20 ideas
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 14508 | A 'thisness' is a thing's property of being identical with itself (not the possession of self-identity) [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: A thisness is the property of being identical with a certain particular individual - not the property that we all share, of being identical with some individual, but my property of being identical with me, your property of being identical with you etc. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
| A reaction: These philosophers tell you that a thisness 'is' so-and-so, and don't admit that he (and Plantinga) are putting forward a new theory about haecceities, and one I find implausible. I just don't believe in the property of 'being-identical-to-me'. |
| 14511 | There are cases where mere qualities would not ensure an intrinsic identity [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: I have argued that there are possible cases in which no purely qualitative conditions would be both necessary and sufficient for possessing a given thisness. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6) | |
| A reaction: Are we perhaps confusing our epistemology with our ontology here? We can ensure that something has identity, or ensure that its identity is knowable. If it is 'something', then it has identity. Er, that's it? |
| 12031 | Essences are taken to be qualitative properties [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Essences have normally been understood to be constituted by qualitative properties. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1) | |
| A reaction: I add this simple point, because it might be challenged by the view that an essence is a substance, rather than the properties of anything. I prefer that, and would add that substances are individuated by distinctive causal powers. |
| 12034 | If the universe was cyclical, totally indiscernible events might occur from time to time [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: There is a temporal argument for the possibility of non-identical indiscernibles, if there could be a cyclical universe, in which each event was preceded and followed by infinitely many other events qualitatively indiscernible from itself. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: The argument is a parallel to Max Black's indiscernible spheres in space. Adams offers the reply that time might be tightly 'curved', so that the repetition was indeed the same event again. |
| 14510 | Two events might be indiscernible yet distinct, if there was a universe cyclical in time [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Similar to the argument from spatial dispersal, we can argue against the Identity of Indiscernibles from temporal dispersal. It seems there could be a cyclic universe, ..and thus there could be distinct but indiscernible events, separated temporally. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14509 for spatial dispersal. If cosmologists decided that a cyclical universe was incoherent, would that ruin the argument? Presumably there might even be indistinguishable events in the one universe (in principle!). |
| 16455 | Black's two globes might be one globe in highly curved space [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: If God creates a globe reached by travelling two diameters in a straight line from another globe, this can be described as two globes in Euclidean space, or a single globe in a tightly curved non-Euclidean space. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3) | |
| A reaction: [my compression of Adams's version of Hacking's response to Black, as spotted by Stalnaker] Hence we save the identity of indiscernibles, by saying we can't be sure that two indiscernibles are not one thing, unusually described. |
| 14507 | Are possible worlds just qualities, or do they include primitive identities as well? [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Is the world - and are all possible worlds - constituted by purely qualitative facts, or does thisness hold a place beside suchness as a fundamental feature of reality? | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], Intro) | |
| A reaction: 'Thisness' and 'suchness' aim to capture Aristotelian notions of the entity and its attributes. Aristotle talks of 'a this'. Adams is after adding 'haecceities' to the world. My intuitive answer is no, there are no 'pure' identities. We add those. |
| 11964 | Possible worlds are world-stories, maximal descriptions of whole non-existent worlds [Adams,RM, by Molnar] |
| Full Idea: According to a theory proposed by Adams, possible worlds are world-stories, that is maximally complete consistent sets of propositions which between them describe non-existent whole worlds. | |
| From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by George Molnar - Powers 12.2.2 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this places an additional constraint on the view that a world is just a maximal set of propositions. It seems to require coherence as well as consistency. Suppose an object destroys all others objects. Is that a world? |
| 16451 | Adams says anti-haecceitism reduces all thisness to suchness [Adams,RM, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The anti-haecceitist thesis (according to Adams's version) is that all thisnesses are reducible to, or supervenient upon, suchnesses. | |
| From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 3.5 |
| 11901 | Haecceitism may or may not involve some logical connection to essence [Adams,RM, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Moderate Haecceitism says that thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive, but logically connected with suchnesses. ..Extreme Haecceitism involves the rejection of all logical connections between suchness and thisness, for persons. | |
| From: report of Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been | |
| A reaction: I am coming to the conclusion that they are not linked. That thisness is a feature of our conceptual thinking, and is utterly atomistic and content-free, while suchness is rich and a feature of reality. |
| 14512 | Moderate Haecceitism says transworld identities are primitive, but connected to qualities [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: My position, according to which thisnesses and transworld identities are primitive but logically connected to suchnesses, we may call 'Moderate Haecceitism'. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6) | |
| A reaction: The rather tentative connection to qualities is to block the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg, which he (quite reasonably!) holds to be counterintuitive. It all feels like a mess to me. |
| 8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
| 8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
| 8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
| 8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
| 12032 | Direct reference is by proper names, or indexicals, or referential uses of descriptions [Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Direct reference is commonly effected by the use of proper names and indexical expressions, and sometimes by what has been called (by Donnellan) the 'referential' use of descriptions. | |
| From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 2) | |
| A reaction: One might enquire whether the third usage should be described as 'direct', but then I am not sure that there is much of a distinction between references which are or are not 'direct'. Either you (or a sentence) refer or you (or it) don't. |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |