73 ideas
| 3269 | If your life is to be meaningful as part of some large thing, the large thing must be meaningful [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Those seeking to give their lives meaning usually envision a role in something larger than themselves, …but such a role can't confer significance unless that enterprise is itself significant. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §3) | |
| A reaction: Which correctly implies that this way of finding meaning for one's life is doomed. |
| 9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The standard sense of a 'contextual definition' permits the eliminating of the defined expression, by transforming any sentence containing it into an equivalent one not containing it. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: So the whole definition might be eliminated by a single word, which is not equivalent to the target word, which is embedded in the original expression. Clearly contextual definitions have some problems |
| 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). |
| 9820 | In classical logic, logical truths are valid formulas; in higher-order logics they are purely logical [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For sentential or first-order logic, the logical truths are represented by valid formulas; in higher-order logics, by sentences formulated in purely logical terms. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 3) |
| 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) |
| 9896 | A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 11) | |
| A reaction: We might say that the only way of 'reaching' or 'constructing' a prime is by incrementing by one till you reach it. That seems a pretty good definition. 64, for example, can be reached by a large number of different routes. |
| 18255 | Addition of quantities is prior to ordering, as shown in cyclic domains like angles [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to a quantitative domain of any kind that there should be an operation of adding its elements; that this is more fundamental thaat that they should be linearly ordered by magnitude is apparent from cyclic domains like that of angles. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
| 9895 | A number is a multitude composed of units [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A number is a multitude composed of units. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 2) | |
| A reaction: This is outdated by the assumption that 0 and 1 are also numbers, but if we say one is really just the 'unit' which is preliminary to numbers, and 0 is as bogus a number as i is, we might stick with the original Greek distinction. |
| 9852 | We understand 'there are as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them as by counting them [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A child understands 'there are just as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them off as by counting them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: I find it very intriguing that you could know that two sets have the same number, without knowing any numbers. Is it like knowing two foreigners spoke the same words, without understanding them? Or is 'equinumerous' conceptually prior to 'number'? |
| 9829 | The identity of a number may be fixed by something outside structure - by counting [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The identity of a mathematical object may sometimes be fixed by its relation to what lies outside the structure to which it belongs. It is more fundamental to '3' that if certain objects are counted, there are three of them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as Dummett being pushed (by his dislike of the purely abstract picture given by structuralism) back to a rather empiricist and physical view of numbers, though he would totally deny that. |
| 9828 | Numbers aren't fixed by position in a structure; it won't tell you whether to start with 0 or 1 [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The number 0 is not differentiated from 1 by its position in a progression, otherwise there would be no difference between starting with 0 and starting with 1. That is enough to show that numbers are not identifiable just as positions in structures. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds conclusive, but doesn't feel right. If numbers are a structure, then where you 'start' seems unimportant. Where do you 'start' in St Paul's Cathedral? Starting sounds like a constructivist concept for number theory. |
| 9876 | Set theory isn't part of logic, and why reduce to something more complex? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The two frequent modern objects to logicism are that set theory is not part of logic, or that it is of no interest to 'reduce' a mathematical theory to another, more complex, one. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Dummett says these are irrelevant (see context). The first one seems a good objection. The second one less so, because whether something is 'complex' is a quite different issue from whether it is ontologically more fundamental. |
| 9884 | The distinction of concrete/abstract, or actual/non-actual, is a scale, not a dichotomy [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between concrete and abstract objects, or Frege's corresponding distinction between actual and non-actual objects, is not a sharp dichotomy, but resembles a scale upon which objects occupy a range of positions. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This might seem right if you live (as Dummett chooses to) in the fog of language, but it surely can't be right if you think about reality. Is the Equator supposed to be near the middle of his scale? Either there is an equator, or there isn't. |
| 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? |
| 9869 | Realism is just the application of two-valued semantics to sentences [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Fully fledged realism depends on - indeed, may be identified with - an undiluted application to sentences of the relevant kind of straightforwards two-valued semantics. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of account you get from a whole-heartedly linguistic philosopher. Personally I would say that Dummett has got it precisely the wrong way round: I adopt a two-valued semantics because my metaphysics is realist. |
| 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) |
| 9880 | Nominalism assumes unmediated mental contact with objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The nominalist superstition is based ultimately on the myth of the unmediated presentation of genuine concrete objects to the mind. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to favour nominalism and a representative theory of perception, which acknowledges some 'mediation', but of a non-linguistic form. Any good theory here had better include animals, which seem to form concepts. |
| 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? |
| 9885 | The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This remark follows after Idea 9884, which says the abstract/concrete distinction is a sliding scale. Personally I take the distinction to be fairly sharp, and it is therefore probably the single most important problem in the whole of human thought. |
| 9858 | Abstract objects nowadays are those which are objective but not actual [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Objects which are objective but not actual are precisely what are now called abstract objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Why can there not be subjective abstract objects? 'My favourites are x, y and z'. 'I'll decide later what my favourites are'. 'I only buy my favourites - nothing else'. |
| 9859 | It is absurd to deny the Equator, on the grounds that it lacks causal powers [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: If someone argued that assuming the existence of the Equator explains nothing, and it has no causal powers, so everything would be the same if it didn't exist, so we needn't accept its existence, we should gape at the crudity of the misunderstanding. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Not me. I would gape if someone argued that latitude 55° 14' (and an infinity of other lines) exists for the same reasons (whatever they may be) that the Equator exists. A mode of description can't create an object. |
| 9860 | 'We've crossed the Equator' has truth-conditions, so accept the Equator - and it's an object [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: 'We've crossed the Equator' is judged true if we are nearer the other Pole, so it not for philosophers to deny that the Earth has an equator, and we see that the Equator is not a concept or relation or function, so it must be classified as an object. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of linguistic philosophy in action (and so much the worse for that, I would say). A useful label here, I suggest (unoriginally, I think), is that we should label such an item a 'semantic object', rather than a real object in our ontology. |
| 9872 | Abstract objects need the context principle, since they can't be encountered directly [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise that there is no objection in principle to abstract objects requires acknowledgement that some form of the context principle is correct, since abstract objects can neither be encountered nor presented. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an immensely important idea. I consider myself to be a philosopher of thought rather than a philosopher of language (Dummett's distinction, he being one of the latter). Thought connects to the world, but does it connect to abstracta? |
| 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. |
| 9848 | Content is replaceable if identical, so replaceability can't define identity [Dummett, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl says the only ground for assuming the replaceability of one content by another is their identity; we are therefore not entitled to define their identity as consisting in their replaceability. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is a direct challenge to Frege. Tricky to arbitrate, as it is an issue of conceptual priority. My intuition is with Husserl, but maybe the two are just benignly inerdefinable. |
| 9842 | Frege introduced criteria for identity, but thought defining identity was circular [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In his middle period Frege rated identity indefinable, on the ground that every definition must take the form of an identity-statement. Frege introduced the notion of criterion of identity, which has been widely used by analytical philosophers. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: The objection that attempts to define identity would be circular sounds quite plausible. It sounds right to seek a criterion for type-identity (in shared properties or predicates), but token-identity looks too fundamental to give clear criteria. |
| 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) |
| 3270 | Justifications come to an end when we want them to [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Justifications come to an end when we are content to have them end. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is the correct account, with the vital proviso that where justification comes to an end is usually a social matter. Robinson Crusoe doesn't care whether he 'knows' - he just acts on his beliefs. |
| 9849 | Maybe a concept is 'prior' to another if it can be defined without the second concept [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: One powerful argument for a thesis that one notion is conceptually prior to another is the possibility of defining the first without reference to the second. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: You'd better check whether you can't also define the second without reference to the first before you rank their priority. And maybe 'conceptual priority' is conceptually prior to 'definition' (i.e. definition needs a knowledge of priority). Help! |
| 9850 | An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: One might still have to decide priority between two equally simple (or complex) concepts. I begin to wonder whether 'priority' has any other than an instrumental meaning (according to which direction you wish to travel - is London before Edinburgh?). |
| 9873 | Abstract terms are acceptable as long as we know how they function linguistically [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise abstract terms as perfectly proper items of a vocabulary depends upon allowing that all that is necessary for the lawful introduction of a range of expressions into the language is a coherent account of how they are to function in sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Why can't the 'coherent account' of the sentences include the fact that there must be something there for the terms to refer to? How else are we to eliminate nonsense words which obey good syntactical rules? Cf. Idea 9872. |
| 9993 | There is no reason why abstraction by equivalence classes should be called 'logical' [Dummett, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Dummett uses the term 'logical abstraction' for the construction of the abstract objects as equivalence classes, but it is not clear why we should call this construction 'logical'. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind n 14 | |
| A reaction: This is a good objection, and Tait offers a much better notion of 'logical abstraction' (as involving preconditions for successful inference), in Idea 9981. |
| 9857 | We arrive at the concept 'suicide' by comparing 'Cato killed Cato' with 'Brutus killed Brutus' [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: We arrive at the concept of suicide by considering both occurrences in the sentence 'Cato killed Cato' of the proper name 'Cato' as simultaneously replaceable by another name, say 'Brutus', and so apprehending the pattern common to both sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This is intended to illustrate Frege's 'logical abstraction' technique, as opposed to wicked psychological abstraction. The concept of suicide is the pattern 'x killed x'. This is a crucial example if we are to understand abstraction... |
| 9833 | To abstract from spoons (to get the same number as the forks), the spoons must be indistinguishable too [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To get units by abstraction, units arrived at by abstraction from forks must the identical to that abstracted from spoons, with no trace of individuality. But if spoons can no longer be differentiated from forks, they can't differ from one another either. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Dummett makes the point better than Frege did. Can we 'think of a fork insofar as it is countable, ignoring its other features'? What are we left thinking of? Frege says it must still be the whole fork. 'Nice fork, apart from the colour'. |
| 9836 | Fregean semantics assumes a domain articulated into individual objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean semantics assumes a domain already determinately articulated into individual objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: A more interesting criticism than most of Dummett's other challenges to the Frege/Davidson view. I am beginning to doubt whether the semantics and the ontology can ever be divorced from the psychology, of thought, interests, focus etc. |
| 3268 | If a small brief life is absurd, then so is a long and large one [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: If life is absurd because it only lasts seventy years, wouldn't it be infinitely absurd if it lasted for eternity? And if we are absurd because we are small, would we be any less absurd if we filled the universe? | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Absurd [1971], §1) |
| 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. |
| 18257 | Why should the limit of measurement be points, not intervals? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: By what right do we assume that the limit of measurement is a point, and not an interval? | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
| 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. |