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Single Idea 15176
[filed under theme 10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
]
Full Idea
It is not merely the modal facts that result from our conventions, but the individuals and kinds that are modally involved.
Gist of Idea
The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention
Source
Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.3)
Book Ref
Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.77
A Reaction
I am beginning to find Sidelle's views very sympathetic - going over to the Dark Side, I'm afraid. But conventions won't work at all if they don't correspond closely to reality.
The
22 ideas
from 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation'
15032
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Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority
[Sidelle, by Sider]
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15167
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Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths
[Sidelle]
|
15165
|
A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths
[Sidelle]
|
15168
|
That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water'
[Sidelle]
|
15166
|
Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open
[Sidelle]
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15169
|
Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it)
[Sidelle]
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15164
|
We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination
[Sidelle]
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15171
|
The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence
[Sidelle]
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15173
|
That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery
[Sidelle]
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15172
|
Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties
[Sidelle]
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15175
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Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects
[Sidelle]
|
15176
|
The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention
[Sidelle]
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15174
|
A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference
[Sidelle]
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15178
|
Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers?
[Sidelle]
|
15177
|
Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable
[Sidelle]
|
15181
|
Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property
[Sidelle]
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15180
|
There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts
[Sidelle]
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15179
|
To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary
[Sidelle]
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15182
|
Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles
[Sidelle]
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15185
|
We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it
[Sidelle]
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15184
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Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities
[Sidelle]
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15183
|
'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term
[Sidelle]
|