August 2002 Short answers first; then more notes ***** State Quine's criterion for ontological commitment. What reasons are there for accepting it? What reasons are there for denying it? Critically discuss. ontology -- what there is, to be is to be the value of a (bound) variable. trivially everything is, but that's not what we want; quine wants a simpler theory of desert landscapes. borrow russell's descriptions and restate without names; there is no object that pegasizes --- no ontological commitment. advantage is simpler, separates naming from meaning; pegasus has meaning but doesn't name any object. quine points to the difficulty of indeterminancy of meaning and inscrutibility of reference. other problem that everything can be rephrased or that if rephrasing is equivalent then commitment remains. ***** There seems to be no fact of the matter as to where exactly the Outback begins and where it ends. Does this mean that there are vague objects? no matter of fact where beings ends: outback, mountain, river (tributaries), caribbean sea. difficulty as boundaries, similiarities. but there are clearly objects there; the difficulty is identifying them. we could have a precise definition of the outback, but that's just linguistic. as lewis says the reason for the vagueness is not the object tbut the semantic indecision. de dicto not de re; it is vague what the object is does not imply the object is vauge. ***** Does having a property require existing? certainly not if we count "non-existence" as a property. then something could have the property of non-existence without existing. this is why quine appeals to descriptions. seems like round squares can't have any non-trivial (tautological, negated) properties. so perhaps no. sherlock holmes (defined, fictional) has properties and does not physically exist, though he does seem to exist in some way since he has properties. ***** If Wittgenstein could have fathered somebody, does this mean that there is somebody Wittgenstein could have fathered? If so, who (or what)? poss world semantics, actualism, possibilism, counterparts. but possible worlds are semantic. confusing de re with de dicto (again) --- possibly w f s does not imply w f possible-s. no possible men in the doorway either, does not make sense to consider them in the same way as actual physical beings. ***** Some say that an object x may be the same lump of matter as an object y, even though x is not the same statue as y. Others say this is incoherent. Why does this debate matter? What can be said for and against the view in question? gibbard --- lumpl and goliath. some say lump = statue because occupy same space, according to leibniz's law (id of ind and ind of id), equal means they can't differ. but this can't be because differ in temporal and contingent properties. so not identity. perhaps geach's relative identity --- same matter, but then this still doesn't satisfy, and in fact statue could change matter. is is not is of identity but of material composition which is an important identity-like but not strict identity relation. ***** Nominalists are said to deny that there are properties. What, exactly, is the nominalist denying when he says this? What can be said for and against nominalism, and for and against the existence of properties? universals. realists (platonists, aristotelian). nominalists deny universals, are said to deny properties. in fact deny that universals exist, instead they are names or concepts or classes or resemblances. simpler ontology, avoids question as to where universals are. but if there are no properties, what are we talking about when we talk about the redness of an apple? seems to imply that there is no such thing that humans all have in common or red objects all have in common. may just be members of the same set, but how do we classify them in a set w/o appeal to properties? ***** Under what conditions do many objects compose one thing? mass nouns - water; class nouns - herd (all the same); group - orchestra (different function); human (organism); mixture; homogenous substance; connected; any two things. molecular, so everything is composed of other things. ***** Are there any good arguments in favor of a four-dimensional ontology? 3d (space) doesn't allow us to explain change and identity over time. 4d does and adds time (temporal stages), endurance/perdurance. 4d can be used to explain tree, river, theseus. mereological sum of stages. possible problem is the now overlapping with the whole. ***** When we consider Bob as a cyclist, he seems to be essentially two-legged and only accidentally rational; but when we consider the same man as a mathematician, he seems to be essentially rational and only accidentally two-legged. What are we to conclude from this concerning the status of de re modal properties? tension between accidental and essential. look at possible world semantics. read de dicto rather than de re. only the de re (essences) is problematic. what changes is not bob but how we consider him. acciddental properties are not cumulative. ***** Do macroscopic objects cause anything? If so, is there rampant causal overdetermination? - ***** What is the best analysis of the relation which obtains between an object and its properties? two main theories: substratum, bundle. substratum says something (bare particular) besides properties; object has properties. bundle says object is just the set of properties. first is problematic because bare particulars are mysterious. second seems more attractive to me but strange that an object is a set of properties (properties can change). seems that the important point is we use properties to classify/name objects. still, object has properties independent of naming. properties then must come from the objects themselves, but objects are just matter. properties come from atoms and structure. ***** Do we only have obligations concerning matters that are under our voluntary control? - ===================== NOTES: *************** State Quine's criterion for ontological commitment. What reasons are there for accepting it? What reasons are there for denying it? Critically discuss. Outline: ontological commitment, Quine's statement, paraphrase, separate naming from meaning, desert landscape, nothing in the ontology, problem of equivalence, reference. (My note: to be is to be the value of a bound variable; to be assumed as an entity is, purely and simply, to be reckoned as the value of a variable. Paraphrase, pegasizes. Accept --- gives us a way to separate naming from meaning and say Pegasus without committing ourselves to Pegasus. Deny --- perhaps everything can be paraphrased away, if paraphrase is actually equivalent, how can it help, inscrutibility of reference. Desert landscapes.) read quine Although the term terms "ontology" and "metaphysics" are far from being univocal and determinate in philosophical jargon, an important distinction seems often enough to be marked by them. What we may call ontology is the attempt to say what entities exist. Metaphysics, by contrast, is the attempt to say, of those entities, what they are. In effect, one's ontology is one's list of entities, while one's metaphysics is an explanatory theory about the nature of those entities. A theory of ontological commitment is a theory that tells us when we are committed to the existence of certain entities. Why do we want a theory of ontological commitment? Applying such a theory gives us a way to move from sentences commonly accepted as true to more contentious claims regarding what there is in the world. If we can show how to move from a list of true claims to a list of what exists, we can anchor our ontological claims on firm ground. The criterion itself is quite simple. A sentence S is committed to the existence of an entity just in case either (i) there is a name for that entity in the sentence or (ii) the sentence contains, or implies, an existential generalization where that entity is needed to be the value of the bound variable. In other words, one is committed to an entity if one refers to it directly or implies that there is some individual which is that entity. Quine's account of that to which the criterion applies provides the theory some bite. On his account, a sentence is not, in fact, committed to an entity if there is some acceptable paraphrase of it which avoids commitment to it as per the criterion. The appeal to paraphrase allows us to avoid the problem of Plato's Beard, or the problem of nonexistent entities to which we nonetheless apparently refer. The names are to be eliminated in such a way that the remaining set of true claims contains none committed to any such entity after the manner of the theory. For example, the name 'Pegasus' is eliminated in favor of a verb 'Pegasize', which is understood as the thing one does when one is Pegasus. We can then say that nothing Pegasizes. The received view of ontological commitments faces at least three important worries concerning the status of paraphrase, its adequacy in capturing ontological concerns, and the inscrutability of reference. The first difficulty turns on the standards governing adequate paraphrase. One problem is that it is unclear how far paraphrase can go in eliminating ontological commitments. Could we not, perhaps, construe all sentences on the model of "it's raining," so that nothing is referred to at all? Perhaps "There is a cat on the couch" should be paraphrased as "It's cat-on-couching," or the like. Given the contortions of adverbialism, one is entitled to wonder how far, and how arbitrarily, commitments may be avoided through paraphrase (see Ackerman 1995). A related but distinct worry is that the theory seems to face a fatal dilemma: either the paraphrase is equivalent to the original, or it is a replacement thereof. If it is equivalent, then it is unclear how the paraphrase, as compared to the original, can be privileged with regards to its ontological commitments. If the original was committed to Pegasus, and the paraphrase is equivalent, why should we not conclude that the paraphrase is also committed to Pegasus? On the other horn, if the paraphrase is not an equivalent but a replacement of the original, then the truth of the original is denied, and the advantages of a theory of ontological commitment are lost. Finally, the third problem facing the Quinean theory comes from Quine himself. The doctrine of ontological inscrutability is the doctrine that, given a class of truth-valued sentences, there will be more than one assignment of referents that will produce the right truth-values such that there is nothing to choose between them. If this is correct, however, then there is no fact of the matter about what the ontological commitments of a set of sentences are; the various assignments of referents provide a disjunction of such commitments, none of which can be said to provide the true commitments of the theory. Quine addresses this worry in his "Ontological relativity" (1968), conceding that in some sense there is no fact of the matter about the ontological commitments of a theory. (http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/ontology.html) Sellars disagrees with Quine about the criterion of ontological commitment relative to the use of quantifiers in symbolic logic. For him, unlike for Quine, variables do not have a referring role. Variables do not function as indexical expressions, they function as place holders for linguistic expressions. This substitutional approach to quantification theory, carrying no ontological commitment, allows him to quantify over names, predicates, relational predicates, and sentences as well. Ontological commitment for Sellars lies in names only. Since Sellars is in many areas a follower of Russell, he adopts this principle that the apparent minimal criterion of ontological commitment of a language resides in what is expressed by the grammatical subject of a sentence. "Anything that can be talked about is an object."{5} If the grammatical subject-predicate form is taken seriously as committing us to a referent of the subject term, then the unqualified logical outcome of this kind of thinking would be Meinong's ontology, which gives to every purported object of reference a mode of being or existence. Now whether Meinong's ontology entails a contradiction, as Russell contended, is disputable; but that it seems to offend our sense of reality, as Russell also contended, is more plausible. To avoid linguistic commitment to unwanted entities, the procedure is to use paraphrase (translation) so that the unwanted entity is no longer mentioned by the subject of the sentence; and yet the transformed sentence is equivalent in some sense{6} to the original one. (http://www.ditext.com/chrucky/chru-3.html) My friend thinks I must acknowledge the existence of unicorns in order to deny it. Unicorns must exist because the denial of their existence is incoherent. Since we can name unicorns (just by saying "unicorn"), and this name is meaningful (we are talking about white, horse-like animals with a single horn extending from their foreheads, and not some other animal, e.g., tigers), unicorns must exist. Obviously, my friend concludes, unicorns exist or we would not even be having this argument! I can settle the debate with a little help from Quine and Russell's theory of descriptions. Using Russell's theory of descriptions, I can transform the sentence "The President of the United States is a wimp" into "Something is the President of the United States and is a wimp, and nothing else is the President of the United States and is a wimp." What appeared to be a name in the first sentence (President of the United States) has become a description in the second sentence in the same sense that "wimp" is a description. Bound variables are meaningful, but it does not follow that bound variables refer to some existing object. I am left alone in a desert landscape to ponder the question of ontological commitment. In Quine's view, nothing we say commits us to the assumption of universals or other entities; only the invocation of a bound variable commits us to the existence of an entity. (http://home.pacbell.net/nicnic/quine.htm) If I claim that Pegasus is not one of the things which exists, am I not contradicting myself by admitting that it IS a thing which simply happens not to exist? In simpler terms, the sentence "it does not exist" already posits an "it" to which the predicate "does not exist" is attached. Quine recalls Russell's solution to this sort of problem. Simply translate the sentence "Pegasus does not exist" into one which expresses what we (as sensible ontologists) mean: "for all the things which are, none of them fit the description 'Pegasus'" -- with hardly any effort at all, we have disposed of the confusion that arises from predicating a subject with non existence. The confusion, of course, which gives rise to the this sort of problem is the one about the difference between meaning and naming. While a name implies a corresponding real object (and, horror of horrors, an ontological commitment), a meaning simply gives the description (conditions) of what sort of being would exist if that meaning were naming something. "Meaning" is as ontologically undesirable as Pegasus, and Quine refuses to admit it as an entity. In the end, then, ontological questions are questions of language. It is the duty of the metaphysician to purge language of its imperfections (thus purging ontology of its vestigial growths). The truth theory for language must be holistic; that is, it must account for the web of beliefs which grant the possibility of meaning. So it is pointless to attempt to analyze individual words and "concepts" -- if interpretation can only happen within a network of largely shared beliefs, how could analysis be successful outside that web? In this Davidson explicitly breaks with traditional metaphysics, leaving behind an ontology which comes TO language for one which comes AFTER it. (http://abacus.bates.edu/Faculty/Philosophy%20and%20Religion/Philosophy/metsem/quineson/quine.son.html) ****************** There seems to be no fact of the matter as to where exactly the Outback begins and where it ends. Does this mean that there are vague objects? (My note: once you can specify a precise definition of something, there's no question about it being vague, though there still is the indeterminacy of meaning problem. You can communicate the border of a fractal, even if you can't draw it. The outback problem seems to have three things going on: it's a concept that is used imprecisely, it's an entity that involves boundary, it changes over time. Surely we could come up with a precise definition for outback though. Or start with an outback point and define others that are similar. And no matter what we say, the outback is there. On the whole, the problem is not with the outback but with us refering to it. There are no vague objects; only vagueness about objects --- a semantic problem; that's de dicto not de re. Mt Everest, Caribbean Sea, tributaries of rivers, shades of colors. I agree with Lewis: "The reason it's vague where the outback begins is not that there's this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word, 'outback'. Vagueness is semantic indecision.") Some have argued that the vagueness exhibited by geographic names and descriptions such as 'Albuquerque', 'The Outback', or 'Mount Everest' is ultimately ontological: these terms are vague because they refer to vague objects , objects with fuzzy boundaries. I take the opposite stand and hold the view that geographic vagueness is exclusively semantic, or conceptual at large. There is no such thing as a vague mountain. Rather, there are many things where we conceive a moun- tain to be, each with its precise boundary, and when we say 'Everest' we are just being vague as to which thing we are referring to. But what about the Outback or the Sahara desert? Where exactly do they begin and where do they end? Where exactly does the Missouri enter the Mississippi? What exactly are the boundaries of Albuquerque? Of Rio de Janeiro? Of Greenwich Village? There is a sense, of course, in which these are ludicrous questions too. Normally we refer to a region without any need to think of its limit or boundary, never mind considering the boundary as being at some definite place. We know how to use geographic terms without being able to provide a precise explanation of the grounds for this competence. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, we know how to use these words just as we know what sound a clarinet makes, though we are unable to say it. We say that something is a mountain because it resembles several things that have hitherto been called mountain, even if the exact nature of this resemblance may give rise to borderline cases. On the de re reading the indeterminacy is ontological. A vague term is one that refers to a vague object, an object the spatial or temporal boundaries of which are genuinely "fuzzy". 6 Accordingly, on this reading verest' is vague insofar as Everest is vague: there is no objective, determinate fact of the matter about whether the borderline hunks are inside or outside the mountain called verest'. The same applies to deserts, lakes, islands, rivers, forests, bays, streets, neighborhoods, and many other sorts of geographic entities. I reject this view. All geographic vagueness-I hold-is purely semantic. It lies in the representation system (our language, our conceptual apparatus), not in the represented entity. Accordingly, it is the de dicto reading that I favor. On this reading, corresponding to (5b), to say that the referent of a geographic term is not sharply demarcated is to say that the term vaguely designates an object, not that it designates a vague object. When we say verest' we are speaking vaguely because there are several dif- ferent ways of tracing the geographic limits of Mount Everest, all perfectly compatible with the way the name is used in ordinary circumstances. In cases such as these the question of whether something is on one side of the border or on the other may be indeterminate. Does this mean that the bounded region is vague? No: it simply means that many regions, each perfectly precise in its own right, have an equal claim to being the intended product of that fiat process. Many borders, each perfectly precise in its own right, could be traced out in a way that conforms to the intended stipulation. (http://www.columbia.edu/~av72/papers/P&G_2001.pdf) But what about the border between Israel and its Arab neighbors? What about the borders of the Caribbean, or the borders of the Australian Outback? What about the boundaries of deserts, valleys, forests, and mountains? These do not seem to be crisp but rather imprecise, illdefined, sparsly settled boundary-like regions. Other people would rather speak of the indeterminacy of geography as being semantic, not ontological. The vagueness would lie exclusively in the geo- graphic nomenclature, and to say that a certain name designates an object with vague boundaries would be to say that the name vaguely designates an object, not that it designates a vague object. 15 Everest, for example, would have vague boundaries insofar as the referent of verest' has been vaguely fixed (possibly because of the vagueness of the sortal concept mountain ). But this would not imply that there is a genuinely scruffy object out there. There would be many mounds of soil that could conceivably be associated with the name verest'-many ways of tracing the limits of a mountain-shaped region that would conform to how the name is actually used-but each one of them would be perfectly determinate. The term would be vague precisely because of this multitude of equally acceptable semantic options. Whether we think of Everest as a vague object or of verest' as a vague name, it is clear that the indeterminacy involved in cases such as this does not reduce to ambiguity. This indeterminacy bears the mark of vagueness because it gives rise to paradoxical arguments of the sorites variety, which are the quintessential symptom of vagueness: It is obvious that one foot away from the top we are still on Everest; and it seems natural so say that if we are still on Everest n feet away from the top, then we are on Everest n + 1 feet away from the top. (One foot makes no difference.) Yet these two statements logically imply that we must be on Everest at any distance from the top-and this is absurd. Either we give up some basic logical principles or we find a way of rejecting one of the premises-presumably the second. 16 But notice: this is not something that we can do on epistemic grounds, as if our inclination to assent to the second premise of the sorites paradox were just a matter of our ignorance. The boundaries of Everest are not just unknown (or unknowable) to us. They are genuinely indeterminate. Not even God could walk down the slope of the mountain and utter, at some point: "Here ends Everest." (http://www.columbia.edu/~av72/papers/Topoi_2001.pdf) The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it our thought and language. The reason it's vague where the outback begins is not that there's this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word, 'outback'. Vagueness is semantic indecision. (Lewis 1986, p. 212. See also 1993, pp. 34-5 for a similar statement.) But then it would appear that the indeterminacy must arise because, although the world is populated by perfectly indeterminate objects, it is indeterminate to which of these we refer when we use language. Viewed this way, the problem of identity of concrete particulars becomes a problem of the vagueness or indefiniteness of language. (http://philo.ucdavis.edu:8080/philosophy/teller/too.pdf) Are there vague objects? Semantic indeterminacy analyses enable us to answer no if we wish; and from a technical point of view this answer undoubtedly saves a lot of bother. Yet I find it hard to disagree with the proposition that there are such objects. I take the Australian outback to be an example of one. David Lewis denies that 'there's this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders' (1986, p.212). But this view seems to me to go against common sense. There is such an object. I've driven across it. And it simply is a fact about the outback that it has a fuzzy boundary. If there are vague objects then it seems to me that there must be indeterminate identity statements. In the case where 'a' names a vague object and 'b' names a precise object then one may plausibly maintain that the statement a=b, while vague, is false. The same can be said in certain cases where both 'a' and 'b' name vague objects (the outback and the steppes, for example) but not, I think, in all such cases. (http://www.phil.canterbury.ac.nz/jack_copeland/pub/vague2.pdf) The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it's vague where the outback begins is not that there's this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word 'outback'. Vagueness is semantic indecision. But not all of language is vague. The truth-functional connectives aren't, for instance. Nor are the words for identity and difference, and for the partial identity of overlap. Nor are the idioms of quantification, so long as they are unrestricted. How could any of these be vague? What would be the alternatives between which we haven't chosen? (http://web.syr.edu/~trsider/papers/4D.html) There is wide agreement that a term is vague to the extent that it has borderline cases. Supervaluationism encourages the view that all vagueness is a matter of linguistic indecision: the reason why there are borderline cases is that we have not bothered to make up our minds. Many supervaluationists maintain that this indecision is functional. Instead of committing ourselves prematurely, we can fill in meanings as we go along in light of new information and interests. Objects themselves do not seem to be the sort of thing that can be general, ambiguous, or vague. Thus the Romantics appear to be committing a category mistake when they characterize sea foam as vague. Indeed, there used to be a consensus that believers in vague objects were committing the fallacy of verbalism -- inferring that an object has the property that its representation has. A minority of philosophers now believe that there are vague objects (clouds, the sky, perhaps even entities of quantum physics). There is a precedent for this revival. Is this indeterminacy in thought to be reduced to indeterminacy in language? Why not vice versa? Language is an outgrowth of human psychology. Thus it seems natural to view language as merely an accessible intermediate bearer of vagueness. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/) Despite its relative specificity, pale yellow applies to samples that are visibly different with respect to color. The same goes for grayish yellow. So something can change gradually from pale yellow to grayish yellow. Is there some point along the way that is the precise boundary between these two color regions? This is a specific form of a question that divides philosophers who develop theories of vagueness. Without needing to adopt some view about the basic nature of borderline cases, one can admit the possibility of borderline cases between pale yellow and grayish yellow. It is possible that something can be on the borderline of each region. Something is a borderline case of pale yellow if it is neither definitely pale yellow nor definitely not pale yellow. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinate-determinables/) ****************** Does having a property require existing? (My note: No! Unicorns have horns (have the property of being horny). Round squares have the property of being impossible. It requires having meaning but not a name (object). Quine - naming vs meaning. Meinong admits golden mountains.) Aristotle (384-322 BC): It is reasonably common ground among commentators that the Frege-Russell distinction is not to be found in Aristotle either in regard to the uses or the senses of 'is'. In so far as this applies to the existential and predicative uses, some have explained the former as being merely elliptical for the latter. Thus, 'Socrates is' would be merely elliptical for 'Socrates is a something or other', where the permissible substitutions for 'something or other' are any of Socrates' essential predicates. On this view, therefore, 'is' would be unambiguous because its use was always predicative, either explicitly as in 'Socrates is a man' or merely implicitly as in 'Socrates is'. Not only was the one sense being used, it was being employed with the same force in each case, namely, predicative. For the preceding view, G. E. L. Owens claims support from Aristotle's saying that to be is to be something or other. Hintikka, however, reminds us of several passsages that would seem to conflict with the ellipsis hypothesis, among them the following. For it is not the same thing not to be something and not to be simpliciter, though owing to the similarity of language to be something appears to differ only a little from to be, and not to be something from not to be. (De Soph. El. 167a4-6) That being so, just what role does 'is' play in such propositions as 'God is' or 'God is omnipotent'? In both, says Kant, its role is simply to posit (setzen) the subject. In the former, it posits the subject (God) 'in itself with all its predicates'; in the latter it posits the predicate in relation to the subject (God). The putative paradox is said to arise because 'does not exist' could be said of Socrates only if he did in fact exist. In his 'Dialog mit Puenjer ueber Existenz' Frege argued that, in the proposition 'Leo Sachse is', nothing is being attributed to Leo Sachse. As to the paradox generated by negative existential propositions, it arises in this way. If 'exists' were a predicate, then its negation ('does not exist') should be a predicate also. But if 'does not exist' were a predicate, then in 'Dragons do not exist' it would be predicated of dragons only if dragons existed. And similarly for all negative existential propositions; paradoxically, if it is to be predicated at all, 'does (do) not exist' can be predicated only of what does exist. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/) ****************** If Wittgenstein could have fathered somebody, does this mean that there is somebody Wittgenstein could have fathered? If so, who (or what)? Outline: possible world, de dicto, de re (My note: no. That de dicto p(W f S) does not mean that W f p(S). We discuss Wittgenstein's possible son's but we can discuss many things that don't exist beyond their being thoughts. We can say 'Witt's son', but there's no object to which we refer in doing so. There are no possible sons or possible men in doorways, they only exist in counterfactuals.) Similarly, we do not say that Mr. and Mrs. X have twelve possible children, but rather that it is possible for Mr. and Mrs. X to have twelve children.None of this is to deny that a kind POSSIBLE CHILD (PC) might be constructed on the basis of the kind CHILD. The non-real members of PC would be confined to counterfactual situations. ****************** Some say that an object x may be the same lump of matter as an object y, even though x is not the same statue as y. Others say this is incoherent. Why does this debate matter? What can be said for and against the view in question? Outline: if really identical problems with Leibniz's law, temporal and modal properties; instead relative identity, material constitution. (My note: it isn't the same if we mean 'is' as 'is identical with'. It is the same if we mean 'is the same material' (relative, Geach) or 'is materially constituted by'. Clearly constitution is an important identity-like relation, but not one of identity. In fact, they are co-located (compresent?). Consider temporal and modal properties. A lump of clay can be remolded whereas the statue can't. A lump of clay is formed before the statue. They differ in temporal and modal properties so are not the same. Even more confusingly, the statue can erode so it is no longer the same material it was. Ship of theseus. But there really is just one object that is both a lump and a statue; that's because we can name the object in many ways depending on function.) read Perry Say that Lumpl is the lump of clay composing Goliath. It seems possible that Lumpl could have been not Goliath, indeed not a statue, indeed not coincident with a statue. It seems possible indeed that Lumpl could have existed in the complete absence of statues. (iii) really (a lump composing Goliath doesn't coincide with a statue, there are none) But of course (iii) isn't possible. How can a lump composing such and such a statue exist in the absence of any statues? That's like saying (as Santayana is supposed to have) that there is no God and Mary is his mother. Mary can't be God's mother unless there's a God; a lump can't compose the statue unless there are statues. So it is just not true that one can explain away our actual intuition of Lumpl without statues in the way Della Rocca proposes. The only real possibility in the neighborhood is the one recorded in (ii). And there is no way on earth that we are misinterpreting that as the possibility of Lumpl without any statues. Kripke says: "...though we can imagine making a table out of another block of wood or even from ice, identical in appearance to this, and though we could have put it in this very position in the room, it seems to me that this is not to imagine this table as made of wood or ice, but rather it is to imagine another table, resembling this one in all external details, made of another block of wood, or even of ice" (NN, 114, emphasis added). (http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/illposs.pdf) I make a clay statue of the infant Goliath in two pieces, one the part above the waist and the other the part below the waist. once I finish the two halves, I stick them together, thereby bringing into existence simultaneously a new piece of clay and a new statue. A day later I smash the statue, thereby bringing to an end both statue and piece of clay. The statue and the piece of clay persisted during exactly the same period of time. (Alan Gibbard, ontingent Identity'. A paradox 1. Lumpl could have survived being squashed. 2. Goliath could not have survived being squashed. 3. Lumpl is Goliath. You could deny 3, concluding that it sometimes happens that two different objects trace out exactly the same spacetime region. 1d.Lumpl could not have survived the destruction and replacement of a limb. 2d.Goliath could have survived the destruction and replacement of a limb. 1e. Lumpl could not have been made of anything other than clay. 2e. Goliath could have been made of something other than clay? 4. It is possible that George Bush holds no political office. 5. It is not possible that the president of the United States holds no political office. 6. ? Therefore, George Bush is not the president of the United States (http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cd50/Handout20.pdf) One solution is to say that continuants perdure , i.e., are composed of temporal parts. The statue and the lump are numerically distinct, but fit into the same location in space because (1983): they share a common temporal part at the time. Indeed, the statue is a proper temporal part of the lump. My forthcoming book Four-Dimensionalism contains a defense of this ontology, including a critical discussion of existing arguments in the literature, and new arguments for temporal parts. (http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/~sider/papers/recent_work_on_identity.pdf) It seems wrong to say that there are two statue shaped objects before us, the statue and the lump; the more natural thing is to say that there is just one. In response, Lewis (1983a, p. 64) defends a revisionary theory of counting. It is a great advantage of the stage view that it vindicates the natural reaction to such cases: the statue should not be distinguished from the lump today just because "they" will differ tomorrow. The stage theory thus preserves the core insight of the thesis of temporary identity while avoiding its pitfalls. Identifying lumps and statues with stages implies the desired claim that the statue is identical to the lump, at the time of coincidence. But we also want to say that "they" differ in their histories. (http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cd50/StageView.pdf) Because the statue and the lump of clay, for example, have different temporal and modal properties, Leibniz's Law dictates they are distinct. But common sense tells us that there is only one thing on the mantle, that two things can't occupy the same place at the same time, that the weight of two objects is the sum of their individual weights, and so forth. These and similar reasons for denying coincidence have been supported by Burke, Doepke, Heller, Lewis, Myro, Rea, Sider, Wiggins, and Zimmerman. I argue that the distinction between temporary and absolute identity, if consistently applied, preserves common sense and yet shows that, in an important sense, multiple things do coincide. Burke and Heller also offer another sort of argument against coincidence, now quite popular. They claim that the statue and the lump of clay could not be distinct, for there would then be no explanation of their differences in sort. Both arguments fail, giving rise to a positive account of what explains an object's sort, viz. its temporal and modal properties. (http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~mmmoyer/dissertation.html) I have surveyed the various charges that have been brought against the general notion that the relation of material constitution is not one of identity. Some of the charges regard constitution as little more than the idea that two objects happen to occupy the same place at the same time. Constitution-without-identity, as defined by (C), is a much richer notion than one of simple spatial colocation, and I have tried to show that constitution-without-identity can withstand the various charges. (http://www-hl.syr.edu/phil/pew/baker2.pdf) ****************** Nominalists are said to deny that there are properties. What, exactly, is the nominalist denying when he says this? What can be said for and against nominalism, and for and against the existence of properties? Outline: define universalism (types), nominalism (types), nominalists deny the existence of properties, instead they are concepts. Advantage is that we don't have to think of where properties are located. Problem: if there is no such thing as redness or humanity, what is it that red things or humans have in common? How do we talk about the redness of an apple as distinct from the apple itself? (My note: nominalists deny the existence of universals; universals are names only. Within nominalism there are many different kinds of nominalism (see general and nominal notes) Properties are labels; they deny that the properties are in the things or in another realm. Nominalism is a simpler (Ockham) theory.) Before me are two white pieces of paper. In some ordinary sense, there is a property that these two pieces of paper share. The dispute between the realist and the nominalist is a dispute as to what sort of metaphysical account we should give of this very ordinary fact. According to the realist, we may give an metaphysical explanation of the fact that both pieces of paper are white: there is some one thing that is, in some sense, "in" both pieces of paper, viz. the universal whiteness. A universal is something that may "recur", i.e. be in more than one distinct particular, and which can explain genuine similarities between the particulars they are in, such as the fact that both pieces of paper are white. The nominalist is one who denies that there are such things as universals. Two strategies for confronting the One over Many argument are open to the nominalist. One is simply to deny that there is any need for an explanation of why both pieces of paper are white (or that they have both have such and such microphysical structure). This is what Armstrong calls "ostrich nominalism" (having one's head in the sand) or "cloak and dagger nominalism." The other strategy is to offer some other explanation of why the two pieces of paper are both white, some explanation that does not make any appeal to universals. I will here look at two different sorts of alternative explanations, which Armstrong labels "class nominalism" and "resemblance nominalism". Class nominalism is a doctrine that attempts to answer the One Over Many argument by appeal to classes instead of universals. Why is it that both pieces of paper are white? Because both are members of a certain class, viz. the class of all and only the white things. Classes are not "in" (part of) their instances, in the way universals are supposed to be; and furthermore, no matter what individuals you pick, no matter how dissimilar they are, there is a class containing all and only those things: this will not be the case with universals and their instances. The first thing Armstrong notes about class nominalism is that its ontological commitment to classes might well be regarded as just as suspect as the realist's commitment to universals, so in and of themselves, there is no reason to prefer classes over universals. But of course, one might have an ontological commitment to classes anyway, as part of one's philosophy of mathematics, or part of one's semantic theory: and if you've got them in one part of your philosophy, you might as well use them to answer the One Over Many argument. Resemblance nominalism, rather than making appeal to class membership to explain sameness of kind, makes appeal to resemblance between things. Both pieces of paper are white in virtue of their resemblance to some paradigm white objects. (http://philarete.home.mindspring.com/philosophy/nominalism.html) Ockham's view of universals does not grant as much confidence in the world of ungraspable, unseeable forms and ideas. Basically, universals do not even exist as external realities in apposition to concrete realities. They are simply useful terms which we can employ to sort the world we see and feel around us. Therefore species, category, or archetypes are not valid properties which exist "out there" somewhere; they are ways of describing similarities we notice among objects. Plato holds that there is an inherent, common nature among similar things: the properties of being a flower are present in roses, geraniums, and daisies. This nature also exists outside of the flower itself. Ockham insists that this is completely invalid; there are no common natures. Thus in answer to the ontological question of universals, Ockham does not allow both the view of a common nature existing apart from things and the view of a universal or common nature existing in things.(9) We arrive at general concepts (universals) by beginning with our experience of individuals and slowly build up our idea of similarity (a posteriori knowledge).(10) Platonic and even Aristotelian thinkers would contend that the more 'real' realities in the cosmos are the timeless, immutable Forms, of which we recognize individual examples (particulars) in our external reality and time. To that, Ockham answers: "without existing things, time, in our sense, would not exist."(11) He believed that Aristotle's categories of quantity and relation are not things in themselves, but are descriptions for the ways in which substances and qualities act or interact.(12) Originally holding that a universal concept was a mental object, a fictum, or image created by the mind but possessing no reality other than logical being, Ockham later maintained that the concept was a psychic entity identical with the act of knowing: the act of abstractive cognition.(13) This raises the issue of knowing. (http://web.syr.edu/~nmagee/ockham.html) Realists hold that redness is a nonphysical being, called in general a universal, that stands in some relation to each red thing. Nominalists, to the contrary, hold that there is no such nonphysical being; nominalists have a variety of other explanations of why it is that we call all red things "red." The original nominalists were so-called because they held that there is nothing that all red things have in common other than the fact that they are all called (have the "name") red. Well, the people who oppose both Plato's theory and Aristotle's theory tend to be rather hard-headed, intellectually speaking. They don't like all this spooky talk of "forms," which exist in some never-never land apart from space and time. They don't even like this talk of qualities that can exist in many different things at once, as Aristotle has it. These people would prefer if we just talked about particular things, thank you very much, because that's all there are -- particular things. This view has a name: nominalism. So nominalism is the view that universals don't exist. No abstract properties, relations, or types exist! That's what they say. Since nominalists deny that universals exist, they don't have to worry about explaining those facts about universals that I listed. But that doesn't mean that nominalists still have nothing to explain. Because, clearly, they have lots of explaining to do. Their position is really very strange! I mean, consider this little argument: We do say, correctly, that this apple, lots of roses, and many sportscars are all "red"; so there is a property they have in common, namely redness; therefore there is a property; properties are universals, so universals exist. How do nominalists reply to that sort of argument? Whatever they say, they sure as heck do not want to admit that anything universal exists; everything that exists, they say, is located in space and time. So we'll just have to see if the nominalists have anything to say in reply to that argument. Now, the word "nominalism" comes from from nominalis, which means, in Latin, "pertaining to names." The first nominalists said that only general terms or names exist -- no general qualities exist for those terms to refer to. Just the names. So we can say the name "redness" exists, but there is no universal, redness, to which it refers. What does the term "redness" refer to, then? Perhaps any particular red thing, and perhaps the collection of all the red things. This is called extreme nominalism: the view that universals do not exist, and that general terms (such as "humanity" and "redness") stand for either particular objects or collections of particular objects (such as "all humans" and "all red things"). Now if you?re a very worldly sort of person, who wants to say that whatever exists, can only exist in space and time surrounding us here and now, then nominalism might appeal to you. But nominalism definitely has some problems; I'll explain two of them. So here's the first problem. If a universal is just a name, then all that the three humans, John, Mary, and Sally have in common, is that they are called "humans." There is no property, humanity, that they have in common. That seems very hard to accept! After all, we need only ask: why are they all called humans? We don't just say that John, Mary, and Sally are all humans for no reason at all: we say so for some reason, don't we? But it is because each of them is an instance of the type, humanity, so you might say. Or maybe you would want to say: each of them is called "human" because each is a rational animal. But at any rate, they each appear to have some properties in common that make them all human! For example: they all have highly-developed minds; they walk on two legs; they talk; and so on. It certainly does look like there are some properties that John, Mary, and Sally have in common -- which are what we call universals. And their having these properties in common is explains why they are all called "humans." The point is that any nominalist worth his salt is going to have to come up with some way of answering the following: why is it that things that are described by the same general term appear to have many properties in common, even though in fact (as the nominalist says), they don't have any properties in common? I'm not saying that extreme nominalists haven't tried to solve this problem, because indeed that have tried. I'm just saying it's a very hard problem for them to solve. Let's move on to a second problem for extreme nominalism. According to extreme nominalism, general terms refer only to particular objects or collections of them, right? That's what I said anyway. But surely when we talk about, for example, the redness of the apple, we don't mean the apple itself, but instead a property of the apple, namely its redness. Suppose extreme nominalism denies that that exists. Then it seems to be denying that this apple has the particular shade of red that it obviously has! (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/problem+of+universals) ****************** Under what conditions do many objects compose one thing? (My note: collective nouns (herd, pack) where the things are roughly indistinguishable; groups (orchestra, human body, a house) where different parts come together to make one thing (autonomous, function); mixtures (both heterogenous and homogenous); chemical compounds. Isn't everything made up of molecules, submolecular particles...? Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? What about time-slices composing one thing? Mass nouns such as some water. Need not be connected. Does composition require life (van Inwagen)?) The main question that has been raised about composition is, roughly, this: Under what circumstances do some things compose, or add up to, or form, a single object? It turns out that it is surprisingly difficult to give a satisfactory answer to this question that accords with standard, pre-philosophical intuitions about the universe's composite objects. In fact, the three rival views in response to this question that have received the most support in the literature are: (i) that there are no objects composed of two or more parts (which means that there are no stars, chairs, humans, or bicycles); (ii) that the only objects composed of two or more parts are living organisms (which still means no stars, chairs, or bicycles); and (iii) that any objects whatsoever, no matter how disparate, far apart, or otherwise unrelated, compose a single object (which means that there are stars, chairs, humans, and bicycles, but also countless other bizarre objects that standard, pre-philosophical intuitions would never countenance). Does composition take place where there is a life? (van Inwagen) Does composition take place whenever objects are fastened together? Does composition always take place? (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~markosia/papers/BC.pdf) ****************** Are there any good arguments in favor of a four-dimensional ontology? see text!!, also Lowe's "Lewis on Perdurance vs Endurance", Mark Johnston "Is there a problem about peristence?", Ted Sider "4-Dimensionalism", Thomson "parthood and identity through time", heller"temporal parts of 4-d objects", http://web.syr.edu/~trsider/papers/4D.html Outline: problem of change with 3D, introduce $d (tree-now is foo vs tree is foo-now) time slices and persistence/perdurance, same tree, same rive, same ship, possible problems w/ 4D and resolution. (My note: persistence vs perdurance (time slice), time-slices can help us understand change and identity, how the same tree is different in spring and fall, how one can bathe in the same river twice though not the same water, how a ship can be the former-theseus. Problem that the 3D has with 4D is how the mereological sum of something over time can occupy the same space as that same thing now. 4D says tree-now is foo while 3D says tree is foo-now. Note analogy with possible worlds.) It is now usual to say that something persists iff it is located at more than one time. This neutral term gives us a means of framing the question, how does a thing persist? One answer is to say that a thing's persistence involves its perduring. What is it for a thing to perdure? Generally, it has been held that perdurance involves persisting in virtue of having temporal, as well as spatial, parts. And what is it for a thing to endure? Often, this is put in terms of a thing's being wholly present at all times at which it exists. How can we alter the 'strict identity' attempt to account for endurance so that it does not also subsume perduring things? Only, it seems, by adding a proviso to the effect that enduring things are wholly present at every time at which they are located. But we can't just say that the cart has four wheels and that it has three wheels, since that would involve a blatant contradiction. So we must say that the cart has four wheels relative to some times and three wheels relative to others. In other words, the temporal indexing of parthood cannot be eliminated. (http://www.geocities.com/trolleylauncher/Distinction.html) ****************** When we consider Bob as a cyclist, he seems to be essentially two-legged and only accidentally rational; but when we consider the same man as a mathematician, he seems to be essentially rational and only accidentally two-legged. What are we to conclude from this concerning the status of de re modal properties? read quine, plantinga (My note: Bob is a member of both cyclist and mathematician. Mathematicians are essentailly rational and cyclists essentially two-legged. So he is both. When we only know that Bob is a cyclist, but not a mathie, we may say he is only accidentally rational, but once we know he is a mathematician, we have a more complete description of him and his properties become more fixed. What is changing is not Bob but how we consider him. It is not that Bob is a necessarily two-legged being, but that when we know he is a cyclist, we know that necesarily he is two-legged (a posteriori). If Bob has an essence, it's there even if we don't know it. The objection is Quine's. de re/de dicto: necessarily, all cyclists are bipedal vs every cyclist has the property of being necessarily bipedal. necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.) The second is to remark with Quine, that the notion of what is essential depends onthe kind considered. Quine (1960, p. 199) pointed out that the properties essential to a mathematician qua mathematician include rationality,whereas those essential to the same mathematician qua cyclist do not. (http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/techreports/mcgill.ca/math/reyes/orkp.ps) Quine has leveled a famous claim against essentialism: what if there is a character named Jones who counts as his avocations both cycling and mathematics? Such a person would have rationality as an essential trait, qua mathematician, and two-leggedness as an essential trait qua cyclist. But, Quine says, is "this concrete individual necessarily rational and contingently two-legged, or vice versa?" (1960 p. 199). It would seem that essentialism is problematic because it would make each trait both essential and accidental, hence leading to absurdity. For Quine, the essentialist is committed to claiming that statements about some objects must be analytic in form. He says the essentialist falsely maintains that, an object, of itself and by whatever name or none, must be seen as having some of its traits necessarily and others contingently, despite the fact that the latter traits follow just as analytically from some ways of specifying the object as the former do from other ways of specifying it (1953 p. 155). Therefore, the essentialist is committed to the paradoxical claim that certain predicates hold both necessarily and contingently of a thing. There is a problem with Quine's claim above: namely, that he treats as the same essential traits and analytic ones; he does not also realize that cyclist and mathematician are not natural kinds, upon which essences proper are based. First of all, Quine is famous for having argued that so-called analytic truths are no more privileged than other sorts of truths. But, in this passage he presumes that, if essential claims are necessary then they would seem to be analytic. Analytic claims are based on our linguistic conventions, so essentialist claims are too. What he is trying to show in the quote above is that if we equate essential with analytic truths truths that are specified by some sort of convention— we would end up with absurd claims, that properties are both necessary and contingent. There is no way of specifying the real essential truth, or analytic truth, of something, hence there is only our own decision to accentuate some properties over others; and this leads to conflicting claims about the necessity and contingency of properties. As Robert Hollinger sums up: For how are we to tell which of the properties ecessarily rational' or ecessarily two-legged' really expresses Jones' eal essence'? On the assumption that analyticity is the only criterion, there is no way of telling, and indeed no sense to the claim, that this quest is valid. At best, we would be expressing an unjustified inegalitarian attitude to some descriptions or classifications of Jones... (p. 329). On the present view of essences, though, essential properties are not analytically specified, but are discovered through investigation. Kripke's claim is that the necessity of essential properties is an a posteriori necessity. The analyticity requirement makes the necessity a priori, since analyticity is a requirement about how something is known to be true. Yet if Putnam and Kripke are correct, we can come to know essential properties from empirical investigation. If this is true, then there is a non-conventional way of specifying what is essential to a thing and what is not. If gold has a certain chemical structure so that it dissolves in aqua regia and melts at the same temperature (under the same atmospheric conditions), then it is not by convention, hence a matter of analyticity, that we distinguish gold from other kinds of substance. Lastly, it should be noted that Quine's cycling mathematician example seems more plausible than it is. This is because he takes cycling and mathematicians to be natural kinds. But this is patently false. Rationality, animality, and man are, plausibly, to be found in rerum natura, hence are all natural kinds (Jones' specific difference, genus, and species, respectively). Jones is a man— this is one natural kind that he is a part of (Hollinger p. 338). His essential traits are the ones he shares with the rest of his species. Cyclist and mathematician are classes that he can belong to: he can be both. But Jones cannot be a man both essentially and accidentally. So, Quine's example of a cycling mathematician to refute essentialism was ill chosen. (http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/neilhaddow/thesis/02.html) ****************** Do macroscopic objects cause anything? If so, is there rampant causal overdetermination? Kim responds to the generalization problem in this way. He argues that macroscopic entities (and events) possess causal powers that are not possessed by their micro-physical constituents. The expression causal powers is a technical term. Kim has something like this in mind. F is a causal power of an entity X if X has F and there are circumstances C such that in C X causes some E in virtue of F. Shoemaker, whose use of the term Kim seems to be following, gives the example of a knife having the causal power of cutting butter in virtue of being sharp. Kim observes that a macroscopic object, for example, a knife, may have a causal power that is not possessed by any of its micro-constituents. More generally macroscopic objects and their properties are constituted by microscopic entities (elementary particles and fields) and their properties and have causal powers that are not possessed by individual micro- constituents. In contrast, Kim thinks that mental properties add no new causal powers to the causal powers already contributed by neurophysiological properties. He concludes that if the physical is confined to the micro-physical, the properties and laws of fundamental physics, then it is not causally closed. He says Physicalism need not be, and should not be, identified with micro-physicalism. What Kim seems to be doing is reconstruing the causal/nomological completeness premise to say saying that all causal powers are contributed by physical properties. He then notes that this version of causal/nomological completeness doesn't hold for micro physical properties (since there are causal powers that are possessed by macroscopic objects that don't instantiate micro-physical properties) but does hold if the physical includes certain properties of micro-objects and so these properties escape the argument for epiphenomenalism. Kim's response to the generalization problem is puzzling. Given his characterization of causal powers it is true that there are causal powers in addition to the causal powers of micro properties. But this is irrelevant to the generalization problem. That problem arises not for causal powers but for nomological/causal completeness and the micro physical is causally and nomologically complete. And this means that every physical event has an as complete as is possible causal/nomological explanation. (http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/~loewer/kimrev.pdf) Another criticism is that the de facto asymmetry of overdetermination is not sufficiently extensive to constitute the objective basis for the temporal asymmetry of causal dependence. Lewis concedes this asymmetry is a contingent feature of the actual world which may not obtain in other worlds. For example, in a simple world inhabited by a single atom, the asymmetry of overdetermination fails to obtain. Convergence to this world takes no more of a varied and widespread miracle than divergence from it, so that counterfactuals about what happens in this world are not temporally asymmetric. However, Lewis's use of the asymmetry of overdetermination has been criticised on the grounds that it fails not only in simple worlds of this kind but also in the actual world. (See Price (1992) and (1996).) This asymmetry, like the related fork asymmetry (correlated events typically have an earlier common cause but seldom a later common effect), is a product of thermodynamic asymmetries. The example of radiation that Lewis offers as a paradigm of the asymmetry of overdetermination depends on the fact that the sources of radiation stem from big disturbances in the initial conditions, but not in the final conditions of the system in question. If the system were a closed system in thermodynamic equilibrium, there would be no asymmetry. This means that the asymmetry of overdetermination, as a feature of thermodynamic disequilibrium, is a large-scale, statistical asymmetry, appearing at the macroscopic but not mircoscopic level. However, the commonplace judgement of physicists is that microphysical processes are causal and temporally asymmetric in character. In view of the failure of the asymmetry of overdetermination at the microscopic level, Lewis's theory is powerless to explain this fact. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/) An assumption behind the following example will be that 'fusions' of events are, in general, themselves events: for instance, that if five battles occur over a certain period of time, then there is an event which occurs over that period of time and contains those five battles as parts (we might call this event a 'campaign', perhaps).6 Most of the macroscopic events we normally talk about are event-fusions in this way. For example, even so 'simple' an event as the rising of a person's arm consists of many sub-events, such as the flexing of certain muscles and the movements of various parts of the arm. Suppose that, over a period of several minutes, the following series of purely physical events is observed to occur: one after another, all of the coloured balls remaining on a snooker table are struck by the cue ball and as a result fall into pockets. The fusion of all these events of a snooker ball falling into a pocket is itself an event, call it event E. Suppose, now, we ask why event E occurred. Clearly, in one sense, E occurred because each of the sub-events of which E is the fusion occurred - but this is not a causal explanation of E. However, each of the sub-events - each event of a snooker ball falling into a pocket - has a causal explanation and one might suppose that the causal explanation of E is simply the conjunction of all those causal explanations (though we shall see in a moment that there could be good reason to challenge this supposition). Moreover, one might suppose that each event of a snooker ball falling into a pocket has a wholly physical causal explanation, adverting solely to prior physical events, such as movements of the snooker cue, movements of the player's hand (we are assuming here that there is just one player involved), neuronal events in the player's efferent nerves and motor cortex, and so forth. However, I suggest, if that is all there is to the explanation of event E, then we shall have to regard event E as having happened merely 'by coincidence'. Moreover, this explanation will not serve to explain, in any interesting sense, why an event of this kind occurred: we shall only be able to say that an event of this kind occurred 'because' this particular event occurred and was an event of this kind (and such a 'because' is not causal in force). (http://www.stir.ac.uk/departments/arts/philosophy/cnw/webpapers/lowe1.htm) The stage was now set for the formulation of a universal principle of the conservation of energy. We can distinguish three elements which together contributed to the formulation of this principle. First, the tradition of rational mechanics provided the mathematical scaffolding. Second, the experiments of Joule and others suggested that different natural processes all involve a single underlying quantity which could manifest itself in different forms. Third, these experiments also suggested that apparently non-conservative forces like friction were merely macroscopic manifestations of more fundamental conservative forces. Thus he took the crucial step of asserting that all forces conserve the sum of kinetic and potential energy; superficially non-conservative forces like friction are simply macroscopic manifestations of more fundamental forces which preserve energy at the micro-level. This then enabled Helmholtz to view the equivalences established by experimentalists like Joule, not just as striking local regularities, but as necessary consequences of a fundamental principle of mechanics. All natural processes must respect the conservation of energy, including processes in living systems. (ii) Accepting overdetermination. The causal argument seems pretty clearly valid . (6) So those who reject the conclusion must reject one of the three premises. All three moves are found in the literature. The status of premise 1, the completeness of physics, will occupy most of what follows. This leaves premises 2 and 3. Let us first consider rejecting premise 3, the premise of no universal overdetermination. To reject this presmise is to accept that the physical effects of mental causes are always overdetermined. This "belt and braces" view is defended by Gabriel Segal and Elliott Sober (1991) and D.H. Mellor (1995, pp. 103-5). In response to the worry that this view seems to imply that your arm would still have moved even if you hadn't felt a pain (because your C-fibres would still have fired, say), these philosophers argue that the distinct mental and physical causes may themselves be strongly counterfactually dependent. Still, this then raises the question of why such causes should always be so counterfactually dependent, if they are genuinely distinct. Possible causal mechanisms underpinning this dependence can be imagined, but there seems to me no good reason to believe in them. (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/philosophy/frames/Staff/Papineau/Risephys.html) ****************** What is the best analysis of the relation which obtains between an object and its properties? Outline: substratum. bundle. problems with both. epistemological, linguistic, posit relation. read: trope (My note: Object is atoms and arrangement (molecules) which give to rise properties. Intrinsic/extrinsic/relational. Properties are descriptions. We recognize objects from properties but that's epistemological. An object has a property. An object belongs to the class of all objects having that property. We know an object through its properties. We observe properties in an object. Substratum says there's some bare particular which has properties; bundle says particulars are the set of properties. Both seem to lead to problems (what is the substratum, if you take away the properties, what's left). Neither seem to me to be particular accurate either. The relation between an object and its properties seems observed/epistemological (not metaphysical). So perhaps the relation is linguistic/nominal.) One reason is that when we see an apple, for instance, we grasp it at once as a whole object. We do not see it, as it were, compositionally, first seeing its red shape, then conjoining with this a taste, a texture, etc., and finally proceeding to unify these elements into a single apple. We do not perceptually grasp an apple through the distinction between substance and attribute. Perception seems not to be the source of the distinction. With the imposition of the substance-attribute distinction, objects which initially were perceived as wholes now come to be analysed or restructured. The need to do so seems to be pressed upon us by various considerations. But the manner of the restructuring appears to be suggested not by reality, so to speak, but by the linguistic distinction between subject and predicate, this being the very means available to us for describing objects in their varieties and alterations. Whereas the perception of objects is as wholes, speech, on the other hand, is almost always construed from parts, and is in this sense compositional. Conceiving the unitary apple in terms of the distinction between substance and attribute or object and property seems to be parasitic on, and a suggestion from, the linguistic distinction between subject and predicate. Three considerations or aims have moved philosophers to engage in the restructuring of things in terms of substance and attribute. The first aim is to secure the ability to speak of similar objects whose features are nevertheless being contrasted (e.g. a green banana and a yellow banana). This aim encourages the idea of the object as comprising a thoroughly denuded substance (often called the ultimate subject of properties) on to which the attributes which it shoulders, and with respect to which object and object can be compared, are grafted. This view of things was held by John Locke, who made famous the phrase 'substance or something-I-know-not-what'. It was also formulated by Aristotle in terms of 'primary substance'. It was accepted by philosophers for centuries. There is also the question of the precise nature of its supposed relations with the properties of an object. Why do the properties of an object hang together? How should one think of the relation between an object and its properties so that properties do not simply fall off and scatter, but are instead collected in the object? Think of the difference between a fruit with a pit (where the flesh corresponds to the properties of an object and the pit corresponds to the primary substance) and a vegetable like an onion whose layers aggregate without a supporting pit. This difference between the two is over a sort of metaphysical arithmetic: would subtracting just its properties from an object leave anything behind, the substance or something-I-know-not-what of John Locke, or would it leave absolutely nothing behind? (http://www.xrefer.com/entry/553633) Concrete particulars are the things we naturally think of when we think of things: books, tables, cups, apples, ships, and people, for example. They are particular in being things which have properties and relations without themselves being (on the face of it) properties or relations. a. Bare Particulars We think of an ordinary particular (one of the apples in my room, say) as having properties and relations: it is crisp, juicy, was grown in New Zealand and is heavier than my pen. But it seems that to think of the particular and to think of its properties is to think of different things. It seems that we can separate the particular (in thought, at least) from its properties: the real particular then seems to be something which in itself has no properties; this is a 'bare' particular. Such a particular is often thought of as a substratum: it is imagined to underlie or 'support' the properties and relations. Different theories may then suppose that the ordinary particular is really just the bare particular (so that that apple is not in itself crisp or juicy, etc.), or else that the ordinary particular is the bare particular taken together with some of its properties. b. Objections to Bare Particulars The later empiricists (Berkeley and Hume) objected to bare particulars on the ground that they were unperceivable and that the relation between them and their properties was unintelligible. They thought that one could only perceive a thing's properties. This seems an odd view: it seems to me that one perceives the thing with the properties. Nevertheless, it is certainly going to be impossible to perceive the bare particular as it is in itself. This objection, however, is only a good one if one insists that only what can be perceived as it is in itself exists; and that doesn't look all that promising, on the understanding of 'in itself' which is likely to be required here. A better objection is that the idea of something which in itself has no properties is unintelligible. It's difficult to be sure what 'in itself' means here, but it seems to mean 'essentially'. Something (a part or a property, for example) is essential to a particular if that particular could not exist without that thing. To suppose that there might be particulars which in themselves have no properties is to say that there are particulars which could exist with no properties at all. But isn't being a particular a property of particulars? And isn't it essential to them? c. Particulars as Bundles of Properties The later empiricists, thinking that one could only perceive properties, and thinking that the relation between a supposed bare particular and its properties was unintelligible, supposed that ordinary particulars were no more than bundles, or collections, of properties. Each particular could be taken to be distinct from each of its qualities, but once you had removed all of the qualities you would also have destroyed the particular. d. Objections to the Bundle Theory One objection to the bundle theory is that it makes all predications tautologies: 'This apple is crisp', for example, seems to be analyzed as 'Crispness is one of the following: juiciness, roundness, crispness, ....' This seems to me to be a bad objection to the bundle theory in general (even if it works against Leibniz's theory, which has some affinities with it): there is no reason why you need to know all of the properties which supposedly constitute the apple in order to be able to refer to the apple. A second objection to the bundle theory is that it requires one to endorse an objectionable version of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: (IdIn) If a and b have all the same properties, a = b. If you include all possible properties of a and b (including, for example, being the same thing as a and being the same thing as b), then this will be true. But it seems to me doubtful that the bundle theory can include any properties whose specification makes essential reference to some particular; for the theory must suppose that the nature of each particular can be analysed in terms of its properties. So it looks as if (IdIn) has to be held with 'properties' meaning properties whose specification makes no essential reference to particulars; and now it looks easy enough to suppose that there might be several different things which differed only in their relation to other things. A third objection to the bundle theory is just the converse of the second objection to bare particulars: the idea of a property which is not the property of a particular is unintelligible. e. An Alternative to the Decompositional Accounts There is a famous alternative to these accounts, which has its roots in Aristotle. We suppose that properties cannot exist without being the properties of some particular, and we suppose that particulars cannot exist without at least some of their properties. In particular, we will distinguish between essential and non-essential properties: so it is essential to that apple of mine, say, that it has the genetic make-up it does, but it is not essential to it that it is now in my room (someone else might have bought it, or it might have got crushed in transit, or consumed on the tree by wasps). Personally, I think that this doesn't yet go deep enough, because it doesn't get to the root of the problem with decompositional accounts. I think that the distinction between particular and universal (substance and attribute, etc.) is fundamentally a distinction between different linguistic categories, and it is simply a mistake to suppose that it is mirrored in a distinction between things as they are independently of those linguistic categories. (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/philosophy/Courseres/EpandMet11.htm) ****************** Do we only have obligations concerning matters that are under our voluntary control?