10 ideas
| 18935 | Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: A semantic theory of names should deliver a specification of the conditions under which a name names an individual, and hence a specification of the conditions under which a name is empty. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Naming can be private, like naming my car 'Bertrand', but never tell anyone. I like Plato's remark that names are 'tools'. Do we specify conditions for successful spanner-usage? The first step must be individuation, preparatory to naming. |
| 18945 | Millians say a name just means its object [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: The Millian view of direct reference says that the meaning of a name is the object named. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 4) | |
| A reaction: Any theory that says meaning somehow is features of the physical world strikes me as totally misguided. Napoleon is a man, so he can't be part of a sentence. He delegates that job to words (such as 'Napoleon'). |
| 18934 | Sentences with empty names can be understood, be co-referential, and even be true [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Some empty names sentences can be understood, so appear to be meaningful ('Pegasus was sired by Poseidon'), ...some appear to be co-referential ('Santa Claus'/'Father Christmas'), and some appear to be straightforwardly true ('Pegasus doesn't exist'). | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Hang on to this, when the logicians arrive and start telling you that your talk of empty names is vacuous, because there is no object in the 'domain' to which a predicate can be attached. Meaning, reference and truth are the issues around empty names. |
| 18938 | Frege's compositional account of truth-vaues makes 'Pegasus doesn't exist' neither true nor false [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: In Frege's account sentences such as 'Pegasus does not exist' will be neither true nor false, since the truth-value of a sentence is its referent, and the referent of a complex expression is determined by the referent of its parts. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: We can keep the idea of 'sense', which is very useful for dealing with empty names, but tweak his account of truth-values to evade this problem. I'm thinking that meaning is compositional, but truth-value isn't. |
| 18947 | Definites descriptions don't solve the empty names problem, because the properties may not exist [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: If it were possible for a definite description to be empty - not in the sense of there being no object that satisfies it, but of there being no set of properties it refers to - the problem of empty names would not have been solved. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 5) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer is thinking of properties like 'is a unicorn', which are clearly just as vulnerable to being empty as 'the unicorn' was. It seems unlikely that 'horse', 'white' and 'horn' would be empty. |
| 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. |
| 22974 | Presentists lack the materials for a realist view of change [Price,H] |
| Full Idea: The presentist view seems to have lost the materials for a realist view of passage, change or temporal transition. | |
| From: Huw Price (The Flow of Time [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is a nice point. How can a presentist talk of change if the only component that exists is the present time slice? Price says change can only be a kind of fiction for the presentist. Change in existence and in properties are distinct concepts. |
| 22973 | The present moment, time's direction, and time's dynamic quality seem to be objective facts [Price,H] |
| Full Idea: The flow of time seems to be an objective feature of reality because of 1) the present moment can be objectively distinguished, 2) time has an objective direction, of earlier and later, and 3) there is something objectively dynamic about time. | |
| From: Huw Price (The Flow of Time [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Price sets out to undermine all three of these claims, in implicit defence of a psychological view. I disagree with him. |
| 22975 | We must explain either the existence of a time direction, or our psychological sense of it [Price,H] |
| Full Idea: If the world comes equipped with a time orientation, where does it come from? If it doesn't, what explains our psychological feeling of a direction for time? | |
| From: Huw Price (The Flow of Time [2011], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: The chances of 'explaining' either one look slim to me. That is, the fact would explain our experience, but the experience without the fact looks ridiculous, and I cannot conceive of any time-free entity which could explain the fact. |