Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Isagoge ('Introduction')', 'Morals and Modals' and 'talk'

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4 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 1. Universals

15034	Are genera and species real or conceptual? bodies or incorporeal? in sensibles or separate from them? [Porphyry]
	Full Idea: I shall beg off talking of a) whether genera and species are real or situated in bare thoughts alone, b) whether as real they are bodies or incorporeals, and c) whether they are separated or in sensibles and have their reality in connection with them.
	From: Porphyry (Isagoge ('Introduction') [c.295], (2))
	A reaction: This passage, picking up on Aristotle, seems to be the original source that grew into the medievel debate about universals. It seems to rather neatly lay out the agenda for the universals debate which is still with us.

10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity

14629	If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn]
	Full Idea: If we ask why A must be the case, and A is then proved from B, that explains it if B must be so. If the eventual source cites some truth F, then if F just is so, there is strong pressure to feel that the original necessity has not been explained.
	From: Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], 1)
	A reaction: [compressed] Ross Cameron wrote a reply to this which I like. I'm fishing for the idea that essence is the source of necessity (as Kit Fine says), but that essence itself is not necessary (as only I say, apparently!).

14529	If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
	Full Idea: Blackburn asks of what theorists propose as underlying the necessity of a proposition, the question whether they themselves are conceived as obtaining of necessity or merely contingently.
	From: report of Simon Blackburn (Morals and Modals [1987], p.120-1) by Bob Hale/ Aviv Hoffmann - Introduction to 'Modality' 1
	A reaction: I've seen a reply to this somewhere: I think the thought was that a necessity wouldn't be any less necessary if it had a contingent source, any more than the father of a world champion boxer has to be a world champion boxer.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 2. Phenomenalism

18988	Behind the bare phenomenal facts there is nothing [Wright,Ch]
	Full Idea: Behind the bare phenomenal facts, as my tough-minded old friend Chauncey Wright, the great Harvard empiricist of my youth, used to say, there is nothing.
	From: Chauncey Wright (talk [1870]), quoted by William James - Pragmatism - eight lectures Lec 7
	A reaction: This is the best slogan for strong phenomenalism ever coined! It also seems to fit David Lewis's approach to philosophy, as the pure study of the mosaic of experiences.