Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Presentism', 'Introduction to 'Modality'' and 'Protrepticus (frags)'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / d. Philosophy as puzzles

17949	Inquiry is the cause of philosophy [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Inquiry is the cause of philosophy.
	From: Aristotle (Protrepticus (frags) [c.334 BCE]), quoted by Alexander Nehamas - Eristic,Antilogic,Sophistic,Dialectic p.120
	A reaction: The earlier part of the quote says philosophical thinking is inescapable (even if philosophy is impossible). I suppose we would call it 'curiosity'.

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / d. Being makes truths

14025	The weaker version of Truthmaker: 'truth supervenes on being' [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: The weaker version of Truthmaker is that 'truth supervenes on being'.
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
	A reaction: [He cites Lewis 2001 and Bigelow 1988] This still leaves the difficulty of truths about non-existent things, and truths about possibilities (esp. those that are possible, but are never actualised). What being do mathematical truths supervene on?

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 9. Making Past Truths

14023	The Truthmaker thesis spells trouble for presentists [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: The Truthmaker thesis (that 'for every truth there is a truthmaker, that is, something whose very existence entails the truth' - Fox 1987) spells trouble for the presentist about time.
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
	A reaction: The point is that presentists can no longer express truths about the past (never mind the future), because the truthmakers for them don't exist. This seems to neglect the power of tense - the truth of the claim that 'p was true'.

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers

14024	Truthmaker has problems with generalisation, non-existence claims, and property instantiations [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: Truthmaker is controversial: what of truths like 'all ravens are black', or 'there are no unicorns'. And 'John is tall' is not made true by John or the property of being tall, but by the fusion of the two, but what could this non-mereological fusion be?
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
	A reaction: A first move is to include modal facts (or possible worlds) among the truthmakers. The unicorns are tricky, and seem to need all of actuality as their truthmaker. I don't see the tallness difficulty. Predication is odd, but so what?

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism

14021	Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: Worm-theoretic Perdurantism says spatio-temporal continuants are mereological fusions of instantaneous temporal parts or stages located at different times; Stage-theoretic Perdurantism says they are instantaneous temporal stages of continuants.
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 2.1)
	A reaction: [Armstrong, Lewis and Quine defend the first; Sider the second] The Stage view seems to be the common sense view. Sider suggests that the earlier stages are counterparts, not the thing as it currently is.

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 1. Types of Modality

14528	Maybe modal thought is unavoidable, as a priori recognition of necessary truth-preservation in reasoning [Hale/Hoffmann,A]
	Full Idea: There are 'transcendental' arguments saying that modal thought is unavoidable - recognition, a priori, of the necessarily truth-preserving character of some forms of inference is a precondition for rational thought in general, and scientific theorizing.
	From: Bob Hale/ Aviv Hoffmann (Introduction to 'Modality' [2010], 1)
	A reaction: So the debate about the status of logical truths and valid inference, are partly debates about whether out thought has to involve modality, or whether it could just be about the actual world. I take possibilities and necssities to be features of nature.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / f. Eternalism

14020	'Eternalism' is the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: I use the term Eternalism for the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities. (It is sometimes used for the view that all propositions have their truth-value eternally - it is always true or never true).
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], Intro n.1)
	A reaction: 'Eternalism' strikes me as an excellent word for the former meaning, so I shall promote that, and quietly forget the second one. The idea that the future exists has always stuck in my craw, and the belief that Napoleon still exists strikes me as a weird.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / h. Presentism

14026	Presentists can talk of 'times', with no more commitment than modalists have to possible worlds [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: We can talk of 'moments of time' as abstract objects. This will be attractive to the presentist. As possible worlds give an economical theory of modal talk, so 'times' gives us a theory for temporal talk.
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
	A reaction: Thus we can utilise 'times', while having no more commitment to them than to possible worlds. Nice. He cites Prior and Fine 1977 and Chisholm 1979.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / d. Time series

14022	The only three theories are Presentism, Dynamic (A-series) Eternalism and Static (B-series) Eternalism [Crisp,TM]
	Full Idea: Three theories exhaust the options on time: presentism, dynamic eternalism (eternalism with the tensed dynamic A-series view of time, and the totality of events changing over time), and static eternalism (eternalism with the B-series).
	From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 2.4)
	A reaction: I think the idea that reality is Static Eternalism is just a misunderstanding, arising from our imaginative ability to take a lofty objective overview of a very fluid reality. The other two are the serious candidates. Present, or Growing-block.