You want to change the subject? Not surprised.

Where did time come from then? — Corvus

I don't know - indeed, the question may well be useless. We don't need to know where time comes form in order to understand that force and energy involve time. What we might seek is consistency.

Do you claim that time was given down by God to humanity? — Corvus

No.

Only that there is time.

And that claiming that there is force and energy but no time involves a contradiction.

But whether you bring in time or not, the object still moves by the force. — Corvus

Nothing moves but that a period of time is involved. If it moves in zero time, the force involved would be infinite.

Do you mean that before time was invented, the stones never fell from the high cliff down the river? — Corvus

Not at all. The notion of time being invented is a nonsense.

Force and energy are both physical constructs. Time is part of the construction. — frank

Yes.

No.

I'm pointing out that if you have force and energy, then you must thereby also have time.

But here we were talking about why the objects move. — Corvus

Indeed, and your explanation was that they move because of force and energy; yet force and energy are defined in terms of time. Hence, on your own account, they move because of time.

The stuff you claim does not exist.

We were talking about why the object move. Not how long it takes to move. — Corvus

You were talking about force and energy, both of which are time dependent:

Objects move because of energy or force, not because of time. — Corvus

Energy and force are defined in terms of time.

If you drop a stone from the top floor of 10m high building... it took 3 seconds for the stone to hit the ground. — Corvus

1.43 seconds, actually.

And it will take that long, measured or not.

Objects move because of energy or force, not because of time. — Corvus

Force is defined as mass times acceleration, and acceleration is change in velocity over time. Energy is force times displacement. So both are inversely proportional to the square of the time taken - less time, more force, more energy.

So you again are exactly wrong.

Thanks for your reply.

Modern conceptions of modality in terms of possible worlds will probably be inadequate to capture these distinctions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't the broken window captured by accessibility - from those worlds in which the rock goes through the glass, all accessible worlds contain broken glass. In some possible worlds, the oldest sibling is alive, in others they are dead - and from the latter, only those worlds in which the oldest sibling is dead are accessible. This captures the "becasue" and "in virtue of". Accessibility would seem to capture the notion of being "downstream" that you think absent. What am I missing? I gather you would say that the cause of the glass breaking is absent; that the nature (essence?) of the rock and the window necessitates the glass breaking? But that's just saying that in every world accessible from that in which the rock goes thought the glass, the glass is broken...

The upshot would be to consider systems other than S5, in which all worlds are accessible from all other worlds. So in effect your position seems to be that S5 does not capture certain ways of dealing with necessity.

I still do not follow what an essence is on your account. Is having three sides part of the essence of triangle, and becasue is it analytic that a triangle have three sides?

Added: That is, if you like, essences, even as you set them out, are descriptions of modal properties, of those consequences that follow from being classified as a rock or classified as glass.

If Santa can be fat without existing, then it does not follow that Santa exists from the presumption of his girth. — noAxioms

Santa is fat, hence, there is something that is fat

Santa is fat
∃(x)( x is fat). (Existential generalisation)

It might be worth considering the suggestion that Santa exists, as a fictive individual, and is indeed fat, but that you will not find him by heading north.

That is, not everything that exists is physical.

So the set of integers necessarily exists because the set isn't empty? — noAxioms

Why introduce "necessarily"? What does that mean in this context? "In every possible world?

Extensionally, the predicate 'p' is <a,b,c> - just those individuals...

So the integers just are <1,2,3...>. hence the integers exist if <1,2,3...> exist.

And Pegasus does not exist in every possible world, so Pegasus does not exist necessarily.

but the existence of x in a set does not make the set exist — noAxioms

That's not what was said. But also, I adopted "set" only becasue you used the word, and sets are not predicates - treating them as such causes problems.

So I've not been able to follow your comments here. Too fast. Maybe go back to this:

So instead of parsing "There is no such thing as Pegasus" as Pegasus not having the property of existence, ~∃!(Pegasus), we pars it as there not being any thing that is Pegasus: ~∃(x)(x is pegasus). — Banno

to which you replied:

This seems to reference a predicate of 'being', but the ∄ part is still existential quantification, no? It isn't a relation to Sydney this time, but more of an objective E1 sort of membership. Nothing in reality 'is Pegasus'. — noAxioms

There is good reason for using ~(∃x). It shows the quantifier and the negation are seperate operations. Pegasus is a mythical horse, is it not? And therefore, we might conclude (by existential generalisation) that there are mythical horses? We can make such a generalisations, hence there is something that is pegasus - the mythical horse. Of course, you will not meet Pegasus at the stables, but in the story of Perseus.

I thought Banno tagged me for chitchat reasons. — fdrake

So did I.

My apologies for compromising you.

I have a question for you. Am I right to understand Davidson's thesis as being that conceptual differences come down to different beliefs, and that, at some point, the differences can be settled empirically? — Ludwig V

Not quite, I think. Rather, apparent differences in belief, and therefore apparent conceptual differences, are in the main differences in expression. Suitable re-expressions, reinterpretations, may be able to make this apparent.

I'm not sure why including more than integers would be the same kind of domain change as the one involving Socrates sitting. — J

I recall that when I wrote that I was thinking that (30) restricted the domain. But looking at that again, i can't fill it out. So the conditional in "If Socrates is sitting then necessarily Socrates is sitting" - if this is to make any sense at all - restricts us to only those worlds in which Socrates is sitting. Now (∃x)(x is necessarily greater than 7) can be parsed as ☐(x<7) - in every possible world x is greater than seven, and then bound to "there is an x" so 'there is an x such that in every possible world x is greater than seven".

So I now think you are correct, and I was mistaken.

We have analytic and synthetic necessities. Perhaps we might use "tautology" only for analytic necessities, such as that there in every possible world there is a number greater than seven, and not for synthetic necessities, such as Hesperus = Venus?

We seem to want the term to function both as a description and -- in upper case -- a name. — J

The brightest star in the western evening sky might not be Hesperus - it might be Jupiter. But Hesperus must be Hesperus, and The Evening Star must be Hesperus... Well, being the evening star does not seem to be essential to Hesperus, or Venus. Not in the way that being made of wood is essential to the lectern in Identity and Necessity, or being H₂O (is that ok, ?) is essential to being water... If the lectern were ice, it would be a different lectern, if the liquid were not (mostly) H₂O, it would not be water. But if Venus were not the brightest star in the western evening, it would still be Venus.

"The brightest star in the western evening sky" is not a rigid designator, but "The Evening Star" is.

Notice that this is not at all the same thing as saying, "You can't understand 'water' without knowing that water is composed of H20". Necessity, as Kripke shows us, may be a feature of either analytic or synthetic statements. So what gives "number" its peculiar type of analyticity? If statements like (3) are not true by tautology, but nor is math empirical . . . what's the best account? Would we be better off, for instance, with an argument that shows that any number x can't be the greatest number because there is no such thing? — J

So applying the principles from the previous post, water = H20

Allow me instead to address the evening star, Hesperus...

(31) (∃x)(necessarily if there is life on the Evening Star then there is life on x) — p.147

Similarly, (31) was meaningless because the sort of thing x which fulfills the condition:
(34) If there is life on the Evening Star then there is life on x,
namely, a physical object, can be uniquely determined by any of various conditions, not all of which have (34) as a necessary consequence. Necessary fulfillment of (34) makes no sense as applied to a physical object x; necessity attaches, at best, only to the connection between (34) and one or another particular means of specifying x. — p.149

So does the reply in the previous post apply here? Well, is "the evening star" rigid? This is I think the ambiguity on which Quine trades - and sorting that, together with Kripke's argument that we can have necessary yet synthetic truths, will get us to transparent substitution in modal contexts.

"The evening star' is a description, picking out the brightest star in the western evening sky, which for half the time is Venus. Of course, many objects might satisfy the description - Jupiter and Saturn, perhaps, when suitably positioned and Venus is visible in the morning; or Sirius, the brightest of the stars, might all be suitable candidates. But The Evening Star - capitalised as a proper name, and also called "Hesperus" - is Venus; that very thing, and not Jupiter, Saturn or Sirius. "Hesperus", then, is a rigid designator, as is "the Evening Star".

So if there is life on Hesperus, then there is life on Venus. If there is life on The Evening Star, then there is life on Venus. And Necessarily, if there is life on Hesperus, there is life on Venus. And Necessarily, if there is life on The Evening Star, then there is life on Venus. And so on.

And we can apply existential generalisation here. If there is life on Hesperus, then there is something on which there is life - or there is an x such that x has life on it. And necessarily, if there is life on Hesperus, then there is something on which there is life.

But of course (31) has the ☐ inside the scope of the existential quantifier...

Almost.


Anyway, back to the article.

In a word, we cannot in general properly quantify into referentially opaque contexts. — p.148

So are there referentially opaque modal contexts? By that we might understand, are there modal contexts were substitution salva veritate fails?

And what we have is that substitution works in modal contexts provided the scope of the modal operator is a whole proposition, and the substitution is rigid.


Here's Quine's objection. We had ☐(4+4=8). Since "the number of planets =4+4", we ought be able to substitute salva veritate "the number of planets" for "4+4" in a modal context, deriving ☐(the number of planets=8).

The reason substitution fails is that "the number of planets" is not a rigid designator. But "4+4" is. Consider the rigid "7+1=4+4". Here, substitution works salva veritate: ☐(7+1=8).

Without the notion of rigid designation, Quine did not have the tools needed to see how substitution in modal contexts could be transparent.

Equivalent rigid designators can be substituted, preserving truth, in a modal context.

It's not a prejudice. There are very good reasons for rejecting essentialism, with a large literature to back them.

David Oderberg also writes a fair bit on this topic, e.g. "How to Win Essence Back from Essentialists." — Leontiskos

Might be worth considering this article, perhaps after Quine. On a quick look it seems more polemic than analytic. On my browser pp40-41are missing. But perhaps we will find the answer to the question I;ve been asking for a few threads now, what exactly is an essence?

Been too busy to reply quickly again. — noAxioms

Same. I was going to follow that with a series of posts on each of the approaches in the article, but travel intervened.

Sydney seems not required to exist (E1, almost a platonic definition) for this to be true, just as the number 91 does not require 13 to exist (E1) for it to have the property of not being prime, but it does require 13 to exist (existential quantification) in order to have the property of not being prime. So for one, we seem to be referencing more than one defniition of existence, and E1 seems to be a property. — noAxioms

Extensionally, Sydney just is the set of stuff that is in Sydney. So as long as there is stuff in Sydney - the set "in Sydney" is not empty - we can't say Sydney doesn't exist.

So the quantification would work as follows: We note that Circular Quay is in Sydney, and so we can invoke the definition of existential quantification, that we list all the individuals in the domain, and say of them that at least one is in Sydney.

This avoids the messy "is a part of objective reality", or knowing about stuff, or being objective, or causal histories. And avoids Platonism.

This presumes a sort of reality with a list of stuff that is part of it, and there not being Pegasus on that list. — noAxioms

Yep. Is Pegasus in the domain, or not? If Pegasus is in the domain then we can use existential generalisation to talk about Pegasus - Pegasus sprang from the blood of medusa, therefore something sprang from the blood of Medusa.

I'll advocate for the "Anti-Meinongian First-Order View", such that "Pegasus" rigidly designates Pegasus, without the need for an intervening description. Pegasus is a myth, so we ought not to expect to meet Pegasus while out shopping.

Oh I thought this was the shoutbox, my bad. — fdrake

:lol:

Now the Mods will be after you for going off topic...


You gave up your immunity with your other powers.

I'll shut it now. Enough corrupting the youth for one day.

My passing heralds the end of days. — fdrake

Indeed; as a great writer once put it,

Therein lies the rub, if one sacrifices one’s moral imagination against systemic injustice on the altar of practicality, one exculpates all evils. — fdrake

But I bet you are glad you are no longer obligated to deal with this particular bit of melodrama...

Cool. If you have a problem with my posts, tell the mods.

~

...genuine philosophic students... — Corvus

...will accept and learn from criticism.

This sort of response goes back years. See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/881390 for a more recent example of the same sort of thing. Any one who disagrees with Corvus is a part of a conspiracy...

It's a now familiar play...

Yes, what Corvus is doing is symptomatic of the malaise in western civilisation. It's about to hit the wall.

Not because such a reading (there existing a winner of all possible plays of the game or a richest in all worlds or a greater than 7 in all worlds) is self-evidently non-sensical but because it has arisen through referential opacity, and hence behaves incoherently. — bongo fury

I missed your post, my apologies.

Yes, it's not non sense. I hope to show that it's not referential opacity that is the problem in modality - becasue modal logic is extensional and preserves truth, and substitution in modal contexts can be made functional.

So Quine argued that quotation, attitude and modality all suffered referential opacity. But recent modal logic is explicitly extensional, and so referentially transparent. Hence, I would seperate modality from quotation and attitude.

So we the truth that there will be a winner of the lottery. And the falsehood that Fred Smith will necessarily win the lottery. The difference can be shown clearly in the scope of the two statements when parsed. Taking "L" as "Wins the lottery" we can write the truth "necessarily, someone will win the lottery" as ☐(∃x)(Lx) and taking "a" as a name for Fred Smith, we can write "La" for "Fred Smith will win the lottery" but ☐La is false - it is not true in every possible world that Fred Smith will win the lottery.

There's a lot of qualification that we might do well to throw in, excluding those possible worlds in which there is no lottery or in which the lottery is found fraudulent and void, and so have a lottery but no winner.

And yes, the issue becomes how we might pars

...one player of whom it may be said to be necessary that he win. — Quine p.147

And it seems clear that even if Fred Smith is the winner, he is not the winner in every possible world, and so it is not true that there is a player (who happens to be Fred) for whom it is necessarily true that they are the winner.

Putting this in terms of scope, we can say ☐(∃x)(Lx) is true but that (∃x)☐(Lx) is false. The different placing of the ☐ says it all.

But you see more here, I suspect.

Notice that it's (∃x)☐(x > 7) that is problematic, not ☐( ∃x)(x > 7). It seems to be the de re necessity that fixes or restricts the accessibility involved. That is, if we take (∃x)☐(x > 7) as true, then we can only access worlds in which (∃x)☐(x > 7).

I'm not using "domain" very well here, either. We need a logician - I wonder if @TonesInDeepFreeze is available?

Many of the threads in the All Discussions page at the moment are the same sort of shite. "The Mind is the uncaused cause", "The logic of a universal origin and meaning", "Physical cannot be the cause of its own change"... "Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA", for fuck's sake.

Physics without the maths and philosophy without critique. Stuff to warm the cockles of any curmudgeon's heart. It's worse than the rash of God that afflicted the forums last month.

I blame @fdrake leaving the mods.

(I'm somewhat regretting being here - the forums are overrun with idiots. Good to have a few folk, such as your good self, to talk to)

As Quine explains it, doesn't the collapse occur regardless of the domain? It has to do with existential generalization itself, no? But maybe I'm missing it. — J

I suspect that this is how Quine pictures his criticism... much more depth is needed here. We will need to go over Kripke's solution again, and how rigid designation fixes the same individual in multiple possible worlds, each in effect a different domain.

Go back to 's "if Socrates is sitting, then necessarily socrates is sitting". How might this be described in possible world semantics? In effect the antecedent, "if Socrates is sitting...", confines us to only those possible worlds in which Socrates is sitting. And in each and every one of those worlds, Socrates is sitting. This is a way to make sense of "if Socrates is sitting, then necessarily socrates is sitting", while maintaining the definition of necessity as true in every possible world.

In that small subset of possible worlds in which Socrates is sitting, necessarily, Socrates is sitting, and modal collapse is avoided by not considering those worlds in which Socrates is not sitting, and so avoiding the situation where he is both sitting and not sitting.

But for any other set of possible worlds, Socrates will be both sitting and not sitting, and modal collapse will ensue.

Necessity can be understood as "true in all possible worlds that are accessible from a given world", and if we then restrict accessibility to only those worlds in which Socrates is sitting, then (by that definition of necessity) necessarily, Socrates is sitting.

So I think that Quine is mistaken, if he thought that collapse occurs regardless of the domain... or of accessibility.

(Thats a dreadfully unclear post - repetitive and obtuse. I hope it gives some indication of where this thread might go).

I've several years of graduate logic to call on.

You are a fool.

You don't understand those points yourself. :roll:

Your stupidity is doing my head in. I'll have to leave you to it. You and your ilk are a large part of why philosophy is not taken seriously in certain circles. It's not enough just to make shit up, as you do.

You wriggle and squirm.

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

and

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

Yet

I never claimed time doesn't exist. — Corvus

You do not have anything more than a superficial grasp of logic. You were not presenting a reductio. You are a bit of a twit.

...unfounded... — Corvus

You blatantly contradicted yourself, at least twice.

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

and

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

Yet

I never claimed time doesn't exist. — Corvus

Not so unfounded...

I've been traveling these last few days, but hope now to get back to this thread.

We have, for the case of attitudes,

(9) Philip is unaware that Tully denounced Catiline

and

(29) Something is such that Philip is unaware that it denounced Catiline

But Philip is aware that Cicero denounced Catiline. What he is unaware of is that Cicero and Tully are the same person. The difficulty here is the misfiring of the reference.

Quine says "the difficulty involved in the apparent consequence (29) of (9) recurs when we try to apply existential generalization to modal statements" (p.147). I'm not convinced that the difficulty in attitudinal issues is the same as that in modal issues. As explained above,

(30) (∃x)(x is necessarily greater than 7)

will result in modal collapse if the domain includes more than integers. In a modal context substitution will maintain truth, provided that we keep track of the domains and individuals being addressed, and hence the accessibility between possible worlds. This is not the case in attitudinal opacity...

I'm aware this is ill-expressed, and in need of much refinement, but I will post it anyway, as a signpost. My suspicion is that Quine has treated quotation, attitude and modality as if they were all examples of the failure of extensionality, but that since Kripke, we have a clearer way to deal with extensionality using possible world semantics, and so can treat modality separately to quotation and attitude.

Let's not move on to neuroscience just yet. There is plenty of more in the article at hand.

, .

Neither of you have read much Davidson, have you.

The difference between

Did you mean "your “without minds, there are no possible worlds”"? — Janus

This: “without minds, there are no possible worlds" is what Corvus is maintaining. He thinks it a counter you your “It is possible for there to be a world without minds”. Of course, it isn't.

Corvus is incapable of shouldering critique. Been that way for years. Hence his response here is to attack you and I, to do anything but reconsider.

So he writes

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

and

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

Yet

I never claimed time doesn't exist. — Corvus

So blatant. Oh, well. There's nought queer as folk.

the actual argument here is about the scope of the operator, not about personality.

I think point very pertinent.

The point here was about logic, — Corvus

Indeed it is. There is a distinction between “it is possible for there to be a world without minds”, account, and your “without minds, there are possible worlds”.


You may well be right that this last is false. But it is not what is being suggested.

To Part 2, and quantification.

The key here may be

Hence the logical importance of the fact that all singular terms, aside from the variables that serve as pronouns in connection with quantifiers, are dispensable and eliminable by paraphrase.

Here Quine is I believe throwing his lot in with Russell and Kripke, accepting a descriptivist logic without individual terms.

He goes on to examine quotations, attitudes and modality, finding each again wanting...

We saw in §1 that referential opacity can obstruct substitutivity of identity. We now see that it also can interrupt quantification: quantifiers outside a referentially opaque construction need have no bearing on variables inside it.