56 ideas
| 15801 | Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz, Reid, Brentano and others have held that, by considering certain obvious facts about ourselves, we can arrive at an understanding of the general principles of metaphysics. The present book is intended to confirm that view. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 1) | |
| A reaction: I sympathise, but don't really agree. I see metaphysics as a process of filtering ourselves out of the picture, leaving an account of how things actually are. |
| 15802 | I use variables to show that each item remains the same entity throughout [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: My use of variables is not merely pedantic; it indicates that the various items on our list pertain to one and the same entity throughout. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 2) | |
| A reaction: I am one of those poor souls who finds modern analytic philosophy challenging simply because I think in terms of old fashioned words, instead of thinking like mathematicians and logicians. This is a nice defence of their approach. |
| 2653 | If the parts of the universe are subject to the law of nature, the whole universe must also be subject to it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the parts of the universe are subject to the law of nature, then the universe itself must be subject to this law. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.86) |
| 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. |
| 15832 | Events are states of affairs that occur at certain places and times [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We will restrict events to those states of affairs which occur at certain places and times. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: If I say 'the bomb may explode sometime', that doesn't seem to refer to an event. Philosophers like Chisholm bowl along, defining left, right and centre, and never seem to step back from their system and ask obvious critical questions. |
| 15829 | The mark of a state of affairs is that it is capable of being accepted [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We will say that the mark of a state of affairs is the fact that it is capable of being accepted. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I find this a quite bewildering proposal. It means that it is impossible for there to be a state of affairs which is beyond human conception, but why commit to that? |
| 15809 | A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies that it has some property [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies the thing to have a certain property. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: For this to work, we must include extrinsic and relational properties, and properties which are derived from mere predication. I think this is bad metaphysics, and leads to endless confusions. |
| 15828 | I propose that events and propositions are two types of states of affairs [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I will propose that events are said to constitute one type of states of affairs, and propositions another | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I would much prefer to distinguish between the static and the dynamic, so we have a static or timeless state of affairs, and a dynamic event or process. Propositions I take to be neither. He really means 'facts', which subsume the whole lot. |
| 15830 | Some properties can never be had, like being a round square [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: There are properties which nothing can possibly have; an example is the property of being both round and square. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather bizarre Meinongian claim. For a start it sounds like two properties not one. Is there a property of being both 'over here' and 'over there'? We might say the round-square property must exist, for God to fail to implement it (?) |
| 15827 | Some properties, such as 'being a widow', can be seen as 'rooted outside the time they are had' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Some properties may be said to be 'rooted outside the times at which they are had'. Examples are the property of being a widow and the property of being a future President. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of mess you when you treat the category in which an object belongs as if it was one of its properties. We categorise because of properties. |
| 15804 | If some dogs are brown, that entails the properties of 'being brown' and 'being canine' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: The state of affairs which is some dogs being brown may be said to entail (make it necessarily so) the property of 'being brown', as well as the properties of 'being canine' and 'being both brown and canine'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: And the property of 'being such that it is both brown and canine and brown or canine'. Etc. This is dangerous nonsense. Making all truths entail the existence of some property means we can no longer get to grips with real properties. |
| 15810 | Maybe we can only individuate things by relating them to ourselves [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: It may well be that the only way we have, ultimately, of individuating anything is to relate it uniquely to ourselves. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that Chisholm is thinking of 'ourselves' as meaning just himself, but I'm thinking this is plausible if he means the human community. I doubt whether there is much a philosopher can say on individuation that is revealing or precise. |
| 15805 | Being the tallest man is an 'individual concept', but not a haecceity [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Being the tallest man and being President of the United States are 'individual concepts', but not haecceities. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm introduces this term, to help him explain his haecceity more clearly. (His proposal on that adds a lot of fog to this area of metaphysics). |
| 15807 | A haecceity is a property had necessarily, and strictly confined to one entity [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence or haecceity is a narrower type of individual concept. This is a property which is had necessarily, and which it is impossible for any other thing to have. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: [Apologies to Chisholm for leaving out the variables from his definition of haecceity. See Idea 15802] See also Idea 15805. The tallest man is unique, but someone else could become the tallest man. No one else could acquire 'being Socrates'. |
| 15814 | A peach is sweet and fuzzy, but it doesn't 'have' those qualities [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Our idea of a peach is not an idea of something that 'has' those particular qualities, but the concrete thing that 'is' sweet and round and fuzzy. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of his 'adverbial' account of properties, with which you have to sympathise. It tries to eliminate the possibility of some propertyless thing, to which properties can then be added, like sprinkling sugar on it. |
| 12852 | If x is ever part of y, then y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm has an axiom: if x is a proper part of y, then necessarily if y exists then x is part of it. If x is ever part of y, they y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists. | |
| From: report of Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], p.149) by Peter Simons - Parts 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This is Chisholm's notorious mereological essentialism, that all parts are necessary, and change of part means change of thing. However, it looks to me more like a proposal about what properties are necessary, not what are essential. |
| 15808 | A traditional individual essence includes all of a thing's necessary characteristics [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: According to the traditional account of individual essence, each thing has only one individual essence and it includes all the characteristics that the thing has necessarily. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm is steeped in medieval theology, but I don't think this is quite what Aristotle meant. Everyone nowadays has to exclude the 'trivial' necessary properties, for a start. But why? I'm contemplating things which survive the loss of their essence. |
| 12851 | Intermittence is seen in a toy fort, which is dismantled then rebuilt with the same bricks [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm poses the problem of intermittence with the case of a toy fort which is built from toy bricks, taken apart, and then reassembled with the same bricks in the same position. | |
| From: report of Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], p.90) by Peter Simons - Parts 5.3 | |
| A reaction: You could strengthen the case, or the problem, by using those very bricks to build a ship during the interval. Or building a fort with a different design. Most people would be happy to say that same object (token) has been rebuilt. |
| 15806 | The property of being identical with me is an individual concept [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I wish to urge that the property of being identical with me is an individual concept. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I can just about live with the claim (for formal purposes) that I am identical with myself, but I strongly resist my then having a 'property' consisting of 'being identical with myself' (or 'not being identical with somone else' etc.). |
| 15826 | There is 'loose' identity between things if their properties, or truths about them, might differ [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that there is a 'loose' sense of identity that is consistent with saying 'A has a property that B does not have', or 'some things are true of A but not of B'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: He is trying to explicate Bishop Butler's famous distinction between 'strict and philosophical' and 'loose and popular' senses. We might want to claim that the genuine identity relation is the 'loose' one (pace the logicians and mathematicians). |
| 15819 | Do sense-data have structure, location, weight, and constituting matter? [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Does a red sense-datum or appearance have a back side as well as a front? Where is it located? Does it have any weight? What is it made of? | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: A reductive physicalist like myself is not so troubled by questions like this, which smack of Descartes's non-spatial argument for dualism. |
| 15816 | 'I feel depressed' is more like 'he runs slowly' than like 'he has a red book' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: The sentences 'I feel depressed' and 'I feel exuberant' are related in the way in which 'He runs slowly' and 'He runs swiftly' are related, and not in the way in which 'He has a red book' and 'He has a brown book' are related. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Ducasse 1942 and Chisholm 1957 seem to be the sources of the adverbial theory. I gather Chisholm gave it up late in his career. The adverbial theory seems sort of right, but it doesn't illuminate what is happening. |
| 15817 | If we can say a man senses 'redly', why not also 'rectangularly'? [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: If we say a man 'senses redly', may we also say that he 'senses rhomboidally' or 'senses rectangularly'? There is no reason why not. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is Chisholm replying to one of the best known objections to the adverbial theory. Can we sense 'wobblyrhomboidallywithpinkdots-ly'? Can we perceive 'landscapely'? The problem is bigger than he thinks. |
| 15818 | So called 'sense-data' are best seen as 'modifications' of the person experiencing them [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We may summarise my way of looking at appearing by saying that so-called appearances or sense-data are 'affections' or 'modifications' of the person who is said to experience them. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Hm. That seems to transfer the ontological problem of the redness of the tomato from the tomato to the perceiver, but leave the basic difficulty untouched. I think we need to pull apart the intrinsic and subjective ingredients here. |
| 15831 | Explanations have states of affairs as their objects [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that states of affairs constitute the objects of the theory of explanation. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: It is good to ask what the constituents of a theory of explanation might be. He has an all-embracing notion of state of affairs, whereas I would say that events and processes are separate. See Idea 15828. |
| 15811 | I am picked out uniquely by my individual essence, which is 'being identical with myself' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: What picks me out uniquely, without relating me to some other being? It can only be the property of 'being me' or 'being identical with myself', which can only be an individual essence or haecceity, a property I cannot fail to have. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher (and a modern analytic one at that) would imagine that this was some crucial insight into how we know our own identities. |
| 15815 | Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I prefer to say that it is 'transparent' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I would think it better to say that the ego is 'transparent'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Insofar as we evidently have a self, I would say it is neither. It is directly experienced, through willing, motivation, and mental focus. |
| 15813 | People use 'I' to refer to themselves, with the meaning of their own individual essence [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Each person uses the first person pronoun to refer to himself, and in such a way that its reference (Bedeutung) is to himself and its intention (Sinn) is his own individual essence. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right, and may be the basis of the way we essentialise in our understanding of the rest of reality. I have a strong notion of what is essential in me and what is not. |
| 15803 | Bad theories of the self see it as abstract, or as a bundle, or as a process [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Some very strange theories of the self suggest it is an abstract object, such as a class, or a property, or a function. Some theories imply that I am a collection, or a bundle, or a structure, or an event, or a process (or even a verb!). | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 4) | |
| A reaction: I certainly reject the abstract lot, but the second lot doesn't sound so silly to me, especially 'structure' and 'process'. I don't buy the idea that the Self is an indivisible monad. It is a central aspect of brain process - the prioritiser of thought. |
| 15821 | Determinism claims that every event has a sufficient causal pre-condition [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Determinism is the proposition that, for every event that occurs, there occurs a sufficient causal condition of that event. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: You need an ontology of events to put it precisely this way. Doesn't it also work the other way: that there is an event for every sufficient causal condition? The beginning and the end of reality pose problems. |
| 2628 | Why would mind mix with matter if it didn't need it? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the gods have no need of the sensible world, why mix up mind with water and water with mind, if mind can exist by itself without any need of matter? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.24) | |
| A reaction: This question migrates into our puzzles about why a separate mental substance would be produced by evolution. If it is device physical systems use to promote themselves, mental substance is reduced to an inferior and dependent role. |
| 20814 | Eloquence educates, exhorts, comforts, distracts and unites us, and raises us from savagery [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How wonderful is the power of eloquence! It enables us to learn and to teach. We use it to exhort and persuade, to comfort the unfortunate, to distract the timid and calm the passionate. It unites us in law and society, and raises us from savagery. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], 2.147) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Cicero would have been well aware of the doubts about rhetoric felt by Socrates (and possibly Plato). Cicero was probably the greatest Roman orator. |
| 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). |
| 15824 | There are mere omissions (through ignorance, perhaps), and people can 'commit an omission' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: If a man does not respond to a greeting, if he was unaware that he was addressed then his failure to respond may be a mere omission. But if he intended to snub the man, then he could be said to have 'committed the omission'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm has an extensive knowledge of Catholic theology. These neat divisions are subject to vagueness and a continuum of cases in real life. |
| 2640 | We have the death penalty, but still have thousands of robbers [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We have robbers by the thousand, although they have the penalty of death before their eyes. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.86) |
| 2652 | Some regard nature simply as an irrational force that imparts movement [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Some regard nature as an irrational force which merely imparts a mechanical motion to material bodies. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.81) |
| 15822 | The concept of physical necessity is basic to both causation, and to the concept of nature [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: It is generally agreed, I think, that the concept of physical necessity, or a law of nature, is fundamental to the theory of causation and, more generally, to the concept of nature. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems intuitively right, but we might be able to formulate a concept of nature that had a bit less necessity in it, especially if we read a few books on quantum theory first. |
| 15823 | Some propose a distinct 'agent causation', as well as 'event causation' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a distinction is made between 'event causation' and 'agent causation' and it has been suggested that there is an unbridgeable gap between the two. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Nope, don't buy that. I connect it with Davidson's 'anomalous monism', that tries to combine one substance with separate laws of action. The metaphysical price for such a theory is too high to pay. |
| 15820 | A 'law of nature' is just something which is physically necessary [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: When we say something is 'physically necessary' we can replace it with 'law of nature'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [plucked out of context even more than usual!] This is illuminating about what contemporary philosophers (such as Armstrong) seem to mean by a law of nature. It is not some grand equation, but a small local necessary connection. |
| 2645 | Why shouldn't the gods fear their own destruction? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Why should the gods not be apprehensive of their own possible dissolution? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.114) |
| 2627 | I wonder whether loss of reverence for the gods would mean the end of all virtue [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: I do not know whether, if our reverence for the gods were lost, we should not also see the end of good faith, of human brotherhood, and even of justice itself, which is the keystone of all the virtues. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.3) |
| 2651 | God doesn't obey the laws of nature; they are subject to the law of God [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: God is not subject to obey the laws of nature. It is nature that is subject to the laws of God. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.77) |
| 2634 | It seems clear to me that we have an innate idea of the divine [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Let us take it as agreed that we have a preconception or "an innate idea" (as I have called it) or a prior knowledge of the divine. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.44) |
| 2636 | Many primitive people know nothing of the gods [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There must be many wild and primitive peoples who have no idea of the gods at all. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.62) |
| 2650 | If a person cannot feel the power of God when looking at the stars, they are probably incapable of feeling [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.55) |
| 2655 | If the barbarians of Britain saw a complex machine, they would be baffled, but would know it was designed [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If someone were to take the celestial globe of Posidonius and show it to the people of Britain, would a single one of those barbarians fail to see that it was the product of a conscious intelligence? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.88) |
| 2656 | Chance is no more likely to create the world than spilling lots of letters is likely to create a famous poem [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If someone thinks chance made the world, he should also think that if an infinite number of the letters of the alphabet were shaken together and poured out on the ground it would be possible for them to spell out the whole 'Annals' of Ennius. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.93) |
| 2647 | It is obvious from order that someone is in charge, as when we visit a gymnasium [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If one comes into a gymnasium and sees everything properly arranged and carried on in order, one does not imagine these arrangements to be accidental, but infers that there is someone in command whose orders are obeyed. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.15) |
| 2657 | If everything with regular movement and order is divine, then recurrent illnesses must be divine [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Are we to find a divinity in every regular movement and in everything which happens in a constant order? If so, we shall have to say that tertian and quartan agues are divine because their course and recurrence is absolutely uniform. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.24) |
| 2638 | Either the gods are identical, or one is more beautiful than another [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Are the gods all exactly the same? If not, then one must be more beautiful than another. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.80) |
| 2635 | The gods are happy, so virtuous, so rational, so must have human shape [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We agree the gods are happy, and no happiness is possible without virtue: there is no virtue without reason: and reason is associated only with the human form: then it must follow that the gods themselves have human shape. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.48) |
| 2641 | Why believe in gods if you have never seen them? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Did you ever actually see a god? Then why do you believe that gods exist? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.88) |
| 2659 | The lists of good men who have suffered and bad men who have prospered are endless [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Time would fail me if I tried to list all the good men for whom things have turned out badly. So it would if I tried to mention all the wicked who have prospered. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.80) |
| 2658 | The gods blame men for having vices, but they could have given us enough reason to avoid them [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: You gods say that the fault lies in the vices of mankind. But you could have endowed men with reason in a form which would exclude all vice and crime. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.76) |