Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'Nietzsche: a philosophical biography' and 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity'

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12 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / d. Nineteenth century philosophy
20110 Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski]
     Full Idea: The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit.,
     From: Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07)
     A reaction: [a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three).
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 3. Logical Truth
15091 Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I favour restricting the term 'logical truth' to what logicians would count as such, excluding both analytic truths like 'Bachelors are unmarried' and Kripkean necessities like 'Gold is an element'.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: I agree. There is a tendency to splash the phrases 'logical truth' and 'logical necessity around in vague ways. I take them to strictly arise out of the requirements of formal systems of logic.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
15095 A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The view I now favour says that the causal features of a property, both forward-looking and backward-looking, are essential to it. And it says that properties having the same causal features are identical.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: In this formulation we have essentialism about properties, as well as essentialism about the things which have the properties.
15097 I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The controversial claim of my theory is that the causal features of properties are essential to them - are features that they have in all possible worlds.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: One problem is that a property can come in degrees, so what degree of the property is necessary to it? It is better to assign this claim to the fundamental properties (which are best called 'powers').
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
15094 I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I now reject the formulation of the causal theory which says that a property is a cluster of conditional powers. That has a reductionist flavour, which is a cheat. We need properties to explain conditional powers, so properties won't reduce.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: [compressed wording] I agree with Mumford and Anjum in preferring his earlier formulation. I think properties are broad messy things, whereas powers can be defined more precisely, and seem to have more stability in nature.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 5. Metaphysical Necessity
15099 If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: If it is possible that there could be possible states of affairs that are not nomologically possible, don't we therefore need a notion of metaphysical possibility that outruns nomological possibility?
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: Shoemaker rejects this possibility (p.425). I sympathise. So there is 'natural' possibility (my preferred term), which is anything which stuff, if it exists, could do, and 'logical' possibility, which is anything that doesn't lead to contradiction.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
15101 Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII)
     A reaction: The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke).
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
15098 Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: We have abundant empirical evidence that when we can imagine some phenomenal situation, e.g., imagine things appearing certain ways, such a situation could actually exist.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: There seem to be good reasons for holding the opposite view too. We can imagine gold appearing to be all sorts of colours, but that doesn't make it possible. What does empirical evidence really tell us here?
15100 Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Imaginability can give us access to conceptual possibility, when we come to believe situations to be conceptually possible by reflecting on their descriptions and seeing no contradiction or incoherence.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: If take the absence of contradiction to indicate 'logical' possibility, but the absence of incoherence is more interesting, even if it is a bit vague. He is talking of 'situations', which I take to be features of reality. A priori synthetic?
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
15096 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Perhaps 'grue' has causal features, but only derivatively, in virtue of its relation to green.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: I take grue to be a behaviour, and not a property at all. The problem only arises because the notion of a 'property' became too lax. Presumably Shoemaker should also mention blue in his account.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions
19216 Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist?
     From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions
     A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done?
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
15093 We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals.