Список вопросов базы знаний

Complete the sentence: Let’s consider the first possibility, that ownership is a matter of convention. Suppose this were so. Then the question arises: which convention? There are so many conventions, both existing and possible, that

Complete the sentence: Ownership is a strange thing. Unlike possession, ownership is not easily defined in physical terms. Possession we can

Complete the sentence: So, as an aid in avoiding confusion with our intuitive conceptual scheme, I introduce guzen and hitsuzen. By guzen I will designate things that happen by chance, not in the sense that occur probabilistically, but

Complete the sentence: This is the legal view – that of the courts, which appeal only to the law to decide matters of ownership. Thus if

Complete the sentence: Thus if I hold a thing in my hand I possess it. But I also possess it if I keep it locked in my safe, since

Complete the sentence: While I could simply repurpose the English terms “coincidence” and “fate” I think they are already too loaded with meaning,

Define the sentence: And with respect to the second some claim that quantum mechanics somehow refutes it.

Define the sentence: But before I can discuss that matter it is first necessary to talk a bit about what free will is.

Define the sentence: Compatibilism in many ways is the antithesis of the determinism-indeterminism debate because it denies any significance to it.

Define the sentence: Despite my inclinations that is not the definition of free will that I will be using here.

Define the sentence: I of course am committed to them being wrong about that, because I am committed to the claim that philosophy is completely independent of scientific fact, which means that a scientific discovery can neither support nor refute a truly philosophical claim.

Define the sentence: In other words, you are free if you are the primary cause of your own actions.

Define the sentence: Many characterize it as “the ability to do otherwise”, but obviously that definition doesn’t say much since it could just as well be used to describe the self-determination view of free will.

Define the sentence: So it is the second that I care about.

Define the sentence: So what is free will in the context of this debate?

Define the sentence: The second is the denial of a certain kind of free will.

Define the sentence: There are many definitions of free will.

Define the sentence: This fits nicely with a physicalist view of the world, since in it you are identified with your brain, and it is obvious that your brain could be considered a primary cause of your actions.

Define the sentence: To really engage in that debate we need to make free will part of the stakes.

Define the sentence: What is meant by this definition is that to be free one must have the ability to make a meaningful choice which is not fully determined by the preceding physical facts.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Thus it must be the first – it is an arbitrary choice. But this is nothing more, and nothing less, than relativism. And relativism is the denial of absolutism. So to tell the absolutist that ethical values are meanings and not facts is simply to assert that absolutism is false. Which is not much of an argument against it. The absolutist’s position presupposes that ethical values are facts and not meanings that we assign.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: A cursory inspection, though, makes ontological dualism appear to be the superior theory. Such a large number of philosophical positions appeal to minds or mental features that it is hard to see how the ontological distinction between mind and body could be removed from philosophy as a whole. Certainly ontological materialists have their work cut out for them.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Any attempt to definitively answer this question would involve examining theories that lean on a division between the mental and the non-mental and seeing whether that division is an essential and irreplaceable part of the theory. That examination in itself could be of great philosophical worth.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Besides objects what other options do we have? Some possibilities can be found in our language, such as actions, relationships, and properties. These are all viable alternatives, but there is a tendency with all of them to fall back, perhaps unconsciously, into an object ontology. Actions and relationships are between two or more objects, and properties are things that objects have.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: But this is philosophy, the fact of the matter isn’t our concern here. On the philosophical level we are still free to hypothesize about what is and isn’t a noumenal property, on the same basis which we do all philosophy, namely that some ways of looking at the world are better than others.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: But, however intuitive that may be, there is good reason to avoid it. If we add properties in this way we will have fallen back into an object ontology, albeit under another name. By adding properties we make our events work exactly like objects.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Events that fall under hitsuzen can be understood as connected to other events within that scheme, and thus signify the scheme and its ends as a whole. To speak in philosophical terms for a moment: hitsuzen manifests teleology, i.e. goals or ends, while guzen does not.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Expressions that describe or refer to some indefinite thing (“the thing in the box”, “something is in the box”) are common, but similar expressions that describe relationships or actions (“the relationship between the watch and the man”, “the effect that the car had on the man”) sound odd.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Finally, we often describe an event as being composed of a number of interactions or causal connections, or both. The car’s failure to start, for example, was the event of the key being turned which caused certain events within the engine that interacted to cause the engine to stop.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Here I want to take a look at one of those other possibilities, and then see whether there are cases where it might be a better fit than our customary objects and properties. This is doing philosophy in reverse, as I understand it, since here we have a solution looking for a problem rather than the other way around, but so be it.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: However, it is also to beg the question against the absolutist, and thus isn’t much of an argument. We can borrow an argument from the Euthyphro here, and ask why we constitute something as good or bad, if ethical values are meanings we give things.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: I think we can describe the size and mass of an object as “facts”, as properties that are what they are independent of us. It’s not that these properties couldn’t be understood as something we are projecting onto the world – they certainly could.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: If everything, or everything significant, is hitsuzen then the natural question to ask is: what is the overarching plan? The obvious religious answer is that the overarching plan is a divine one. In fact a religious perspective would seem to necessitate that everything is hitsuzen.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: If this ontology is to do any meaningful work we need the ability to say things about events. The temptation is, of course, to add properties into the system (or classes of events, event kinds, which amount to the same thing), and thus to say that an event has the property of being such and such.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: In simpler terms: the world makes more sense if we conceive of some properties as belonging to the noumenal, regardless of what the noumena is “really” like.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: In a similar way we also talk of the interaction between two or more events, often in connection with causation. For example, the forest fire (the forest burning) interacts with the rain (raining); it is caused by the rain to go out.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: In contrast hitsuzen is the opposite of guzen. Events that fall under the domain of hitsuzen happen in accordance with some scheme, plan, or design. Thus hitsuzen is meaningful in exactly the way that guzen isn’t.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: In this event the components of the chair take only very minimal actions, such that they remain basically the same throughout. A chair doing nothing is an event in the same way that silence is a sound; it is an event where nothing much is happening.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Indeed, in such constructions the relationship or action is often treated grammatically as an object (“the relationship”, “the effect”). This is not necessarily a bad thing, but because it is so natural we are often blind to other alternatives; we reach so readily for objects and properties as tools that we never stop to think what else might be there.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Instead of the object chair having the property green we would now have the event of the chair’s being having the property green. Thus events essentially are objects (following the philosophical principle that whatever walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, is a duck); the only difference is that besides the normal set of objects (tables, chairs, cars, etc.) we have what can be thought of as situational objects as well (the car turning a corner, the chair being moved, etc).

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: It is natural to ground a metaphysical system in objects. The English language, along with most other western languages, is an object centric language. Sentences are constructed primarily by describing nouns and connecting them together.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: It it an arbitrary choice, or do we constitute it as good because it is good? The second creates a paradox – if good is nothing but our constitution of something as good, then this is to say that we constitute it as good because we constitute it as good, which says nothing.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Just as ontological dualism implies that the division between the mental and the physical is philosophically significant, ontological materialism asserts that those divisions should play no significant role in philosophical theories.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Materialism can also be construed as a purely ontological theory, as one that proposes that there be no categorical divisions between mental and physical properties or beings with and without minds.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Of course just because we can describe the world in terms of events, that we can point at the chair and say it is one kind of event, and at the man falling and say it is another, doesn’t mean that we have accomplished anything significant.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Once the categories are defined the next question to consider is how to deploy them. Three possibilities immediately present themselves. First everything, or at least everything important might be hitsuzen, i.e. part of some larger plan.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Perhaps I have once again made a straw man out of the nihilist’s position. Can’t the nihilist simply accompany their denial of absolute meanings with the additional assertion that ethical values are meaning and not facts? Perhaps they could, and this would threaten the absolutist conception of ethics.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Secondly the world could be a mixture of hitsuzen and guzen. Finally, there may only be guzen; with any appearance of hitsuzen being simply a kind of delusion or illusion.

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: So properties aren’t the way to go. What then can we say about events? As usual the place to start looking is with how we ordinarily talk and think about events. One common observation to make of an event is that it produces or causes some other event or events. For example, the car’s failure to start (an event, it failing) caused the professor to arrive late (another event, his arriving).

Define what syntactic role the underlined word plays in the sentence: Still, it is an event. An event is a characterization of change. Since the absence of change is itself a kind of change (a limiting case) we can talk about an event that describes it.