42 ideas
| 6123 | 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? |
| 12463 | Unlike correspondence, truthmaking can be one truth to many truthmakers, or vice versa [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: I assume a form of truthmaking theory, ..which is a many-many relation, unlike, say correspondence, so that one entity can make multiple truths true and one truth can have multiple truthmakers. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like common sense, once you think about it. One tree makes many things true, and one statement about trees is made true by many trees. |
| 6143 | 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. |
| 6135 | 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. |
| 14375 | If structures result from intrinsic natures of properties, the 'relations' between them can drop out [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: If a relation holds between two properties as a result of their intrinsic natures, then it appears the relation between the properties is not needed to do the structuring of reality; the properties themselves suffice to fix the structure. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: [the first bit quotes Jubien 2007] He cites a group of scientific essentialists as spokesmen for this view. Sounds right to me. No on seems able to pin down what a relation is - which may be because there is no such entity. |
| 6145 | 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? |
| 14378 | Science aims at identifying the structure and nature of the powers that exist [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Scientific practice seems aimed precisely at identifying the structure and nature of the powers that exist. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.3) | |
| A reaction: Good. Friends of powers should look at this nice paper by Jacobs. There is a good degree of support for this view from pronouncements of modern scientists. If scientists don't support it, they should. Otherwise they are trapped in the superficial. |
| 12467 | Powers come from concrete particulars, not from the laws of nature [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: The source of powers is not the laws of nature; it is the powerful nature of the ordinary properties of concrete particulars. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: This pithily summarises my own view. People who think the powers of the world derive from the laws either have an implicit religious framework, or they are giving no thought at all to the ontological status of the laws. |
| 6124 | 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? |
| 6134 | 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. |
| 6125 | 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. |
| 14229 | 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). |
| 6142 | 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). |
| 14472 | 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. |
| 14469 | 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. |
| 6137 | 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. |
| 6127 | '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'. |
| 6131 | 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. |
| 6132 | 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. |
| 6141 | 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. |
| 6130 | '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. |
| 6138 | 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. |
| 6128 | 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. |
| 6136 | 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. |
| 14377 | Possibilities are manifestations of some power, and impossibilies rest on no powers [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: To be possible is just to be one of the many manifestations of some power, and to be impossible is to be a manifestation of no power. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: [This remark occurs in a discussion of theistic Aristotelianism] I like this. If we say that something is possible, the correct question is to ask what power could bring it about. |
| 14376 | States of affairs are only possible if some substance could initiate a causal chain to get there [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: A non-actual state of affairs in possible if there actually was a substance capable of initiating a causal chain, perhaps non-deterministic, that could lead to the state of affairs that we claim is possible. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He is quoting A.R. Pruss 2002] That seems exactly right. Of course the initial substance(s) might create a further substance, such as a transuranic element, which then produces the state of affairs. I favour this strongly actualist view. |
| 14379 | Counterfactuals invite us to consider the powers picked out by the antecedent [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: A counterfactual is an invitation to consider what the properties picked out by the antecedent are powers for (where Lewis 1973 took it to be an invitation to consider what goes on in a selected possible world). | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.4.3) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple proposal from Jacobs, with which I agree. This seems to be an expansion of the Ramsey test for conditionals, where you consider the antecedent being true, and see what follows. What, we ask Ramsey, would make it follow? |
| 14372 | Possible worlds are just not suitable truthmakers for modality [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Possible worlds are just not the sorts of things that could ground modality; they are not suitable truthmakers. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: Are possible world theorists actually claiming that the worlds 'ground' modality? Maybe Lewis is, since all those concrete worlds had better do some hard work, but for the ersatzist they just provide a kind of formal semantics, leaving ontology to others. |
| 12466 | All modality is in the properties and relations of the actual world [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Properties and the relations between them introduce modal connections in the actual world. ..This is a strong form of actualism, since all of modality is part of the fundamental fabric of the actual world. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of modality which I find most congenial, with the notion of 'powers' giving us the conceptual framework on which to build an account. |
| 14371 | We can base counterfactuals on powers, not possible worlds, and hence define necessity [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Together with a definition of possibility and necessity in terms of counterfactuals, the powers semantics of counterfactuals generates a semantics for modality that appeals to causal powers and not possible worlds. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: Wonderful. Just what the doctor ordered. The only caveat is that if we say that reality is built up from fundamental powers, then might those powers change their character without losing their identity (e.g. gravity getting weaker)? |
| 12465 | Concrete worlds, unlike fictions, at least offer evidence of how the actual world could be [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's concrete worlds give a better account of modality (than fictional worlds). When I learn that a man like me drives a truck, I gain evidence for the fact that I can drive a truck. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 12464. Jacobs still rightly rejects this as an account of possibility, since the possibility that I might drive a truck must be rooted in me, not in some other person who drives a truck, even if that person is very like me. |
| 12464 | If some book described a possibe life for you, that isn't what makes such a life possible [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: Suppose somewhere deep in the rain forest is a book that includes a story about you as a truck-driver. I doubt that you would be inclined the think that that story, that book, is the reason you could have been a truck driver. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: This begins to look like a totally overwhelming and obvious reason why possible worlds (especially as stories) don't give a good metaphysical account of possibility. They provide a semantic structure for modal reasoning, but that is entirely different. |
| 12469 | Possible worlds semantics gives little insight into modality [Jacobs] |
| Full Idea: If we want our semantics for modality to give us insight into the truthmakers for modality, then possible worlds semantics is inadequate. | |
| From: Jonathan D. Jacobs (A Powers Theory of Modality [2010], §4.4) | |
| A reaction: [See the other ideas of Jacobs (and Jubien) for this] It is an interesting question whether a semantics for a logic is meant to give us insight into how things really are, or whether it just builds nice models. Satisfaction, or truth? |
| 6133 | 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. |
| 6150 | 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. |
| 19699 | 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. |
| 6144 | 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. |
| 6140 | 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. |
| 6149 | 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. |
| 6148 | 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. |
| 6146 | 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. |
| 6147 | 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. |