Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Works of Love', 'fragments/reports' and 'The Individuation of Events'

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7 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 2. Domain of Quantification

18914	Davidson controversially proposed to quantify over events [Davidson, by Engelbretsen]
	Full Idea: An alternative, and still controversial, extension of first-order logic is due to Donald Davidson, who allows for quantification over events.
	From: report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 3
	A reaction: I'm suddenly thinking this is quite an attractive proposal. We need to quantify over facts, or states of affairs, or events, or some such thing, to talk about the world properly. Objects, predicates and sets/parts is too sparse. I like facts.

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / b. Events as primitive

9843	You can't identify events by causes and effects, as the event needs to be known first [Dummett on Davidson]
	Full Idea: Davidson's criterion for the identity of events is a mistake, because we cannot know the causes and effects of an event until we know what that event comprises.
	From: comment on Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.10
	A reaction: How many attempts by analytical philosophers to give necessary and sufficient conditions for things seem to founder in this way. Their predecessor is at the end of 'Theaetetus'; you have to know what the sun is before you can define it.

14602	Events can only be individuated causally [Davidson, by Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Davidson claims that events can only be individuated causally.
	From: report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969], 3) by Jonathan Schaffer - Causation and Laws of Nature 3
	A reaction: Schaffer rejects this in favour of individuating events by their spatiotemporal locations and intrinsic natures (which seem to be property instantiations, a la Kim). Schaffer was a pupil of David Lewis.

14004	We need events for action statements, causal statements, explanation, mind-and-body, and adverbs [Davidson, by Bourne]
	Full Idea: Davidson claims that we require the existence of events in order to make sense of a) action statements, b) causal statements, c) explanation, d) the mind-body problem, and e) the logic of adverbial modification.
	From: report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969], Intro IIb) by Craig Bourne - A Future for Presentism
	A reaction: Events are a nice shorthand, but I don't like them in a serious ontology. Prior says there objects and what happens to them; Kim reduces events to other things. Processes are more clearly individuated than events.

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events

8278	The claim that events are individuated by their causal relations to other events is circular [Lowe on Davidson]
	Full Idea: Davidson has urged that events are individuated by the causal relations which they bear to one another, in accordance with the principle that events are identical just in case they have the same causes and effects. But the principle is viciously circular.
	From: comment on Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 7.4
	A reaction: You wouldn't want to identify a person just by their relationships, even though those will certainly be unique. Generally it is what I am (right now) naming as the Functional Fallacy: believing that specifying the function of x explains x.

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / c. Knowledge closure

20769	Sphaerus he was not assenting to the presence of pomegranates, but that it was 'reasonable' [Sphaerus, by Diog. Laertius]
	Full Idea: When Sphaerus accepted pomegranates from the king, he was accused of assenting to a false presentation, to which Sphaerus replied that what he had assented to was not that they were pomegranates, but that it was reasonable that they were pomegranates.
	From: report of Sphaerus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.177
	A reaction: He then cited the stoic distinction between a 'graspable' presentation and a 'reasonable' one. This seems a rather helpful response to Dretske's zebra problem. I like the word 'sensible' in epistemology, because animals can be sensible.

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / g. Love

15998	Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard]
	Full Idea: To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections.
	From: Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158)
	A reaction: A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY]