Category: Aporetics
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Substantial Change, Prime Matter, and Individuation
Eric Levy wants to talk about prime matter. I am 'primed' and my powder's dry: Nihil philosophicum a me alienum putamus. "I consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to me." Change, Accidental and Substantial There is no change without a substrate of change which, in respect of its existence and identity, does not change during…
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Trope Troubles: An Exercise in Aporetics with the Help of Professor Levy
Eric P. Levy, an emeritus professor of English at the University of British Columbia, has been much exercised of late by trope theory and other questions in ontology. He has been sharing his enthusiasm with me. He espies . . . an apparent antinomy at the heart of trope theory. On the one hand,…
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What Exactly is Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief?
I will try to explain it as clearly and succinctly as I can. I will explain the simplest version of the puzzle, the 'monoglot' version. We shall cleave to English as to our dear mother. The puzzle is generated by the collision of two principles, one concerning reference, the other concerning disquotation. Call them MILL…
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Ortcutt and Paderewski: Against the Millian Theory of Proper Names
Saul Kripke's Paderewski puzzle put me in mind of a rather similar puzzle — call it the Ortcutt puzzle — from W.V. Quine's seminal 1956 J. Phil. paper, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" (in The Ways of Paradox, Harvard UP, 1976, pp. 185-196). Back to Ortcutt! The ordinary language 'Ralph believes that someone is a spy' …
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In What Sense Does an Indefinite Noun Phrase Refer?
London Ed propounds a difficulty for our delectation and possible solution: Clearly the difficulty with the intralinguistic theory is its apparent absurdity, but I am trying to turn this around. What can we say about extralinguistic reference? What actually is the extralinguistic theory? You argue that the pronoun ‘he’ inherits a reference from its antecedent,…
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Worship, Reference, and Existence: An Aporetic Triad
Each of the following three propositions strikes me as very reasonably maintained. But they cannot all be true. A. Worship Entails Reference: If S worships x, then S refers to x.B. Reference Entails Existence: If S refers to x, then x exists.C. Worship Does Not Entail Existence: It is not the case that if S…
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The Euthyphro Problem, Islam, and Thomism
Peter Lupu called me last night to report that it had occurred to him that the famous Euthyphro Dilemma, first bruited in the eponymous early Platonic dialog, reflects a difference between two conceptions of God. One is the God-as-Being-itself conception; the other is the God-as-supreme-being conception. After he hung up, I recalled that in June,…
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World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World ‘Relation’
Fr. Aidan Kimel in a recent comment: I just started reading Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen. The first chapter is devoted to the doctrine of creation. These two sentences jumped out at me: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone."…
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Divine Simplicity and God’s Contingent Knowledge: An Aporetic Tetrad
The following entry draws heavily upon W. Matthews Grant, "Divine Simplicity, Contingent Truths, and Extrinsic Models of Divine Knowing," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 3, July 2012, pp. 254-274. It also bears upon my discussion with Professor Dale Tuggy. He holds that God is a being among beings. I deny that God is a…
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The Aporetics of Baptism
Peter Lupu wrote me yesterday about baptism, I responded online, and today he is back at me again: In your response you say: " As for the change in metaphysical status wrought by baptism, the main change is the forgiveness of all sins, whether original or individual (personal). The baptism of infants removes or…
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Language and Reality
London Ed sends his thoughts on language and reality. My comments are in blue. Still mulling over the relation between language and reality. Train of thought below. I tried to convert it to an aporetic polyad, but failed. The tension is between the idea that propositions are (1) mind-dependent and (2) have parts and so…
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The Grand Central Conundrum in the Philosophy of Fiction
As I see it, the central problem in the philosophy of fiction is to find a solution to the following aporetic dyad: 1. There are no purely fictional items. 2. There are some purely fictional items. The problem is that while the limbs of the dyad cannot both be true, there is reason to think…
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An Active-Passive Puzzle
UPDATE (7/31): The following entry is deeply confused. But I will leave it up for the sake of the commenters, David Gordon and AJ, who refuted it. In my defense I will say something Roderick Chisholm once said about himself in a similar connection, namely, that I wrote something clear enough to be mistaken. …………..…
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Thinking About Frodo
Let me attack yesterday's puzzle from a different angle. The puzzle in one sentence: we think about things that do not exist; but how is this possible given that they do not exist? Here is the problem set forth as an aporetic hexad: 1. When I think about Frodo, as I am doing right now,…