Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Gettier Problem', 'Letters to Oldenburg' and 'Actualism and Thisness'

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5 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
Adams says actual things have haecceities, but not things that only might exist [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker]
     Full Idea: Adams favours haecceitism about actual things but no haecceities for things that might exist but don't.
     From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Actualism and Thisness [1981]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.2
     A reaction: This contrasts with Plantinga, who proposes necessary essences for everything, even for what might exist. Plantinga sounds crazy to me, Adams merely interesting but not too plausible.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
A Gettier case is a belief which is true, and its fallible justification involves some luck [Hetherington]
     Full Idea: A Gettier case contains a belief which is true and well justified without being knowledge. Its justificatory support is also fallible, ...and there is considerable luck in how the belief combnes being true with being justified.
     From: Stephen Hetherington (The Gettier Problem [2011], 5)
     A reaction: This makes luck the key factor. 'Luck' is a rather vague concept, and so the sort of luck involved must first be spelled out. Or the varieties of luck that can produce this outcome.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism
Whether nature is beautiful or orderly is entirely in relation to human imagination [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1665?)
     A reaction: This is clearly a statement of Hume's famous later opinion that there are no values ('ought') in nature ('is'). It is a rejection of Aristotelian and Greek teleology. It is hard to argue with, but I have strong sales resistance, rooted in virtue theory.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections
God is a being with infinite attributes, each of them infinite or perfect [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: I define God as a being consisting in infinite attributes, whereof each is infinite or supremely perfect.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1661)
     A reaction: This seems to me the glorious culmination of the hyperbolic conception of God that expands steadily from wood spirits through Zeus, to eventually mop up everything in nature, and then everything that can be imagined beyond nature. All very silly.
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / e. Miracles
Trying to prove God's existence through miracles is proving the obscure by the more obscure [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: Those who endeavour to establish God's existence and the truth of religion by means of miracles seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1675?)
     A reaction: Nicely put. On the whole this has to be right, but one must leave open a possibility. If there is a God, and He seeks to prove Himself by a deed, are we saying this is impossible? Divine intervention might be the best explanation of something.