Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Logic of What Might Have Been' and 'Sameness and Substance'

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57 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis
16512 Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 2. Tools of Modal Logic / b. Terminology of ML
14684 A world is 'accessible' to another iff the first is possible according to the second [Salmon,N]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / d. System T
14669 For metaphysics, T may be the only correct system of modal logic [Salmon,N]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / f. System B
14667 System B has not been justified as fallacy-free for reasoning on what might have been [Salmon,N]
14668 In B it seems logically possible to have both p true and p is necessarily possibly false [Salmon,N]
14692 System B implies that possibly-being-realized is an essential property of the world [Salmon,N]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / g. System S4
14671 What is necessary is not always necessarily necessary, so S4 is fallacious [Salmon,N]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / h. System S5
14686 S5 modal logic ignores accessibility altogether [Salmon,N]
14691 S5 believers say that-things-might-have-been-that-way is essential to ways things might have been [Salmon,N]
14693 The unsatisfactory counterpart-theory allows the retention of S5 [Salmon,N]
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 4. Alethic Modal Logic
14670 Metaphysical (alethic) modal logic concerns simple necessity and possibility (not physical, epistemic..) [Salmon,N]
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / d. Counting via concepts
17529 Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins]
17530 The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
16523 Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins]
16524 Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins]
7. Existence / E. Categories / 3. Proposed Categories
16526 Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
16492 Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins]
16493 Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / c. Individuation by location
16496 Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind
16495 The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins]
16501 In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins]
16506 Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
16509 Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 11. Essence of Artefacts
16514 Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 13. Nominal Essence
16510 Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
14678 Any property is attached to anything in some possible world, so I am a radical anti-essentialist [Salmon,N]
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 1. Objects over Time
16503 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins]
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 7. Intermittent Objects
16499 A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins]
16515 A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins]
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 9. Ship of Theseus
16517 Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 2. Defining Identity
16498 Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins]
16497 Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins]
16502 Identity is primitive [Wiggins]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects
16521 A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects
16505 By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 9. Sameness
16494 We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 3. Types of Necessity
14680 Logical possibility contains metaphysical possibility, which contains nomological possibility [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 5. Metaphysical Necessity
14690 In the S5 account, nested modalities may be unseen, but they are still there [Salmon,N]
14677 Metaphysical necessity is said to be unrestricted necessity, true in every world whatsoever [Salmon,N]
14679 Bizarre identities are logically but not metaphysically possible, so metaphysical modality is restricted [Salmon,N]
14688 Without impossible worlds, the unrestricted modality that is metaphysical has S5 logic [Salmon,N]
14685 Metaphysical necessity is NOT truth in all (unrestricted) worlds; necessity comes first, and is restricted [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
14681 Logical necessity is free of constraints, and may accommodate all of S5 logic [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 7. Natural Necessity
14676 Nomological necessity is expressed with intransitive relations in modal semantics [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality
14689 Necessity and possibility are not just necessity and possibility according to the actual world [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
16522 It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / b. Impossible worlds
14674 Impossible worlds are also ways for things to be [Salmon,N]
14682 Denial of impossible worlds involves two different confusions [Salmon,N]
14687 Without impossible worlds, how things might have been is the only way for things to be [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds
14683 Possible worlds rely on what might have been, so they can' be used to define or analyse modality [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds
14672 Possible worlds are maximal abstract ways that things might have been [Salmon,N]
14675 Possible worlds just have to be 'maximal', but they don't have to be consistent [Salmon,N]
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / c. Worlds as propositions
14673 You can't define worlds as sets of propositions, and then define propositions using worlds [Salmon,N]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
16525 Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins]
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / b. Empirical concepts
16518 We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins]
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / f. Theory theory of concepts
16511 A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins]
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
468 Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]