31 ideas
| 9331 | How do we determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: How are we to determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §2) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. If I say 'philosophy is the love of wisdom' and 'philosophy bores me', why should one be part of its definition and the other not? What if I stipulated that the second one is part of my definition, and the first one isn't? |
| 6334 | The function of the truth predicate? Understanding 'true'? Meaning of 'true'? The concept of truth? A theory of truth? [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish the function of the truth predicate, what it is to understand 'true', the meaning of 'true', grasping the concept of truth, and a theory of truth itself. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.8) | |
| A reaction: It makes you feel tired to think about it. Presumably every other philosophical analysis has to do this many jobs. Clearly Horwich wants to propose one account which will do all five jobs. Personally I don't believe these five are really distinct. |
| 6342 | Some correspondence theories concern facts; others are built up through reference and satisfaction [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: One correspondence theory (e.g. early Wittgenstein) concerns representations and facts; alternatively (Tarski, Davidson) the category of fact is eschewed, and the truth of sentences or propositions is built out of relations of reference and satisfaction. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.7.35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction. Clearly the notion of a 'fact' is an elusive one ("how many facts are there in this room?"), so it seems quite promising to say that the parts of the sentence correspond, rather than the whole thing. |
| 6332 | The common-sense theory of correspondence has never been worked out satisfactorily [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The common-sense notion that truth is a kind of 'correspondence with the facts' has never been worked out to anyone's satisfaction. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I've put this in to criticise it. Philosophy can't work by rejecting theories which can't be 'worked out', and accepting theories (like Tarski's) because they can be 'worked out'. All our theories will end up minimal, and defiant of common sense. |
| 6335 | The redundancy theory cannot explain inferences from 'what x said is true' and 'x said p', to p [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The redundancy theory is unable to account for the inference from "Oscar's claim is true" and "Oscar's claim is that snow is white" to "the proposition 'that snow is white' is true", and hence to "snow is white". | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.9) | |
| A reaction: Earlier objections appealed to the fact that the word 'true' seemed to have a use in ordinary speech, but this seems a much stronger one. In general, showing the role of a term in making inferences pins it down better than ordinary speech does. |
| 6344 | Truth is a useful concept for unarticulated propositions and generalisations about them [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: All uses of the truth predicate are explained by the hypothesis that its entire raison d'ętre is to help us say things about unarticulated propositions, and in particular to express generalisations about them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Concl) | |
| A reaction: This certain is a very deflationary notion of truth. Articulated propositions are considered to stand on their own two feet, without need of 'is true'. He makes truth sound like a language game, though. Personally I prefer to mention reality. |
| 6336 | No deflationary conception of truth does justice to the fact that we aim for truth [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that no deflationary conception of truth could do justice to the fact that we aim for the truth. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.11) | |
| A reaction: (He mentions Dummett and Wright). People don't only aim for it - they become very idealistic about it, and sometimes die for it. Personally I think that any study of truth should use as its example police investigations, not philosophical analysis. |
| 23299 | Horwich's deflationary view is novel, because it relies on propositions rather than sentences [Horwich, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Horwich's brave and striking move is to make the primary bearers of truth propositions - not exactly a new idea in itself, but new in the context of a serious attempt to defend deflationism. | |
| From: report of Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990]) by Donald Davidson - The Folly of Trying to Define Truth p.30 | |
| A reaction: Davidson rejects propositions because they can't be individuated, but I totally accept propositions. I'm puzzled why this would produce a deflationist theory, since I think it points to a much more robust view. |
| 6337 | The deflationary picture says believing a theory true is a trivial step after believing the theory [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: According to the deflationary picture, believing that a theory is true is a trivial step beyond believing the theory. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.17) | |
| A reaction: What has gone wrong with this picture is that you cannot (it seems to me) give a decent account of belief without mentioning truth. To believe a proposition is to hold it true. Hume's emotional account (Idea 2208) makes belief bewildering. |
| 6339 | Logical form is the aspects of meaning that determine logical entailments [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The logical forms of the sentences in a language are those aspects of their meanings that determine the relations of deductive entailment holding amongst them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.30) | |
| A reaction: A helpful definition. Not all sentences, therefore, need to have a 'logical form'. Is the logical form the same as the underlying proposition. The two must converge, given that propositions lack the ambiguity that is often found in sentences. |
| 8431 | Problems with Goodman's view of counterfactuals led to a radical approach from Stalnaker and Lewis [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: In reaction to two classic difficulties in Goodman's treatment of counterfactuals - the contenability problem and the explication of law - a radically different approach was instigated by Stalnaker (1968) and has been developed by Lewis. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Lewis's Programme [1987], p208) | |
| A reaction: [I record this for study purposes] |
| 9333 | A priori belief is not necessarily a priori justification, or a priori knowledge [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: It is one thing to believe something a priori and another for this belief to be epistemically justified. The latter is required for a priori knowledge. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would agree with this, because I don't think anything should count as knowledge if it doesn't have supporting reasons, but fans of a priori knowledge presumably think that certain basic facts are just known. They are a priori justified. |
| 9342 | Understanding needs a priori commitment [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is itself based on a priori commitment. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
| A reaction: This sounds plausible, but needs more justification than Horwich offers. This is the sort of New Rationalist idea I associate with Bonjour. The crucial feature of the New lot is, I take it, their fallibilism. All understanding is provisional. |
| 9332 | Meaning is generated by a priori commitment to truth, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Our a priori commitment to certain sentences is not really explained by our knowledge of a word's meaning. It is the other way around. We accept a priori that the sentences are true, and thereby provide it with meaning. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a lovely trump card, but how on earth do you decide that a sentence is true if you don't know what it means? Personally I would take it that we are committed to the truth of a proposition, before we have a sentence for it. |
| 9341 | Meanings and concepts cannot give a priori knowledge, because they may be unacceptable [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: A priori knowledge of logic and mathematics cannot derive from meanings or concepts, because someone may possess such concepts, and yet disagree with us about them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
| A reaction: A good argument. The thing to focus on is not whether such ideas are a priori, but whether they are knowledge. I think we should employ the word 'intuition' for a priori candidates for knowledge, and demand further justification for actual knowledge. |
| 9334 | If we stipulate the meaning of 'number' to make Hume's Principle true, we first need Hume's Principle [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate the meaning of 'the number of x's' so that it makes Hume's Principle true, we must accept Hume's Principle. But a precondition for this stipulation is that Hume's Principle be accepted a priori. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §9) | |
| A reaction: Yet another modern Quinean argument that all attempts at defining things are circular. I am beginning to think that the only a priori knowledge we have is of when a group of ideas is coherent. Calling it 'intuition' might be more accurate. |
| 9339 | A priori knowledge (e.g. classical logic) may derive from the innate structure of our minds [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: One potential source of a priori knowledge is the innate structure of our minds. We might, for example, have an a priori commitment to classical logic. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §11) | |
| A reaction: Horwich points out that to be knowledge it must also say that we ought to believe it. I'm wondering whether if we divided the whole territory of the a priori up into intuitions and then coherent justifications, the whole problem would go away. |
| 7544 | Many people imagine that to experience is to understand [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: There are many people who imagine that what they experience they also understand. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 889) | |
| A reaction: This should be posted over the arrivals gate of every international airport, for returning holiday-makers. It seems to place Goethe on the rationalist side of the debate with empiricism. It is hard to explain 'understanding' in Humean terms. |
| 7541 | Man never understands how anthropomorphic he is [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: Man never understands how anthropomorphic he is. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 203) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is true, even when it is pointed out to us. No matter how hard we try to realise how very different animals are from us, we can't help identifying with them. Religious people even do it with inanimate creation. |
| 2799 | Bayes' theorem explains why very surprising predictions have a higher value as evidence [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Bayesianism can explain the fact that in science surprising predictions have greater evidential value, as the equation produces a higher degree of confirmation. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.42) |
| 2798 | Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) x prob(E given H) / prob(E) [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Bayesianism says ideally rational people should have degrees of belief (not all-or-nothing beliefs), corresponding with probability theory. Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) X prob(E given H) / prob(E). | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.41) |
| 7543 | We gain self-knowledge through action, not thought - especially when doing our duty [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought, but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 442) | |
| A reaction: Good! I even like the unfashionable bit about duty. If you just do what you want, you will discover your interests, but not so much about your capacities. However, when you have to do something less comfortable, it is very revealing. |
| 6338 | We could know the truth-conditions of a foreign sentence without knowing its meaning [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Someone who does not understand German and is told 'Schnee ist weiss' is true if frozen H2O is white, does not understand the German sentence, even though he knows the truth-conditions. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.5.22 n1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a powerful objection to Davidson's well-known claim that meaning is truth-conditions. Horwich likes the idea that meaning is use, but I think a similar objection arises - you can use a sentence well without knowing its meaning. |
| 6340 | There are Fregean de dicto propositions, and Russellian de re propositions, or a mixture [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: There are pure, Fregean, abstract, de dicto propositions, in which a compositional structure is filled only with senses; there are pure, Russellian, concrete, de re propositions, which are filled with referents; and there are mixed propositions. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.31) | |
| A reaction: Once Frege has distinguished sense from reference, this distinction of propositions is likely to follow. The current debate over the internalist and externalist accounts of concepts seems to continue the debate. A mixed strategy sounds good. |
| 6341 | Right translation is a mapping of languages which preserves basic patterns of usage [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The right translation between words of two languages is the mapping that preserves basic patterns of usage - where usage is characterised non-semantically, in terms of circumstances of application, assertibility conditions and inferential role. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.32) | |
| A reaction: It still strikes me that if you ask why a piece of language is used in a certain way, you find yourself facing something deeper about meaning than mere usage. Horwich cites Wittgenstein and Quine in his support. Could a machine pass his test? |
| 7540 | Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws which without this appearance would have remained eternally hidden from us. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 183) | |
| A reaction: An interesting defence of beauty as an objective feature of the world. I'm not sure. Much beauty is indeed the result of growth or erosion expressing underlying laws, but then I have always thought there was a sexual component to visual beauty. |
| 19941 | Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself [Anon (Leviticus)] |
| Full Idea: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. | |
| From: Anon (Lev) (03: Book of Leviticus [c.700 BCE], 19.18) | |
| A reaction: Most Christians think Jesus originated this thought. Interestingly, this precedes Socrates, who taught a similar idea. |
| 7538 | The happiest people link the beginning and end of life [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: The happiest man is one who can link the end of his life with its beginning. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 140) | |
| A reaction: [from 'Art and Antiquity']. A nice thought, which chimes in with the idea that a good life is like a complete story or a work of art (Idea 7501), or that it is 'eudaimon'. |
| 7542 | The best form of government teaches us to govern ourselves [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 353) | |
| A reaction: Not a fashionable view, since the rise of freedom as the highest political ideal, but I identify with the idea that a good government should educate, and should try to facilitate virtue as well as pleasure. |
| 7539 | To get duties from people without rights, you must pay them well [Goethe] |
| Full Idea: If you demand duties from people and will not concede them rights, you have to pay them well. | |
| From: Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections [1825], 180) | |
| A reaction: [from 'Art and Antiquity']. ...or have great power over them. Goethe gives the optimistic liberal view, rather than the Marxist view. |
| 8432 | Analyse counterfactuals using causation, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: In my view, counterfactual conditionals are analysed in terms of causation. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Lewis's Programme [1987], p.208) | |
| A reaction: This immediately sounds more plausible to me. Counterfactual claims are rather human, whereas causation (if we accept it) seems a feature of nature. The key question is whether some sort of 'dependency' is a feature of counterfactuals. |