15 ideas
| 13591 | Quantified modal logic collapses if essence is withdrawn [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The whole of quantified modal logic collapses if essence is withdrawn. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121) | |
| A reaction: Quine offers an interesting qualification to this crushing remark in Idea 13590. The point is that objects must retain their identity in modal contexts, as if I say 'John Kennedy might have been Richard Nixon'. What could that mean? |
| 17954 | Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Essence is, as it were, necessity rooted in things, ...but how about possibility rooted in things? ...Having the potential to Φ, unlike being essentially Φ, does not entail being actually Φ. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §2) | |
| A reaction: To me this invites the question 'what is it about the entity which endows it with its rooted possibilities?' A thing has possibilities because it has a certain nature (at a given time). |
| 17953 | Real definition fits abstracta, but not individual concrete objects like Socrates [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: I can understand the notion of real definition as applying to (some) abstact entities, but I have no idea how to apply it to a concrete object such as Socrates or myself. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: She is objecting to Kit Fine's account of essence, which is meant to be clearer than the normal account of essences based on necessities. Aristotle implies that definitions get fuzzy when you reach the level of the individual. |
| 17952 | Modal accounts make essence less mysterious, by basing them on the clearer necessity [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The modal account was meant, I take it, to make the notion of essence less mysterious by basing it on the supposedly better understood notion of necessity. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §1) |
| 13590 | Essences can make sense in a particular context or enquiry, as the most basic predicates [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The notion of essence makes sense in context. Relative to a particular enquiry, some predicates may play a more basic role than others, or may apply more fixedly; and these may be treated as essential. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121) | |
| A reaction: Quine has got a bad press on essentialism, and on modal logic, but I take this point seriously. If you give something a fixed identity by means of essence in some context, you can then go ahead and apply possible world reasoning in that context. |
| 17959 | Metaphysical necessity is even more deeply empirical than Kripke has argued [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We support the views of metaphysical modality on which metaphysical necessity is an even more deeply empirical matter than Kripke has argued. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], p.2) | |
| A reaction: [co-author E. Viebahn] This seems to pinpoint the spirit of scientific essentialism. She cites Bird and Shoemaker. If it is empirical, doesn't that make it a matter of epistemology, and hence further from absolute necessity? |
| 8483 | Necessity is relative to context; it is what is assumed in an inquiry [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The very notion of necessity makes sense to me only relative to context. Typically it is applied to what is assumed in an inquiry, as against what has yet to transpire. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121) | |
| A reaction: Lots of things are assumed by an inquiry without an assumption that they must be true. Quine is the greatest opponent of necessity in all of philosophy. Asserting necessities, though, is too much fun to give up. It would ruin philosophy. |
| 17955 | Possible worlds allow us to talk about degrees of possibility [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The apparatus of possible worlds affords greater expressive power than mere talk of possibility and necessity. In particular, possible worlds talk allows us to introduce degrees of possibility. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: A nice feature, but I'm not sure that either the proportion of possible worlds or the closeness of possible worlds captures what we actually mean by a certain degree of possibility. There is 'accidental closeness', or absence of contingency. See Vetter. |
| 17957 | Maybe possibility is constituted by potentiality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should look at the claim that possibility is constituted by potentiality. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: A problem that comes to mind is possibilities arising from coincidence. The whole of reality must be described, to capture all the possibilities for a particular thing. So potentialities of what? Nice thought, though. |
| 17958 | The apparently metaphysically possible may only be epistemically possible [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Some of what metaphysicians take to be metaphysically possible turns out to be only epistemically possible. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear expression of the increasingly common view that conceivability may be a limited way to grasp possibility. |
| 17956 | Closeness of worlds should be determined by the intrinsic nature of relevant objects [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The closeness of possible worlds should be determined by similarity in the intrinsic constitution of whatever object it is whose potentialities are at issue. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: Nice thought. This seems to be the essentialist approach to possible worlds, but it makes the natures of the objects more fundamental than the framework of the worlds. She demurs because there are also extrinsic potentialities. |
| 13589 | Possible worlds are a way to dramatise essentialism, and yet they presuppose essentialism [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Talk of possible worlds is a graphic way of waging the essentialist philosophy, but it is only that; it is not an explication. Essence is needed to identify an object from one possible world to another. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.118) | |
| A reaction: He makes the proposal sound circular, but I take a commitment to essences to be prior to talk of possible worlds. Possible worlds are a tool for clarifying modalities, not for clarifying essential identities. |
| 13588 | A rigid designator (for all possible worlds) picks out an object by its essential traits [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A rigid designator differs from others in that it picks out its object by essential traits. It designates the object in all possible worlds in which it exists. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.118) | |
| A reaction: This states the point more clearly than Kripke ever does, and I presume it is right. Thus when we say that we wish 'our' Hubert Humphrey had won the election, we can allow that his victory elation would change him a bit. Kripke is right. |
| 13592 | Beliefs can be ascribed to machines [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Beliefs have been ascribed to machines, in support of a mechanistic philosophy, and I share this attitude. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.123) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Raymond Nelson] One suspects that this is Quine's latent behaviourism speaking. It strikes me as a crass misuse of 'belief' to ascribe it to a simple machine like a thermostat. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |