26 ideas
| 14064 | If a statue is identical with the clay of which it is made, that identity is contingent [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Under certain conditions a clay statue is identical with the piece of clay of which it is made, and if this is so then the identity is contingent. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This initiated the modern debate about statues, and it is an attack on Kripke's claim that if two things are identical, then they are necessarily identical. Kripke seems right about Hesperus and Phosphorus, but not about the statue. |
| 14066 | A 'piece' of clay begins when its parts stick together, separately from other clay [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: A 'piece' of clay is a portion of clay which comes into existence when all of its parts come to be stuck to each other, and cease to be stuck to any clay which is not a part of the portion. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: The sort of gormlessly elementary things that philosophers find themselves having to say, but this is a good basic assertion for a discussion of statue and clay, and I can't think of an objection to it. |
| 14067 | Clay and statue are two objects, which can be named and reasoned about [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The piece of clay and the statue are 'objects' - that is to say, they can be designated with proper names, and the logic we ordinarily use will still apply. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: An interesting indication of the way that 'object' is used in modern analytic philosophy, which may not be the way that it is used in ordinary English. The number 'seven', for example, seems to be an object by this criterion. |
| 14069 | We can only investigate the identity once we have designated it as 'statue' or as 'clay' [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: To ask meaningfully what that thing would be, we must designate it either as a statue or as a piece of clay. What that thing would be, apart from the way it is designated, is a question without meaning. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: He obviously has a powerful point, but to suggest that we can only investigate a mysterious object once we have designated it as something sounds daft. It would ruin the fun of archaeology. |
| 14076 | Essentialism is the existence of a definite answer as to whether an entity fulfils a condition [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism for a class of entities is that for one entity and a condition which it fulfills, the question of whether it necessarily fulfills the condition has a definite answer apart from the way the entity is specified. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: Yet another definition of essentialism, but resting, as usual in modern discussions, entirely on the notion of necessity. Kit Fine's challenge is that if you investigate the source of the necessity, it turns out to be an essence. |
| 14077 | Essentialism for concreta is false, since they can come apart under two concepts [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism for the class of concrete things is false, since a statue necessarily fulfils a condition as 'Goliath', but only contingently fulfils it as 'lumpl'. On the other hand, essentialism for the class of individual concepts can be true. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: This rests on his definition of essentialism in Idea 14076. He rests his essentialism about concepts on an account given by Carnap ('Meaning and Necessity' §41). The essence of a statue and the essence of a lump of clay do seem distinct. |
| 14070 | A particular statue has sortal persistence conditions, so its origin defines it [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: A proper name like 'Goliath' denotes a thing in the actual world, and invokes a sortal with certain persistence criteria. Hence its origin makes a statue the statue that it is, and if statues in different worlds have the same beginning, they are the same. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: Too neat. There are vague, ambiguous and duplicated origins. Persistence criteria can shift during the existence of a thing (like a club which changes its own constitution). In replicated statues, what is the status of the mould? |
| 14073 | Claims on contingent identity seem to violate Leibniz's Law [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The most prominent objection to contingent identity (as in the case of the statue and its clay) is that it violates Leibniz's Law. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], V) | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by a property. The trickiest one would be that the statue has (right now) a disposition to be worth a lot, but the clay doesn't. But I don't think that is really a property of the statue. Properties are a muddle. |
| 14065 | Two identical things must share properties - including creation and destruction times [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: For two things to be strictly identical, they must have all properties in common. That means, among other things, that they must start to exist at the same time and cease to exist at the same time. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], I) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept that coming into existence at time t is a 'property' of a thing. Coincident objects give you the notion of 'existing as' something, which complicates the whole story. |
| 14074 | Leibniz's Law isn't just about substitutivity, because it must involve properties and relations [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: As a general law of substitutivity of identicals, Leibniz's Law is false. It is a law about properties and relations, that if two things are identical, they have the same properties and relations. It only works in contexts which attribute those. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced about relations, which are not intrinsic properties. Under different descriptions, the relations to human minds might differ. |
| 14072 | Possible worlds identity needs a sortal [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: Identity across possible worlds makes sense only with respect to a sortal | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], IV) | |
| A reaction: See Gibbard's other ideas from this paper. I fear that the sortal invoked is too uncertain and slippery to do any useful job, and I can't see any principled difficulty with naming something before you can think of a sortal for it. |
| 14078 | Only concepts, not individuals, can be the same across possible worlds [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: It is meaningless to talk of the same concrete thing in different possible worlds, ...but it makes sense to speak of the same individual concept, which is just a function which assigns to each possible world in a set an individual in that world. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], VII) | |
| A reaction: A lovely bold response to the problem of transworld identity, but one which needs investigation. It sounds very promising to me. 'Aristotle' is a cocept, not a name. There is no separate category of 'names'. Wow. (Attach dispositions to concepts?). |
| 14079 | Kripke's semantics needs lots of intuitions about which properties are essential [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: To use Kripke's semantics, one needs extensive intuitions that certain properties are essential and others accidental. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], X) | |
| A reaction: As usual, we could substitute the word 'necessary' for 'essential' without changing his meaning. If we are always referring to 'our' Hubert Humphrey is speculations about him, then nearly all of his properties will be necessary ones. |
| 14071 | Naming a thing in the actual world also invokes some persistence criteria [Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: The reference of a name in the actual world is fixed partly by invoking a set of persistence criteria which determine what thing it names. | |
| From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III) | |
| A reaction: This is offered as a modification to Kripke, to deal with the statue and clay. I fear that the 'persistence criteria' may be too vague, and too subject to possible change after the origin, to do the job required. |
| 22455 | Many ethical theories neglect the power of regretting the ought not acted upon [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: It is a fundamental criticism of many ethical theories that their accounts of moral conflict and its resolution do not do justice to the facts of regret...: basically because they eliminate from the scene the ought that is not acted upon. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Ethical consistency [1965], p.175), quoted by Philippa Foot - Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma p.39 | |
| A reaction: [p.175 in Problems of the Self] Williams seems to have initiated this idea. It doesn't matter much for Kantians and Utilitarians (any more than a wrong answer in maths), but it matters if character is the focus. The virtuous have regrets. |
| 22453 | Moral conflicts have a different feeling and structure from belief conflicts [Williams,B, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Williams insisted that the feelings we have in situations of moral conflict show that the 'structure' of moral judgements is unlike that of assertions expressing beliefs. | |
| From: report of Bernard Williams (Ethical consistency [1965]) by Philippa Foot - Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma p.36 | |
| A reaction: Foot presents this as a key reason for the non-cognitivist view of ethics, and her paper attacks it. I don't usually react to moral disagreement with the same vigour I have when I think a belief is untrue. It may just be uncertainty, though. |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |