40 ideas
| 2319 | Metaphysics is the clarification of the ontological relationships between different areas of thought [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.066) |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 2317 | Reductionism is good on light, genes, temperature and transparency [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Examples where reductionism seems to give a good account of things are light, genes, temperature and transparency. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.025) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This a fairly simple examples, thoroughly confirmed by science a long time ago. Life is a nicer example, because it is more complex and less obvious, but pretty much beyond dispute these days. |
| 2310 | Supervenience is linked to dependence [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is customary to associate supervenience with the idea of dependence or determination. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.011) | |
| A reaction: It is only 'customary' because, in principle, the supervenience might just be a coincidence. I might follow someone everywhere because I love them (dependence) or because they force me to (determination). There's always a reason. |
| 2315 | Mereological supervenience says wholes are fixed by parts [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mereological supervenience is the doctrine that wholes are fixed by the properties and relations that characterise their parts. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.018) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would be the opposite of 'holism'. Personally I would take mereological supervenience to be not merely correct, but to be metaphysically necessary. Don't ask me to prove it, of course. |
| 2329 | Causal power is a good way of distinguishing the real from the unreal [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A plausible criterion for distinguishing what is real from what is not real is the possession of causal power. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.119) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, a physicalist view, but for physicalists it is probably the best criterion of what is real. A standard objection to platonism in mathematics is that it denies mathematics causal powers. |
| 2320 | Properties can have causal powers lacked by their constituents [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Macroproperties can, and in general do, have their own causal powers, powers that go beyond the causal powers of their microconstituents. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.085) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the macro-powers 'go beyond' the sum of the micro-powers. Admittedly one molecule can't be slippery, but slipperiness can be totally reduced to molecule behaviour. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 23647 | Objects have an essential constitution, producing its qualities, which we are too ignorant to define [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Individuals and objects have a real essence, or constitution of nature, from which all their qualities flow: but this essence our faculties do not comprehend. They are therefore incapable of definition. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: Aha - he's one of us! I prefer the phrase 'essential nature' of an object, which is understood, I think, by everyone. I especially like the last bit, directed at those who mistakenly think that Aristotle identified the essence with the definition. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11958 | Impossibilites are easily conceived in mathematics and geometry [Reid, by Molnar] |
| Full Idea: Reid pointed out how easily conceivable mathematical and geometric impossibilities are. | |
| From: report of Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], IV.III) by George Molnar - Powers 11.3 | |
| A reaction: The defence would be that you have to really really conceive them, and the only way the impossible can be conceived is by blurring it at the crucial point, or by claiming to conceive more than you actually can |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 530 | There are two contradictory arguments about everything [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There are two contradictory arguments about everything. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B06a), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 13314 | Protagoras says arguments on both sides are always equal [Kim, by Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Protagoras declares that it is possible to argue either side of any question with equal force, even the question whether or not one can equally argue either side of any question! | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998]) by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 088 | |
| A reaction: This is perhaps the most famous sceptical argument in the ancient world (though, note, Protagoras is most famous for his relativism rather than his scepticism). It is, of course, wrong. The arguments are sometimes equal, but often they are not. |
| 2065 | Not every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: We do not agree that every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 183c | |
| A reaction: I fully agree with this, but only because I have an optimistic view that rational people converge on the truth. |
| 1550 | Why didn't Protagoras begin by saying "a tadpole is the measure of all things"? [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: Why didn't he start 'Truth' off by saying "A pig is the measure of all things", or "a baboon",…or " tadpole"? That would have been a magnificently haughty beginning. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 161d1 |
| 2318 | Agency, knowledge, reason, memory, psychology all need mental causes [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The following all require a belief in mental causation: agency (mind causes events), knowledge (perception causes beliefs), reasoning (one belief causes another), memory (events cause ideas), psychology (science of mental causes). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §2 p.031) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A very good list, which I cannot fault, and to which I cannot add. The question is: is there any mental activity left over which does NOT require causation? Candidates are free will, and the contingent character of qualia. I say the answer is, no. |
| 2325 | It seems impossible that an exact physical copy of this world could lack intentionality [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me inconceivable that a possible world exists that is an exact physical duplicate of this world but lacking wholly in intentionality. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: Personally I can't conceive of such a world lacking qualia either. The physical entails the mental, say I. |
| 2324 | Intentionality as function seems possible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There has been much scepticism about a functionalist account of intentionality, particularly from Putnam (recently) and Searle, but, like many others, I don't see any principled objections to such an account. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I don't believe that intentionality is a candidate for being one of those many 'magic' qualities which are supposed to make the reduction of mind to brain impossible. |
| 2314 | Maybe intentionality is reducible, but qualia aren't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to hold that phenomenal properties (qualia) are irreducible, while holding intentional properties, including propositional attitudes, to be reducible (functionally, or biologically). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.017) | |
| A reaction: This is the position which Kim has settled for, but I find it baffling. If the universe is full of irreducibles that is one thing, but if everything in the universe is reducible except for one tiny item, that is implausible. |
| 2313 | Emergentism says there is no explanation for a supervenient property [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The emergentism (of Searle), like ethical intuitionism, views mind-body supervenience as something that admits no explanation - it is a brute fact. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.013) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'emergence' is no sort of theory, and is really old-fashioned dualism in a dubious naturalistic disguise. If mind 'emerges', there is presumably a causal mechanism for that. |
| 2328 | The only mental property that might be emergent is that of qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If emergentism is correct about anything, it is more likely to be correct about qualia than about anything else. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.103) | |
| A reaction: I'm puzzled by a view that says that nearly all of the mind is reducible, but one tiny aspect of it is 'emergent'. What sort of ontology is envisaged by that? |
| 2309 | Non-Reductive Physicalism relies on supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers saw in mind-body supervenience a satisfying metaphysical statement of physicalism without reductionism. This widely influential position is now known as "nonreductive physicalism". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.008) | |
| A reaction: If two things supervene on one another, then we should be asking why. Occasionalism and Parallelism are presumably not the answer. Coldness supervenes on ice. |
| 2311 | Maybe strong supervenience implies reduction [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe strong supervenience is inconsistent with the irreducibility of the supervenient properties to their subvenient bases. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.012) | |
| A reaction: If two things are really very very supervenient on one another (superdupervenient?), then you have to ask WHY? If there isn't identity, then there is surely a highly lawlike connection? |
| 2308 | Identity theory was overthrown by multiple realisations and causal anomalies [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two principle arguments which overthrew the mind-brain identity theory were the multiple realization argument of Hilary Putnam, and the anomalist argument of Davidson, which contained the seeds of functionalism and anomalous monism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.002) | |
| A reaction: The first argument strikes me as significant and interesting, but Davidson seems weak. It makes the unsubstantiated claim that mind is outside the laws of physics, and irreducible. |
| 2322 | Multiple realisation applies to other species, and even one individual over time [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realization goes deeper and wider than biological species, and even in the same individual the neural realizer, or correlate, of a given mental state or function may change over time through maturation and brain injuries. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.095) | |
| A reaction: The tricky question here is what you mean by 'change'. How different must a pattern of neurons be before you say it is of a different type? How do you individuate a type? |
| 2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: My doubts about functionalist accounts of qualia are based on the much discussed arguments from qualia inversions, and from epistemic considerations. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.102) | |
| A reaction: With a colour inversion experience changes but function doesn't. But maybe function does change if you ask the right questions. 'Is this a warm colour?' It certainly strikes me that qualia contain useful (epistemic) information. |
| 2323 | Emotions have both intentionality and qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It has been customary to distinguish between two broad categories of mental phenomena, the intentional and the phenomenal, without excluding those that have both (e.g. emotions). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: This has become the conventional modern account of the mind. It seems a little too simple to say that the mind is characterised by two clearcut phenomena like this. I suspect that his picture will be modified in time. |
| 23646 | Reference is by name, or a term-plus-circumstance, or ostensively, or by description [Reid] |
| Full Idea: An individual is expressed by a proper name, or by a general word joined to distinguishing circumstances; if unknown, it may be pointed out to the senses; when beyond the reach of the senses it may be picked out by an imperfect but true description. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If Putnam, Kripke and Donnellan had read this paragraph they could have save themselves a lot of work! I take reference to be the activity of speakers and writers, and these are the main tools of the trade. |
| 23645 | A word's meaning is the thing conceived, as fixed by linguistic experts [Reid] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a word (such as 'felony') is the thing conceived; and that meaning is the conception affixed to it by those who best understand the language. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 4: Conception [1785], 1) | |
| A reaction: He means legal experts. This is precisely that same as Putnam's account of the meaning of 'elm tree'. His discussion here of reference is the earliest I have encountered, and it is good common sense (for which Reid is famous). |