display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
17 ideas
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
9064 | Objects such as a cloud or Mount Everest seem to have fuzzy boundaries in nature [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: A common intuition is that a vague object has indeterminate or fuzzy spatio-temporal boundaries, such as a cloud. Mount Everest can only have arbitrary boundaries placed around it, so in nature it must have fuzzy boundaries. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §5) | |
A reaction: We would have to respond by questioning whether Everest counts precisely as an 'object'. At the microscopic or subatomic level it seems that virtually everything has fuzzy boundaries. Maybe boundaries don't really exist. |
9044 | If someone is borderline tall, no further information is likely to resolve the question [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: If Tek is borderline tall, the unclarity does not seem to be epistemic, because no amount of further information about his exact height (or the heights of others) could help us decide whether he is tall. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
A reaction: One should add also that information about social conventions or conventions about the usage of the word 'tall' will not help either. It seems fairly obvious that God would not know whether Tek is tall, so the epistemic view is certainly counterintuitive. |
9048 | The simplest approach, that vagueness is just ignorance, retains classical logic and semantics [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: The simplest approach to vagueness is to retain classical logic and semantics. Borderline cases are either true or false, but we don't know which, and, despite appearances, vague predicates have well-defined extensions. Vagueness is ignorance. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that you must have a rather unhealthy attachment to the logicians' view of the world to take this line. It is the passion of the stamp collector, to want everything in sets, with neatly labelled properties, and inference lines marked out. |
9055 | The epistemic view of vagueness must explain why we don't know the predicate boundary [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: A key question for the epistemic view of vagueness is: why are we ignorant of the facts about where the boundaries of vague predicates lie? | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §2) | |
A reaction: Presumably there is a range of answers, from laziness, to inability to afford the instruments, to limitations on human perception. At the limit, with physical objects, how do we tell whether it is us or the object which is afflicted with vagueness? |
9049 | Supervaluationism keeps true-or-false where precision can be produced, but not otherwise [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: The supervaluationist view of vagueness is that 'tall' comes out true or false on all the ways in which we can make 'tall' precise. There is a gap for borderline cases, but 'tall or not-tall' is still true wherever you draw a boundary. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
A reaction: [Kit Fine is the spokesperson for this; it preserves classical logic, but not semantics] This doesn't seem to solve the problem of vagueness, but it does (sort of) save the principle of excluded middle. |
9056 | Vague statements lack truth value if attempts to make them precise fail [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: The supervaluationist view of vagueness proposes that a sentence is true iff it is true on all precisifications, false iff false on all precisifications, and neither true nor false otherwise. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be just a footnote to the Russell/Unger view, that logic works if the proposition is precise, but otherwise it is either just the mess of ordinary life, or the predicate doesn't apply at all. |
9058 | Some of the principles of classical logic still fail with supervaluationism [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: Supervaluationist logic (now with a 'definite' operator D) fails to preserve certain classical principles about consequence and rules of inference. For example, reduction ad absurdum, contraposition, the deduction theorem and argument by cases. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
A reaction: The aim of supervaluationism was to try to preserve some classical logic, especially the law of excluded middle, in the face of problems of vagueness. More drastic views, like treating vagueness as irrelevant to logic, or the epistemic view, do better. |
9059 | The semantics of supervaluation (e.g. disjunction and quantification) is not classical [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: The semantics of supervaluational views is not classical. A disjunction can be true without either of its disjuncts being true, and an existential quantification can be true without any of its substitution instances being true. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
A reaction: There is a vaguely plausible story here (either red or orange, but not definitely one nor tother; there exists an x, but which x it is is undecidable), but I think I will vote for this all being very very wrong. |
9060 | Supervaluation misunderstands vagueness, treating it as a failure to make things precise [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: Why should we think vague language is explained away by how things would be if it were made precise? Supervaluationism misrepresents vague expressions, as vague only because we have not bothered to make them precise. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §3) | |
A reaction: The theory still leaves a gap where vagueness is ineradicable, so the charge doesn't seem quite fair. Logicians always yearn for precision, but common speech enjoys wallowing in a sea of easy-going vagueness, which works fine. |
9050 | A third truth-value at borderlines might be 'indeterminate', or a value somewhere between 0 and 1 [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: One approach to predications in borderline cases is to say that they have a third truth value - 'neutral', 'indeterminate' or 'indefinite', leading to a three-valued logic. Or a degree theory, such as fuzzy logic, with infinite values between 0 and 1. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §1) | |
A reaction: This looks more like a strategy for computer programmers than for metaphysicians, as it doesn't seem to solve the difficulty of things to which no one can quite assign any value at all. Sometimes you can't be sure if an entity is vague. |
9061 | People can't be placed in a precise order according to how 'nice' they are [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: There is no complete ordering of people by niceness, and two people could be both fairly nice, nice to intermediate degrees, while there is no fact of the matter about who is the nicer. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
A reaction: This is a difficulty if you are trying to decide vague predicates by awarding them degrees of truth. Attempts to place a precise value on 'nice' seem to miss the point, even more than utilitarian attempts to score happiness. |
9062 | If truth-values for vagueness range from 0 to 1, there must be someone who is 'completely tall' [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: Many-valued theories still seem to have a sharp boundary between sentences taking truth-value 1 and those taking value less than 1. So there is a last man in our sorites series who counts as 'completely tall'. | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
A reaction: Lovely. Completely nice, totally red, perfectly childlike, an utter mountain, one hundred per cent amused. The enterprise seems to have the same implausibility found in Bayesian approaches to assessing evidence. |
9063 | How do we decide if my coat is red to degree 0.322 or 0.321? [Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: What could determine which is the correct function, settling that my coat is red to degree 0.322 rather than 0.321? | |
From: R Keefe / P Smith (Intro: Theories of Vagueness [1997], §4) | |
A reaction: It is not just the uncertainty of placing the coat on the scale. The two ends of the scale have all the indeterminacy of being red rather than orange (or, indeed, pink). You are struggling to find a spot on the ruler, when the ruler is placed vaguely. |