4 ideas
| 17962 | The truth-maker principle is that every truth has a sufficient truth-maker [Forrest] |
| Full Idea: Item x is said to be a sufficient truth-maker for truth-bearer p just in case necessarily if x exists then p is true. ...Every truth has a sufficient truth-maker. Hence, I take it, the sum of all sufficient truth-makers is a universal truth-maker. | |
| From: Peter Forrest (General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Note that it is not 'necessary', because something else might make p true instead. |
| 20921 | How can we state relativism of sweet and sour, if they have no determinate nature? [Theophrastus] |
| Full Idea: How could what is bitter for us be sweet and sour for others, if there is not some determinate nature for them? | |
| From: Theophrastus (On the Senses [c.321 BCE], 70) | |
| A reaction: The remark is aimed at Democritus. This is part of the general question of how you can even talk about relativism, without attaching stable meanings to the concepts employed. |
| 7441 | Experiences are defined by their causal role, and causal roles belong to physical states [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The definitive characteristic of any experience is its causal role, its most typical causes and effects; but we materialists believe that these causal roles which belong by analytic necessity to experiences belong in fact to certain physical states. | |
| From: David Lewis (An Argument for the Identity Theory [1966], §I) | |
| A reaction: This is the Causal version of functionalism, which Armstrong also developed. The word 'typical' leads later to a teleological element in the theory (e.g. in Lycan). There are other things to say about mental states than just their causal role. |
| 7442 | 'Pain' contingently names the state that occupies the causal role of pain [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: On my theory, 'pain' is a contingent name - that is, a name with different denotations in different possible worlds - since in any world, 'pain' names whatever state happens in that world to occupy the causal role definitive of pain. | |
| From: David Lewis (An Argument for the Identity Theory [1966], §II n6) | |
| A reaction: Better to say that 'pain' (like 'sound') is ambiguous. It is indiscriminately used by English-speakers to mean [1] the raw quale that we experience when damaged, and [2] whatever it is that leads to pain behaviour. Maybe frogs have 2 but not 1. |