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All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Objects and Persons' and 'A Future for Presentism'

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44 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Ontology is not empirical, but ontologists do make discoveries; empirical investigation won't discover that holes exist; we see that two things are the same colour, but a philosopher must resolve whether one universal is present in both.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], Pref)
     A reaction: This is one of the best, simplest and clearest statements I have encountered of the autonomy of philosophy. One may, of course, respond by saying 'who cares?', but then who cares about quarks, or the economy of the Spanish Empire?
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Mackie (1983) dismisses the Principle of Sufficient Reason quickly, arguing that it is self-refuting: there is no sufficient reason to accept it. However, a principle is not invalidated by not applying to itself; it can be a powerful heuristic tool.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VI)
     A reaction: If God was entirely rational, and created everything, that would be a sufficient reason to accept the principle. You would never, though, get to the reason why God was entirely rational. Something will always elude the principle.
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne]
     Full Idea: The problem with the redundancy theory of truth is that it conflates the metalinguistic notion of bivalence with a theorem of the object language, namely the law of excluded middle.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr3)
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / a. Nature of events
Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks]
     Full Idea: That events endure is difficult to reconcile with the claim that, say, the American Civil War existed; for such an event seems never to have been 'wholly present' at any single time.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §3 n14)
     A reaction: A nice problem example for those who, like Kim, want their ontology to include events. Personally I am happy to allow some vagueness here. The Civil War only became an 'event' on the day it finished. An event's time need not be an instant.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Some would say that annihilating grains of stone from the statue of David (playing the 'Sorites Game') could never make its identity vague, because metaphysical vagueness is simply unintelligible.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.II)
     A reaction: He cites Russell, Dummett and Lewis in support. But Russell is a logical atomist, and Lewis says identity is composition. It strikes me as obvious that identity can be vague; the alternative is the absurdities of the Sorites paradox.
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne]
     Full Idea: If there are any genuine relations at all between spatio-temporal objects, then they are all either spatio-temporal or causal.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4)
     A reaction: This sounds too easy, but I have wracked my brains for counterexamples and failed to find any. How about qualitative relations?
It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne]
     Full Idea: It is widely held, and I think correctly so, that a necessary condition for the existence of relations is that both of the relata exist.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4)
     A reaction: This is either trivial or false. Relations in the actual world self-evidently relate components of it. But I seem able to revere Sherlock Holmes, and speculate about relations between possible entities.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 4. Intrinsic Properties
Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Intrinsic properties are, by and large, those properties that an object can exemplify even if that object and its parts (if any) are the only objects that exist.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.I)
     A reaction: This leads to all sorts of properties that seemed intrinsic turning out to be relational. In what sense would a single object have mass, or impenetrability?
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks]
     Full Idea: I argue against the existence of most of the objects alleged to exist by what we might call 'folk ontology'.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1)
     A reaction: This is the programme for Merricks's heroic book, denying (quite plausibly) the need for large objects in our ontology. It seems that ontology must multiply its entities prodigiously, or else be austere in the extreme. Is there no middle way?
Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Some - such as those who endorse unrestricted composition or those who believe in a kind of entity called 'a mass' - say that 'the water in the swimming pool' refers to a big material object.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.I)
     A reaction: A well-chosen example to support his thesis that large objects don't (strictly) exist. We certainly must not say (in Quine fashion) that we must accept the ontology of our phrases. I cut nature at the joints, and I say a pool is an obvious joint.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Simples
We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Eliminativism about physical objects does not require a commitment to (or against) simples.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.I)
     A reaction: His strategy is to eliminate objects in favour of whatever it is (an unknown) to which objects actually reduce. His point seems to be clearly correct, just as I might eliminate 'life' from my ontology, without quite knowing what it is.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins]
     Full Idea: Merricks agrees with van Inwagen that there are no composite objects, but disagrees with him about the semantics of talk about material objects.
     From: report of Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003]) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 4
     A reaction: Van Inwagen has one semantics for folk talk, and another semantics 'for the philosophy room'. Merricks seems to have an error theory of folk semantics (i.e. the folk don't understand what they are saying).
The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks]
     Full Idea: It is hard to see why the folk way of carving up the material world should - barring further argument - be elevated to a loftier status than the unrestricted compositionist way.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §3.III)
     A reaction: There are some right ways to carve up the world, though there is also the capacity to be quite arbitrary, if it is useful, or even amusing. Thus Cyprus is an island (fact), Britons are a nation (useful), and Arsenal fans are sad (amusing).
If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson]
     Full Idea: Given the proper understanding of 'arranged baseballwise', the fact that atoms arranged baseballwise are causally relevant to a shattering analytically entails that a baseball is.
     From: report of Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], 3) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 01.3
     A reaction: This is the key argument of Thomasson's book. Presumably, following Idea 14471, 'I bought some atoms arranged baseballwise' is held to entail 'I bought a baseball'. That seems to beg the question against Van Inwagen and Merricks.
Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The Overdetermination Argument: a baseball is irrelevant to whether its atoms shatter a window, the shattering is caused by the atoms in concert, the shattering is not overdetermined, so if the baseball exists it doesn't cause the shattering.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], 3)
     A reaction: An obvious thought is that no individual atom does any sort of breaking at all - it is only when they act as a team, and an appropriate name for the team is a 'baseball', and the team is real.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks]
     Full Idea: A statue is not identical with its constituent lump of clay because they have different persistence conditions; the statue, but not the lump, could survive the loss of a few smallish bits, and the lump, but not the statue, could survive being squashed.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.III)
     A reaction: I don't see why a lump can't survive losing a few bits (if the lump never had a precise identity), but it is hard to argue that squashing is a problem. However, presumably the identity (or constitution) between lump and statue is not a necessity.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 5. Composition of an Object
'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks]
     Full Idea: If my dog and the top half of my tree compose an object, this is defended under the title of 'unrestricted (universal) composition', the thesis that any two things compose something.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.II)
     A reaction: David Lewis is cited amongst those defending this thesis. My intuition is against this thesis, because I think identity is partly dictated by nature, and is not entirely conventional. You can force an identity, but you feel the 'restriction'.
Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks]
     Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about identity is that it holds one-one (John and Mr Smith) and perhaps many-many (John+Mary and Mr Smith+Miss Jones), but never one-many. It follows that composition as identity (things are their parts) is false.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV)
     A reaction: This assumes that 'having identity' and 'being identical to' are the same concept. I agree with his conclusion, but am not convinced by the argument. I'm not even quite clear why John and May can't be identical to the Smiths.
Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Composition as identity implies that no persisting object ever changes its parts, which is clearly false, so composition as identity is false.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV)
     A reaction: Presumably Lewis can say that when a thing subtly changes its parts, it really does lose its strict identity, but becomes another 'time-slice' or close 'counterpart' of the original object. This is a coherent view, but I disagree. I'm a believer.
There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks]
     Full Idea: If we imagine a world like ours except that, while there are atoms arranged statuewise in that world, there are no statues, ...no amount of looking around could distinguish that imagined world from ours.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.V)
     A reaction: This is one of his arguments for ontological eliminativism about physical objects. If we accept the argument, it will wreak havoc with our entire ontology, and we will end up anti-realists. I say you have to see statues - you just can't miss them.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 6. Constitution of an Object
'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Composition as identity claims that a single object is identical with the many parts it comprises; constitution as identity says that a single object (a statue) is identical with a single object (clay) that 'constitutes' it.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1 n11)
     A reaction: The constitution view has been utilised (by Lynn Rudder Baker) to give an account of personal identity as constituted by a human body. Neither sounds quite right to me; the former view misses something about reality; the latter doesn't explain much.
It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Many philosophers deny that two numerically distinct physical objects could be 'wholly co-located'.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.III)
     A reaction: A fish can be located in a river; the Appenines can be located in Italy. If you accept the objection you will probably have to accept identity-as-composition, or object-eliminativism. One object can have two causal roles, supporting two identities.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / a. Parts of objects
Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Intuitively, an object's parts at one level of decomposition are parts of that object that do not overlap and that, collectively, fill the whole region the object fills.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.II)
     A reaction: A nice case where 'intuition' must be cited as the basis for the claim, and yet it is hard to see how anyone could possibly disagree. Exhibit 73 in favour of rationalism. This ideas shows the structure of nature and the workings of our minds.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 13. No Identity over Time
Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks]
     Full Idea: I say we should endorse eliminativism about physical objects, because it offers the most plausible understanding of what occurs during the Sorites Game (eliminating grains of a thing one at a time).
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.II)
     A reaction: That is one route to go in explaining the paradox (i.e. by saying there never was a 'heap' in the first place). I suspect a better route is to say that heaps really exist as natural phenomena, but they suffer from vague identity and borderline cases.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / c. Counterparts
If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The existence of someone in another world who is a lot like me, but happier, is irrelevant to whether I - this very person - could have been happier, even if we call that other-worldly someone 'my counterpart'.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV)
     A reaction: He says this is a familiar objection. I retain a lingering deterministic doubt about whether it ever makes to sense to say that I 'could' have been happy, given that I am not. It does seem to make sense to say that I was close to happiness, but missed it.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The 'warrant' for a belief is that, whatever it is, that makes the difference between mere true belief and knowledge.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §7.II)
     A reaction: Hence a false belief could be well justified, but it could never be warranted. This makes warrant something like the externalist view of justification, a good supporting situation for a belief, rather than an inner awareness of support for it.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body
You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]
     Full Idea: When you hold your child, you do exactly that - hold the child himself or herself - and not some stand-in. This implies that we are not two substances, and we are not mental states nor akin to software.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4)
     A reaction: And it is not just a brain, either. This is a nice simple example to support the sensible view that a person is a type of animal. Like all other physical objects that is a bit vague, so we should not be distracted by borderline cases like brain bisection.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 3. Reference of 'I'
Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks]
     Full Idea: One might say that the word 'I' can only have a person as its reference.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.IV)
     A reaction: To infer the existence of persons from this would be to commit what I think of as the Linguistic Fallacy, of deducing ontology directly from language. We might allow (Dennett fashion) that folk categories require the fiction of persons.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 7. Compatibilism
Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The main recent support for incompatibilism is the 'no choice' argument: we have no choice that the past and the laws of nature entail human actions, we have no choice about what the past or the laws are like, so we have no choice about our actions.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §6.III)
     A reaction: Since I consider free will to be an absurd chimera, I think this argument involves a total misunderstanding of what a 'choice' is. Since the human brain is a wonderfully sophisticated choosing machine, our whole life consists of choices.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 4. Emergentism
Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Human organisms have non-redundant causal powers, and so can exercise downward causation.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.VII)
     A reaction: The hallmark of property dualism. This notion needs a lot more expansion and exploration than Merricks gives it, and I don't think it will be enough to provide 'free will', or even, as Merricks hopes, to place humans in a distinct ontological category.
18. Thought / C. Content / 7. Narrow Content
Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The belief of theists that God might never have created implies that there is a possible world that contains just a single entity with many conscious mental properties.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.II)
     A reaction: So if we believe content is wide, we must believe that God was incapable of thought before creation, and thus couldn't plan creation, and so didn't create, and so the Creator is a logical impossibility. Cool.
The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The hypothesis of solipsism, that I - an entity with many conscious mental properties - am all that exists, while surely false, is not rendered incoherent simply by the nature of the mental properties.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.II)
     A reaction: This, along with the thought of a pre-Creation God, is a nice intuitive case for showing that we strongly believe in some degree of narrow content.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
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.
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 1. Relativity / a. Special relativity
The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Special Relativity, with its definition of simultaneity, is shot through with verificationist assumptions.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIc)
     A reaction: [He credits Sklar with this] I love hearing such points made, because all my instincts have rebelled against Einstein's story, even after I have been repeatedly told how stupid I am, and how I should study more maths etc.
Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Special Relativity denies absolute simultaneity, and therefore requires a past and a future, as well as a present. The Presentist, however, only requires the present.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VII)
     A reaction: It is nice to accuse Relativity of ontological extravagence. When it 'requires' past and future, that may not be a massive commitment, since the whole theory is fairly operationalist, according to Putnam.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / a. Absolute time
Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne]
     Full Idea: There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction).
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III)
     A reaction: [My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
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.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / g. Growing block
No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne]
     Full Idea: 'No-Futurists' believe in the real existence of the past and present but not the future, and hold that the world grows as more and more facts come into existence.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIb)
     A reaction: [He cites Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997] My sympathies are with Presentism, but there seems not denying that past events fix truths in a way that future events don't. The unchangeability of past events seems to make them factual.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / h. Presentism
How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Presentists have a difficulty with how they can help themselves to the notion of 'earlier than' without having to invoke real relata, and how presentism can distinguish the past from the future.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 2.IV)
     A reaction: The obvious response is to infer the past from the present (fossils), and infer the future from the present (ticking bomb). But what is it that is being inferred, if the past and future are denied a priori? Tricky!
Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne]
     Full Idea: It seems that presentism cannot accommodate causation at all. In a true instance of 'c causes e', it seems to follow that both c and e exist, and it is widely accepted that c is earlier than e. But for presentists that means c and e can't coexist.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 4)
     A reaction: A nice problem. Obviously if the flying ball smashed the window, we are left with only the effect existing - otherwise we could intercept the ball and prevent the disaster. To say this cause and this effect coexist would be even dafter than the problem.
Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Since for presentism there is an ontologically significant and basic sense in which events are present, we should expect a definition of simultaneity in terms of presentness, rather than the other way round.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IV)
     A reaction: Love it. I don't see how you can even articulate questions about simultaneity if you don't already have a notion of presentness. What are the relata you are enquiring about?
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / d. Time series
Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Theories of time are in two broad categories, the tenseless and the tensed theories. In tenseless theories, all times are equally real, as are all objects located at them, and there is no passage of time from future to present to past. It's the B-series.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIa)
     A reaction: It might solve a few of the problems, but is highly counterintuitive. Presumably it makes the passage of time an illusion, and gives no account of how events 'happen', or of their direction, and it leaves causation out on a limb. I'm afraid not.
B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne]
     Full Idea: Objects in the B-series are earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with each other, whereas objects in the A-series are earlier than, later than or simultaneous with the present.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIb)
     A reaction: Must we choose? Two past events relate to each other, but there is a further relation when 'now' falls between the events. If I must choose, I suppose I go for the A-series view. The B-series is a subsequent feat of imagination. McTaggart agreed.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series
Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne]
     Full Idea: We say that time 'flows', that the past is 'fixed' but the future is 'open'; we only dread the future, but not the past; we remember the past but not the future; we plan for the future but not the past.
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro III)
     A reaction: These seem pretty overwhelming reasons for accepting an asymmetry between the past and the future. If you reject that, you seem to be mired in a multitude of contradictions. Your error theory is going to be massive.