64 ideas
| 14227 | We could refer to tables as 'xs that are arranged tablewise' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: We could paraphrase 'some chairs are heavier than some tables' as 'there are xs that are arranged chairwise and there are ys that are arranged tablewise and the xs are heavier than the ys'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 11) | |
| A reaction: Liggins notes that this involves plural quantification. Being 'arranged tablewise' has become a rather notorious locution in modern ontology. We still have to retain identity, to pick out the xs. |
| 10662 | Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen writes of 'mereological nihilism' (that only mereological atoms exist) and of 'mereological universalism' (adhering to the principle of Unrestricted Composition). | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], p.72-) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3 | |
| A reaction: They both look mereologically nihilistic to me, in comparison with an account that builds on 'natural' wholes and their parts. You can only be 'unrestricted' if you view the 'wholes' in your vast ontology as pretty meaningless (as Lewis does, Idea 10660). |
| 17587 | The 'Law' of Excluded Middle needs all propositions to be definitely true or definitely false [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think the validity of the 'Law' of Excluded Middle depends on the assumption that every proposition is definitely true or definitely false. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this is confused. He cites vagueness as the problem, but that is a problem for Bivalence. If excluded middle is read as 'true or not-true', that leaves the meaning of 'not-true' open, and never mentions the bivalent 'false'. |
| 17558 | Variables are just like pronouns; syntactic explanations get muddled over dummy letters [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Explanations in terms of syntax do not satisfactorily distinguish true variables from dummy or schematic letters. Identifying variables with pronouns, however, provides a genuine explanation of what variables are. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it shows that our ordinary thought and speech use variables all the time ('I've forgotten something - what was it?'). He says syntax is fine for maths, but not for ordinary understanding. |
| 17583 | There are no heaps [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Fortunately ....there are no heaps. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: This is the nihilist view of (inorganic) physical objects. If a wild view solves all sorts of problems, one should take it serious. It is why I take reductive physicalism about the mind seriously. (Well, it's true, actually) |
| 17578 | I reject talk of 'stuff', and treat it in terms of particles [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I have a great deal of difficulty with an ontology that includes 'stuffs' in addition to things. ...I prefer to replace talk of sameness of matter with talk of sameness of particles. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is wedded to the idea that reality is composed of 'simples' - even if physicists seem now to talk of 'fields' as much as they do about objects in the fields. Has philosophy yet caught up with Maxwell? |
| 22427 | To explain object qualities, primary qualities must be more than mere sources of experience [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: In order that we have available an explanation of the qualities of objects we need to be able to conceive primary qualities as consisting in something other than powers to produce experiences. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6 n 52) | |
| A reaction: I suppose if the qualities are nothing more than the source of the experiences, that is Kant's noumenon. Nothing more could be said. The seems to be a requirement for tacit inference here. We infer the interior of the tomato. |
| 17582 | Singular terms can be vague, because they can contain predicates, which can be vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Since singular terms can contain predicates, and since vague predicates are common, vague singular terms are common. For 'the tallest man that Sally knows' there are lots of men for whom it is unclear whether Sally knows them. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) |
| 17556 | Material objects are in space and time, move, have a surface and mass, and are made of some stuff [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A thing is a material object if it occupies space and endures through time and can move about in space (literally move, unlike a shadow or wave or reflection) and has a surface and has a mass and is made of a certain stuff or stuffs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: It is not at all clear what electrons (which must count for him as 'simples') are made of. |
| 8264 | Maybe table-shaped particles exist, but not tables [Inwagen, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen holds that although table-shaped collections of particles exist, tables do not. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Ch.13) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 2.3 | |
| A reaction: I find this idea appealing. See the ideas of Trenton Merricks. When you get down to micro-level, it is hard to individuate a table among the force fields, and hard to distinguish a table from a smashed or burnt table. An ontology without objects? |
| 17565 | Nihilism says composition between single things is impossible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Nihilism about objects says there is a Y such that the Xs compose it if and only if there is only one of the Xs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 08) | |
| A reaction: He says that Unger, the best known 'nihilist' about objects, believes a different version - claiming there are composites, but they never make up the ordinary objects we talk about. |
| 14228 | If there are no tables, but tables are things arranged tablewise, the denial of tables is a contradiction [Liggins on Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen says 'there are no tables', and 'there are tables' means 'there are some things arranged tablewise'. Presumably 'there are no tables' negates the latter claim, saying no things are arranged tablewise. But he should think that is false. | |
| From: comment on Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 3 | |
| A reaction: Liggins's nice paper shows that Van Inwagen is in a potential state of contradiction when he starts saying that there are no tables, but that there are things arranged tablewise, and that they amount to tables. Liggins offers him an escape. |
| 14468 | Actions by artefacts and natural bodies are disguised cooperations, so we don't need them [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: All the activities apparently carried out by shelves and stars and other artefacts and natural bodies can be understood as disguised cooperative activities. And, therefore, we are not forced to grant existence to any artefacts or natural bodies. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: In 'the crowd tore her to pieces' are we forced to accept the existence of a crowd? We can't say 'Jack tore her to pieces' and 'Jill tore her to pieces'. If a plural quantification is unavoidable, we have to accept the plurality. Perhaps. |
| 17571 | Every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The thesis about composition and parthood that I am advocating has far-reaching ontological consequences: that every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) | |
| A reaction: A 'simple' is a placeholder for anything considered to be a fundamental unit of existence (such as an electron or a quark). This amazingly sharp distinction strikes me as utterly implausible. There is too much in the middle ground. |
| 17562 | The statue and lump seem to share parts, but the statue is not part of the lump [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Those who believe that the statue is distinct from the lump should concede that whatever shares a part with the statue shares a part with the lump but deny that the statue is a part of the lump. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 05) | |
| A reaction: Standard mereology says if they share all their parts then they are the same thing, so it is hard to explain how they are 'distinct'. The distinction is only modal - that they could be separated (by squashing, or by part substitution). |
| 17574 | If you knead clay you make an infinite series of objects, but they are rearrangements, not creations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you can make a (random) gollyswoggle by accident by kneading clay, then you must be causing the generation and corruption of a series of objects of infinitesimal duration. ...We have not augmented the furniture of the world but only rearranged it. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen's final conclusion is a bit crazy, but I am in sympathy with his general scepticism about what sorts of things definitively constitute 'objects'. He overrates simples, and he overrates lives. |
| 17531 | I assume matter is particulate, made up of 'simples' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I assume in this book that matter is ultimately particulate. Every material being is composed of things that have no proper parts: 'elementary particles' or 'mereological atoms' or 'metaphysical simples'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Pref) | |
| A reaction: It may be that modern physics doesn't support this, if 'fields' is the best term for what is fundamental. Best to treat his book as hypothetical - IF there are just simples, proceed as follows. |
| 17560 | If contact causes composition, do two colliding balls briefly make one object? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, if I cause the cue ball to rebound from the eight ball, do I thereby create a short-lived object shaped like two slightly flattened spheres in contact? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17561 | If bricks compose a house, that is at least one thing, but it might be many things [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, that tells us that the bricks of a house compose at least one thing; it does not tell us that they also compose at most one thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 04) |
| 17566 | I think parthood involves causation, and not just a reasonably stable spatial relationship [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I propose that parthood essentially involves causation. Too many philosophers have supposed that objects compose something when and only when they stand in some (more or less stable) spatial relationship to one another. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: I have to say that I like this, even though it comes from a thinker who is close to nihilism about ordinary non-living objects. He goes on to say that only a 'life' provides the right sort of causal relationship. |
| 14230 | We can deny whole objects but accept parts, by referring to them as plurals within things [Inwagen, by Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen's claim that nothing has parts causes incredulity. ..But the problem is not with endorsing the sentence 'Some things have parts'; it is with interpreting this sentence by means of singular resources rather than plural ones. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 7) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen notoriously denies the existence of normal physical objects. Liggins shows that modern formal plural quantification gives a better way of presenting his theory, by accepting tables and parts of tables as plurals of basic entities. |
| 17557 | Special Composition Question: when is a thing part of something? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The Special Composition Question asks, In what circumstances is a thing a (proper) part of something? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: [He qualifies this formulation as 'misleading'] It's a really nice basic question for the metaphysics of objects. |
| 17564 | The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think it is part of the essence of a star that the radiation pressures that oppose the star's tendency to gravitational collapse has its source in the release of no-longer-needed nuclear binding energy when colliding nuclei fuse in the star's hot core. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of giving the essence of something as the bottom level of its explanation. This even comes from someone who doesn't really believe in stars! |
| 17575 | The persistence of artifacts always covertly involves intelligent beings [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Statements that are apparently about the persistence of artifacts make covert reference to the dispositions of intelligent beings to maintain certain arrangements of matter. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: If you build a self-sustaining windmill that pumps water, that seems to have an identity of its own, apart from the intentions of whoever makes it and repairs it. The function of an artefact is not just the function we want it to have. |
| 17577 | When an electron 'leaps' to another orbit, is the new one the same electron? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Is the 'new' electron in the lower orbit the one that was in the higher orbit? Physics, as far as I can tell, has nothing to say about this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that physicists would say that philosophers are worrying about such questions because they haven't grasped the new conceptual scheme that emerged in 1926. The poor mutts insist on hanging on to 'objects'. |
| 17589 | If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you have rejected the Principle of the Transitivity of (vague) Identity, it is hard to see how the problem of the Ship of Theseus could arise. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this may well be the best solution to the whole problem |
| 17588 | We should talk of the transitivity of 'identity', and of 'definite identity' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: In some contexts, the principle of 'the transitivity of identity' should be called 'the transitivity of definite identity'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: He is making room for a person to retain identity despite having changed. Applause from me. |
| 17572 | Actuality proves possibility, but that doesn't explain how it is possible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A proof of actuality is a proof of possibility, but that does not invariably explain the possibility whose existence it demonstrates, for we may know that a certain thing is actual (and hence possible) but have no explanation of how it could be possible. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because my project is to see all of philosophy in terms of explanation rather than of description. |
| 17579 | Counterparts reduce counterfactual identity to problems about similarity relations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Counterpart Theory essentially reduces all problems about counterfactual identity to problems about choosing appropriate similarity relations. That is, Counterpart Theory essentially eliminates problems of counterfactual identity as such. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a merely possible object is an even more defective notion than the notion of a borderline object; after all, a merely possible object is an object that definitely isn't there. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Talk of merely possible objects may be redeemed in either maximally consistent sets of properties or in haecceities. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 22413 | Being red simply consists in looking red [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: What we should claim is that being red consists in looking red. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: A very nice simple account. There is more to being square than looking square (which may not even guarantee that it is square). That's the primary/secondary distinction in a nut shell. But red things don't look red in the dark. Sufficient, not necessary. |
| 22415 | Relativity means differing secondary perceptions are not real disagreements [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Relativity permits differences in the perceived secondary qualities not to imply genuine disagreement, whereas perceived differences of primary qualities imply that at least one perceiver is in error. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: An example of 'relativity' is colour blindness. Sounds good, but what of one perceiver seeing a square as square, and another seeing it obliquely as a parallelogram? The squareness then seems more like a theory than a perception. |
| 22416 | Phenomenalism is correct for secondary qualities, so scepticism is there impossible [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We might say that scepticism is ruled out for secondary qualities because (roughly) phenomenalism is correct for them; but phenomenalism is not similarly correct for primary qualities, and scepticism cannot get a foothold. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: An odd idea, if phenomenalism says that reality consists entirely of phenomena. I should think phenomenalism is a commitment to the absence of primary qualities. |
| 22422 | Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The inseparability thesis about perception says that for any actual and possible sense the content of experiences delivered by that sense must be both of secondary qualities and of primary qualities. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: That would mean that all possible experience must have a mode of presentation, and also must be 'of' something independent of experience. So a yellow after-image would not count as an 'experience'? |
| 22428 | You understood being red if you know the experience involved; not so with thngs being square [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: To grasp what it is to be red is to know the kind of sensory experience red things produce; ...but it is not true that to grasp what it is to be square one needs to know what kinds of sensory experience square things produce. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 8) | |
| A reaction: Are any experiences involved in the understanding of squareness? We don't know squareness by a priori intuition (do we?). To grasp squareness if may be necessary to have a variety of experiences of it. Or to grasp that it is primary. |
| 22414 | You don't need to know how a square thing looks or feels to understand squareness [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: To grasp what it is for something to be square it is not constitutively necessary to know how square things look or feel, since what it is to be square does not involve any such relation to experience. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: You could even describe squareness verbally, unlike redness. It seems crucial that almost any sense (such as bat echoes) can communicate primary qualities, but secondary qualities are tied to a sense, and wouldn't exist without it. |
| 22423 | Touch doesn't provide direct experience of primary qualities, because touch feels temperature [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Bennett's claim that touch provides experience of primary qualities without experience of any secondary qualities strikes me as false, because tactile experience includes felt temperature, which is a dispositional secondary quality. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: [J.Bennett 1971 pp. 90-4] Fair point. What about shape and texture? We experience forces, but the shape is assembled in imagination rather than in experience. So do we meet primary qualities directly in forces, such as acceleration? No secondary quality? |
| 22426 | We can perceive objectively, because primary qualities are not mind-created [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: I hold that experience succeeds in representing the world objectively, since primary quality perceptual content is not contributed by the mind. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: My new example of a direct perception of a primary quality is acceleration in a lift. What would we say to one passenger who denied feeling the acceleration? It took an effort to see that mind contributes to secondary qualities (so make more effort?). |
| 22412 | Lockean secondary qualities (unlike primaries) produce particular sensory experiences [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: In the Lockean tradition, secondary qualities are defined as those whose instantiation in an object consists in a power or disposition of the object to produce sensory experiences in perceivers of a certain phenomenological character. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: Primary qualities are said to lack such dispositions. Not sure about these definitions. Primaries offer no experiences? With these definitions, comparing them would be a category mistake. I take it primaries reflect reality and secondaries do not. |
| 22421 | Could there be a mind which lacked secondary quality perception? [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Can we form a conception of a type of mind whose representations are free of secondary quality perceptions? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. Minds must have experiences, and there has to be a 'way' or 'mode' for those experiences. A mind which directly grasped the primary quality of sphericity would seem to be visionary rather than sensual or experiential. |
| 22424 | Secondary qualities contain information; their variety would be superfluous otherwise [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Surely we learn something about an object when we discover its secondary qualities? ...If secondary quality experience were informationally inert, its variety would be something of a puzzle. Why not employ the same medium for all primary informaton? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: This is important. We can't just focus on the primary qualities, and ignore the secondary. But diverse colours draw attention to information, which can then be translated into neutral data, as in spectroscopic analysis. Locke agrees with this. |
| 22425 | The utility theory says secondary qualities give information useful to human beings [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Secondary quality perception, according to the utility theory, gives information about the relation between the perceptual object and the perceiver's needs and interests. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: Almost the only example I can think of is whether fruit is ripe or rotten. ...Also 'bad' smells. We recognise aggressive animal noises, but that is not the same as dangerous (e.g. rustling snake). Divine design is behind this theory, I think. |
| 7629 | We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: My view is that we see objects 'directly' by representing them in visual experience. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], Ch.8 n1) | |
| A reaction: [Quoted by Maund] This rejects both inference in perception and sense-data, while retaining the notion of representation. It is a view which has gained a lot of support. But how can it be direct if it represents? Photographs can't do that. |
| 22420 | The indexical perspective is subjective, incorrigible and constant [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: I attribute three properties to the indexical perspective: it is subjective, incorrigible, and constant. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 5) | |
| A reaction: That is as good an idea as any for summarising the view (associated with John Perry) that the indexical perspective is an indispensable feature of reality. For a good attack on this, which I favour, see Cappelen and Dever. |
| 18410 | Indexical thought is in relation to my self-consciousness [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Very roughly, we can say that to think of something indexically is to think of it in relation to me, as I am presented to myself in self-consciousness. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: So it is characterised relationally, which doesn't mean it has a distinctive intrinsic character. If I'm lost, and I overhear someone say 'Peter is in Hazlemere', I get the same relational information (in a different mode) without the indexicality. |
| 22417 | Indexicals do not figure in theories of physics, because they are not explanatory causes [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Indexicals are like secondary qualities in not figuring in causal explanations of the interactions of objects: physics omits them not because they are relative and egocentric, but because they do not constitute explanatory predicates of a causal theory. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 2) | |
| A reaction: They are outside explanatory physics, but not outside explanation. The object moved because a force acted on it; or the object moved because I wanted it moved. |
| 18402 | Indexical concepts are indispensable, as we need them for the power to act [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The present suggestion is that indexical concepts are ineliminable because without them agency would be impossible: when I imagine myself divested of indexical thoughts employing only centreless mental representations, I am deprived of the power to act. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the view developed by Perry and Lewis. I agree with Cappelen and Dever that it is entirely wrong, and that indexical thought is entirely eliminable, and nothing special. |
| 22418 | I can know indexical truths a priori, unlike their non-indexical paraphrases [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: I know the truth of the sentence 'I am here now' a priori, but I do not know a priori 'McGinn is in London on 15th Nov 1981'. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 3) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that I can grasp the concepts of 'here' and 'now' (i.e. space and time) by purely a priori means. But he certainly shows that you can't glibly dismiss indexicals by paraphrasing them in that way. |
| 22442 | If lies were ever acceptable, with would undermine all duties based on contract [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Truthfulness is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties to be grounded on a contract, the law of which is made uncertain and useless if even the least exception to it is admitted. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (On a supposed right to lie [1797], p.30) | |
| A reaction: Should we keep contracts which are made by means of deception and coercion? Where could such absolute authority for contracts come from? Do contracts and treaties tend to lapse after a long period of time? |
| 22441 | The law will protect you if you tell a truth which results in murder [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If you have by a lie prevented someone bent on murder from committing the deed, then you are legally accountable for all the consequences that might arise from it. But if you keep strictly to the truth, then public justice can hold nothing against you. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (On a supposed right to lie [1797], p.29) | |
| A reaction: Shocking, from a supposedly great thinker. Cowardly hiding behind a perverse law. What would Kant do if the law were changed, to condemn someone who told a truth which would probably lead to a murder? Would he accept a jail sentence? |
| 17563 | The strong force pulls, but also pushes apart if nucleons get too close together [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The strong force doesn't always pull nucleons together, but pushes them apart if they get too close. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers tend to learn their physics from other philosophers. But that's because philosophers are brilliant at picking out the interesting parts of physics, and skipping the boring stuff. |
| 17559 | Is one atom a piece of gold, or is a sizable group of atoms required? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A physicist once told me that of course a gold atom was a piece of gold, and a physical chemist has assured me that the smallest possible piece of gold would have to be composed of sixteen or seventeen atoms. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: The issue is at what point all the properties that we normally begin to associate with gold begin to appear. One water molecule can hardly have a degree of viscosity or liquidity. |
| 17586 | At the lower level, life trails off into mere molecular interaction [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The lives of the lower links of the Great Chain of Being trail off into vague, temporary episodes of molecular interaction. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: His case involves conceding all sorts of vagueness to life, but asserting the utter distinctness of the full blown cases of more elaborate life. I don't really concede the distinction. |
| 17568 | A tumour may spread a sort of life, but it is not a life, or an organism [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A tumour is not an organism (or a parasite) and there is no self-regulating event that is its life. It does not fill one space, but is a locus within which a certain sort of thing is happening: the spreading of a certain sort of (mass-term) life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17581 | Being part of an organism's life is a matter of degree, and vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Being caught up in the life of an organism is, like being rich or being tall, a matter of degree, and is in that sense a vague condition. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is trying to cover himself, given that he makes a sharp distinction between living organisms, which are unified objects, and everything else, which isn't. There may be a vague centre to a 'life', as well as vague boundaries. |
| 17567 | A flame is like a life, but not nearly so well individuated [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A flame, though it is a self-maintaining event, does not seem to be nearly so well individuated as a life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: This is to counter the standard problem that if you attempt to define 'life', fire turns out to tick nearly all the same boxes. The concept of 'individuated' often strikes me as unsatisfactory. How does a bonfire fail to be individuated? |
| 17576 | If God were to 'reassemble' my atoms of ten years ago, the result would certainly not be me [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If God were to 'reassemble' the atoms that composed me ten years ago, the resulting organism would certainly not be me. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: What is obvious to Van Inwagen is not obvious to me. He thinks lives are special. Such examples just leave us bewildered about what counts as 'the same', because our concept of sameness wasn't designed to deal with such cases. |
| 17584 | Some events are only borderline cases of lives [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are events of which it is neither definitely true nor definitely false that those events are lives. I do not see how we can deny this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Very frustrating, since this is my main objection to Van Inwagen's distinction between unified lives and mere collections of simples. Some boundaries are real enough, despite their vagueness, and others indicate that there is no real distinction. |
| 17569 | Unlike waves, lives are 'jealous'; it is almost impossible for them to overlap [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A wave is not a 'jealous' event. Lives, however, are jealous. It cannot be that the activities of the Xs constitute at one and the same time two lives. Only in certain special cases can two lives overlap. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17580 | One's mental and other life is centred on the brain, unlike any other part of the body [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: One's life - not simply one's mental life - is centered in the activity of the simples that virtually compose one's brain in a way in which it is not centered in the activity of any of the other simples that compose one. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 15) | |
| A reaction: This justifies the common view that 'one follows one's brain'. I take that to mean that my brain embodies my essence. I would read 'centered on' as 'explains'. |
| 17570 | The chemical reactions in a human life involve about sixteen elements [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are sixteen or so chemical elements involved in those chemical reactions that collectively constitute the life of a human being. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17585 | Life is vague at both ends, but could it be totally vague? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Individual human lives are infected with vagueness at both ends. ...But could there be a 'borderline life'? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen says (p.239) that there may be wholly vague lives, though it would suit his case better if there were not. |
| 17573 | There is no reason to think that mere existence is a valuable thing [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose - whatever Saint Anselm and Descartes may have thought - that mere existence is a valuable thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the simplest and most powerful objections to the Ontological Argument. God's existence may be of great value, but the existence of Hitler wasn't. |