29 ideas
| 18487 | We want to know what makes sentences true, rather than defining 'true' [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The generalisation 'What makes a (any) sentence true?' is not a request for definitions of 'true' (the concept), but rather requests for (partial) explanations of why certain particular sentences are true. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: McFetridge is responding to the shortcomings of Tarski's account of truth. The mystery seems to be why some of our representations of the world are 'successful', and others are not. |
| 18488 | We normally explain natural events by citing further facts [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: If one were asked 'What makes salt soluble in water?', the most natural answer would be something of the style 'The fact that it has such-and-such structure'. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would want to talk about its 'powers' (dispositional properties), rather than its 'structure' (categorical properties). This defends facts, but you could easily paraphrase 'fact' out of this reply (as McFetridge realised). |
| 20339 | Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g. the class of big things is big), but this is very rare. ....In the case of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things can be exhilarating, and so can redness. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 92) | |
| A reaction: 'Exhilarating' is an extrinsic property, so not the best illustration. This is interesting, but would need checking with a wide range of examples. (Too busy for that right now) |
| 12184 | Logical necessity overrules all other necessities [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: If it is logically necessary that if p then q, then there is no other sense of 'necessary' in which it is not necessary that if p then q. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
| A reaction: The thesis which McFetridge proposes to defend. The obvious rival would be metaphysical necessity, and the rival claim would presumably be that things are only logically necessary if that is entailed by a metaphysical necessity. Metaphysics drives logic. |
| 15083 | The fundamental case of logical necessity is the valid conclusion of an inference [McFetridge, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: McFetridge's conception of logical necessity is one which sees the concept as receiving its fundamental exemplification in the connection between the premiss and conclusion of a deductively valid inference. | |
| From: report of Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986]) by Bob Hale - Absolute Necessities 2 | |
| A reaction: This would mean that p could be logically necessary but false (if it was a valid argument from false premisses). What if it was a valid inference in a dodgy logical system (including 'tonk', for example)? |
| 15084 | In the McFetridge view, logical necessity means a consequent must be true if the antecedent is [McFetridge, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: McFetridge's view proves that if the conditional corresponding to a valid inference is logically necessary, then there is no sense in which it is possible that its antecedent be true but its consequent false. ..This result generalises to any statement. | |
| From: report of Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986]) by Bob Hale - Absolute Necessities 2 | |
| A reaction: I am becoming puzzled by Hale's assertion that logical necessity is 'absolute', while resting his case on a conditional. Are we interested in the necessity of the inference, or the necessity of the consequent? |
| 12180 | Logical necessity requires that a valid argument be necessary [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: There will be a legitimate notion of 'logical' necessity only if there is a notion of necessity which attaches to the claim, concerning a deductively valid argument, that if the premisses are true then so is the conclusion. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
| A reaction: He quotes Aristotle's Idea 11148 in support. Is this resting a stronger idea on a weaker one? Or is it the wrong way round? We endorse validity because we see the necessity; we don't endorse necessity because we see 'validity'. |
| 12181 | Traditionally, logical necessity is the strongest, and entails any other necessities [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The traditional crucial assumption is that logical necessity is the strongest notion of necessity. If it is logically necessary that p, then it is necessary that p in any other use of the notion of necessity there may be (physically, practically etc.). | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. We might say it is physically necessary simply because it is logically necessary, and even that it is metaphysically necessary because it is logically necessary (required by logic). Logical possibility is hence the weakest kind? |
| 12183 | It is only logical necessity if there is absolutely no sense in which it could be false [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: Is there any sense in which, despite an ascription of necessity to p, it is held that not-p is possible? If there is, then the original claim then it was necessary is not a claim of 'logical' necessity (which is the strongest necessity). | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 12181, which leads up to this proposed "test" for logical necessity. McFetridge has already put epistemic ('for all I know') possibility to one side. □p→¬◊¬p is the standard reading of necessity. His word 'sense' bears the burden. |
| 12192 | The mark of logical necessity is deduction from any suppositions whatever [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The manifestation of the belief that a mode of inference is logically necessarily truth-preserving is the preparedness to employ that mode of inference in reasoning from any set of suppositions whatsoever. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §4) | |
| A reaction: He rests this on the idea of 'cotenability' of the two sides of a counterfactual (in Mill, Goodman and Lewis). There seems, at first blush, to be a problem of the relevance of the presuppositions. |
| 12182 | We assert epistemic possibility without commitment to logical possibility [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: Time- and person-relative epistemic possibility can be asserted even when logical possibility cannot, such as undecided mathematical propositions. 'It may be that p' just comes to 'For all I know, not-p'. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §1) | |
| A reaction: If it is possible 'for all I know', then it could be actual for all I know, and if we accept that it might be actual, we could hardly deny that it is logically possible. Logical and epistemic possibilities of mathematical p stand or fall together. |
| 12187 | Objectual modal realists believe in possible worlds; non-objectual ones rest it on the actual world [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The 'objectual modal realist' holds that what makes modal beliefs true are certain modal objects, typically 'possible worlds'. ..The 'non-objectual modal realist' says modal judgements are made true by how things stand with respect to this world. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §2) | |
| A reaction: I am an enthusiastic 'non-objectual modal realist'. I accept the argument that real possible worlds have no relevance to the actual world, and explain nothing (see Jubien). The possibilities reside in the 'powers' of this world. See Molnar on powers. |
| 12186 | Modal realists hold that necessities and possibilities are part of the totality of facts [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The 'modal realist' holds that part of the totality of what is the case, the totality of facts, are such things as that certain events could have happened, certain propositions are necessarily true, if this happened then that would have been the case. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Logical Necessity: Some Issues [1986], §2) | |
| A reaction: I am an enthusiastic modal realist. If the aim of philosophy is 'to understand' (and I take that to be the master idea of the subject) then no understanding is possible which excludes the possibilities and necessities in things. |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
| From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Much of the time we think and talk of a type as though it were itself a kind of token. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful way of connecting what I call 'objectification' to the more conventional modern philosophical vocabulary. Thus I might claim that beauty is superior to truth, as if they were two tokens. |
| 20342 | Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Performative interpretation occurs only with certain arts, but critical intepretation pertains to all. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 38) | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, but this is the first point to make about the concept of 'interpretation'. Does the word in fact have two meanings? Or do I perform a painting when I look carefully at it? |
| 20343 | A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: We could not have a feeling for the beauties of art unless we had been correspondingly moved in front of nature. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 43) | |
| A reaction: Wollheim offers this in defence of Kant's view, without necessarily agreeing. Similarly one could hardly care for fictional characters, but not for real people. So the aesthetic attitude may arise from life, rather than from art. Is art hence unimportant? |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60) | |
| A reaction: The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art. |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is said that beauty cannot consist in organisation because, if it did, we would not be able to predicate beauty of totally simple objects. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 59) | |
| A reaction: [He says this idea originates in Plotinus] I'm struggling to think of an example of something which is 'totally' simple and beautiful. Maybe a patch of colour like the breast of a bullfinch? |
| 20345 | Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The view that a work of art expresses nothing if it can't be put into other words ...is reduced by the view that a work of art has no value if what it expresses or says can be put into (other) words. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 49) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the second view. Poetry is what is lost in translation. Good art actually seems to evoke emotions which one virtually never feels in ordinary life. But how could that be possible? What are those emotions doing there? |
| 20331 | It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 10) | |
| A reaction: Since the idea of an object having non-physical properties strikes me as ridiculous, this gets off to a bad start. If artworks are abstract objects, then all of their properties are non-physical. |
| 20336 | Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: 'Style' would seem to be a concept that cannot be applied to a work solely on the basis of what is represented and yet it is also essential to a proper understanding or appreciation of a work. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. One long held musical note creates an expectation which depends on the presumed style of the piece of music. A single bar from a piece may well not exhibit its characteristic style. |
| 20337 | The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: From Aristotle onwards it has been a tenet of the traditional rhetoric that the proper understanding of a literary work involves the location of it in the correct genre, that is, as drama, epic or lyric. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Walton argues this persuasively. I've seen the climax of a Jacobean tragedy ruined by laughter from the audience. Genre dictates appropriate responses, so it is a communal concept. |
| 20333 | If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: In denying that works of art are physical objects, one theory (the 'ideal') withdraws them altogether from experience, and a second theory ('phenomenal') pins them too it inescapably and at all points. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 21) | |
| A reaction: I incline towards them being transient ideals, created by human minds. As with so much, we idealise and objectify them as 'works', and abstract their image from the instance(s) we encounter. |
| 20334 | The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The ideal theory of Croce and Collingwood says art is first an inner intuition or expression of the artist, resulting from a particular process of organisation and unification, which can be externalised in public form. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 22) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] As stated this doesn't sound very controversial or 'ideal'. I take it the theory is intended to be more platonist than this expression of it suggests. I think the idea that it is an 'expression' of the artist is wrong. |
| 20335 | The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Because the ideal theory makes a work of art inner or mental, the link between the artist and the audience has been severed .....and it also totally ignores the significance of the medium. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 23) | |
| A reaction: Emily Dickinson had virtually no audience for her poetry. The medium used to perform Bach's 'Art of Fugue' seems unimportant. For paintings of painterly painters paint matters. For some visual art many different media will suffice. |
| 20340 | A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as evidence that it fits the performance being a token, and music (and all other art) being a type. There are quite a few 'reservations'. Music too difficult to perform. Great music always badly performed. |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so. If you play accurately everything that is written in the score, then anything else has to be an addition. If you play less than the score, you aren't quite playing that piece of music. |
| 20332 | A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary, if a drawing is to represent Napoleon, that the draughtsman should intend it to be Napoleon. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 13) | |
| A reaction: Does a perfect and intended representation of a person also count as a representation of the person's identical twin? The families of both might well order copies. |