12 ideas
| 6806 | Do not multiply entities beyond necessity [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]) | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of Ockham's Razor, though it is not found in his printed works. It appears to be mainly aimed at Plato's Theory of Forms. It is taken to refer to types of entities, not numbers. One seraph is as bad as a hundred. |
| 22132 | Species and genera are individual concepts which naturally signify many individuals [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: In his mature nominalism, species and genera are identified with certain mental qualities called concepts or intentions of the mind. Ontologically they are individuals too, like everthing else, ...but they naturally signify many different individuals. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Claude Panaccio - William of Ockham p.1056 | |
| A reaction: 'Naturally' is the key word, because the concepts are not fictions, but natural responses to encountering individuals in the world. I am an Ockhamist. |
| 10558 | Abstract objects are actually constituted by the properties by which we conceive them [Zalta] |
| Full Idea: Where for ordinary objects one can discover the properties they exemplify, abstract objects are actually constituted or determined by the properties by which we conceive them. I use the technical term 'x encodes F' for this idea. | |
| From: Edward N. Zalta (Deriving Kripkean Claims with Abstract Objects [2006], 2 n2) | |
| A reaction: One might say that whereas concrete objects can be dubbed (in the Kripke manner), abstract objects can only be referred to by descriptions. See 10557 for more technicalities about Zalta's idea. |
| 10557 | Abstract objects are captured by second-order modal logic, plus 'encoding' formulas [Zalta] |
| Full Idea: My object theory is formulated in a 'syntactically second-order' modal predicate calculus modified only so as to admit a second kind of atomic formula ('xF'), which asserts that object x 'encodes' property F. | |
| From: Edward N. Zalta (Deriving Kripkean Claims with Abstract Objects [2006], p.2) | |
| A reaction: This is summarising Zalta's 1983 theory of abstract objects. See Idea 10558 for Zalta's idea in plain English. |
| 21733 | The right-wing conception of freedom is based on the idea of self-ownership [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing conception of freedom is, I think, founded on the idea that each person is the morally rightful owner of himself, even if existing legal systems do not acknowledge it. Let us call that the 'self-ownership' thesis. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Nozick as articulating this view. At the end Cohen rejects self-ownership, though he agrees that no one would accept that the state could be the owner of your eyes. Do I own my hair after it is cut? |
| 21739 | Plenty of people have self-ownership, but still lack autonomy [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: Universal self-ownership fails to ensure autonomy, since it tends to produce proletarians, who lack it. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: The implication is that autonomy is not a property of individuals but a social phenomenon. Self-owning people can still be imprisoned. What about autonomy without self-ownership? A bright slave who is given extensive responsibility? |
| 21736 | It is doubtful whether any private property was originally acquired legitimately [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to doubt that much actually existing private property was formed in what anyone could think was a legitimating way. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: What if I created an artificial island out of unwanted raw materials? What about the first humans to reach some remote territory? |
| 21734 | It is plausible that no one has an initial right to own land and natural resources [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: One may plausibly say of external things in their initial state, of raw land and natural resources, that no person has a greater right to them than any other does. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: How about if your group has lived on that plot for fifty generations, and some interlopers arrive and claim part of it. No one thought of 'owning' it till the interlopers arrived. Native Americans and Australians. |
| 21735 | Every thing which is now private started out as unowned [Cohen,GA] |
| Full Idea: In the prehistory of anything that is now private property there was at least one moment at which something privately unowned was taken into private ownership. | |
| From: G.A. Cohen (Are Freedom and Equality Compatible? [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He is obviously talking about land and natural resources. Presumably a table which I made and own was always private property, although the land where the trees were grown was not. Though in some communities what I make could be automatically communal. |
| 19381 | The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: Time is composed of non-entities, because it is composed of the past which does not exist now, although it did exist, and of the future, which does not yet exist; therefore time does not exist. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335], 6:496), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist' | |
| A reaction: I've a lot of sympathy with this! I favour Presentism, so the past is gone and the future is yet to arrive. But we have no coherent concept of a present moment of any duration to contain reality. We are just completely bogglificated by it all. |
| 8010 | William of Ockham is the main spokesman for God's commands being the source of morality [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: The most notable philosopher who makes God's commandment the basis of goodness, rather than God's goodness a reason for obeying him, is William of Occam. | |
| From: William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: Either view has problems. Why choose God to obey? Obey anyone who is powerful? But how do you decide that God is good? How do we know the nature of God's commands, or the nature of God's goodness? Etc. |
| 16679 | Even an angel must have some location [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Ockham dismisses the possibility of non-location out of hand, remarking that even an angel has some location. | |
| From: report of William of Ockham (works [1335]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 14.4 |