Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Classical Cosmology (frags)', 'The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics' and 'Autobiography'

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6 ideas

4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 7. Barcan Formula
16186 The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen]
     Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification.
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1)
16187 The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen]
     Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things).
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1)
     A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual.
16190 BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen]
     Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child.
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5)
     A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing?
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / d. Possible worlds actualism
16188 Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen]
     Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4)
     A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness
7076 Mill wondered if he would be happy if all his aims were realised, and answered no [Mill, by Critchley]
     Full Idea: Mill, in his crisis of 1827, asked himself whether he would be happy if all his objects in life were realised, and had to answer that he would not.
     From: report of John Stuart Mill (Autobiography [1870]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.3
     A reaction: The reply is either that happiness is in the striving, or that his aims in life were wrong, or that happiness is impossible. It seems to contradict Kant's definition (Idea 1452).
27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 1. Cosmology
5994 Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG]
     Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning.
     From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out.