13 ideas
| 15545 | Armstrong's analysis seeks truthmakers rather than definitions [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that Armstrong has an unfamiliar notion of analysis, as not primarily a quest for definitions, but as a quest for truth-makers. | |
| From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'The demand') | |
| A reaction: This is not a dichotomy, I think, but a shift of emphasis. A definition will probably refer to truthmakers; a decent account of truthmakers would approximate a definition. |
| 15546 | Predications aren't true because of what exists, but of how it exists [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Predications seem, for the most part, to be true not because of whether things are, but because of how things are. | |
| From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'The demand') | |
| A reaction: This simple point shows that you get into a tangle if you insist that truthmakers just consist of what exists. Lewis says Armstrong offers states of affairs as truthmakers for predications. |
| 15548 | Say 'truth is supervenient on being', but construe 'being' broadly [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I want to say that 'truth is supervenient on being', but as an Ostrich about universals I want to construe 'being' broadly. | |
| From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'Truth') | |
| A reaction: [His slogan is borrowed from Bigelow 1988:132-,158-9] This seems much more promising that the more precise and restricted notion of truthmakers, as resting on the existence of particular things. Presentism is the big test case. |
| 14399 | Presentism says only the present exists, so there is nothing for tensed truths to supervene on [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Presentism says that although there is nothing outside the present, yet there are past-tensed and future-tensed truths that do not supervene on the present, and hence do not supervene on being. | |
| From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], p.207) | |
| A reaction: Since I rather like both presentism and truth supervening on being, this observation comes as rather a devastating blow. I thought philosophy would be quite easy, but it's turning out to be rather tricky. Could tensed truths supervene on the present? |
| 16007 | I assume existence, rather than reasoning towards it [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: I always reason from existence, not towards existence. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Kierkegaard's important premise to help show that theistic proofs for God's existence don't actually prove existence, but develop the content of a conception. [SY] |
| 15543 | How do things combine to make states of affairs? Constituents can repeat, and fail to combine [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To me it is mysterious how a state of affairs is made out of its particular and universal constituents. Different states of affairs may have the very same constituents, and the existence of constituents by no means entails the existence of the states. | |
| From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'What is there') | |
| A reaction: He is rejecting the structure of states of affairs as wholes made of parts. But then mereology was never going to explain the structure of the world. |
| 16013 | Nothing necessary can come into existence, since it already 'is' [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Can the necessary come into existence? That is a change, and everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary. The necessary already 'is'. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.74) | |
| A reaction: [SY] |
| 411 | If we succeed in speaking the truth, we cannot know we have done it [Xenophanes] |
| Full Idea: No man has seen certain truth, and no man will ever know about the gods and other things I mentioned; for if he succeeds in saying what is fully true, he himself is unaware of it; opinion is fixed by fate on all things. | |
| From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B34), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 7.49.4 |
| 412 | If God had not created honey, men would say figs are sweeter [Xenophanes] |
| Full Idea: If God had not created yellow honey, men would say that figs were sweeter. | |
| From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B38), quoted by Herodian - On Peculiar Speech 41.5 |
| 1640 | The basic Eleatic belief was that all things are one [Xenophanes, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: The Eleatic tribe, which had its beginnings from Xenophanes and still earlier, proceed on the grounds that all things so-called are one. | |
| From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Plato - The Sophist 242d |
| 3055 | Xenophanes said the essence of God was spherical and utterly inhuman [Xenophanes, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Xenophanes taught that the essence of God was of a spherical form, in no respect resembling man. | |
| From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.2.3 |
| 408 | Ethiopian gods have black hair, and Thracian gods have red hair [Xenophanes] |
| Full Idea: Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair. | |
| From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B16), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 7.22.1 |
| 407 | Mortals believe gods are born, and have voices and clothes just like mortals [Xenophanes] |
| Full Idea: Mortals believe the gods to be created by birth, and to have raiment, voice and body like mortals'. | |
| From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B14), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.109.2 |