Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity', 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz' and 'A History of God'

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28 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 3. Logical Truth
15091 Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I favour restricting the term 'logical truth' to what logicians would count as such, excluding both analytic truths like 'Bachelors are unmarried' and Kripkean necessities like 'Gold is an element'.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: I agree. There is a tendency to splash the phrases 'logical truth' and 'logical necessity around in vague ways. I take them to strictly arise out of the requirements of formal systems of logic.
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
13076 Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1)
     A reaction: The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata?
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
15095 A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The view I now favour says that the causal features of a property, both forward-looking and backward-looking, are essential to it. And it says that properties having the same causal features are identical.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: In this formulation we have essentialism about properties, as well as essentialism about the things which have the properties.
15097 I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The controversial claim of my theory is that the causal features of properties are essential to them - are features that they have in all possible worlds.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: One problem is that a property can come in degrees, so what degree of the property is necessary to it? It is better to assign this claim to the fundamental properties (which are best called 'powers').
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
15094 I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I now reject the formulation of the causal theory which says that a property is a cluster of conditional powers. That has a reductionist flavour, which is a cheat. We need properties to explain conditional powers, so properties won't reduce.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: [compressed wording] I agree with Mumford and Anjum in preferring his earlier formulation. I think properties are broad messy things, whereas powers can be defined more precisely, and seem to have more stability in nature.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
13102 If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?'
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
     A reaction: There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place.
13103 Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
     A reaction: This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
13104 Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4)
     A reaction: [He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity?
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance
13100 Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3)
     A reaction: They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / c. Types of substance
13068 We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance?
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1)
     A reaction: My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / d. Substance defined
13069 The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
13072 Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2)
     A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties.
17080 Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2)
     A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
13101 Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
     A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant).
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 5. Metaphysical Necessity
15099 If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: If it is possible that there could be possible states of affairs that are not nomologically possible, don't we therefore need a notion of metaphysical possibility that outruns nomological possibility?
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: Shoemaker rejects this possibility (p.425). I sympathise. So there is 'natural' possibility (my preferred term), which is anything which stuff, if it exists, could do, and 'logical' possibility, which is anything that doesn't lead to contradiction.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
15101 Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII)
     A reaction: The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke).
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
15098 Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: We have abundant empirical evidence that when we can imagine some phenomenal situation, e.g., imagine things appearing certain ways, such a situation could actually exist.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: There seem to be good reasons for holding the opposite view too. We can imagine gold appearing to be all sorts of colours, but that doesn't make it possible. What does empirical evidence really tell us here?
15100 Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Imaginability can give us access to conceptual possibility, when we come to believe situations to be conceptually possible by reflecting on their descriptions and seeing no contradiction or incoherence.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: If take the absence of contradiction to indicate 'logical' possibility, but the absence of incoherence is more interesting, even if it is a bit vague. He is talking of 'situations', which I take to be features of reality. A priori synthetic?
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
13081 Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46)
     A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is!
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
15096 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Perhaps 'grue' has causal features, but only derivatively, in virtue of its relation to green.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: I take grue to be a behaviour, and not a property at all. The problem only arises because the notion of a 'property' became too lax. Presumably Shoemaker should also mention blue in his account.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / c. Explanations by coherence
13071 We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
15093 We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 4. Divine Contradictions
7602 In the Bible God changes his mind (repenting of creating humanity, in the Flood) [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: In the Bible God changes his mind, as when he repents of having made man and decides to destroy the human race in the Flood.
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1)
     A reaction: It becomes apparent that the most startling feature of Christian fundamentalism is its uncritical reading of the Bible, in which passages are wilfully lifted from context, and inconvenient inconsistencies are ruthlessly ignored.
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 1. Monotheism
7605 Monotheism introduced intolerance into religious thinking [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: We have become so used to the intolerance of monotheism that we may not appreciate that its hostility towards other gods was a new religious attitude; paganism was an essentially tolerant faith.
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.2)
     A reaction: The comedian Dave Allen always signed off with "may your god go with you". To me the most striking feature of monotheists is frequently their barely controlled aggression, beneath a mask of strained compassion.
29. Religion / A. Polytheistic Religion / 3. Hinduism
7599 Around 800 BCE teachers superseded gods in India [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: Around the eighth century BCE the gods ceased to be very important in India, and would be superseded by the religious teacher, who would be considered higher than the gods.
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1)
     A reaction: At least there has been one culture that gave an appropriate status to teachers. It seems astonishing in that age that human beings could have higher status than gods - way before the European 'humanists'.
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 2. Judaism
7597 There is virtually no sign of monotheism in the Pentateuch [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: It is very difficult to find a single monotheistic statement in the whole of the Pentateuch, and even the Ten Commandments take the existence of other gods for granted ("There shall be no strange gods for you before my face").
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1)
     A reaction: The transition from polytheism to monotheism is very strange. First God is 'jealous' of other gods, then supremely above them, and eventually totally exclusive. It's like watching the rise of Stalin.
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / a. Christianity
7606 The idea that Jesus was God was only settled in the fourth century [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: Jesus himself certainly never claimed to be God, and the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalised until the fourth century.
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.3)
     A reaction: It was this final view which seems to have provoked Muhammed into developing a religion with the slogan "there is only one God". In Christianity an initially promising set of teachings grew into a prolonged irrational hysteria.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / e. Fideism
7596 Faith is not just belief in propositions, but also putting trust in them [Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them.
     From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Intro)
     A reaction: This is interestingly distinct from the usual idea that faith is putting belief in propositions which are not sufficiently rationally justified. How many philosophers actually have faith in the propositions they say they believe?