32 ideas
| 16123 | 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. |
| 16125 | 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? |
| 16124 | 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. |
| 16405 | To understand a name (unlike a description) picking the thing out is sufficient? [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If we ask 'what must you know to understand a name?', the naïve answer is that one must know who or what it names - nothing more. (But no one would give this answer about what is needed to understand a definite description). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is naive because names can be full of meaning ('the Empress'), or description and reference together ('there's the man who robbed me') and so on. It's a nice starting point though. A number can serve as a name. |
| 17867 | If a concept is not compact, it will not be presentable to finite minds [Almog] |
| Full Idea: If the notion of 'logically following' in your language is not compact, it will not be locally presentable to finite minds. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 02) |
| 17877 | The number series is primitive, not the result of some set theoretic axioms [Almog] |
| Full Idea: On Skolem's account, to 'get' the natural numbers - that primal structure - do not 'look for it' as the satisfier of some abstract (set-theoretic) axiomatic essence; start with that primitive structure. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 12) | |
| A reaction: [Skolem 1922 and 1923] Almog says the numbers are just 0,1,2,3,4..., and not some underlying axioms. That makes it sound as if they have nothing in common, and that the successor relation is a coincidence. |
| 16407 | Possible worlds allow separating all the properties, without hitting a bare particular [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The possible worlds framework suggests a way to express the idea that a particular is conceptually separable from its properties without relying on the rejected picture of a bare particular. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 5) | |
| A reaction: As I read him, Stalnaker's proposal just comes down to replacing each property in turn with a different one. 'Strip away' red by making it green. It being green in w1 doesn't throw extra light. Can it be a bare particular in w37? |
| 17871 | Fregean meanings are analogous to conceptual essence, defining a kind [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Ever since Frege, semantic definitionalists have posited a meaning ('sinn') for a name; the meaning/sinn is their semantic analog to the conceptual essence, as ontologically defining of the kind. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 07) |
| 17866 | Essential definition aims at existence conditions and structural truths [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist encapsulating formula is meant to be existence-exhaustive (an attribute the satisfaction of which is logically necessary and sufficient to be the thing) and truth-exhaustive (promising all the structural truths). | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If he thinks essentialism means that one short phrase can achieve all this, then it is not surprising that Almog renounces his former essentialism in this essay. He may, however, have misunderstood. He should reread Aristotle. |
| 17868 | Surface accounts aren't exhaustive as they always allow unintended twin cases [Almog] |
| Full Idea: A surface-functional characterisation is not exhaustive. It allows unintended twins, alien intruders with different structures - water lookalikes that are not H2O and lookalike infinite structures that are not the natural numbers. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 03) | |
| A reaction: He rests this on the claim in mathematical logic that fully expressive systems are always non-categorical (having unintended twins). Set theory is not fully categorical, but Peano Arithmetic is. Almog's main anti-essentialist argument. |
| 17872 | Definitionalists rely on snapshot-concepts, instead of on the real processes [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The definitionalist errs by abstracting away from differences cosmic processes, freezing real, dynamic processes in snapshot-concepts. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 08) | |
| A reaction: You could hardly do science at all if you didn't 'abstract away from the differences in cosmic processes'. We can't write about sea-waves, because they all differ slightly? 'Electron' is a snapshot concept. |
| 17870 | Alien 'tigers' can't be tigers if they are not related to our tigers [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Animals roaming jungles on some planet at the other end of the galaxy with the tiger-look and the tiger genetic make-up but with a disjoint evolutionary history are not the same species as the earthly tigers. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: I disagree. If two independent cultures build boats, they are both boats. If we manufacture a tiger which can breed with other tigers, we've made a tiger. His 'tigers' would scream for explanation, precisely because they are tigers. If not, no puzzle. |
| 17869 | Kripke and Putnam offer an intermediary between real and nominal essences [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam offer us enhanced essences, still formulable in one short sentence and locally graspable. They offer between Locke's mind-boggling definitive real essence and his mind-friendly but not definitive nominal essence. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 04) | |
| A reaction: The solution is to add a 'deep structure' which serves both ends. |
| 17876 | Individual essences are just cobbled together classificatory predicates [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The key for the essentialist is classificatory predication. It is only a subsequent extension of this prime idea that leads us to cobble together enough such essential predications to make an individuative essential property. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 11) | |
| A reaction: So the essence is just a cross-reference of all the ways we can think of to classify it? I don't think so. Which are the essential classifications? |
| 16397 | If it might be true, it might be true in particular ways, and possible worlds describe such ways [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: A clarifying assumption is that if something might be true, then it might be true in some particular way. …Possible worlds begin from this, and the assumption that what might be true can be described as how a possibility might be realised. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is a leading practitioner giving his best shot at explaining the rationale of the possible worlds approach, addressed to many sceptics. Most sceptics, I think, don't understand the qualifications the practitioners apply to their game. |
| 16399 | Possible worlds are ontologically neutral, but a commitment to possibilities remains [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: I argue for the metaphysical neutrality of the possible worlds framework, but I do not suggest that its use is free of ontological commitment to possibilities (ways things might be, counterfactual situations, possible states of worlds). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
| A reaction: Glad to hear this, as I have always been puzzled at possible aspirations to eliminate modality (such as possibility) by introducing 'possible' worlds. Commitment to possibilities I take to be basic and unavoidable. |
| 16398 | Possible worlds allow discussion of modality without controversial modal auxiliaries [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The main benefit of the possible worlds move is to permit one to paraphrase modal claims in an extensional language that has quantifiers, but no modal auxiliaries, so the semantic stucture of modal discourse can be discussed without the controversies. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
| A reaction: The strategy introduces the controversy of possible worlds instead, but since they just boil down to collections of objects with properties, classical logic can reign. Possible worlds are one strategy alongside many others. |
| 16396 | Kripke's possible worlds are methodological, not metaphysical [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The possible worlds framework that Kripke introduces should be understood not as a metaphysical theory, but as a methodological framework. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], Intro) | |
| A reaction: That's certainly how I see possible worlds. I lose no sleep over whether they exist. I just take a set of possible worlds to be like cells in a spreadsheet, or records in a database. |
| 16408 | Rigid designation seems to presuppose that differing worlds contain the same individuals [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: A rigid designator is a designator that denotes the same individual in all possible worlds; doesn't this presuppose that the same individuals can be found in differing possible worlds? | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Stalnaker's claim that Kripke already has a metaphysics in place when he starts on his semantics and his theory of reference. Kripke needs a global domain, not a variable domain. Possibilities suggest variable domains to me. |
| 5961 | 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? |
| 17873 | Water must be related to water, just as tigers must be related to tigers [Almog] |
| Full Idea: It is a blindspot to say that to be a tiger one must come from tigers, but to be water one needn't come from water. ...The error lies in not appreciating that to be water one still must come from somewhere in the cosmos, indeed, from hydrogen and oxygen. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 09) | |
| A reaction: A unified picture is indeed desirable, but a better solution is to say that the essence of a tiger is in its structure, not in its origins. There are many ways to produce an artefact. There could be many ways to produce a tiger. |
| 16406 | If you don't know what you say you can't mean it; what people say usually fits what they mean [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: If you don't know what you are saying then you don't mean what you say, and also speakers generally mean what they say (in that what they say coincides with what they mean). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
| A reaction: Both these thoughts seem completely acceptable and correct, but rely on something called 'meaning' that is distinct from saying. I would express this in terms of propositions, which I take to be mental events. |
| 16404 | In the use of a name, many individuals are causally involved, but they aren't all the referent [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The causal theory of reference is criticised for vagueness. Causal connections are ubiquitous, and there are obviously many individuals that are causally implicated in the speaker's use of a name, but they aren't all plausible candidates for the referent. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very good objection. Among all the causal links back to some baptised object, we have to pick out the referential link, which needs a criterion. |
| 16403 | 'Descriptive' semantics gives a system for a language; 'foundational' semantics give underlying facts [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: 'Descriptive' semantics gives a semantics for the language without saying how practice explains why the semantics is right; …'foundational' semantics concerns the facts that give expressions their semantic values. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Sounds parallel to the syntax/semantics distinction, or proof-theoretical and semantic validity. Or the sense/reference distinction! Or object language/metalanguage. Shall I go on? |
| 16401 | To understand an utterance, you must understand what the world would be like if it is true [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: To understand what is said in an utterance of 'The first dog born at sea was a basset hound', one needs to know what the world would have been like in order for what was said in that utterance to be true. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 3) | |
| A reaction: Put like that, the idea is undeniable. Understanding involves truth conditions. Does mean involve the understanding of the meaning. What do you understand when you understand a sentence? Just facts about dogs? Or something in the sentence? |
| 283 | 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. |
| 282 | 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. |
| 281 | 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) |
| 22559 | 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. |
| 17864 | Defining an essence comes no where near giving a thing's nature [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The natures of things are neither exhausted nor even partially given by 'defining essences'. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A better criticism of essentialism. 'Natures' is a much vaguer word than 'essences', however, because the latter refers to what is stable and important, whereas natures could include any aspect. Being ticklish is in my nature, but not in my essence. |
| 17863 | Essences promise to reveal reality, but actually drive us away from it [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist line (one I trace to Aristotle, Descartes and Kripke) is driving us away from, not closer to, the real nature of things. It promised a sort of Hubble telescope - essences - able to reveal the deep structure of reality. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I suspect this is tilting at a straw man. No one thinks we should hunt for essences instead of doing normal science. 'Essence' just labels what you've got when you succeed. |
| 279 | 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) |