85 ideas
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: It is an empirical fact that people often sincerely report having had dreams which involve category mistakes. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: She doesn't give any examples, but I was thinking that this might be the case before I read this idea. Dreams seem to allow you to live with gaps in reality that we don't tolerate when awake. |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: A plausible case can be made for explaining the phenomenon of category mistakes in terms of each of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I want to explain them in terms of (structured) ontology, but she totally rejects that on p.156. Her preferred account is that they are presupposition failures, which is pragmatics. She splits the semantic view into truth-valued and non-truth-valued. |
| 18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The infelicity of category mistakes seems to be universal across languages. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Magidor rightly offers this fact to refute the claim that category mistakes are purely syntax (since syntax obviously varies hugely across languages). I also take the fact to show that category mistakes concern the world, and not merely language. |
| 18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: A syntactic theory of category mistakes would require not only general syntactic features such as must-be-human, but also highly particular ones such as must-be-a-grape. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Her grape example comes from Hebrew, but an English example might be the verb 'to hull', which is largely exclusive to strawberries. The 'must-be' form is one of Chomsky's 'selectional features'. |
| 18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The embedding data (such as 'John said that the number two is green', compared to '*John said that me likes apples') strongly suggests that category mistakes are not syntactically ill-formed. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds conclusive. The report of John's category error, unlike the report of his remark about apples, seems perfectly syntactically acceptable. |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Metaphors must have literal meanings. …Since many metaphors involving category mistakes manage to achieve their metaphorical purpose, they must also have literal meanings, so category mistakes must be (literally) meaningful. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Hm. 'This guy is so weird that to meet him is to encounter a circular square'. |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The principle that if a competent speaker understands some terms then they understand a sentence made up of them entails that category mistakes are meaningful (as in understanding 'the number two' and 'is green'). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed version] It is normal to impose restrictions on plausible compositionality, and thus back away from this claim, but I rather sympathise with it. She adds to a second version of the principle the proviso 'IF the sentence is meaningful'. |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Two sentences are synonymous if they have the same meaning, suggesting that they must both be meaningful. On the face of it the English 'two is green' and French 'deux est vert' are synonymous, suggesting meaningful category mistakes. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm fairly convinced already that most category mistakes are meaningful, and this seems to confirm the view. Some mistakes could be so extreme that no auditor could compute their meaning, especially if you concatenated lots of them. |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: One motivation for taking category mistakes to be meaningless is that one cannot even imagine what it would take for 'Two is green' to be true. …Underlying this complaint is sometimes the thought that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I defend the view that most sentences are meaningful if they compose from meaningful parts, but you have to acknowledge this view. It seems to come in degrees. Sentences can have fragmentary meaning, or be almost meaningful, or offer a glimpse of meaning? |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The meaninglessness view does seem to offer a simple and compelling explanation for the fact that category mistakes are highly infelicitous. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: However, I take there to be quite a large gulf between why meaningless sentences like 'squares turn happiness into incommensurability', which I would call 'category blunders', and subtle category mistakes, which are meaningful. |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: No sense experience shows that 'two is green' is true or false. But neither is 'two is green' analytically true or false. So it fails to have legitimate verification conditions and hence, by the lights of traditional verificationism, it is meaningless. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2) | |
| A reaction: If a category mistake is an error in classification, then it would seem to be analytically false. If it wrongly attributes a property to something, that makes it verifiably false. The problem is to verify anything at all about 'two'. |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: One might argue that conceptual role semantics entails that category mistakes are meaningless. Sentences such as 'two is green' play no role in the cognitive life of any agent. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [She quotes Block's definition of conceptual role semantics] I would have thought that if a category mistake is believed by an agent, it could play a huge role in their cognitive life. |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: One might argue that although 'two' refers to the number two, and 'is green' expresses the property of being green, in 'two is green' the property somehow fails to apply to the number two. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: It is an interesting thought that you say something which applies a predicate to an object, but the predicate then 'fails to apply' for reasons of its own, over which you have no control. The only possible cause of the failure is the nature of reality. |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Having rejected the syntactic approach and the meaninglessness view, one might feel that the last resort for explaining the defectiveness of category mistakes is to claim that they are truth-valueless (even if meaningful). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.3.1) | |
| A reaction: She rejects this one as well, and votes for a pragmatic explanation, in terms of presupposition failure. The view I incline towards is just that they are false, despite being well-formed, meaningful and truth-valued. |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The principle that if 'p' and 'q' are meaningful sentences then 'p and q' is a meaningful sentence seems highly plausible. But now consider the following example: 'That is a number and that is green'. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This challenges the defence of the meaningfulness of category mistakes on the basis of strong compositionality. |
| 18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The most promising way to characterise the presuppositions involved in category mistakes might be to rephrase them in modal terms ('x is able to be pregnant', 'x is able to be green'). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This catches my attention because it suggests that category mistakes contradict dispositions, rather than contradicting classifications or types. 'Let's use a magnet to repel this iron'? The dispositions of 'two' and 'green' in 'two is green'? Hm |
| 18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: I argue that category mistakes are infelicitous because they suffer from (pragmatic) presupposition failure, ...but I reject the 'naive pragmatic approach' according to which category mistakes are infelicitous because they are trivially true or false. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: She supports her case quite well, but I vote for them being false. The falsity may involve presuppositions. 'Two is green' is a category mistake, and false, because 'two' lacks the preconditions for anything to be coloured (notably, emitting light). |
| 18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: I am assuming that even in those contexts in which the presupposition of 'the number two is green' fails and the utterance is infelicitious, it nevertheless receives a bivalent truth-value (presumably 'false'). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me obvious that, in normal contexts, 'the number two is green' is false, rather than meaningless. Is 'the number eight is an odd number' meaningless? |
| 18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: My proposal is that the truth-conditional content of 'green' (in 'two is green') is the property of being green, and its presuppositional content is the property of being coloured. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This requires a two-dimensional semantics of truth-conditional and presuppositional content. I fear it may have a problem she spotted elsewhere, of overgenerating presuppositions. Eyes are presupposed by 'green'. Ambient light is required. |
| 18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: 'The number two is green' is normally infelicitous, but, interestingly, 'numbers are coloured and the number two is green' is not infelicitous. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice example, which gives good support for her pragmatic account of category mistakes in terms of presupposition failure. But how about 'figures can have contradictory shapes, and this square is circular'? Numbers are not coloured!!! |
| 18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: My pragmatic account of category mistakes does not support a key role for them in metaphysics. It is highly doubtful that the presuppositions associated with category mistakes reveal anything about the fundamental nature of ontological categories. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Thus she dashes my hope, without even bothering to offer a reason. I think she should push her enquiry further, and ask why we presuppose things. Why do we take presuppositions for granted? Why are they obvious? |
| 21032 | Speak truth only to those who deserve the truth [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The duty to tell the truth applies only to those who deserve the truth. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [from Benjamin Constant, in opposition to Kant] I prefer the idea that we should use people 'after our own honour and dignity' (Hamlet), which means speaking the truth even to Donald Trump (for those of you who remember 2018). But not always. |
| 21033 | Careful evasions of truth at least show respect for it [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put. He refers to an incident in Kant's life. I think of the great equivocation controversy at the time of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. See the porter in Macbeth. All I ask is that people care about the truth. Many people don't. Why? |
| 18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Intensional logic aims to capture necessary relations between certain predicates, such as that 'green all over' and 'red all over' cannot be co-instantiated. Each predicate is allocated a set of points in logical space, and every object has one point. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This produces an intriguing model of reality, as a vast and rich space of multiply overlapping modal predicates. Things can be blue, square, dangerous and large. They can't be small and large, or square and round. Objects are optional extras! |
| 13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points. | |
| From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13 | |
| A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry. |
| 17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Various authors have argued that identity statements arising in the context of the 'Julius Caesar' problem in philosophy of mathematics constitute category mistakes. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Benacerraf 1965 and Shapiro 1997:79] |
| 18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Since 'the lump of clay is Romanesque' is a category mistake, a pragmatic account of that phenomenon is key to pursuing the strategy of saying that the problem rests on a false premise. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Three views of the semantics of propositional attitudes: they are relations between agents and propositions ('propositional' view); relations between individuals and meanings (Fregean); or relations of individuals and sentences/utterances ('sentential'). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: I am a propositionalist on this one. Meanings are too vague, and sentences are too linguistic. |
| 18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: It is commonly assumed that meaning and content can come apart: the sentence 'I am writing' and 'Ofra is writing' may have different meanings, even if, as currently uttered, they express the same content. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: From that, I would judge 'content' to mean the same as 'proposition'. |
| 18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Is it a necessary condition on possessing the concepts of 'two' and 'green' that one does not believe that two is green? I think this claim is false. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: To see that it is false one only has to consider much more sophisticated concepts, which are grasped without knowing their full implications. I might think two is green because I fully grasp 'two', but have not yet mastered 'green'. |
| 18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Generative semanticists claimed that the structure of a sentence is determined by both 'syntactic' and 'semantic' considerations which interact with each other in complex ways. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: [She mentions George Lakoff for this view] You need to study a range of examples, but this sounds a better view to me than the tidy picture of producing a syntactic structure and then adding a semantics. We make up sentences while speaking them. |
| 18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The sentences 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' can have very different deep structure (with the latter concerning John as a pleaser, while the former concerns John as the one being pleased). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This demolishes the old idea of grammar as 'parts of speech' strung together according to superficial rules. The question is whether we now just have deeper syntax, or whether semantics is part of the process. |
| 18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The basic semantics of sentences are not truth-conditions, but rather context change potential, which is a rule which determines what the effect of uttering the sentence would be on the context. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
| A reaction: [I. Heim's 'renowned' 1983 revision of Stalnaker] This means the semantics of a sentence can vary hugely, depending on context. It is known as 'dynamic semantics'. 'I think you should go ahead and do it'. |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: A weaker principle of compositionality states that if a syntactically well-formed sentence is meaningful, then its meaning is a function of the meaning of its parts. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I would certainly accept this as being correct. I take the meaning of a sentence to be something which you assemble in your head as you hear the parts of it unfold. ….However, irony might exhibit meaning that only comes from the whole sentence. Hm. |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: In the strong form of the principle of compositionality any meaningful expressions combined in a syntactically well-formed manner compose a meaningful expression. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Montague as holding this view] I find this plausible, at least. If you look at whole sentences they can seem meaningless, but if you track the process of composition a collective meaning emerges, despite the oddities. |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The fact that speakers of natural languages have the capacity to understand indefinitely many new sentences suggests that meaning must be compositional. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: To some extent, the compositionality of meaning is so obvious as to hardly require pointing out. It is the precise nature of the claim, and the extent to which whole sentences can add to the compositional meaning, that is of interest. |
| 18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Are there such things as 'partial propositions', which are truth-valueless relative to some possible worlds? | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this could be expressed without possible worlds. Are there propositions meaningful in New Guinea, and meaningless in England? Do some propositions require the contingent existence of certain objects to be meaningful? |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: 'That is red' in a context where the demonstrative fails to refer is truth-valueless, despite being meaningful, as is 'the queen of France in 2010 is bald'. ...The claim that some sentences are meaningful but truth-valueless is, then, widely accepted. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: The lack of truth value is usually because of reference failure. It is best to say the words are meaningful, but no proposition is expressed. |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: According to the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are constraints on the context: if a sentence s generates a presupposition p, an assertion of s cannot proceed smoothly unless the context already entails p (p is taken for granted). | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
| A reaction: She credits Stalnaker for this approach. There is a choice between the presuppositions being largely driven by internal features of the sentence, or by external features of context. You may not know the context of some statements. |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially true, asserting it would violate the maxim of quantity. For Stalnaker, if p is trivially true, it involves no update to the context-set, and is thus pointless. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Let us remind ourselves, before we proceed, of the following trivial truth: p'. |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially false, asserting it would violate the maxim of quality. For Stalnaker if p is trivially false, removing all worlds incompatible with p would result in an empty context-set, preventing any further communication. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm not sure whether we need to 'explain' the inappropriateness of uttering trivial falsities. I take the main rule of conversation to be 'don't be boring', but we all violate that. |
| 18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The most obvious test for presupposition would be this: if s generates the presupposition p, then an utterance of s would be infelicitous, unless p is taken for granted by participants in the conversation. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.1) | |
| A reaction: The principle of charity seems to be involved here - that we try to make people's utterances sound right, so we add in the presuppositions which would achieve that. The problem, she says, is that the infelicity may have other causes. |
| 18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: A proposed test for presupposition is the 'Hey, wait a minute' test. S presupposes that p, just in case it would be felictious to respond to an utterance of s with something like 'Hey, wait a minute - I had not idea that p!'. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: [K. Von Finkel 2004 made the suggestion] That is, you think 'hm ...this statement seems to presuppose p'. She says the suggestion vastly over-generates possible presuppositions - unlikely ones, as well as the obvious ones. |
| 18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The most robust tests for presupposition are the projection tests. If s presupposes p, then ¬s does too. If s1 presupposes p, then 'if s1 then s2' presupposes p. If s1 presupposes p, then 's1 and s2' presupposes p. If s presupposes p, then 's?' does too. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] She also discusses quantifiers. In other words, the presupposition remains stable through various transformations of the underlying proposition. |
| 18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: In the traditional account, a sentence s presupposes p if and only if both s and ¬s entail p. Standardly, this entails that if s presupposes p, then whenever p is false, s must be neither true nor false. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
| A reaction: 'I'm looking down on the garden' presupposes 'I'm upstairs'. Why would 'I'm not looking down on the garden' entail 'I'm upstairs'? I seem to have missed something. |
| 18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: We can ask why a range of lexical items (e.g. 'stop' or 'know') trigger the presuppositions they do. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether we'll get an answer, but I would approach the question by thinking about mental files. |
| 18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: On standard versions of the simile theory of metaphors, they mean the same as the corresponding simile. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Magidor points out that this allows the metaphor to work while being meaningless, since all the work is done by the perfectly meaningful simile. But the metaphor must at least mean enough to indicate what the simile is. |
| 18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: There are theories of metaphors that require them to have literal meanings in order to achieve their metaphorical purpose, and those that do not. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: I take almost any string of proper language to have literal meaning (for compositional reasons), even if the end result is somewhat ridiculous. 'Churchill was a lion' obviously has literal meaning. And so does 'Churchill was a transcendental number'. |
| 18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The simile theory of metaphors makes them too easy to figure out, when they cannot be paraphrased in literal terms, …and it does not explain why we use metaphors as well as similes. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Davidson for these points] They might just be similes with the added frisson of leaving out 'like', so that they seem at first to be false, until you work out the simile and see their truth. |
| 18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: According to the substitution view of metaphors, a word used metaphorically is merely a substitute for another word or phrase that expresses the same meaning literally. Thus 'John is an ice-cube' is a substitute for 'John is cruel and unemotional'. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to capture the denotation but miss the connotation. Whoever came up with this theory didn't read much poetry. |
| 18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Gricean theories of metaphor …assume that conversational implicatures are generated via literal contents, and hence that a sentence cannot generate an implicature without being literally meaningful. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Magidor gives not details of such theories, but presumably the metaphor is all in the speaker's intention, which is parasitic on the wayward literal meaning, as in cases of irony. |
| 18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: According to non-cognitivists there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning. …The effects on the hearer are induced directly via the literal meaning of the metaphor. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [This is said to be Davidson's view] I wonder how many people defended some explicit 'metaphorical meaning', as opposed to connotations that accumulate as you take in the metaphor? Any second meaning is just a further literal meaning. |
| 18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The fact that most metaphors involve category mistakes is not a coincidence. …A big part of them is to do with connecting objects and properties that normally seem to belong to disjoint domains. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Metaphysica poets took disjoint domains and 'yoked them together by violence', according to Dr Johnson. |
| 18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |
| Full Idea: A problem with the substitution view of metaphors is that the same predicate can have very different metaphorical contributions in different contexts. Consider 'Juliet is the sun' uttered by Romeo, and 'Stalin is the sun' from a devoted communist. | |
| From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: The substitution view never looked good (especially if you like poetry), and now it looks a lot worse. |
| 21036 | Not all deals are fair deals [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The mere fact that you and I make a deal is not enough to make it fair. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) |
| 21038 | Does consent create the obligation, or must there be some benefit? [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Legal thinkers have debated this question for a long time: can consent create an obligation on its own, or is some element of benefit or reliance required? | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: Clearly mere consent could be under some compulsion, either by the other party, or by some other forces. Keeping a deathbed promise usually brings no benefit, but is a matter of honour. Ah, honour! Can anyone remember what that is? |
| 21039 | Moral contracts involve both consent and reciprocity; making the deal, and keeping it [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Despite a tendency to read consent into moral claims, it is hard to make sense of our morality without acknowledging the independent weight of reciprocity. If my wife is unfaithful I have two different grounds of outrage: our promise, and my loyalty. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: The point is that Hobbes and co over-simplify what a contract is. Compare a contract with a promise. One must be two-sided, the other can be one-sided. |
| 21030 | The categorical imperative is not the Golden Rule, which concerns contingent desires [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The Golden Rule depends on contingent facts about how people like to be treated. The categorical imperative asks that we abstract from such contingencies and respect persons as rational beings, regardless of what they might want in particular situations. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: I think the Golden Rule is wrong for a different reason. It assumes that we all want similar things, which we don't. Focus on other people's needs, not yours. |
| 22262 | Kant's moral law has no foundation - because that would undermine its priority [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Given the stringent demands of the Kantian ethic, the moral law would seem almost to require a foundation in nothing, for any empirical precondition would undermine its priority. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Procedural republic and unencumbered self [1984], 'Kantian') | |
| A reaction: The idea of a value with 'a foundation in nothing' is particular anathema to me, because my project is to find a foundation for everything (in nature, which is the Given). Kant's only foundational value seems to be rational consistency. |
| 21031 | Man cannot dispose of himself, because he is not a thing to be owned [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [Kant lecture note] This is an important qualification to persons as ends. If a person owned themselves, that would separate the person from what they owned. Sandel mentions selling your own organs. Kant is considering prostitution. Why is slavery wrong? |
| 20594 | Choosers in the 'original position' have been stripped of most human characteristics [Sandel, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Sandel argues that people in the 'original position' have been stripped of everything that makes them recognisably human: their conceptions of the good, their nationality, family membership, religion, friendships and past histories. | |
| From: report of Michael J. Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice [1982]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian' | |
| A reaction: This draws attention to what a pure Enlightenment rational project Rawls is pursuing, in the spirit if Kant's ethics. Choosers in the original position become identical, and thus choose a homogeneous society. |
| 21035 | Just visiting (and using roads) is hardly ratifying the Constitution [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how just passing through town is morally akin to ratifying the Constitution. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: They say that philosophical ideas are never refuted, and no progress is made, but this sure put paid to John Locke. |
| 21037 | A ratified constitution may not be a just constitution [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a constitution is ratified by the people does not prove that its provisions are just. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: Yes indeed. And the fact that a majority won a referendum does not make their decision wise. Hence all constitutions must be open to evaluation. Gun laws in the US are the obvious example. |
| 21034 | A just constitution harmonises the different freedoms [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: As Kant sees it, a just constitution aims at harmonising each individual's freedom with that of everyone else. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [source?] Nice statement of the project. I increasingly see political philosophy as constitution design. I say philosophers have got fifty years to design an optimum constitution, and they should then down tools and promote it, in simple language. |
| 22258 | Passion for progress is always short-lived [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Progress demands passions that cannot last for long. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Beyond Individualism [1988], p.35) | |
| A reaction: The obvious example, for me, is the Labour Government in the UK, 1945-51. This is the kind of realism which progressive politicians must face up to. Unfortunately it is the logic of very ruthless revolutionaries. |
| 22259 | Conservatives are either individualistic, or communal [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Individualist conservatives believe people should be free to do as they please so long as they do not harm others. ...Communal conservatives, by contrast, believe government should affirm moral and religious values. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Beyond Individualism [1988], p.38) | |
| A reaction: Nozick represents the first group (as does J.S.Mill, usually seen as epitomising liberalism). He says the first group like volunteer armies and oppose welfare; the second group favour conscription and conservative welfare. |
| 22264 | Modern liberal rights in democracies protect individuals against the majority [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Liberty in the modern procedural republic is defined in opposition to democracy, as an individual's guarantee against what the majority might will. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Procedural republic and unencumbered self [1984], 'Present') | |
| A reaction: And so I should hope. Sandel is sort of criticising this view, but it seems obvious that rights of this sort must be basic to any civilised democracy. But how do you decide those rights, if not by a majoritarian decision? |
| 22261 | Liberals say rights always come first, and justice is neutral on social values [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The liberal claim that the right is prior to the good means that individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and that the basic principles of justice cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Procedural republic and unencumbered self [1984], 'The right') | |
| A reaction: In Rawls, the first thesis is chosen from a neutral position, and the second is all that is needed to affirm rights as basic. These two are the target of Sandel's communitarian claims. Utilitarians will make the sacrifices. No consensus on the good life! |
| 21120 | The self is 'unencumbered' if it can abandon its roles and commitments without losing identity [Sandel, by Shorten] |
| Full Idea: Sandel says liberals are committed to the 'unencumbered self', ..when it has no roles, commitments or projects that are 'so essential that turning away from them would call into question the person I am'. | |
| From: report of Michael J. Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice [1982], p.86) by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory 02 | |
| A reaction: This is a very penetrating criticism of liberalism. The liberal self that makes social and legal contracts and exercises basic political rights is not far from being a robot. It has the minimum needed to join a society. Belonging is quite different. |
| 22263 | Liberal justice means the withdrawal of the self, as transcendental or as unencumbered [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: For the liberal concept of justice we must stand to our circumstances always at a certain distance, whether as transcendental subject in the case of Kant, or as unencumbered selves in the case of Rawls. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Procedural republic and unencumbered self [1984], 'Transcendental') | |
| A reaction: Maybe the only way to be unencumbered is to be transcendental. There is an insecure feeling that if the self becomes immanent or encumbered it thereby loses its objective rationality. You wake up one morning and find you are a nazi? |
| 21049 | Liberal freedom was a response to assigned destinies like caste and class [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Liberal freedom developed as an antidote to political theories that consigned persons to destinies fixed by caste or class, station or rank, custom, tradition or inherited status. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: Virtually all human beings before modern times found that they had been 'assigned destinies'. The huge exception is war, especially civil war, which must be a huge liberation for many people, despite the danger. |
| 22805 | Liberalism concerns rights, and communitarianism concerns the common good [Sandel, by Avineri/De-Shalit] |
| Full Idea: Sandel argues that liberalism is the politics of rights, while communitarianism is the politics of the common good. | |
| From: report of Michael J. Sandel (Procedural republic and unencumbered self [1984]) by Avineri,S/De-Shalit,A - Intro to 'Communitarianism and Individualism' §4 | |
| A reaction: The first thing on the agenda of the common good should be to assert and protect the rights of individual citizens. How could there be a common good which trampled on individuals? I agree that the common good is prior (e.g. in a pandemic). |
| 22260 | Modern liberalism fails to articulate a vision of the common good [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: In recent years liberalism has faltered because of its failure to argue for a vision of the common good. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Beyond Individualism [1988], p.45) | |
| A reaction: This is Sandel's main theme. He derives his concept of the common good from the essential natures of persons and institutions. I greatly admire this. |
| 22265 | I can't defend the view that the majority values of a community are thereby right [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Insofar as 'communitarian' is another name for majoritarianism, or for the idea that rights should rest on the values that predominate in any given community at any given time, it is not a view I would defend. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (The Limits of Communitarianism [1998], 'Where') | |
| A reaction: I should hope not. You could soon end up as a good nazi if you follow that route. Sandel defends a critical view of community values (implying a role for philosophy?). The community good must be continually negotiated. Sounds fine to me. |
| 22268 | If persons define themselves by a group membership, insults to that group are a real harm [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: For persons who understand themselves as defined by the ethnic or religious group to which they belong, an insult to the group can inflict a harm as real and as damaging as some physical harms. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (The Limits of Communitarianism [1998], 'Free speech') | |
| A reaction: In Britain many people fully define themselves by their allegiance to a football club. Really! They usually learn to laugh off an insult to their club, but it hurts. Laughing off an insult is an essential modern skill - up to a point. |
| 22267 | In the liberal view an insult to my group doesn't hurt me, since I'm defined by choices not groups [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: By the liberal conception of a person, my dignity could never be damaged by an insult to a group with which I identify, because what matters is not my social role, but my capacity to choose that role. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (The Limits of Communitarianism [1998], 'Free speech') | |
| A reaction: If I'm defined by my capacity to choose, and I choose to join some group, why is an insult to that group not an insult to my capacity to choose? How do you insult a liberal? 'I despise your individual freedom!'. |
| 21040 | Libertarians just want formal equality in a free market; the meritocratic view wants fair equality [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: The libertarian view of distributive justice is a free market with formal equality of opportunity. The meritocratic view is a free market with fair equality of opportunity. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is what has to be done, by intervention, to make the market fair. There are two major rival views of equality here. Is the starting point fair, and is the race itself fair? |
| 21028 | We can approach justice through welfare, or freedom, or virtue [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: We have identified three ways of approaching the distribution of goods: welfare, freedom and virtue. ...and these are three ways of thinking about justice. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 01) | |
| A reaction: Virtue is Sandel's distinctively Aristotelian contribution to the problem. The best known instance of justice is punishment, which is a distribution of harms. |
| 21027 | Justice concerns how a society distributes what it prizes - wealth, rights, power and honours [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: To ask whether a society is just is to ask how we distribute the things we prize - income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honours. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 01) | |
| A reaction: There is, of course, the prior question of what things should be controlled by a society for distribution. But there is also justice in the promotional and pay structure of institutions within a society, including private institutions. |
| 21042 | Should we redress wrongs done by a previous generation? [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Can we ever have a moral responsibility to redress wrongs committed by a previous generation? | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: Just asking for a friend. It seems to depend on how close we feel to the previous generation. Regretting the crime committed by a beloved parent is one thing. Despising the crime committed by some right bastard who shares my nationality is another. |
| 21043 | Distributive justice concern deserts, as well as who gets what [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Debates about distributive justice are about not only who gets what but also what qualities are worthy of honour and reward. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: So the 'undeserving poor' get nuffink? Does just being a human being deserve anything? Obviously yes. That said, we can't deny the concept of 'appropriate reward'. |
| 21052 | Justice is about how we value things, and not just about distributions [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 10) | |
| A reaction: This is Sandel's distinctively Aristotelian contribution to the justice debate - with which I have great sympathy. And, as he argues, the values of things arise out of assessing their essential natures. |
| 21048 | Work is not fair if it is negotiated, even in a fair situation, but if it suits the nature of the worker [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: For the libertarian free exchange for labour is fair; for Rawls it requires fair background conditions; for Aristotle, for the work to be just it must be suited to the nature of the workers who perform it. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle's idea is powerful, and Sandel performs a great service in drawing attention to it. Imagine the key negotiation in an interview being whether this particular work suits your nature! |
| 22266 | The case for religious liberty depends on the religion contributing to a morally good life [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: Unless there were reason to believe that religious beliefs and practices contribute to morally admirable ways of life, the case for a right to religious liberty would be weakened. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (The Limits of Communitarianism [1998], 'Religious') | |
| A reaction: I think many religious people would deny that their religion is primarily moral. (W.Blake: 'If morality is Christianity, then Socrates was the saviour'). Whose concept of a morally good life is Sandel referring to? |
| 21045 | Teleological thinking is essential for social and political issues [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to dispense with teleological reasoning in thinking about social institutions and political practices. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think teleological thinking is also indispensable in biology. You can't understand an ear or an eye if you don't know what it is FOR. If it relates to a mind, it is teleological. The eye of a dead person is for nothing. |