8 ideas
15545 | Armstrong's analysis seeks truthmakers rather than definitions [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I suggest that Armstrong has an unfamiliar notion of analysis, as not primarily a quest for definitions, but as a quest for truth-makers. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'The demand') | |
A reaction: This is not a dichotomy, I think, but a shift of emphasis. A definition will probably refer to truthmakers; a decent account of truthmakers would approximate a definition. |
15546 | Predications aren't true because of what exists, but of how it exists [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Predications seem, for the most part, to be true not because of whether things are, but because of how things are. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'The demand') | |
A reaction: This simple point shows that you get into a tangle if you insist that truthmakers just consist of what exists. Lewis says Armstrong offers states of affairs as truthmakers for predications. |
15548 | Say 'truth is supervenient on being', but construe 'being' broadly [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I want to say that 'truth is supervenient on being', but as an Ostrich about universals I want to construe 'being' broadly. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'Truth') | |
A reaction: [His slogan is borrowed from Bigelow 1988:132-,158-9] This seems much more promising that the more precise and restricted notion of truthmakers, as resting on the existence of particular things. Presentism is the big test case. |
14399 | Presentism says only the present exists, so there is nothing for tensed truths to supervene on [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Presentism says that although there is nothing outside the present, yet there are past-tensed and future-tensed truths that do not supervene on the present, and hence do not supervene on being. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], p.207) | |
A reaction: Since I rather like both presentism and truth supervening on being, this observation comes as rather a devastating blow. I thought philosophy would be quite easy, but it's turning out to be rather tricky. Could tensed truths supervene on the present? |
15543 | How do things combine to make states of affairs? Constituents can repeat, and fail to combine [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To me it is mysterious how a state of affairs is made out of its particular and universal constituents. Different states of affairs may have the very same constituents, and the existence of constituents by no means entails the existence of the states. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'What is there') | |
A reaction: He is rejecting the structure of states of affairs as wholes made of parts. But then mereology was never going to explain the structure of the world. |
12191 | Counterfactuals are true if logical or natural laws imply the consequence [Goodman, by McFetridge] |
Full Idea: Goodman's central idea was: 'If that match had been scratched, it would have lighted' is true if there are suitable truths from which, with the antecedent, the consequent can be inferred by means of a logical, or more typically natural, law. | |
From: report of Nelson Goodman (The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals [1947]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §4 | |
A reaction: Goodman then discusses the problem of identifying the natural laws, and identifying the suitable truths. I'm inclined to think counterfactuals are vaguer than that; they are plausible if coherent reasons can be offered for the inference. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |