22 ideas
8250 | So-called 'free logic' operates without existence assumptions [Meinong, by George/Van Evra] |
Full Idea: Meinong has recently been credited with inspiring 'free logic': a logic without existence assumptions. | |
From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by George / Van Evra - The Rise of Modern Logic 8 | |
A reaction: This would appear to be a bold escape from the quandries concerning the existential implications of quantifiers. I immediately find it very appealing. It seems to spell disaster for the Quinean program of deducing ontology from language. |
17292 | Avoid 'in virtue of' for grounding, since it might imply a reflexive relation such as identity [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: We should not use 'in virtue of' where it might express a reflexive relation, such as identity. Since grounding is a relation of determination, and closely linked to the concept of explanation, it is irreflexive and asymmetric. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
A reaction: E.g. he says someone isn't a bachelor in virtue of being an unmarried man, since a bachelor just is an unmarried man. I can't disagree. 'Determination' looks like the magic word, even if we don't know how it cashes out. |
17295 | Ground relations depend on the properties [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: On my view, grounding relations depend on the natures of the properties involved in them. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
A reaction: I'm cautious about this if we don't find out more exactly what properties are (and they had better not just be predicates). Maybe properties are the only apparatus we have here, though I prefer 'powers' for the fundamentals. |
17297 | A ball's being spherical non-causally determines its power to roll [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: The fact that a given thing is spherical non-causally determines the fact that it has the power to roll. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Quine won't accept this, because you have added something called a 'power' to the ball (intrinsically, it seems), over and above its observable sphericity. Does being a ball 'determine' that it can't be in two places at once? Order of explanation? |
17302 | Ground is irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, non-monotonic etc. [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: The logical principles about grounding include irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, non-monotonicity, and so forth. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.8) | |
A reaction: [It can't ground itself, there is no mutual grounding, grounds of grounds ground, and grounding judgements are not fixed] |
17303 | The best critique of grounding says it is actually either identity or elimination [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: I think the most promising skeptical strategy is to insist on either identity or elimination wherever grounding is alleged to hold. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.9) | |
A reaction: This comes after an assessment of the critiques of grounding by Oliver, Hofweber and Daly. So we don't say chemistry grounds biology, we either say biology is chemistry, or that there is no biology. Everything is just simples. Not for me. |
17294 | Grounding is a singular relation between worldly facts [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: On my view, grounding is a singular relation between facts. ...Facts, on this view, are obtaining states of affairs. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
A reaction: He rest this claim on his 'worldly' view of facts, Idea 17293. I seem to be agreeing with him. Note that it is not between types of fact, even if there are such general truths, such as in chemistry. |
17300 | If grounding relates facts, properties must be included, as well as objects [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: Taking facts to be the relata of grounding has the interesting consequence that it does not relate ordinary particulars, objects, considered apart from their properties. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.4) | |
A reaction: It will depend on what you mean by properties, and it seems to me that something like 'powers' must be invoked, to get the active character that seems to be involved in grounding. |
17296 | We must accept grounding, for our important explanations [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: The reason we must countenance grounding is that it is indispensible to certain important explanations. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
A reaction: I like this a lot. The first given of all philosophy is the drive to exlain. However, we mustn't go inventing features of the world, simply to give us the possibility of explaining it. The objective fact seems to be the without-which-not relation. |
17301 | Reduction is just identity, so the two things are the same fact, so reduction isn't grounding [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: I deny that when p grounds q, q thereby reduces to p, and I deny that if q reduces to p, then p grounds q. ...On my view, reduction is nothing other than identity, so p is the same fact as q. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.5) | |
A reaction: Very good. I can't disagree with any of it, and it is crystal clear. Philosophical heaven. |
17293 | Worldly facts are obtaining states of affairs, with constituents; conceptual facts also depend on concepts [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: The 'worldly' view of facts says they are obtaining states of affairs, individuated by their constituents and their combination. On the 'conceptual' view, facts will differ if they pick out an object or property via different concepts. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
A reaction: Might it be that conceptual differences between facts are supervenient on worldly differences (with the worldly facts in charge)? |
8719 | There can be impossible and contradictory objects, if they can have properties [Meinong, by Friend] |
Full Idea: Meinong (and Priest) leave room for impossible objects (like a mountain made entirely of gold), and even contradictory objects (such as a round square). This would have a property, of 'being a contradictory object'. | |
From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 6.8 | |
A reaction: This view is only possible with a rather lax view of properties. Personally I don't take 'being a pencil' to be a property of a pencil. It might be safer to just say that 'round squares' are possible linguistic subjects of predication. |
8971 | There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects [Meinong] |
Full Idea: There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects. | |
From: Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]), quoted by Peter van Inwagen - Existence,Ontological Commitment and Fictions p.131 | |
A reaction: Van Inwagen say this idea is 'infamous', but Meinong is undergoing a revival, and commitment to non-existent objects may be the best explanation of some ways of talking. |
8718 | Meinong says an object need not exist, but must only have properties [Meinong, by Friend] |
Full Idea: Meinong distinguished between 'existing objects' and 'subsisting objects', and being an object does not imply existence, but only 'having properties'. | |
From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 6.8 | |
A reaction: Meinong is treated as a joke (thanks to Russell), but this is good. "Father Christmas does not exist, but he has a red coat". He'd better have some sort of existy aspect if he is going to have a property. So he's 'an object'. 'Insubstantial'? |
7756 | Meinong said all objects of thought (even self-contradictions) have some sort of being [Meinong, by Lycan] |
Full Idea: Meinong insisted (à la Anselm) that any possible object of thought - even a self-contradictory one - has being of a sort even though only a few such things are so lucky as to exist in reality as well. | |
From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.1 | |
A reaction: ['This idea gave Russell fits' says Lycan]. In the English-speaking world this is virtually the only idea for which Meinong is remembered. Russell (Idea 5409) was happy for some things to merely 'subsist' as well as others which could 'exist'. |
15781 | The objects of knowledge are far more numerous than objects which exist [Meinong] |
Full Idea: The totality of what exists, including what has existed and what will exist, is infinitely small in comparison with the totality of Objects of knowledge. | |
From: Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]), quoted by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 01 | |
A reaction: This is rather profound, but the word 'object' doesn't help. I would say 'What we know concerns far more than what merely exists'. |
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. |
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 |
17298 | Two things being identical (like water and H2O) is not an explanation [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: If there is identity between water and H2O, we have neither the asymmetry nor the irreflexivity that explanations require. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Once you realise it is H2O, you understand its deeper features, which will open up new explanations. He's right, though. |
17299 | There are plenty of examples of non-causal explanation [Audi,P] |
Full Idea: There are a number of explanations where it seems clear that causation is not involved at all: normative grounded in non-normative, disposition grounded in categorical, aesthetic grounded in non-aesthetic, semantic in social and psychological. | |
From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Apart from dispositions, perhaps, these all seem to be experienced phenomena grounded in the physical world. 'Determination' is the preferred term for non-causal grounding. |
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). |