15 ideas
| 13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
| Full Idea: The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166) | |
| A reaction: Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of. |
| 13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
| Full Idea: If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186) | |
| A reaction: He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read. |
| 14970 | Normal system K has five axioms and rules [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: Normal propositional modal logics derive from the minimal system K: wffs of PC are axioms; □(p⊃q)⊃(□p⊃□q); uniform substitution; modus ponens; necessitation (α→□α). | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.1) |
| 14971 | D is valid on every serial frame, but not where there are dead ends [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: If a frame contains any dead end or blind world, then D is not valid on that frame, ...but D is valid on every serial frame. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.1.1) |
| 14972 | S4 has 14 modalities, and always reduces to a maximum of three modal operators [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: In S4 there are exactly 14 distinct modalities, and any modality may be reduced to one containing no more than three modal operators in sequence. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.1.2) | |
| A reaction: The significance of this may be unclear, but it illustrates one of the rewards of using formal systems to think about modal problems. There is at least an appearance of precision, even if it is only conditional precision. |
| 14973 | In S5 all the long complex modalities reduce to just three, and their negations [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: S5 contains the four main reduction laws, so the first of any pair of operators may be deleted. Hence all but the last modal operator may be deleted. This leaves six modalities: p, ◊p, □p, and their negations. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.1.2) |
| 14976 | Reject the Barcan if quantifiers are confined to worlds, and different things exist in other worlds [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: If one wants the quantifiers in each world to range only over the things that exist in that world, and one doesn't believe that the same things exist in every world, one would probably not want the Barcan formula. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.2.2) | |
| A reaction: I haven't quite got this, but it sounds to me like I should reject the Barcan formula (but Idea 9449!). I like a metaphysics to rest on the actual world (with modal properties). I assume different things could have existed, but don't. |
| 14974 | A relation is 'Euclidean' if aRb and aRc imply bRc [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: A relation is 'Euclidean' if aRb and aRc imply bRc. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.1.2) | |
| A reaction: If a thing has a relation to two separate things, then those two things will also have that relation between them. If I am in the same family as Jim and as Jill, then Jim and Jill are in the same family. |
| 13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
| Full Idea: By (Kripkean) 'essential' properties and relations I mean simply properties and relations that hold necessarily of objects (in all genuinely possible world-states in which the objects exist). | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.168 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard modern view of essences which I find so unsatisfactory. Kit Fine has helped to take us back to the proper Aristotelian view, where 'necessary' and 'essential' actually have different meanings. Note the inclusion of relations. |
| 14975 | A de dicto necessity is true in all worlds, but not necessarily of the same thing in each world [Cresswell] |
| Full Idea: A de dicto necessary truth says that something is φ, that this proposition is a necessary truth, i.e. that in every accessible world something (but not necessarily the same thing in each world) is φ. | |
| From: Max J. Cresswell (Modal Logic [2001], 7.2.1) | |
| A reaction: At last, a really clear and illuminating account of this term! The question is then invited of what is the truthmaker for a de dicto truth, assuming that the objects themselves are truthmakers for de re truths. |
| 13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
| Full Idea: None of Kripke's many achievements is more important than his breaking the spell of the linguistic as the source of philosophically important modalities. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186) | |
| A reaction: Put like that, Kripke may have had the single most important thought of modern times. I take good philosophy to be exactly the same as good scientific theorising, in that it all arises out of the nature of reality (and I include logic in that). |
| 13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
| Full Idea: For the Kripkean possible states of the world are not alternate concrete universes, but abstract objects. Metaphysically possible world-states are maximally complete ways the real concrete universe could have been. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.167) | |
| A reaction: This is probably clearer about the Kripkean view than Kripke ever is, but then that is part of Soames's mission. It sounds like the right way to conceive possible worlds. At least there is some commitment there, rather than instrumentalism about them. |
| 13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
| Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183) | |
| A reaction: I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that? |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |