12750
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The question is whether force is self-sufficient in bodies, and essential, or dependent on something [Lenfant]
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Full Idea:
The whole question is to know if the force to act in bodies is in matter something distinct and independent of everything else that one conceives there. Without that, this force cannot be its essence, and will remain the result of some primitive quality.
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From:
Jacques Lenfant (Letters to Leibniz [1693], 1693.11.07), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
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A reaction:
This challenge to Leibniz highlights the drama of trying to simultaneously arrive at explanations of things, and to decide the nature of essence. Leibniz replied that force is primitive, because it is the 'principle' of behaviour and dispositions.
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15452
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We could not uphold a truthmaker for 'Fa' without structures [Lewis]
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Full Idea:
We could not, without structures, uphold the principle that every truth has a truthmaker. If Fa is true, the truthmaker is not F, not a, nor both together; not their mereological sum; not a set-theoretic construction. These would exist just the same.
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From:
David Lewis (Comment on Armstrong and Forrest [1986], p.109)
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A reaction:
This point ought to trouble Lewis, as well as Armstrong and Forrest. If we assert 'Fa', we must (in any theory) have some idea of what unites them, as well as of their separate existence. It must a fact about 'a', not a fact about 'F'.
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11214
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We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
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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.
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From:
Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
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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).
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