72 ideas
| 15010 | Your metaphysics is 'cheating' if your ontology won't support the beliefs you accept [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Ontological 'cheaters' are those ne'er-do-well metaphysicians (such as presentists, phenomenalists, or solipsists) who refuse to countenance a sufficiently robust conception of the fundamental to underwrite the truths they accept. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: Presentists are placed in rather insalubrious company here, The notion of 'cheaters' is nice, and I associate it with Australian philosophy, and the reason that was admired by David Lewis. |
| 14977 | Metaphysics is not about what exists or is true or essential; it is about the structure of reality [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics, at bottom, is about the fundamental structure of reality. Not about what's necessarily true. Not about what properties are essential. Not about conceptual analysis. Not about what there is. Structure. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01) | |
| A reaction: The opening words of his book. I take them to be absolutely correct, and to articulate the new orthodoxy about metaphysics which has emerged since about 1995. He expands this as being about patterns, categories and joints. |
| 14994 | Extreme doubts about metaphysics also threaten to undermine the science of unobservables [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme critics of metaphysics base their critique on sweeping views about language (logical positivism), or knowledge (empiricism), ...but this notoriously threatens the science of unobservables as much as it threatens metaphysics. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: These criticisms also threaten speculative physics (even about what is possibly observable). |
| 15003 | It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider] |
| Full Idea: It has always seemed odd that insight into the fundamental workings of the universe should be gained by reflection on how we think and speak. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.8) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of what should by now be obvious to all philosophers - that analysis of language is not going to reveal very much. It is merely clearing the undergrowth so that we can go somewhere. |
| 14986 | Conceptual analysts trust particular intuitions much more than general ones [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual analysts generally regard intuitive judgements about particular cases as being far more diagnostic than intuitive judgements about general principles. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.4 n7) | |
| A reaction: Since I take the aim to be the building up an accurate picture about general truths, it would be daft to just leap to our intuitions about those general truths. Equally you can't cut intuition out of the picture (pace Ladyman). |
| 15015 | It seems possible for a correct definition to be factually incorrect, as in defining 'contact' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Arguably, 'there is absolutely no space between two objects in contact' is false, but definitional of 'contact'. ...We need a word for true definitional sentences. I propose: 'analytic'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.8) |
| 14981 | Philosophical concepts are rarely defined, and are not understood by means of definitions [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical concepts of interest are rarely reductively defined; still more rarely does our understanding of such concepts rest on definitions. ...(We generally understand concepts to the extent that we know what role they play in thinking). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I agree with this. I suspect that Sider has the notion of definition in mind that is influenced by lexicography. Aristotle's concept of definition I take to be lengthy and expansive, and that is very relevant to philosophy. |
| 14992 | We don't care about plain truth, but truth in joint-carving terms [Sider] |
| Full Idea: What we care about is truth in joint-carving terms, not just truth. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: The thought is that it matters what conceptual scheme is used to express the truth (the 'ideology'). Truths can be true but uninformative or unexplanatory. |
| 15012 | Orthodox truthmaker theories make entities fundamental, but that is poor for explanation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: According to the entrenched truthmaker theorist, the fundamental facts consist just of facts citing the existence of entities. It's hard to see how all the complexity we experience could possibly be explained from that sparse basis. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: This may be the 'entrenched' truthmaker view, but it is not clear why there could not be more complicated fundamental truthmakers, with structure as well as entities. And powers. |
| 15023 | The Barcan schema implies if X might have fathered something, there is something X might have fathered [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If we accept the Barcan and converse Barcan schemas, this leads to surprising ontological consequences. Wittgenstein might have fathered something, so, by the Barcan schema, there is something that Wittgenstein might have fathered. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Tim Williamson for this line of thought] I was liking the Barcan picture, by now I am backing away fast. They cannot be serious! |
| 15004 | 'Gunk' is an object in which proper parts all endlessly have further proper parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: An object is 'gunky' if each of its parts has further proper parts; thus gunk involves infinite descent in the part-whole relation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.11.2) |
| 14984 | Which should be primitive in mereology - part, or overlap? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Should our fundamental theory of part and whole take 'part' or 'overlap' as primitive? | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.3) |
| 14980 | There is a real issue over what is the 'correct' logic [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Certain debates over the 'correct' logic are genuine, and not linguistic or conceptual. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01.3) | |
| A reaction: It is rather hard to give arguments in favour of this view, but I am pleased to have the authority of Sider with me. |
| 15000 | 'It is raining' and 'it is not raining' can't be legislated, so we can't legislate 'p or ¬p' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: I cannot legislate-true 'It is raining' and I cannot legislate true 'It is not raining', so if I cannot legislate either true then I cannot legislate-true the disjunction 'it is raining or it is not raining'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a very simple and very persuasive argument against the idea that logic is a mere convention. I take disjunction to be an abstract summary of how the world works. Sider seems sympathetic. |
| 15020 | Classical logic is good for mathematics and science, but less good for natural language [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Despite its brilliant success in mathematics and fundamental science, classical logic applies uneasily to natural language. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: He gives examples of the conditional, and debates over the meaning of 'and', 'or' and 'not', and also names and quantifiers. Many modern philosophical problems result from this conflict. |
| 15029 | Modal accounts of logical consequence are simple necessity, or essential use of logical words [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The simplest modal account is that logical consequence is just necessary consequence; another modal account says that logical consequences are modal consequences that involve only logical words essentially. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Quine's 'Carnap and Logical Truth' for the second idea] Sider is asserting that Humeans like him dislike modality, and hence need a nonmodal account of logical consequence. |
| 15019 | Define logical constants by role in proofs, or as fixed in meaning, or as topic-neutral [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Some say that logical constants are those expressions that are defined by their proof-theoretic roles, others that they are the expressions whose semantic values are permutation-invariant, and still others that they are the topic-neutral expressions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites MacFarlane 2005 as giving a survey of this] |
| 15001 | 'Tonk' is supposed to follow the elimination and introduction rules, but it can't be so interpreted [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Tonk' is stipulated by Prior to stand for a meaning that obeys the elimination and introduction rules; but there simply is no such meaning; 'tonk' cannot be interpreted so as to obey the rules. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: 'Tonk' thus seems to present a problem for so-called 'natural' deduction, if the natural deduction consists of nothing more than obey elimination and introduction rules. |
| 16588 | I prefer a lack of form to mean non-existence, than to think of some quasi-existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I sooner judged that what lacks all form does not exist, than thought of as something in between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, unformed and next to nothing. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XII.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were struck by the contrast between this remark, and the remark of Averroes (Idea 16587) that prime matter was halfway existence. Their two great authorities disagreed! This sort of thing stimulated the revival of metaphysics. |
| 15017 | Supervenience is a modal connection [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is just a kind of modal connection. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.10) | |
| A reaction: It says what would happen, as well as what does. This is big for Sider because he rejects modality as a feature of actuality. I think the world is crammed full of modal facts, so supervenience should be a handy tool for me. |
| 15008 | Is fundamentality in whole propositions (and holistic), or in concepts (and atomic)? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The locus of fundamentality for a Finean is the whole proposition, whereas for me it is the proposition-part. Fundamentality is holistic for the Finean, atomistic for me. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.3) | |
| A reaction: This is because Kit Fine has pushed fundamentality into a relation (grounding), rather than into the particular entities involved (if I understand Sider's reading of him aright). My first intuition is to side with Sider. I'm on Sider's side... |
| 15013 | Tables and chairs have fundamental existence, but not fundamental natures [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The existence of tables and chairs is just as fundamental as the existence of electrons (in contrast, perhaps, with smirks and shadows, which do not exist fundamentally). However, tables and chairs have nonfundamental natures. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a good clarification, and to me the 'nature' of something points towards its essence. However, I suppose he refers here to the place of something in a dependence hierarchy. But then, why does it have that place? What power? |
| 15014 | Unlike things, stuff obeys unrestricted composition and mereological essentialism [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Stuff obeys unrestricted composition and mereological essentialism, whereas things do not. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Markosian 2004] |
| 22979 | Three main questions seem to be whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I am told that I can ask three sorts of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very Aristotelian approach. I am pleased to see that what it is and what sort it is are not conflated. The first one must be its individual essence, and the second its generic essence. |
| 15009 | We must distinguish 'concrete' from 'abstract' and necessary states of affairs. [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker theorist's 'concrete' states of affairs must be distinguished from necessarily existing 'abstract' states of affairs. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Plantinga's 'Nature of Necessity' for the second one; I presume the first one is Armstrong] |
| 14983 | Accept the ontology of your best theory - and also that it carves nature at the joints [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We can add to the Quinean advice to believe the ontology of your best theory that you should also regard the ideology of your best theory as carving at the joints. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: I've never liked the original Quinean formulation, but this is much better. I just take my ontological commitments to reside in me, not in whatever theory I am currently employing. I may be dubious about my own theory. |
| 14978 | A property is intrinsic if an object alone in the world can instantiate it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm and Kim proposed a modal notion of an 'intrinsic' property - that a property is intrinsic if and only if it is possibly instantiated by an object that is alone in the world. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Chisholm 1976:127 and Kim 1982:59-60] Sider then gives a counterexample from David Lewis (Idea 14979). |
| 14995 | Predicates can be 'sparse' if there is a universal, or if there is a natural property or relation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: For Armstrong a predicate is sparse when there exists a corresponding universal; for Lewis, a predicate is sparse when there exists a corresponding natural property or relation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06) | |
| A reaction: I like 'sparse' properties, but have no sympathy with Armstrong, and am cautious about Lewis. I like Shoemaker's account, which makes properties even sparser. 'Abundant' so-called properties are my pet hate. They are 'predicates'! |
| 15026 | Essence (even if nonmodal) is not fundamental in metaphysics [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We should not regard nonmodal essence as being metaphysically basic: fundamental theories need essence no more than they need modality. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: He is discussing Kit Fine, and notes that Fine offers a nonmodal view of essence, but still doesn't make it fundamental. I am a fan of essences, but making them fundamental in metaphysics seems unlikely. |
| 15030 | Humeans say that we decide what is necessary [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The spirit of Humeanism is that necessity is not a realm to be discovered. We draw the lines around what is necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: I disagree, but it is hard to argue the point. My intuitions are that the obvious necessities of logic and mathematics reflect the way nature has to be. The deepest necessities are patterns (about which God has no choice). |
| 15031 | Modal terms in English are entirely contextual, with no modality outside the language [Sider] |
| Full Idea: English modals are context-dependent through and through; there is no stable 'outer modality'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.7) | |
| A reaction: Sider has been doing so well up to here. To me this is swallowing the bait of linguistic approaches to philosophy which he has fought so hard to avoid. |
| 15027 | If truths are necessary 'by convention', that seems to make them contingent [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If □φ says that φ is true by convention, then □φ would apparently turn out to be contingent, since statements about what conventions we adopt are not themselves true by convention. The main axioms of S4 and S5 would be false. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) |
| 15028 | Conventionalism doesn't seem to apply to examples of the necessary a posteriori [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Conventionalism is apparently inapplicable to Kripke's and Putnam's examples of the necessary a posteriori (and, relatedly, to de re modality). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: [Sidelle 1989 discusses this] |
| 15033 | Humeans says mathematics and logic are necessary because that is how our concept of necessity works [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Why are logical (or mathematical, or analytic...) truths necessary? The Humean's answer is that this is just how our concept of necessity works. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.11) | |
| A reaction: This is why I (unlike Sider) am not a Humean. If we agreed that 'necessary' meant 'whatever is decreed by the Pope', that would so obviously not be necessary that we would have to start searching nature for true necessities. |
| 15025 | The world does not contain necessity and possibility - merely how things are [Sider] |
| Full Idea: At bottom, the world is an amodal place. Necessity and possibility do not carve at the joints; ultimate reality is not 'full of threats and promises' (Goodman). The book of the world says how things are, not how they must or might be. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12) | |
| A reaction: Nice to see this expressed so clearly. I find it much easier to disagree with as a result. At first blush I would say that if you haven't noticed that the world is full of threats and promises, you should wake up and smell the coffee. Actuality is active. |
| 22981 | Mind and memory are the same, as shown in 'bear it in mind' or 'it slipped from mind' [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the memory are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell a person to remember something, we tell them to 'bear this in mind', and when we forget something 'it slipped out of my mind'. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This idea has become familiar in modern neuroscience, I think, presumably because we do not find distinct types of neurons for consciousness and for memory. |
| 22980 | Memory contains innumerable principles of maths, as well as past sense experiences [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these can have been conveyed to me by the bodily senses. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.12) | |
| A reaction: Even if you have a fairly empirical view of the sources of mathematics (a view with which I sympathise), it must by admitted that our endless extrapolations from the sources also reside in memory. So we remember thoughts as well as experiences. |
| 22983 | We would avoid remembering sorrow or fear if that triggered the emotions afresh [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: If we had to experience sorrow or fear every time that we mentioned these emotions, no one would be willing to speak of them. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: Remembering the death of a loved one can trigger fresh grief, but remembering their dangerous illness from which they recovered no longer contains the feeling of fear. |
| 22977 | I can distinguish different smells even when I am not experiencing them [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I can distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets, even though there is no scent at all in my nostrils. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: Augustine has a nice introspective account of how we experience memory, and identifies lots of puzzling features. I know I can identify the smell of vinegar, but I can't bring it to mind, the way I can the appearance of roses. |
| 22982 | Why does joy in my mind make me happy, but joy in my memory doesn't? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How can it be that my mind can be happy because of the joy that is in it, and yet my memory is not sad by reason of the sadness that is in it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contradict his thought in Idea 22981, that memory and mind are the same. Recall seems to be a part of consciousness which is not fully wired up to the rest of the mind. |
| 14988 | A theory which doesn't fit nature is unexplanatory, even if it is true [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Theories' based on bizarre, non-joint-carving classifications are unexplanatory even when true. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints why I take explanation to be central to whole metaphysical enterprise. |
| 14982 | If I used Ramsey sentences to eliminate fundamentality from my theory, that would be a real loss [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If the entire theory of this book were replaced by its Ramsey sentence, omitting all mention of fundamentality, something would seem to be lost. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.2 n2) | |
| A reaction: It is a moot point whether Ramsey sentences actually eliminate anything from the ontology, but trying to wriggle out of ontological commitment looks a rather sad route to follow. |
| 14997 | Two applications of 'grue' do not guarantee a similarity between two things [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The applicability of 'grue' to each of a pair of particulars does not guarantee the similarity of those particulars. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: Grue is not a colour but a behaviour. If two things are 'mercurial' or 'erratic', will that ensure a similarity at any given moment? |
| 14989 | Problem predicates in induction don't reflect the structure of nature [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Is nonblack', 'is a nonraven', and 'grue' fail to carve at the joints. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: A lot more than this needs to said, but this remark encapsulates why I find most of these paradoxes of induction uninteresting. They are all the creations of logicians, rather than of scientists. |
| 14990 | Bayes produces weird results if the prior probabilities are bizarre [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In the Bayesian approach, bizarre prior probability distributions will result in bizarre responses to evidence. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly what you find when people with weird beliefs encounter ridiculous evidence for things. It doesn't invalidate the formula, but just says rubbish in rubbish out. |
| 15005 | Explanations must cite generalisations [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Explanations must cite generalisations. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.13) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about this. Presumably some events have a unique explanation - a unique mechanism, perhaps. Language is inescapably general in its nature - which I take to be Aristotle's reason for agreeing the Sider. [Sider adds mechanisms on p.159] |
| 15011 | If the ultimate explanation is a list of entities, no laws, patterns or mechanisms can be cited [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Ultimate explanations always terminate in the citation of entities; but since a mere list of entities is so unstructured, these 'explanations' cannot be systematized with detailed general laws, patterns, or mechanisms. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: We just need to distinguish between ultimate ontology and ultimate explanations. I think explanations peter out at the point where we descend below the mechanisms. Patterns or laws don't explain on their own. Causal mechanisms are the thing. |
| 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. It is part of my nature, but I cannot understand all that I am. Hence the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. Is the other part outside of itself, and not within it? How then can it be a part? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: He seems to understand the mind as entirely consisting of consciousness. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first inklings of the modern externalist view of the mind. |
| 15018 | Intentionality is too superficial to appear in the catalogue of ultimate physics [Sider] |
| Full Idea: One day the physicists will complete the catalogue of ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the like of spin, charm and charge will perhaps appear on the list. But aboutness sure won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 4 Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fodor's project is to give a reductive, and perhaps eliminative, account of intentionality of mind, while leaving open what one might do with the phenomenological aspects. Personally I don't think they will appear on the list either. |
| 22984 | Without memory I could not even speak of myself [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand the power of memory that is in myself, although without it I could not even speak of myself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.16) | |
| A reaction: Even if the self is not identical with memory, this idea seems to establish that memory is an essential aspect of the self. This point is neglected by those who see the self as an entity (the 'soul pearl') which persists through all experience. |
| 5982 | If the future does not exist, how can prophets see it? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How do prophets see the future, if there is not a future to be seen? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.17) | |
| A reaction: The answer, I suspect, is that prophets can't see the future. The prospect that the future already exists would seem to saboutage human freedom and responsibility, and point to Calvinist predestination, and even fatalism. |
| 22976 | Memories are preserved separately, according to category [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: In memory everything is preserved separately, according to its category. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the first seeds of the idea that the mind functions by means of mental files. Our memories of cats are 'close to' or 'linked to' our memories of dogs. |
| 14999 | Prior to conventions, not all green things were green? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: It is absurd to say that 'before we introduced our conventions, not all green things were green'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: Well… Different cultures label the colours of the rainbow differently, and many of them omit orange. I suspect the blue/green borderline has shifted. |
| 14998 | Conventions are contingent and analytic truths are necessary, so that isn't their explanation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: To suggest that analytic truths make statements about linguistic conventions is a nonstarter; statements about linguistic conventions are contingent, whereas the statements made by typical analytic sentences are necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: That 'anything yellow is extended' is not just a convention should be fairly obvious, and it is obviously necessary. But we can say that bachelors are necessarily unmarried men - given the current convention. |
| 15016 | Analyticity has lost its traditional role, which relied on truth by convention [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can fully play the role traditionally associated with analyticity, for much of that traditional role presupposed the doctrine of truth by convention. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.8) | |
| A reaction: Sider rejects Quine's attack on analyticity, but accepts his critique of truth by convention. |
| 22511 | Some reasonings are stronger than we are [Philolaus] |
| Full Idea: Some reasonings are stronger than we are. | |
| From: Philolaus (fragments/reports [c.425 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1225a33 | |
| A reaction: This endorses the Aristotle view of akrasia (as opposed to the Socratic view). This isolated remark seems to imply that we are more clearly embodiments of will than of reason. |
| 22985 | Everyone wants happiness [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.20) | |
| A reaction: His concept of happiness is, of course, religious. Occasionally you meet habitual grumblers about life who give the impression that they are only happy when they are discontented. So happiness is achieving desires, not feeling good? |
| 14987 | Many of the key theories of modern physics do not appear to be 'laws' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: That spacetime is 4D Lorentzian manifold, that the universe began with a singularity, and in a state of low entropy, are all central to physics, but it is a stretch to call them 'laws'. ...It has been argued that there are no laws of biology. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.1) |
| 14985 | The notion of law doesn't seem to enhance physical theories [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Adding the notion of law to physical theory doesn't seem to enhance its explanatory power. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree with his scepticism about laws, although Sider offers it as part of his scepticism about modal facts being included in explanations of actuality. Personally I like dispositions, but not laws. See the ideas of Stephen Mumford. |
| 14991 | Space has real betweenness and congruence structure (though it is not the Euclidean concepts) [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In metaphysics, space is intrinsically structured; the genuine betweenness and congruence relations are privileged in a way that Euclidean-betweenness and Euclidean-congruence are not. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: I note that Einstein requires space to be 'curved', which implies that it is a substance with properties. |
| 15021 | The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.1) |
| 22888 | To be aware of time it can only exist in the mind, as memory or anticipation [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: Augustine answers that for us to be aware of time it must exist only in the mind, …and the difference between past and future is just the difference between memory and anticipation. | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: This is an extreme idealist view. Are we to say that the past consists only of what can be remembered, and the future only of what is anticipated? Absurd anti-realism, in my view. Where do his concepts come from, asks Le Poidevin. |
| 5984 | Maybe time is an extension of the mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I begin to wonder whether time is an extension of the mind itself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.26) | |
| A reaction: The observation that the mind creates a 'specious present' (spreading experience out over a short fraction of second) reinforces this. Personally I like David Marshall's proposal that consciousness is entirely memory, which would deny this idea. |
| 15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The spotlight theorist accepts the block universe, but also something in addition: a joint-carving monadic property of presentness, which is possessed by just one moment of time, and which 'moves', to be possessed by later and later times. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
| A reaction: This seems better than the merely detached eternalist view, which seems to ignore the key phenomenon. I just can't comprehend any theory which makes the future as real as the past. |
| 5980 | How can ten days ahead be a short time, if it doesn't exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: A short time ago or a short time ahead we might put at ten days, but how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, which gets at the paradoxical nature of time very nicely. How can it be long, but non-existent? We could break the paradox by concluding '..and therefore time does exist', even though we can't see how. |
| 5979 | If the past is no longer, and the future is not yet, how can they exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Of the three divisions of time, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: This is the oldest bewilderment about time, which naturally leads us to the thought that time cannot actually 'exist'. The remark implies that at least 'now' is safe, but that also succumbs to paradox pretty quickly. |
| 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that the whole of the current year is present, and if the whole of it is not present, the year is not present. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: Another nice way of presenting the paradox of time. We are in a particular year, so it has to be real. |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind. |
| 5983 | I disagree with the idea that time is nothing but cosmic movement [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I do not agree. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.22) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to say that you either take time or movement as axiomatic, and describe one in terms of the other, but you are stuck unable to give the initial statement of the axiom without mentioning the second property you were saving for later. |
| 5977 | Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The fact that heaven and earth are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; ..the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.04) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that the underlying matter is eternal (as in various conservation laws, such as that of energy), and that all change is in the form rather than the substance. |
| 22887 | If God existed before creation, why would a perfect being desire to change things? [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: If nothing existed by God before creation, then what could have happened to, or within, God that led God to decide to create the universe at that particular moment? Why would an eternal or perfect being want or need to change? | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: I suppose you could reply that change is superior to stasis, but then why did God delay the creation? |
| 5976 | If God is outside time in eternity, can He hear prayers? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.01) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the single most difficult and most elusive question about the nature of a supreme divine being. If the being is trapped in time, as we are, it is greatly diminished, and if it is outside, it is hard to see how it could be a participant. |