Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Essay on Probability', 'The Statesman' and 'De Re and De Dicto'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 2. Analysis by Division
Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato]
     Full Idea: The rule is that when one perceives first the community between the members of a group of many things, one should not desist until one sees in it all those differences that are located in classes.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285b)
     A reaction: He goes on to recommend the opposite as well - see community even when there appears to be nothing but differences. I take this to be analysis, just as much as modern linguistic approaches are. Analyse the world, not language.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition
To reveal a nature, divide down, and strip away what it has in common with other things [Plato]
     Full Idea: Let's take the kind posited and cut it in two, .then follow the righthand part of what we've cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything he has in common with other things, then display his peculiar nature.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 264e)
     A reaction: This seems to be close to Aristotle's account of definition, when he is trying to get at what-it-is-to-be some thing. But if you strip away everything the definiendum has in common with other things, will anything remain?
No one wants to define 'weaving' just for the sake of weaving [Plato]
     Full Idea: I don't suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of 'weaving' for the sake of weaving itself.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 285d)
     A reaction: The point seems to be that the definition brings out the connections between weaving and other activities and objects, thus enlarging our understanding.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names
Maybe proper names involve essentialism [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: Perhaps the notion of a proper name itself involves essentialism.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.43)
     A reaction: This is just before Kripke's announcement of 'rigid designation', which seems to have relaunched modern essentialism. The thought is that you can't name something, if you don't have a stable notion of what is (and isn't) being named.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / g. Real numbers
Could I name all of the real numbers in one fell swoop? Call them all 'Charley'? [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: Can't I name all the real numbers in the interval (0,1) at once? Couldn't I name them all 'Charley', for example?
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.40)
     A reaction: Plantinga is nervous about such a sweeping move, but can't think of an objection. This addresses a big problem, I think - that you are supposed to accept the real numbers when we cannot possibly name them all.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
Surely self-identity is essential to Socrates? [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: If anything is essential to Socrates, surely self-identity is.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.37)
     A reaction: This is the modern move of Plantinga and Adams, to make 'is identical with Socrates' the one property which assures the identity of Socrates (his 'haecceity'). My view is that self-identity is not a property. Plantinga wonders about that on p.44.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 9. Essence and Properties
An object has a property essentially if it couldn't conceivably have lacked it [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: An object has a property essentially just in case it couldn't conceivably have lacked that property.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.35)
     A reaction: Making it depend on what we can conceive seems a bit dubious, for someone committed to real essences. The key issue is how narrowly or broadly you interpret the word 'property'. The word 'object' needs a bit of thought, too!
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality
Can we find an appropriate 'de dicto' paraphrase for any 'de re' proposition? [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: To explain the 'de re' via the 'de dicto' is to provide a rule enabling us to find, for each de re proposition, an equivalent de dicto proposition.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.41)
     A reaction: Many 'de dicto' paraphrases will change the modality of a 'de re' statement, so the challenge is to find the right equivalent version. Plantinga takes up this challenge. The 'de dicto' statement says the object has the property, and must have it.
Expressing modality about a statement is 'de dicto'; expressing it of property-possession is 'de re' [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: Some statements predicate modality of another statement (modality 'de dicto'); but others predicate of an object the necessary or essential possession of a property; these latter express modality 'de re'.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.26)
     A reaction: The distinction seems to originate in Aquinas, concerning whether God knows the future (or, how he knows the future). 'De dicto' is straightforward, but possibly the result of convention. 'De re' is controversial, and implies deep metaphysics.
'De dicto' true and 'de re' false is possible, and so is 'de dicto' false and 'de re' true [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: Aquinas says if a 'de dicto' statement is true, the 'de re' version may be false. The opposite also applies: 'What I am thinking of [17] is essentially prime' is true, but 'The proposition "what I am thinking of is prime" is necessarily true' is false.
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.27)
     A reaction: In his examples the first is 'de re' (about the number), and the second is 'de dicto' (about that proposition).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga]
     Full Idea: Is there a difference between what Socrates could have been, and what he could have become?
     From: Alvin Plantinga (De Re and De Dicto [1969], p.44)
     A reaction: That is, I take it, 1) how different might he have been in the past, given how he is now?, and 2) how different might he have been in the past, and now, if he had permanently diverged from how he is now? 1) has tight constraints on it.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 3. Innate Knowledge / b. Recollection doctrine
The soul gets its goodness from god, and its evil from previous existence. [Plato]
     Full Idea: From its composer the soul possesses all beautiful things, but from its former condition, everything that proves to be harsh and unjust in heaven.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 273b)
     A reaction: A neat move to explain the origins of evil (or rather, to shift the problem of evil to a long long way from here). This view presumably traces back to the views of Empedocles on good and evil. Can the soul acquire evil in its current existence?
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony
The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking]
     Full Idea: The credibility of a witness is in part a function of the story being reported. When the story claims to have infinite value, the temptation to lie for personal benefit is asymptotically infinite.
     From: report of Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820], Ch.XI) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8
     A reaction: Laplace seems to especially have reports of miracles in mind. This observation certainly dashes any dreams one might have of producing a statistical measure of the reliability of testimony.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace]
     Full Idea: An intelligence knowing at an instant the whole universe could know the movement of the largest bodies and atoms in one formula, provided his intellect were powerful enough to subject all data to analysis. Past and future would be present to his eyes.
     From: Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820]), quoted by Mark Thornton - Do we have free will? p.70
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
The question of whether or not to persuade comes before the science of persuasion [Plato]
     Full Idea: The science of whether one must persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 304c)
     A reaction: Plato probably thinks that reason has to be top of the pyramid, but there is always the Nietzschean/romantic question of why we should place such a value on what is rational.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty
Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato]
     Full Idea: The bodiless things, being the most beautiful and the greatest, are only shown with clarity by speech and nothing else.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 286a)
     A reaction: Unfortunately this will be true of warped and ugly ideas as well.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean
The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is by preserving the mean that arts produce everything that is good and beautiful.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 284b)
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / a. Nature of democracy
Democracy is the worst of good constitutions, but the best of bad constitutions [Plato, by Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Plato judged that when the constitution is decent, democracy is the worst of them, but when they are bad it is the best.
     From: report of Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 302e) by Aristotle - Politics 1289b07
     A reaction: Aristotle denies that a good oligarchy is superior. What of technocracy? The challenge is to set up institutions which ensure the health of the democracy. The big modern problem is populists who lie.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b)