60 ideas
| 18365 | If truths are just identical with facts, then truths will make themselves true [David] |
| Full Idea: According to the identity theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if it is identical with a fact. ...This leads to the unacceptable claim that every true proposition makes itself true (because it is identical to its fact). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 14) |
| 18362 | Examples show that truth-making is just non-symmetric, not asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: That 'there is at least one proposition' ...is a case where something makes itself true, which generates a counterexample to the natural assumption that truth-making is asymmetric; truth-making, it seems, is merely non-symmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18360 | It is assumed that a proposition is necessarily true if its truth-maker exists [David] |
| Full Idea: Friends of the truth-maker principle usually hold that the following states a crucial necessary condition on truth-making: if x makes y true, then, necessarily, if x exists then y is true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: My objection is that the proposition y is taken to pre-exist, primly awaiting the facts that will award it 'truth'. An ontology that contains an infinity of propositions, most of which so far lack a truth-value, is incoherent. You can have x, but no y! |
| 18358 | Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker [David] |
| Full Idea: Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker. For example, 'L is happy or L is hungry', and 'L is happy or L is thirsty', which are both made true by the fact that L is happy. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18355 | What matters is truth-making (not truth-makers) [David] |
| Full Idea: The term 'truthmaker' just labels whatever stands in the truth-making relation to a truth. The truth-making relation is crucial. It would have been just as well to refer to the truth-'maker' principle as the truth-'making' principle. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is well said. The commitment of this theory is to something which makes each proposition true. There is no initial commitment to any theories about what sorts of things do the job. |
| 18354 | Correspondence is symmetric, while truth-making is taken to be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence appears to be a symmetric relation while truth-making appears to be, or is supposed to be, an asymmetric relation. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], Intro) |
| 18356 | Correspondence is an over-ambitious attempt to explain truth-making [David] |
| Full Idea: Truth-maker theory says that the attempt by correspondence to fill in the generic truth-maker principle with something more informative fails. It is too ambitious, offering a whole zoo of funny facts that are not needed. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: A typical funny fact is a disjunctive fact, which makes 'he is hungry or thirsty' true (when it can just be made true by the simple fact that he is thirsty). |
| 18363 | Correspondence theorists see facts as the only truth-makers [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists are committed to the view that, since truth is correspondence with a fact, only facts can make true propositions true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18364 | Correspondence theory likes ideal languages, that reveal the structure of propositions [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists tend to promote ideal languages, ...which is intended to mirror perfectly the structure of the propositions it expresses. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 03) |
| 18357 | What makes a disjunction true is simpler than the disjunctive fact it names [David] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that 'L is happy or hungry' can be made true by the fact that L is happy. This does not have the same complexity or constituent structure as the proposition it makes true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18359 | One proposition can be made true by many different facts [David] |
| Full Idea: One proposition can be made true by many different facts (such as 'there are some happy dogs'). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 4098 | The theory of descriptions supports internalism, since they are thinkable when the object is non-existent [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The theory of descriptions gives a model of internalist intentionality, in that it describes cases where the thinkability of a belief does not depend on the existence of a specific object. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 4.36) | |
| A reaction: So what do externalists say about the theory? Surely a reference to 'water' can't entail the existence of water? |
| 4077 | Aesthetic properties of thing supervene on their physical properties [Crane] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes said that the aesthetic properties of a thing supervene on its physical properties. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.16) | |
| A reaction: A confusing example, as aesthetic properties only exist if there is an observer. Is 'supervenience' just an empty locution which tries to avoid reduction? |
| 4078 | Constitution (as in a statue constituted by its marble) is supervenience without identity [Crane] |
| Full Idea: A statue is constituted by the marble that makes it up. It is plausible to say that constitution is not the same as identity - since identity is symmetrical and identity is not - but nonetheless constitution is a supervenience relation. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.16) | |
| A reaction: So what makes it a statue, as opposed to a piece of marble? It may well be an abstraction which only exists relative to observers. |
| 18361 | A reflexive relation entails that the relation can't be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: An asymmetric relation must be irreflexive: any case of aRa will yield a reductio of the assumption that R is asymmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 4082 | The distinction between 'resultant' properties (weight) and 'emergent' properties is a bit vague [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between 'resultant' properties like weight, and 'emergent' properties like colour, seems intuitive enough, but on examination it is very hard to make precise. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
| A reaction: It is no coincidence that the examples are of primary and secondary qualities. If 'the physical entails the mental' then all mental properties are resultant. |
| 4083 | If mental properties are emergent they add a new type of causation, and physics is not complete [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Whatever the causal process is, it remains true that if emergentism is true, the completeness of physics is false; there are some effects which would not have come about if mental things were absent from the world. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
| A reaction: Emergentism looks to me like an incoherent concept, unless it is another word for dualism. |
| 4079 | Properties are causes [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Properties are causes. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.17) | |
| A reaction: We can't detect properties if they lack causal powers. This may be a deep confusion. Properties are what make causal powers possible, but that isn't what properties are? |
| 4068 | Traditional substance is separate from properties and capable of independent existence [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The traditional concept of substance says substances bear properties which are distinct from them, and substances are capable of independent existence. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.9) | |
| A reaction: Put like that, it sounds ridiculous as a physical theory. It is hard to dislodge substance, though, from a priori human metaphysics. |
| 4096 | Maybe beliefs don't need to be conscious, if you are not conscious of the beliefs guiding your actions [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The beliefs that are currently guiding your actions do not need to be in your stream of consciousness, which suggests that beliefs do not need to be conscious at all. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 4.31) | |
| A reaction: Too bold, I think. Presumably this would eliminate all the other propositional attitudes from consciousness. There would only be qualia left! |
| 4097 | Maybe there are two kinds of belief - 'de re' beliefs and 'de dicto' beliefs [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have claimed that there are two kinds of belief, 'de re' belief and 'de dicto' belief. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 4.35) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, though it may only distinguish two objects of belief, not two types. Internalist and externalist views are implied. |
| 4093 | Many cases of knowing how can be expressed in propositional terms (like how to get somewhere) [Crane] |
| Full Idea: There are plenty of cases of knowing how to do something, where that knowledge can also be expressed - without remainder, as it were - in propositional terms (such as knowing how to get to the Albert Hall). | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.28) | |
| A reaction: Presumably all knowing how could be expressed propositionally by God. |
| 4108 | Phenol-thio-urea tastes bitter to three-quarters of people, but to the rest it is tasteless, so which is it? [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Phenol-thio-urea tastes bitter to three-quarters of people, but to the rest it is tasteless. Is it really bitter, or really tasteless? | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.44) | |
| A reaction: A nice reinforcement of a classic Greek question. Good support for the primary/secondary distinction. Common sense, really. |
| 4105 | The traditional supports for the sense datum theory were seeing double and specks before one's eyes [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The traditional examples used to support the sense datum theory were seeing double and specks before one's eyes. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.43) | |
| A reaction: Presumably, though, direct realists can move one eye, or having something wrong with a retina. |
| 4104 | One can taste that the wine is sour, and one can also taste the sourness of the wine [Crane] |
| Full Idea: One can taste that the wine is sour, and one can also taste the sourness of the wine. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.42) | |
| A reaction: …so sense data are optional? We create sense data by objectifying them, but animals just taste the wine, and are direct realists. Tasting the sourness seems to be a case of abstraction. |
| 4101 | If we smell something we are aware of the smell separately, but we don't perceive a 'look' when we see [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Visual perception seems to differ from some of the other senses; when we become aware of burning toast, we become aware of the smell, ...but we don't see a garden by seeing a 'look' of the garden. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.40) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Do blind people transfer this more direct perception to a different sense (e.g. the one they rely on most)? |
| 4102 | The problems of perception disappear if it is a relation to an intentional state, not to an object or sense datum [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The solution to the problem of perception is to deny that it is related to real objects (things or sense-data); rather, perception is an intentional state (with a subject, mode and content), a relation to the intentional content. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.42) | |
| A reaction: Not clear. This definition makes it sound like a propositional attitude. |
| 4109 | If perception is much richer than our powers of description, this suggests that it is non-conceptual [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The richness in information of perceptual experience outruns our modes of description of it, which has led some philosophers to claim that the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.45) | |
| A reaction: It certainly implies that it can't be entirely conceptual, but it still may be that in humans concepts are always involved. Not when I'm waking up in the morning, though. |
| 4103 | The adverbial theory of perceptions says it is the experiences which have properties, not the objects [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The Adverbial Theory of perception holds that the predicates which other theories take as picking out the properties of objects are really adverbs of the perceptual verb; ..instead of strange objects, we just have properties of experiences. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.42) | |
| A reaction: Promising. It fits secondary qualities all right, but what about primary? I 'see bluely', but can I 'see squarely'? |
| 4065 | Is knowledge just a state of mind, or does it also involve the existence of external things? [Crane] |
| Full Idea: It is controversial whether knowledge is a state of mind, or a composite state involving a thought about something, plus its existence. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Pinpoints the internalism/externalism problem. Knowledge is a special type of belief (but maybe belief with external links!). Tricky. I vote for internalism. |
| 4092 | The core of the consciousness problem is the case of Mary, zombies, and the Hard Question [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The three arguments that have been used to articulate the problem of consciousness are the knowledge argument ('Mary'), the possibility of 'zombies' (creatures like us but lacking phenomenal consciousness), and the explanatory gap (the Hard Question). | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.26) | |
| A reaction: All of these push towards the implausible claim that there could never be a physical explanation of why we experience things. Zombies are impossible, in my opinion. |
| 4087 | Intentionalism does not require that all mental states be propositional attitudes [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Intentionalism (the doctrine that all mental states are intentional) need not be the thesis that all mental states are propositional attitudes. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.22) | |
| A reaction: This points to the requirement for an intentionalist to prove that so-called 'qualia' states are essentially intentional, which is not implausible. |
| 4095 | Object-directed attitudes like love are just as significant as propositional attitudes [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Love, hate, and the other object-directed attitudes have as much of a role in explaining behaviour as the propositional attitudes. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 4.34) | |
| A reaction: A good clarification of the range of intentional states. Objects seem to be external, where propositions are clearly internal. |
| 4106 | If someone removes their glasses the content of experience remains, but the quality changes [Crane] |
| Full Idea: There is a phenomenal difference between a short-sighted person wearing glasses and not; they do not judge that the world is different, but the properties of the experience (the qualia) have changed. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.43) | |
| A reaction: Could be challenged. If a notice becomes unreadable, that is more than the qualia changing. |
| 4089 | Pains have a region of the body as their intentional content, not some pain object [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The intentional object of a pain-state is a part or region of the body, not a pain-object. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.24) | |
| A reaction: Plausible. Has anyone ever suffered from pain without some sense of what part of the body is actually in pain? |
| 4090 | Weak intentionalism says qualia are extra properties; strong intentionalism says they are intentional [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Weak intentionalism says all mental states are intentional, but qualia are higher-order properties of these states. ..Strong intentionalists say the phenomenal character of a sensation consists purely in that state's intentionality. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.25) | |
| A reaction: The weak version sounds better. Asking 'how could a thought have a quality of experience just by being about something?' is a restatement of the traditional problem, which won't go away. The Hard Question. |
| 4107 | With inverted qualia a person's experiences would change, but their beliefs remain the same [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The right thing to say about inverted qualia is that the person's experiences are different from other people's, but their beliefs are the same. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 5.44) | |
| A reaction: Right - which reinforces the idea that all beliefs are the result of judgement, and none come directly from perception. |
| 4069 | Descartes did not think of minds as made of a substance, because they are not divisible [Crane] |
| Full Idea: It would be wrong to represent Descartes' view as the idea that bodies are made of one kind of stuff and minds of another; he did not think minds are made of stuff at all, because then they would be divisible. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.10) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced. It could be an indivisible substance. Without a mental substance, Descartes may have to say the mind is an abstraction, perhaps a pattern of Platonic forms. |
| 4074 | Functionalism defines mental states by their causal properties, which rules out epiphenomenalism [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism holds that it is in the nature of certain mental states to have certain effects; therefore there can be no mental epiphenomena. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.14) | |
| A reaction: I strongly resist the idea that a thing's identity is its function. Functionalism may not say that. Mind is an abstraction referring to a causal nexus of unknowable components. |
| 4091 | The problems of misrepresentation and error have dogged physicalist reductions of intentionality [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental problems of misrepresentation and error have dogged physicalist reductions of intentionality. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.26) | |
| A reaction: If footprints or tree-rings are the model for reductions of intentionality, there doesn't seem much scope in them for giving false information, except by some freak event. |
| 4070 | Properties dualism says mental properties are distinct from physical, despite a single underlying substance [Crane] |
| Full Idea: According to property dualism, mental properties are distinct from physical properties, even though they are properties of one substance. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.10) | |
| A reaction: Two properties may be phenomenologically different (transparent and magnetic), but that doesn't put them in different ontological categories. |
| 4084 | Non-reductive physicalism seeks an explanation of supervenience, but emergentists accept it as basic [Crane] |
| Full Idea: While the non-reductive physicalist believes that mental/physical supervenience must be explained, the emergentist is willing to accept it as a fact of nature. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
| A reaction: A good reason not to be an emergentist. No philosopher should abandon the principle of sufficient reason. |
| 4080 | If mental supervenes on the physical, then every physical cause will be accompanied by a mental one [Crane] |
| Full Idea: If the mental supervenes on the physical, then whenever a physical cause brings about some effect, a mental cause comes along for the ride. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.17) | |
| A reaction: This is why supervenience seems to imply epiphenomenalism. The very concept of supervenience is dubious. |
| 4075 | Identity theory is either of particular events, or of properties, depending on your theory of causation [Crane] |
| Full Idea: If causation concerns events, then we have an identity theory of mental and physical events (particulars) [Davidson]. If causation is by properties, then it is mental and physical properties which are identical [Lewis and Armstrong]. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.14) | |
| A reaction: Events are tokens, and properties are types. Tricky. Events are dynamic, but properties can be static. |
| 4085 | Physicalism may be the source of the mind-body problem, rather than its solution [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Physicalism may be the source of the mind-body problem, rather than its solution. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.19) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if the physical is seen as just a pile of atoms, it is hard to see how they could ever think (see idea 1909). |
| 4073 | Overdetermination occurs if two events cause an effect, when each would have caused it alone [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Causal overdetermination is when an effect has more than one cause, and each event would have caused the effect if the other one had not done so. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.13) | |
| A reaction: Overdetermination is a symptom that an explanation is questionable, but it can occur. Two strong people can join to push over a light hatstand. |
| 4072 | The completeness of physics must be an essential component of any physicalist view of mind [Crane] |
| Full Idea: I claim that the completeness of physics must be an essential component of any physicalist view of mind. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.12) | |
| A reaction: He does not convince me of this. The mind may be within physics, but why should we say a priori that no exceptions to physical law will ever be discovered. Crane is setting up straw men. |
| 4094 | Experience teaches us propositions, because we can reason about our phenomenal experience [Crane] |
| Full Idea: In experience we learn propositions, since someone can reason using the sentence 'Red looks like this' (e.g. 'If red looks like this, then either it looks like this to dogs or it doesn't'). | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 3.28) | |
| A reaction: The fact that we can create propositions about experiences doesn't prove that experience is inherently propositional. |
| 4100 | The Twin Earth argument depends on reference being determined by content, which may be false. [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The Twin Earth argument does not refute internalism, since it depends on the 'Content-Determines-Reference' principle, which internalists can reject. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 4.37) | |
| A reaction: The idea is that content should be understood in a context (e.g. on a particular planet). Indexicals count against a totally narrow view of content (Twins thinking 'I am here'). |
| 4067 | Broad content entails the existence of the object of the thought [Crane] |
| Full Idea: If a mental state is broad, then the existence of the mental state entails the existence of its object. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Hence thinking of non-existent things like unicorns is problematic for externalists. However, externalists can think about numbers or Platonic ideals. |
| 4063 | In intensional contexts, truth depends on how extensions are conceived. [Crane] |
| Full Idea: Intensional contexts are those where truth or falsehood depends on the way the extensions are conceived. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: An important distinction for anyone defending an internalist view of concepts or of knowledge |
| 22687 | Maybe literary assessment is evaluating the artist as a suitable friend [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: An approach in Hume (elaborated by Wayne Booth) holds that literary assessment is akin to an act of befriending, for one assesses the author of a work as a suitable friend. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Some') | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that art exploits our normal range of social emotions and attitudes, so I think this has some truth, but some of the best artists are so out of my league as to not even be candidates for friendship. Dostoevsky? Webster? Caravaggio? |
| 22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels. |
| 22690 | 'Moralism' says all aesthetic merits are moral merits [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The view that the only aesthetic merit of works are ethical ones is known as 'moralism'. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], n 1) | |
| A reaction: [He says this view was demolished by R.W.Beardsmore in 1971] Gaut contrasts this with his own carefully modulated 'ethicism'. Moralism predominated in the eighteenth century, but now looks clearly wrong (or naïve). |
| 22684 | Good ethics counts towards aesthetic merit, and bad ethics counts against it [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: I defend 'ethicism', which says that ethically admirable attitudes count toward the the aesthetic merit of a work, and ethically reprehensible attitudes count against its aesthetic merit. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: He recognises that morally admirable works can explore unethical behaviour, and also that identifying the 'attitude' of a work is not simple. The ethics are not necessary. 'Triumph of the Will' is a classic test case. I disagree with Gaut. |
| 22689 | If we don't respond ethically in the way a work prescribes, that is an aesthetic failure [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Our having reason not to respond in the way prescribed (because it is unethical) is a failure of the work …so that is an aesthetic failure, which is an aesthetic defect. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Merited') | |
| A reaction: A key argument for Gaut's theory of 'ethicism' about literature. If 'Triumph of the Will' gets the right response from Nazi sympathisers, that is probably all aesthetic success. Jane Austen hasn't failed if she is rejected as bourgeois. |
| 22685 | Good art does not necessarily improve people (any more than good advice does) [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Ethicism does not entail the causal thesis that good art ethically improves people, …any more than it follows that earnest ethical advice improves people. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: How successful were sermons, in the great days of Christianity? It seems hard to disagree with Gaut's point. |
| 4071 | Causation can be seen in counterfactual terms, or as increased probability, or as energy flow [Crane] |
| Full Idea: A theory of causation might say 'If A had not existed, B would not have existed' (counterfactual theory), or 'B is more likely if A occurs' (probabilistic), or 'energy flows from A to B'. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.11) | |
| A reaction: As always, it is vital to separate epistemology from ontology. Energy won't cover agents. Whisper "Fire!" in a theatre. |
| 4076 | Causes are properties, not events, because properties are what make a difference in a situation [Crane] |
| Full Idea: My view is that causes are properties (not events); when we look for causes, we look for the aspect of a situation which made a difference, and aspects are properties or qualities. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.14) | |
| A reaction: He is talking about explanations, which may not be causes, or at least they have a different emphasis. Don't events 'make a difference'? Events are ontologically weird |
| 4066 | It seems that 'exists' could sometimes be a predicate [Crane] |
| Full Idea: The view that 'exists' is never a predicate is not plausible. | |
| From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't enlarge. Russell says 'exists' is a quantifier. 'Your very existence offends me - I hope it is confiscated'. |