| A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
| 19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account. |
| 19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The passions of monads reside in their confused perceptions. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715) | |
| A reaction: He thinks perceptions come in degrees of confusion, all the way up to God, who alone has fully clear perceptions. He blames in on these confused perceptions. |
| 18033 | The meaning of a representation is its role in thought, perception or decisions [Block] |
| Full Idea: According to conceptual role semantics, the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, thought and decision-making. | |
| From: Ned Block (Semantics, Conceptual Role [1998]) | |
| A reaction: I never believe theories of this kind, because I always find myself asking 'what is the nature of this representation which enables it to play this role?'. |
| 19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: God is the source of possibilities and consequently of ideas. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §8) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully individual conception of the nature of God. He produces the possibilities from which creation is chosen, and ideas and concepts are of everything which is non-contradictory, and thus possible. It all makes lovely sense! |