73 ideas
| 19275 | You cannot understand what exists without understanding possibility and necessity [Hale] |
| Full Idea: I defend the thesis that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Good. I would say that this is a growing realisation in contemporary philosophy. The issue is focused when we ask what are the limitations of Quine's approach to metaphysics. If you don't see possibilities around you, you are a fool. |
| 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). |
| 19291 | A canonical defintion specifies the type of thing, and what distinguish this specimen [Hale] |
| Full Idea: One might think of a full dress, or canonical, definition as specifying what type of thing it is, and what distinguishes it from everything else within its type. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: Good! At last someone embraces the Aristotelian ideas that definitions are a) quite extensive and detailed (unlike lexicography), and b) they aim to get right down to the individual. In that sense, an essence is captured by a definition. |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| 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! |
| 19297 | The two Barcan principles are easily proved in fairly basic modal logic [Hale] |
| Full Idea: If the Brouwersche principle, p ⊃ □◊p is adjoined to a standard quantified vesion of the weakest modal logic K, then one can prove both the Barcan principle, and its converse. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: The Brouwersche principle (that p implies that p must be possible) sounds reasonable, but the Barcan principles strike me as false, so something has to give. They are theorems of S5. Hale proposes giving up classical logic. |
| 19301 | With a negative free logic, we can dispense with the Barcan formulae [Hale] |
| Full Idea: I reject both Barcan and Converse Barcan by adopting a negative free logic. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: See section 9.2 of Hale's book, where he makes his case. I can't evaluate this bold move, though I don't like the Barcan Formulae. We can anticipate objections to Hale: are you prepared to embrace the unexpected consequences of your new logic? |
| 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. |
| 19296 | If second-order variables range over sets, those are just objects; properties and relations aren't sets [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Quine supposes, it is neither necessary nor desirable to interpret bound higher-order variables as ranging over sets. Sets are a species of object. They should range over entities of a completely different type: properties and relations. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 08.2) | |
| A reaction: This helpfully clarifies something which was confusing me. If sets are objects, then 'second-order' logic just seems to be the same as first-order logic (rather than being 'set theory in disguise'). I quantify over properties, but deny their existence! |
| 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. |
| 19289 | Maybe conventionalism applies to meaning, but not to the truth of propositions expressed [Hale] |
| Full Idea: An old objection to conventionalism claims that it confuses sentences with propositions, confusing what makes sentences mean what they do with what makes them (as propositions) true. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.2) | |
| A reaction: The conventions would presumably apply to the sentences, but not to the propositions. Since I think that focusing on propositions solves a lot of misunderstandings in modern philosophy, I like the sound of this. |
| 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. |
| 19298 | Unlike axiom proofs, natural deduction proofs needn't focus on logical truths and theorems [Hale] |
| Full Idea: In contrast with axiomatic systems, in natural deductions systems of logic neither the premises nor the conclusions of steps in a derivation need themselves be logical truths or theorems of logic. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 09.2 n7) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I get that. It can't be that everything in an axiomatic proof has to be a logical truth. How would you prove anything about the world that way? I'm obviously missing something. |
| 19295 | Add Hume's principle to logic, to get numbers; arithmetic truths rest on the nature of the numbers [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The existence of the natural numbers is not a matter of pure logic - it cannot be proved in pure logic. It can be proved in second-order logic plus Hume's principle. Truths of arithmetic are not logic - they depend on the nature of natural numbers. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.4) | |
| A reaction: Hume's principles needs entities which can be matched to one another, so a certain ontology is needed to get neo-logicism off the ground. |
| 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. |
| 19281 | Interesting supervenience must characterise the base quite differently from what supervenes on it [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Any intereresting supervenience thesis requires that the class of facts on which the allegedly supervening facts supervene be characterizable independently, without use or presupposition of the notions involved in stating the supervening facts. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.1) | |
| A reaction: There might be intermediate cases here, since having descriptions which are utterly unconnected (at any level) might be rather challenging. |
| 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] |
| 19278 | There is no gap between a fact that p, and it is true that p; so we only have the truth-condtions for p [Hale] |
| Full Idea: There is no clear gap between its being a fact that p and its being true that p, no obvious way to individuate the fact a true statement records other than via that statement's truth-conditions. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Typical of philosophers of language. The concept of a fact is of something mind-independent; the concept of a truth is of something mind-dependent. They can't therefore be the same thing (by the contrapositive of the indiscernability of identicals!). |
| 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'! |
| 19302 | If a chair could be made of slightly different material, that could lead to big changes [Hale] |
| Full Idea: How shall we prevent a sorites taking us to the conclusion that a chair might have originated in a completely disjoint lot of wood, or even in some other material altogether? | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.3.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good criticism of Kripke's implausible claim that his lectern is necessarily (or essentially) made of the piece of wood it is made of. Could his lectern have had a small piece of plastic inserted in it? |
| 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. |
| 19290 | Absolute necessities are necessarily necessary [Hale] |
| Full Idea: I argue that any absolute necessity is necessarily necessary. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 05.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This requires the principle of S4 modal logic, that necessity implies necessary necessity. He argues that S5 is the logical of absolute necessity. |
| 19286 | 'Absolute necessity' is when there is no restriction on the things which necessitate p [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The strength of the claim that p is 'absolutely necessary' derives from the fact that in its expression as a universally quantified counterfactual ('everything will necessitate p'), the quantifier ranges over all propositions whatever. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
| A reaction: Other philosophers don't seem to use the term 'absolute necessity', but it seems a useful concept, in contrast to conditional or local necessities. You can't buy chocolate on the sun. |
| 19288 | Logical and metaphysical necessities differ in their vocabulary, and their underlying entities [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The difference between logical and metaphysical necessities lies, not in the range of possibilities for which they hold, but - at the linguistic level - in the kind of vocabulary essential to their expression, and the kinds of entities that explain them. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't think much of the idea that the difference is just linguistic, and I don't like the idea of 'entities' as grounding them. I see logical necessities as arising from natural deduction rules, and metaphysical ones coming from the nature of reality. |
| 19285 | Logical necessity is something which is true, no matter what else is the case [Hale] |
| Full Idea: We can identify the belief that the proposition that p is logically necessary, where p may be of any logical form, with the belief that, no matter what else was the case, it would be true that p. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.1) | |
| A reaction: I find this surprising. I take it that logical necessity must be the consequence of logic. That all squares have corners doesn't seem to be a matter of logic. But then he seems to expand logical necessity to include conceptual necessity. Why? |
| 19287 | Maybe each type of logic has its own necessity, gradually becoming broader [Hale] |
| Full Idea: We can distinguish between narrower and broader kinds of logical necessity. There are, for example, the logical necessities of propostional logic, those of first-order logic, and so on. Maybe they are necessities expressed using logical vocabulary. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: Hale goes on to prefer a view that embraces conceptual necessities. I think in philosophy we should designate the necessities according to their sources. This might clarify a currently rather confused situation. First-order includes propositional logic. |
| 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. |
| 19282 | It seems that we cannot show that modal facts depend on non-modal facts [Hale] |
| Full Idea: I think we may conclude that there is no significant version of modal supervenience which both commands acceptance and implies that all modal facts depend asymmetrically on non-modal ones. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the conclusion of a sustained and careful discussion, recorded here for interest. I'm inclined to think that there are very few, if any, non-modal facts in the world, if those facts are accurately characterised. |
| 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. |
| 19276 | The big challenge for essentialist views of modality is things having necessary existence [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Whether the essentialist theory can account for all absolute necessities depends in part on whether the theory can explain the necessities of existence (of certain objects, properties and entities). | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hale has a Fregean commitment to all sorts of abstract objects, and then finds difficulty in explaining them from his essentialist viewpoint. His book didn't convince me. I'm more of a nominalist, me, so I sleep better at nights. |
| 19293 | Essentialism doesn't explain necessity reductively; it explains all necessities in terms of a few basic natures [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The point of the essentialist theory is not to provide a reductive explanation of necessities. It is, rather, to locate a base class of necessities - those which directly reflect the natures of things - in terms of which the remainder may be explained. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 06.6) | |
| A reaction: My picture is of most of the necessities being directly explained by the natures of things, rather than a small core of natures generating all the derived ones. All the necessities of squares derive from the nature of the square. |
| 19294 | If necessity derives from essences, how do we explain the necessary existence of essences? [Hale] |
| Full Idea: If the essentialist theory of necessity is to be adequate, it must be able to explain how the existence of certain objects - such as the natural numbers - can itself be absolutely necessary. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 07.1) | |
| A reaction: Hale and his neo-logicist pals think that numbers are 'objects', and they necessarily exist, so he obviously has a problem. I don't see any alternative for essentialists to treating the existing (and possible) natures as brute facts. |
| 19279 | What are these worlds, that being true in all of them makes something necessary? [Hale] |
| Full Idea: We need an explanation of what worlds are that makes clear why being true at all of them should be necessary and sufficient for being necessary (and true at one of them suffices for being possible). | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.3.2) | |
| A reaction: Hale is introducing combinatorial accounts of worlds, as one possible answer to this. Hale observes that all the worlds might be identical to our world. It is always assumed that the worlds are hugely varied. But maybe worlds are constrained. |
| 19299 | Possible worlds make every proposition true or false, which endorses classical logic [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The standard conception of worlds incorporates the assumption of bivalence - every proposition is either true or false. But it is infelicitous to build into one's basic semantic machinery a principle endorsing classical logic against its rivals. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: No wonder Dummett (with his intuitionist logic) immediately spurned possible worlds. This objection must be central to many recent thinkers who have begun to doubt possible worlds. I heard Kit Fine say 'always kick possible worlds where you can'. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 19300 | The molecules may explain the water, but they are not what 'water' means [Hale] |
| Full Idea: What it is to be (pure) water is to be explained in terms of being composed of H2O molecules, but this is not what the word 'water' means. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: Hale says when the real and verbal definitions match, we can know the essence a priori. If they come apart, presumably we need a posteriori research. Interesting. It is certainly dubious to say a stuff-word means its chemical composition. |
| 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. |
| 1743 | The greatest deterrence for injustice is if uninjured parties feel as much indignation as those who are injured [Solon, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Men can be most effectively deterred from committing injustice if those who are not injured feel as much indignation as those who are. | |
| From: report of Solon (reports [c.600 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.So.10 |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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. |