42 ideas
14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
Full Idea: Metaphysical enquiry can survive if we are willing to live with highly tentative conclusions. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], Intro) | |
A reaction: Nice. Nothing alienates the rather literal scientific sort of mind quicker that bold, dogmatic and even arrogant assertions about metaphysics. But to entirely close down metaphysical speculation for that reason is absurd. |
14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism does not respect a deep difference between thing-talk and process-talk, because it tends to place events and things in the same ontological category. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.1) | |
A reaction: He then quotes Broad, Idea 14759. This idea is the best reason yet for being sympathetic to the four-dimensionalist view, because I think processes really must have a central place in any decent ontology. |
14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
Full Idea: A proper ontology should invoke only categorical, or occurrent, properties and relations. Categorical properties involve what objects are actually like, whereas hypothetical properties 'point beyond' their instances. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: This spectacularly leaves out powers and dispositions, which are actual properties which 'point beyond' their instances! This is the nub of the powers debate, and the most interesting topic in modern metaphysics. |
16435 | Plantinga proposes necessary existent essences as surrogates for the nonexistent things [Plantinga, by Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Plantinga proposes surrogates for nonexistent things - individual essences that are themselves necessary existents and that correspond one-to-one with all the 'things' that might exist. | |
From: report of Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 1 | |
A reaction: There are an awful lot of competing concepts of essence flying around these days. This one seems to require some abstract 'third realm' (or worse) in which these essences can exist, awaiting the arrival of thinkers. Not for me. |
14655 | The 'identity criteria' of a name are a group of essential and established facts [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: What we might call 'identity criteria' associated with a name such as 'Aristotle' are what the users of the name regard as essential and established facts about him. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
A reaction: The problem here is that identifying something is superficial, whereas essences run deep. Plantinga is, in fact, talking about Lockean 'nominal essence' (and seems unaware of the fact, and never mentions the Lockean real/nominal distinction). |
14658 | 'Being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterise Socrates, so they are among his properties [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Surely it is true of Socrates that he is Socrates and he is identical with Socrates. If these are true of him, then 'being Socrates' and 'being identical with Socrates' characterize him; they are among his properties or attributes. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: As far as I can see (if you insist on accepting self-identity as meaningful) the most you get here is that these are predicates that can attach to Socrates. If you identify predicates with properties you are in deep metaphysical trouble. |
14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
Full Idea: Followers of the view that every entity is associated with some sortal term that answers the question 'what kind of thing is this?', and determines its persistence conditions, must answer the question what kinds of entity there are. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
A reaction: [He explicitly refers to David Wiggins here] In other words Wiggins has got it the wrong way round, which is my own view of his theory. Sortal terms don't grow on the trees in the Garden of Eden, available for applications. |
14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
Full Idea: This powerful puzzle (known to the Stoics, introduced by Geach, popularised by Wiggins) has a cat Tibbles and a proper part Tib, which is all of Tibbles except the tail. If Tibbles loses her tail, the two were distinct, but they now coincide. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Compare a few people leave a football ground, and what was a large part of the crowd becomes the whole of the crowd. Which suggests that there is no problem if cats are like crowds. But we don't like that view of cats. |
14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
Full Idea: Presumably it is claimed that the artist 'created' the statue because the object created is essentially a statue, and thus cannot be identified with the unformed lump of clay with which the artist began. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001]) | |
A reaction: This is based on Burke's views. This is sortal essentialism, rather than my own view of essence as an inner explanatory mechanism or form. If an old abstract sculpture was no longer recognised as a statue, would it necessarily still be a statue? |
14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
Full Idea: There are numerous cases in which there is pressure to admit coincident entities. The best way of coming to grips with this, I think, invokes the stage view. ...In the worm theory, coincident objects are no more mysterious than overlapping roads. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: At this point I get nervous if in order to 'get to grips' with a phenomenon which is hard to articulate but obvious to common sense, we have to invoke a rather startling metaphysics that completely upends the common sense we started with. |
14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
Full Idea: 'Composition as identity' says that when a thing, x, is composed of some other objects, the ys, then this is a kind of identity between the x and the ys. The industrial-strength version says object x just is the ys. Lewis says it is just an analogy. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
A reaction: I am averse to such a doctrine, as is Leibniz, with his insistence that an aggregate is not a unity. There has to be some sort of principle that bestows oneness on a many. I take this to be structural, and is an elucidation of hylomorphism. |
14656 | Does Socrates have essential properties, plus a unique essence (or 'haecceity') which entails them? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Does Socrates have, in addition to his essential properties, an 'essence' or 'haecceity' - a property essential to him that entails each of his essential properties and that nothing distinct from him has in the world? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: Plantinga says yes, and offers 'Socrateity' (borrowed from Boethius) as his candidate. This is a very odd use of the word 'essence'. I take an essence to be a complex set of fundamental properties. I am also puzzled by his use of the word 'entails'. |
14653 | X is essentially P if it is P in every world, or in every X-world, or in the actual world (and not ¬P elsewhere) [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Socrates has P essentially if he has P in every world, or has it in every world in which he exists, or - most plausible of all - has P in the actual world and has its complement [non-P] in no world. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
A reaction: These strike me as mere necessary properties, which are not the same thing at all. Essences give rise to the other properties, but Plantinga offers nothing to do the job (and especially not 'Socrateity'!). Essences must explain, say I! |
14660 | If a property is ever essential, can it only ever be an essential property? [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Is it the case that any property had essentially by anything is had essentially by everything that has it? | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
A reaction: Plantinga says it is not true, but the only example he can give is Socrates having the property of 'being Socrates or Greek'. I take it to be universally false. There are not two types of property here. Properties sometimes play an essential role. |
14661 | Essences are instantiated, and are what entails a thing's properties and lack of properties [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: E is an essence if and only if (a) 'has E essentially' is instantiated in some world or other, and (b) for any world W and property P, E entails 'has P in W' or 'does not have P in W'. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], IV) | |
A reaction: 'Entail' strikes me as a very odd word when you are talking about the structure of the physical world (or are we??). Why would a unique self-identity (his candidate for essence) do the necessary entailing? |
14654 | Properties are 'trivially essential' if they are instantiated by every object in every possible world [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Let us call properties that enjoy the distinction of being instantiated by every object in every possible world 'trivially essential properties'. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], I) | |
A reaction: These would appear to be trivially 'necessary' rather than 'essential'. This continual need for the qualifier 'trivial' shows that they are not talking about proper essences. |
14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
Full Idea: Mereological essentialism says that an object's parts are necessary for its existence. ....It is literally never correct to say that an thing survives a change in its parts. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.7) | |
A reaction: Chisholm is well known for proposing this view. Sider adds a possible toughening clause, that the parts are also sufficient for the object's existence. This is a philosophers' notion of identity, not the normal English language concept. |
14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
Full Idea: Three-dimensionalists say that things have no 'temporal parts', that they 'endure', and that they are wholly present at every moment of their careers. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) | |
A reaction: An obvious problem case for being wholly present would be the building and fitting of a large ship, where it might seem to be present before it was wholly present. |
14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
Full Idea: Some might even regard inconsistency with time travel as an advantage of three-dimensionalism, as a vindication of a prior belief that time travel is impossible! I see no merit in these claims. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 7.2) | |
A reaction: I do! Sider cheerfully says that there are good reasons to believe that time travel is possible, and then use this possibility to support his four-dimensional view, but I personally doubt his assumption. The evidence for time travel is flimsy and obscure. |
14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
Full Idea: Four-dimensionalists say that things have 'temporal parts', that they 'perdure', and that they are spread out over time. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) |
14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
Full Idea: For four-dimensionalists intrinsic change is difference between successive temporal parts. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: This attempts a reply to the commonest criticism of four-dimensionalism - that you can't explain change if you don't have one enduring thing which undergoes the change. I get stuck of the question 'how big (temporally) is a part?'. |
14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism may be formulated as the claim that, necessarily, each spatiotemporal object has a temporal part at every moment at which it exists. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: If there were tiny quantum gaps between temporal parts, that would presumably ruin the story. On this view an object has to be a 'worm', to be the thing which has the parts. |
14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
Full Idea: My four-dimensionalism implies the existence of temporal parts, but not that those parts are more fundamental, nor that the object is 'constructed' from its parts, nor that identity over time is reducible to parts. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: That's a rather negative account of temporal parts, which makes you ask what their positive role could be. Do they contribute anything to our understanding of a temporally extended object? |
14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
Full Idea: Unless otherwise noted, I will think of temporal parts as being instantaneous. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: This comes up against all the Augustinian worries about the intrinsic nature of time. How many temporal parts does a typical object possess? Is a third temporal part always to be found between any two of them? How do they 'connect'? |
14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
Full Idea: How can an instantaneous stage believe anything? Beliefs take time. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.8) | |
A reaction: Sider's four-dimensionalist answer is that the belief is embodied in the earlier counterparts, making belief a 'highly relational property'. I am not impressed by this answer to the very nice problem which he has raised. It's a problem for 3D, too. |
14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
Full Idea: The sensible four-dimensionalist will claim that current temporal parts are caused to exist by previous temporal parts. The laws that govern this process are none other than the familiar laws of motion. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.3) | |
A reaction: I keep struggling with the instantaneous natural of temporal parts, and now I find that they have to do the job of being causal relata. When do they do their job? They've gone home before they've finished clocking in. Continuance requires motion? |
14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
Full Idea: The Ship of Theseus seems to be a case of 'asymmetric' fission (where one resultant entity has a stronger claim). Many see the continuously rebuilt ship as the stronger candidate, but each candidate, without the other, would be the original ship. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) |
14657 | Does 'being identical with Socrates' name a property? I can think of no objections to it [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Is there any reason to suppose that 'being identical with Socrates' names a property? Well, is there any reason to suppose that it does not? I cannot think of any, nor have I heard any that are at all impressive. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], II) | |
A reaction: Is there any reason to think that a planet somewhere is entirely under the control of white mice? Extraordinary. No wonder Plantinga believes in God and the Ontological Argument, as well as the existence of 'Socrateity' etc. |
14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
Full Idea: If someone is in pain at t1 and not at t2, we might restrict Leibniz's Law so as not to apply to 'timebound' properties, ..but this is deeply unsatisfying, ...and forfeits one's claim to be discussing identity. The demands of identity are high. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
A reaction: [on Myro 1986] Sider's response is unsatisfying. It means a thing loses its identity (with itself?) if it has even a tiny fluctuating in its properties. Quantum changes then destroy all notions of identity. English-speakers don't use 'identity' like that. |
14652 | 'De re' modality is as clear as 'de dicto' modality, because they are logically equivalent [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The idea of modality 'de re' is no more (although no less) obscure that the idea of modality 'de dicto'; for I think we can see that any statement of the former type is logically equivalent to some statement of the latter. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], Intro) | |
A reaction: If two things are logically equivalent, that doesn't ensure that they are equally clear! Personally I am on the side of de re modality. |
14659 | We can imagine being beetles or alligators, so it is possible we might have such bodies [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: We easily understand Kafka's story about the man who wakes up to discover that he now has the body of a beetle; and in fact the state of affairs depicted is entirely possible. I can imagine being an alligator, so Socrates could have had an alligator body. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (World and Essence [1970], III) | |
A reaction: This really is going the whole hog with accepting whatever is conceivable as being possible. I take this to be shocking nonsense, and it greatly reduces Plantinga in my esteem, despite his displays of intelligence and erudition. |
14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
Full Idea: A counterpart relation is a similarity relation. Since there are different dimensions of similarity, there are different counterpart relations. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.4) |
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. |
14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
Full Idea: There is an alternative to the Russellian 'at-at' theory of motion, according to which dynamical quantities are intrinsic to times. Whether and how an object is moving at a time is a fact about what that object is like then. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I think I find this quite appealing, because there is too much of a tendency to think of objects as passive and inert, with laws, forces, motions etc. imposed from the outside. But nature is active and dynamic. However, motion can't be wholly intrinsic. |
14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
Full Idea: Unlike time, space has three dimensions and lacks a distinguishing direction; unlike space, time seems to be specially connected with causation. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.5) | |
A reaction: These strike me as nice reasons to doubt (what I already prima facie doubt) that there is a single manifold that is 'space-time', for all that twentieth century physics tells us it is so. A century is a mere click of a clock where truth is concerned. |
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. |
14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
Full Idea: Intermediate between the polar opposites of presentism and eternalism is the view (defended by Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997) that the past is real but the future is not. Reality consists of a growing four-dimensional manifold, the 'growing block universe'. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: The obvious and plausible basis for this is that statements about the past seem to have truthmakers, but statements about the future lack them. Does a truth always require ontological commitment? Death is cessation of existence. |
14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
Full Idea: The presentist must deny the truth of everyday claims that concern multiple times taken together. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: This rests on the extent to which every truth has an ontological commitment. You can deny the literal existence of multiple times without denying such truths. |
14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
Full Idea: The Presentist acknowledges that no atemporal description of the case can be given; a vantage point must be chosen for any description. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
A reaction: This is because Presentists are committed to tense, which have to be either explicit or implicit in any sentence. But what of famously 'timeless' truths such as '2 and 2 are 4'? |
14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
Full Idea: The temporal reductionist claims that tensed locutions are indexical - 'present' being the time of utterance etc. This generalises to say that nothing corresponding to tense need be admitted as a fundamental feature of the world. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: [He particular cites Mellor for this view] Highly implausible. I very much doubt whether it is possible to explain the indexicality of a word like 'now' without referring to tenses. Does time only exist when sentences and thoughts occur? |
14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
Full Idea: The B-series has two components: eternalism - the thesis that all future entities are real - and the thesis of reducibility of tense. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.2) |
14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
Full Idea: The B-theoretic description of the world is completely adequate except that it leaves out information about which time is present. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.6) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty basic deficiency. How could there a time which lacked a present moment? The present is when things happen. How would it qualify as time at all if it lacked past, present and future? |