display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
6 ideas
| 7013 | The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism. |
| 4605 | Truth-conditions correspond to the idea of 'literal meaning' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I intend the notion of truth-conditions to correspond to what I have called 'literal meaning'. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes. If I identify myself to you by saying "the spam is in the fridge", that always has a literal meaning (which we assemble from the words), as well as connotation in this particular context. |
| 4606 | To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is something puzzling about the notion that someone could understand the sentences "birds warble" and "tigers growl", yet have no idea what the sentence "tigers warble" meant. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: True enough, but this need not imply the full thesis of linguistic holism. Words are assembled like bricks. I know tigers might warble, but stones don't. Might fish warble? Or volcanoes? I must know that 'birds warble' is not a tautology. |
| 18536 | The subject-predicate form reflects reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I like to think that the subject-predicate form reflects a fundamental division in reality. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, he defends the idea that there are substances, and powerful qualities pertaining to those substances. I sympathise, but this slogan makes it too simple. |
| 4604 | If propositions are abstract entities, how do human beings interact with them? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who takes propositions to be abstract entities owes the rest of us an account of how human beings could interact with such things. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes this sound impossible, but that would mean that all abstraction is impossible, and there are no such things as ideas and concepts. In the end something has to be miraculous, so let it be our ability to think about abstractions. |
| 7002 | If propositions are states of affairs or sets of possible worlds, these lack truth values [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When pressed, philosophers will describe propositions as states of affairs or sets of possible worlds. But wait! Neither sets of possible worlds nor states of affairs - electrons being negatively charged, for instance - have truth values. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I see a problem. A pure proposition, expressed as, say "there is a giraffe on the roof" only acquires a truth value at the point where you assert it or believe it. There IS a possible world where there is a giraffe on the roof. |