110 ideas
6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Not only is traditional philosophy incapable of discovering the foundations it seeks, but the philosophical enterprise may itself dislodge the contingent, de facto supports that our daily life depends upon. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: In the end Fogelin is not so pessimistic, but he is worried by the concern of philosophers with paradox and contradiction. I don't remotely consider this a reason to reject philosophy, but it might be a reason to keep it sealed off from daily life. |
16440 | I don't think Lewis's cost-benefit reflective equilibrium approach offers enough guidance [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Lewis articulated and made fashionable the cost-benefit reflective equilibrium methodology, but I have my reservations as it does not offer much guidance. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker suggests that this approach has 'run amok' in Lewis's case, giving reality to possible worlds. He spends much effort on showing the 'benefits' of a profoundly implausible view. The same can be said of 4D Perdurantism. |
6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The three main threats to our rational lives are fear of inconsistency, illusions (of absolutism and relativism) and doubt. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This is a very nice analysis of the forces that can destroy the philosopher's aspiration to the rational life. Personally I still suffer from a few illusions about the possibility of absolutes, but I may grow out of it. The other three don't bother me. |
6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: It might be wholly unreasonable to suppose that human beings will ever be able to attain a view of the world that is both suitably rich and completely consistent. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: Fogelin's lectures develop this view very persuasively. I think all philosophers must believe that the gods could attain a 'rich and consistent' view. Our problem is that we are a badly organised team, whose members keep dying. |
6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The presence of an inconsistency in the rules that govern a game need not destroy the game. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: He only defends this thesis if the inconsistency is away from the main centre of the action. You can't have an inconsistent definition of scoring a goal or a touchdown. |
6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Traditionally many philosophers (Aristotle among them) have considered the law of noncontradiction to be the deepest, most fundamental principle of rationality. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: For Aristotle, see Idea 1601 (and 'Metaphysics' 1005b28). The only denier of the basic character of the law that I know of is Nietzsche (Idea 4531). Fogelin, despite many qualifications, endorses the law, and so do I. |
6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: People who reject the law of noncontradiction obliterate any significant difference between asserting something and denying it; …this will not move anyone who genuinely opts either for silence or for madness. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This seems a sufficiently firm and clear assertion of the basic nature of this law. The only rival view seems to be that of Nietzsche (Idea 4531), but then you wonder how Nietzsche is in a position to assert the relativity of the law. |
6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: There is almost universal agreement that legal reasoning is fundamentally analogical, not deductive, in character. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This raises the question of whether analogy can be considered as 'reasoning' in itself. How do you compare the examples? Could you compare two examples if you lacked language, or rules, or a scale of values? |
12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
16468 | Non-S5 can talk of contingent or necessary necessities [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: One can make sense of necessary versus contingent necessities in a non-S5 modal semantics. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3 n17) | |
A reaction: In S5 □φ → □□φ, so all necessities are necessary. Does it make any sense to say 'I suppose this might have been necessarily true'? |
18823 | To say there could have been people who don't exist, but deny those possible things, rejects Barcan [Stalnaker, by Rumfitt] |
Full Idea: Stalnaker holds that there could have been people who do not actually exist, but he denies that there are things that could have been those people. That is, he denies the unrestricted validity of the Barcan Formula. | |
From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 6.2 | |
A reaction: And quite right too, I should have thought. As they say, Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe might have had a child, but the idea that we should accept some entity which might have been that child but wasn't sounds like nonsense. Except as fiction….. |
16449 | In modal set theory, sets only exist in a possible world if that world contains all of its members [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: One principle of modal set theory should be uncontroversial: a set exists in a given possible world if and only if all of its members exist at that world. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2.4) | |
A reaction: Does this mean there can be no set containing all of my ancestors and future descendants? In no world can we coexist. |
12766 | Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85) | |
A reaction: I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality. |
16464 | We regiment to get semantic structure, for evaluating arguments, and understanding complexities [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The point of regimentation is to give a perspicuous representation of the semantic structure of an expression, making it easier to evaluate the validity of arguments and to interpret complex statements. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.2) | |
A reaction: This is an authoritative summary from an expert of why all philosophers must take an interest in logical form. |
16465 | In 'S was F or some other than S was F', the disjuncts need S, but the whole disjunction doesn't [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: In 'either Socrates was a philosopher or someone other than Socrates was a philosopher', both propositions expressed by the disjuncts depend for their existence on the existence of Socrates, but the whole disjunction does not. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Nice example, just the sort of thing we pay philosophers to come up with. He is claiming that propositions can exist in possible worlds in which the individuals mentioned do not exist. |
16405 | To understand a name (unlike a description) picking the thing out is sufficient? [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: If we ask 'what must you know to understand a name?', the naïve answer is that one must know who or what it names - nothing more. (But no one would give this answer about what is needed to understand a definite description). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is naive because names can be full of meaning ('the Empress'), or description and reference together ('there's the man who robbed me') and so on. It's a nice starting point though. A number can serve as a name. |
12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: If we stipulate that 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, we speedily arrive at the contradiction that 'heterological' is itself heterological just in case it is not. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) |
10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals, not arithmetical truths which are not truths of logic, but that logical truth likewise defies complete deductive characterization. ...Gödel's result has no specific bearing on the logicist project. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §2 n5) | |
A reaction: This is the key defence against the claim that Gödel's First Theorem demolished logicism. |
8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The relativization of ontology to theory in structuralism can't avoid carrying with it a relativization of truth-value, which would compromise the objectivity which structuralists wish to claim for mathematics. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
A reaction: This is the attraction of structures which grow out of the physical world, where truth-value is presumably not in dispute. |
10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: It is not clear how the view that natural numbers are purely intra-structural 'objects' can be squared with the widespread use of numerals outside purely arithmetical contexts. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
A reaction: I don't understand this objection. If they refer to quantity, they are implicitly cardinal. If they name things in a sequence they are implicitly ordinal. All users of numbers have a grasp of the basic structure. |
8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The neo-Fregean takes a more optimistic view than Frege of the prospects for the kind of contextual explanation of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis (cardinals and reals), which he rejected in 'Grundlagen' 60-68. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §1) |
8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
16439 | A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A nominalist definition of existence is 'having spatio-temporal location'. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: This would evidently be physicalist as well as nominalist. Presumably it fits the 'mosaic' of reality Lewis refers to. I find this view sympathetic. A process of abstraction is required to get the rest of the stuff we talk about. |
16434 | Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers deny there could have been anything other than what in fact exists, or that anything that exists could have failed to exist. This is developed in very different ways by Wittgenstein (in 'Tractatus'), Lewis and Williamson. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) | |
A reaction: This could come in various strengths. A weak version would say that, empirically, that all talk of what doesn't exist is vacuous. A strong necessity (Williamson?) that totally rules out other possible existence is a very odd view. |
12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
16443 | Properties are modal, involving possible situations where they are exemplified [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I take properties and relations to be modal notions. Properties are to be understood in terms of what it would be for them to be exemplified, which means understanding them in terms of a range of possible situations. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: I can't make head or tail of a property as anything other than a feature of some entity. Treating properties as a 'range of situations' is just as baffling to me as treating them as sets of objects. |
12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
16471 | I accept a hierarchy of properties of properties of properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I myself am prepared to accept higher-order properties and relations. There is the property of being Socrates, …and the property of being the property of being Socrates, ..and so on. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Elsewhere I have quoted such a hierarchy of vacuous properties as an absurdity that arises if all predicates are treated as properties. Logicians can live with such stuff, given their set hierarchy and so on, but in science and life this is a nonsense. |
18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
16452 | Dispositions have modal properties, of which properties things would have counterfactually [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Dispositional properties deserve special mention since they seem to be properties that have modal consequences - consequences for what properties the individuals that instantiate them would have in counterfactual circumstances. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.4) | |
A reaction: I take this to be the key idea in trying to understand modality, but Stalnaker makes this point and then moves swiftly on, because it is so far away from his possible worlds models, in which he has invested a lifetime. |
10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1) | |
A reaction: I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning. |
14617 | Predicates can't apply to what doesn't exist [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Nothing can be predicated of something which does not exist. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Merely Possible Propositions [2010], p.28) | |
A reaction: [He says he is 'agreeing with Plantinga' on this] This seems very puzzling, as you can obviously say that dragons do not exist, but they breathe fire. Why can't you attach predicates to hypothetical objects? |
12764 | For the bare particular view, properties must be features, not just groups of objects [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: If we are to make sense of the bare particular theory, a property must be not just a rule for grouping individuals, but a feature of individuals in virtue of which they may be grouped. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.76) | |
A reaction: He is offering an objection to the thoroughly extensional account of properties that is found in standard possible worlds semantics. Quite right too. We can't give up on the common sense notion of a property. |
16407 | Possible worlds allow separating all the properties, without hitting a bare particular [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The possible worlds framework suggests a way to express the idea that a particular is conceptually separable from its properties without relying on the rejected picture of a bare particular. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: As I read him, Stalnaker's proposal just comes down to replacing each property in turn with a different one. 'Strip away' red by making it green. It being green in w1 doesn't throw extra light. Can it be a bare particular in w37? |
12761 | An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something. |
16467 | 'Socrates is essentially human' seems to say nothing could be Socrates if it was not human [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It seems natural to paraphrase the claim that Socrates is essentially human as the claim that nothing could be Socrates if it was not human. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3) | |
A reaction: In ordinary speech it would be emphasising how very human Socrates was (in comparison with Frege, for example). By this token Socrates essentially breathes oxygen, but that is hardly part of his essence. |
12763 | Necessarily self-identical, or being what it is, or its world-indexed properties, aren't essential [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: We can remain anti-essentialist while allowing some necessary properties: those essential to everything (self-identity), relational properties (being what it is), and world-indexed properties (being snub-nosed-only-in-Kronos). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.73) | |
A reaction: [a summary] He defined essential properties as necessary properties (Idea 12761), and now backpeddles. World-indexed properties are an invention of Plantinga, as essential properties to don't limit individuals. But they are necessary, not essential! |
12762 | Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I argue that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of standard semantics for modal logic. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker characterises the bare particular view as ANTI-essentialist, because he has defined essence in terms of necessary properties. The bare particular seems to allow the possibility of Aristotle being a poached egg. |
16453 | The bundle theory makes the identity of indiscernibles a necessity, since the thing is the properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: On the bundle theory, the identity of indiscernibles (for 'individuals') is a necessary truth, since an individual is just the co-instantiation of all the properties represented by a point in the space of properties. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.6) | |
A reaction: So much the worse for the bundle theory, I presume. Leibniz did not, I think, hold a bundle theory, but his belief in the identity of indiscernibles seems to have had a theologicial underpinning. |
16466 | Strong necessity is always true; weak necessity is cannot be false [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Prior had a strong and a weak reading of necessity, where strong necessity is truth in all possible worlds, while weak necessity is falsity in no possible world. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3) | |
A reaction: [K.Fine 2005:Ch.9 is also cited] The point of the weak one is that in some worlds there might not exist the proposition which is the candidate for truth or falsehood. |
14286 | In nearby worlds where A is true, 'if A,B' is true or false if B is true or false [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Consider a possible world in which A is true and otherwise differs minimally from the actual world. 'If A, then B' is true (false) just in case B is true (false) in that possible world. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (A Theory of Conditionals [1968], p.34), quoted by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.1 | |
A reaction: This is the first proposal to give a possible worlds semantics for conditional statements. Edgington observes that worlds which are nearby for me may not be nearby for you. |
10994 | Conditionals are true if minimal revision of the antecedent verifies the consequent [Stalnaker, by Read] |
Full Idea: Stalnaker proposes that a conditional is true if its consequent is true in the minimal revision in which the antecedent is true, that is, in the most similar possible world in which the antecedent is true. | |
From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (works [1970]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
A reaction: A similar account of counterfactuals was taken up by Lewis to give a (rather dubious) account of causation. |
16438 | Necessity and possibility are fundamental, and there can be no reductive analysis of them [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: My view is that if there were a nonmodal analysis of the modal concepts, that would be a sure sign that we were on the wrong track. Necessity and possibility are fundamental concepts, like truth and existence. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.1) | |
A reaction: The mystery of modality is tied up with the mystery of time (which is a very big mystery indeed). You get a nice clear grip on the here and now, but time and motion whisk you away to something else. Modality concerns the something else. |
6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Convention, to exist at all, must have a basis in something that is not conventional; conventions, to work, need something nonconventional to build upon and shape. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Fogelin attributes his point to Hume. I agree entirely. No convention could ever possibly catch on in a society unless there were some point to it. If you can't see a point to a convention (like wearing ties) then start looking, because it's there. |
16422 | The necessity of a proposition concerns reality, not our words or concepts [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The necessity or contingency of a proposition has nothing to do with our concepts or the meanings of our words. The possibilities would have been the same even if we had never conceived of them. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) | |
A reaction: This sounds in need of qualification, since some of the propositions will be explicitly about words and concepts. Still, I like this idea. |
16423 | Conceptual possibilities are metaphysical possibilities we can conceive of [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Conceptual possibilities are just (metaphysical) possibilities that we can conceive of. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) |
16436 | Modal concepts are central to the actual world, and shouldn't need extravagant metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Modal concepts are central to our understanding of the world - the actual world - and understanding them should not require extravagant metaphysical commitments. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) | |
A reaction: I agree. Personally I think powers and dispositions do the job nicely. You just have to embrace Leibniz's emphasis on the active nature of reality, and the implausible metaphysics starts to recede. |
16421 | Critics say there are just an a priori necessary part, and an a posteriori contingent part [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Critics say there are no irreducible a posteriori truths. They can be factored into a part that is necessary, but knowable a priori through conceptual analysis, and a part knowable only a posteriori, but contingent. 2-D semantics makes this precise. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) | |
A reaction: [Critics are Sidelle, Jackson and Chalmers] Interesting. If gold is necessarily atomic number 79, or it wouldn't be gold, that sounds like an analytic truth about gold. Discovering the 79 wasn't a discovery of a necessity. Stalnaker rejects this idea. |
16429 | A 'centred' world is an ordered triple of world, individual and time [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A 'centred' possible world is an ordered triple consisting of a possible world, an individual in the domain of that world, and a time. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) |
16397 | If it might be true, it might be true in particular ways, and possible worlds describe such ways [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A clarifying assumption is that if something might be true, then it might be true in some particular way. …Possible worlds begin from this, and the assumption that what might be true can be described as how a possibility might be realised. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
A reaction: This is a leading practitioner giving his best shot at explaining the rationale of the possible worlds approach, addressed to many sceptics. Most sceptics, I think, don't understand the qualifications the practitioners apply to their game. |
16398 | Possible worlds allow discussion of modality without controversial modal auxiliaries [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The main benefit of the possible worlds move is to permit one to paraphrase modal claims in an extensional language that has quantifiers, but no modal auxiliaries, so the semantic stucture of modal discourse can be discussed without the controversies. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
A reaction: The strategy introduces the controversy of possible worlds instead, but since they just boil down to collections of objects with properties, classical logic can reign. Possible worlds are one strategy alongside many others. |
16399 | Possible worlds are ontologically neutral, but a commitment to possibilities remains [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I argue for the metaphysical neutrality of the possible worlds framework, but I do not suggest that its use is free of ontological commitment to possibilities (ways things might be, counterfactual situations, possible states of worlds). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 2) | |
A reaction: Glad to hear this, as I have always been puzzled at possible aspirations to eliminate modality (such as possibility) by introducing 'possible' worlds. Commitment to possibilities I take to be basic and unavoidable. |
16433 | Given actualism, how can there be possible individuals, other than the actual ones? [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: My main focus is on how, on an actualist interpretation of possible worlds as ways a world might be, one is to account for the possibility that there be individuals other than those that actually exist. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], Pref) | |
A reaction: The obvious thought would be that they are constructions from components of actual individuals, such as the chimaera, or fictional characters. We need some psychology here, which is not Stalnaker's style. |
14285 | A possible world is the ontological analogue of hypothetical beliefs [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A possible world is the ontological analogue of a stock of hypothetical beliefs. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (A Theory of Conditionals [1968], p.34), quoted by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.1 | |
A reaction: Sounds neat and persuasive. What is the ontological analogue of a stock of hopes? Heaven! |
15793 | We can take 'ways things might have been' as irreducible elements in our ontology [Stalnaker, by Lycan] |
Full Idea: Stalnaker suggests talking 'ways things might have been' as sui generis elements of our ontology - actual abstract entities in their own right, not to be reduced to more familiar items. | |
From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Possible Worlds [1976]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 09 | |
A reaction: This seems to rest on an ontology of 'states of affairs', favoured by Armstrong, and implied in the Tractatus. How big is a state of affairs? How manys states of affairs can be co-present? |
16396 | Kripke's possible worlds are methodological, not metaphysical [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The possible worlds framework that Kripke introduces should be understood not as a metaphysical theory, but as a methodological framework. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], Intro) | |
A reaction: That's certainly how I see possible worlds. I lose no sleep over whether they exist. I just take a set of possible worlds to be like cells in a spreadsheet, or records in a database. |
16437 | Possible worlds are properties [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Possible worlds are (to a first approximation) properties. [p.12] They are properties of the total universe. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1) |
16444 | Possible worlds don't reduce modality, they regiment it to reveal its structure [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It is not reduction (of modality) but regimentation that the possible-worlds framework provides - a procedure for representing modal discourse, using primitive modal notions, in a way that helps reveal its structure. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly my view. All discussion of the ontology of possible worlds is irrelevant. They no more exist than variables in logic exist. They're good when they clarify, but dubious when they over-simplify. |
16445 | I think of worlds as cells (rather than points) in logical space [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I prefer to think of the possible worlds not as points in logical space but as cells of a relatively fine-grained partition of logical space - a partition that makes all the distinctions we need. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: Since he regards possible worlds as simply a means of regimenting our understanding of modality, he can think of possible worlds in any way that suits him. I find it hard work tuning in to his vision. |
12765 | Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I cannot think of any point in making the counterfactual supposition that Babe Ruth is a billiard ball; there is nothing I can say about him in that imagined state that I could not just as well say about billiard balls that are not him. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.79) | |
A reaction: A bizarrely circumspect semanticists way of saying that Ruth couldn't possibly be a billiard ball! Would he say the same about a group of old men in wheelchairs, one of whom IS Babe Ruth? |
16408 | Rigid designation seems to presuppose that differing worlds contain the same individuals [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A rigid designator is a designator that denotes the same individual in all possible worlds; doesn't this presuppose that the same individuals can be found in differing possible worlds? | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: This is part of Stalnaker's claim that Kripke already has a metaphysics in place when he starts on his semantics and his theory of reference. Kripke needs a global domain, not a variable domain. Possibilities suggest variable domains to me. |
16409 | Unlike Lewis, I defend an actualist version of counterpart theory [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I defend a version of counterpart theory that is quite different from Lewis's version, as it is tied to actualism (all that exists is part of the actual world) rather than possibilism (possible things may exist without actually existing). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987], 1) | |
A reaction: This could be the theory I am after. I am sympathetic to both actualism and to counterpart theory. Off to the woodshed…. |
16411 | If possible worlds really differ, I can't be in more than one at a time [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Nothing can be in two places at once. If other possible worlds are really other universes, then clearly, you and I cannot be in them if we are here in this one. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987], 2) | |
A reaction: This can be sensibly expressed without possible worlds. I can't embody my other possibilities while I am embodying this one (I'm too busy). Insofar as possible worlds are a good framework, they are just a precise map of common sense. |
16412 | If counterparts exist strictly in one world only, this seems to be extreme invariant essentialism [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Counterparts involve the thesis that domains of different possible worlds are disjoint: possible individuals exist in at most one possible world. This seems to suggest extreme essentialism, where nothing could differ from how it is. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987], 2) | |
A reaction: He quotes Salmon (1981:236) as saying counterpart theory is particularly inflexible essentialism. This is a long way from my use of 'essentialism'. The problem is just the extent to which my counterpart is 'the same' as me. |
16454 | Modal properties depend on the choice of a counterpart, which is unconstrained by metaphysics [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Things have modal properties only relative to the choice of a counterpart relation, and the choice between alternative counterpart relations is not constrained by the metaphysics. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3.6) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker is sympathetic to counterparts, but this strikes me as a powerful objection to the theory. I take the modal properties of something to be fixed by its actuality. |
16450 | Anti-haecceitism says there is no more to an individual than meeting some qualitative conditions [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The anti-haecceitist strategy holds that a purely qualitative characterisation of a possible world would be a complete characterisation; there is, on this view, nothing to being a particular individual other than meeting certain qualitative conditions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 3) | |
A reaction: Not quite the same as the bundle theory of objects, which says the objects are the qualities. This is about individuation, not about ontology (I think). I don't like anti-haecceitism, but I also don't like haecceitism. Hmm. |
6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: My own view might be called 'circumspect rationalism' - the view that our intellectual faculties provide our only means for comprehending the world in which we find oruselves. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: He needs to say more than that to offer a theory, but I like the label, and it fits the modern revival of rationalism, with which I sympathise, and which rests, I think, on Russell's point that self-evidence comes in degrees, not as all-or-nothing truth. |
6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: In general a knowledge claim is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: The problem here is what is 'relevant'. Fogelin's example is 'Are you sure the suspect doesn't have a twin brother?' If virtual reality is relevant, most knowledge is defeated. Certainly, imaginative people feel that they know less than others. |
6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Coherentists argue that if the circle of justifications is big enough, rich enough, coherent enough, and so on, then there is nothing wrong circularity. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: There must always be something wrong with circularity, and no god would put up with it, but we might have to. Of course, two pieces of evidence might be unconnected, such as an equation and an observation. |
6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: One rule for the justification of knowledge might be: Do not raise the level of scrutiny in the absence of a particular reason that triggers it. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: That won't decide the appropriate level of scrutiny from which to start. One of my maxims is 'don't set the bar too high', but it seems tough that one should have to justify moving it. The early scientists tried raising it, and were amazed by the results. |
6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction. |
6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Sceptical scenarios deal in wildly remote defeating possibilities, so that the level of scrutiny becomes unrestrictedly high, and they also usually deal with defeators that are in principle ineliminable. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: The question of how high we 'set the bar' seems to me central to epistemology. There is clearly an element of social negotiation involved, centring on what is appropriate. If, though, scepticism is 'ineliminable', we must face up to that. |
6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: We reach radical perspectivism by replacing Kant's single, necessary categorial scheme with a plurality of competing categorial schemes. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: It certainly looks as if Kant sent us down a slippery slope into the dafter aspects of twentieth century relativism. The best antidote I know of is Davidson's (e.g. Idea 6398). But then it seems unimaginative to say that only one scheme is possible. |
6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: We as human beings are also irrational animals, unique among animals in our capacity to place faith in bizarre fictions of our own construction. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: This is glaringly true, and a very nice corrective to the talk of Greeks and others about man as the 'rational animal'. From a distance we might be described by Martians as the 'mad animal'. Is the irrational current too strong to swim against? |
16428 | Meanings aren't in the head, but that is because they are abstract [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Meanings ain't in the head. Putnam's famous slogan actually fits Frege's anti-psychologism better than it fits Purnam's and Burge's anti-individualism. The point is that intensions of any kind are abstract objects. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) | |
A reaction: If intensions are abstract, that leaves (for me) the question of what they are abstracted from. I take it that there are specific brain events that are being abstractly characterised. What do we call those? |
16474 | How can we know what we are thinking, if content depends on something we don't know? [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: How can we know what we ourselves are thinking if the very existence of the content of our thought may depend on facts of which we are ignorant? | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 5) | |
A reaction: This has always been my main doubt about externalism. I may defer to experts about what I intend by an 'elm' (Putnam's example), but what I mean by elm is thereby a fuzzy tall tree with indeterminate leaves. I don't know the meaning of 'elm'! |
10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The new kind of abstract objects are not creations of the human mind. ...The existence of such objects depends upon whether or not the relevant equivalence relation holds among the entities of the presupposed kind. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: It seems odd that we no longer have any choice about what abstract objects we use, and that we can't evade them if the objects exist, and can't have them if the objects don't exist - and presumably destruction of the objects kills the concept? |
8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
16406 | If you don't know what you say you can't mean it; what people say usually fits what they mean [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: If you don't know what you are saying then you don't mean what you say, and also speakers generally mean what they say (in that what they say coincides with what they mean). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: Both these thoughts seem completely acceptable and correct, but rely on something called 'meaning' that is distinct from saying. I would express this in terms of propositions, which I take to be mental events. |
16404 | In the use of a name, many individuals are causally involved, but they aren't all the referent [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: The causal theory of reference is criticised for vagueness. Causal connections are ubiquitous, and there are obviously many individuals that are causally implicated in the speaker's use of a name, but they aren't all plausible candidates for the referent. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a very good objection. Among all the causal links back to some baptised object, we have to pick out the referential link, which needs a criterion. |
16432 | One view says the causal story is built into the description that is the name's content [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: In 'causal descriptivism' the causal story is built into the description that is the content of the name (and also incorporates a rigidifying operator to ensure that the descriptions that names abbreviate have wide scope). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 5) | |
A reaction: Not very controversial, I would say, since virtually every fact about the world has a 'causal story' built into it. Must we insist on rigidity in order to have wide scope? |
12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
16403 | 'Descriptive' semantics gives a system for a language; 'foundational' semantics give underlying facts [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: 'Descriptive' semantics gives a semantics for the language without saying how practice explains why the semantics is right; …'foundational' semantics concerns the facts that give expressions their semantic values. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], §1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Sounds parallel to the syntax/semantics distinction, or proof-theoretical and semantic validity. Or the sense/reference distinction! Or object language/metalanguage. Shall I go on? |
16461 | We still lack an agreed semantics for quantifiers in natural language [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: We still do not know how to give a direct semantics for the quantifiers of a natural language; that is something that we still do not know how to do (or at least how it is done remains controversial). | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4) | |
A reaction: I am struck by how rapidly the domain of quantification changes, even in mid-sentence, in the course of an ordinary conversation. This is decided almost entirely by context, not by pure ('direct'?) semantics. |
16401 | To understand an utterance, you must understand what the world would be like if it is true [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: To understand what is said in an utterance of 'The first dog born at sea was a basset hound', one needs to know what the world would have been like in order for what was said in that utterance to be true. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Reference and Necessity [1997], 3) | |
A reaction: Put like that, the idea is undeniable. Understanding involves truth conditions. Does mean involve the understanding of the meaning. What do you understand when you understand a sentence? Just facts about dogs? Or something in the sentence? |
16410 | Extensional semantics has individuals and sets; modal semantics has intensions, functions of world to extension [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Semantic values in extensional semantics are extensions, like individuals for terms, and sets for predicates. In modal semantics we have intensions, functions from worlds to appropriate extensions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987], 2) | |
A reaction: It seems obvious that the meaning of a word like 'giraffe' must include possible giraffes, as well as actual and deceased giraffes. |
16448 | Possible world semantics may not reduce modality, but it can explain it [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Most theorists agree that possible worlds semantics cannot provide an analysis of modal concepts which is an eliminative reduction, but it can still provide an explanation of the meanings of modal expressions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Stalnaker cites Kit Fine for the view that there is no reduction of modality, which Fine takes to be primitive. Stalnaker defends the semantics, while denying the reduction which Lewis thought possible. |
16430 | Two-D says that a posteriori is primary and contingent, and the necessity is the secondary intension [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism says the necessity of a statement is constituted by the fact that the secondary intensions is a necessary proposition, and their a posteriori character is constituted by the fact that the associated primary intension is contingent. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) | |
A reaction: This view is found in Sidelle 1989, and then formalised by Jackson and Chalmers. I like metaphysical necessity, but I have some sympathy with the approach. The question must always be 'where does this necessity derive from'? |
16431 | In one view, the secondary intension is metasemantic, about how the thinker relates to the content [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: On the metasemantic interpretation of the two-dimensional framework, the second dimension is used to represent the metasemantic facts about the relation between a thinker or speaker and the contents of her thoughts or utterances. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 4) | |
A reaction: I'm struggling to think what facts there might be about the relation between myself and the contents of my thoughts. I'm more or less constituted by my thoughts. |
16442 | I take propositions to be truth conditions [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: I will defend the view that propositions are truth conditions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This sounds close to the Russellian view, which I take to equate propositions (roughly) with facts or states of affairs. But are 'truth conditions' in the world or in the head? |
16447 | A theory of propositions at least needs primitive properties of consistency and of truth [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A minimal theory of propositions can make do with just two primitive properties: a property of consistency applied to sets of propositions, and a property of truth applied to propositions. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2) | |
A reaction: I would have thought a minimal theory would need some account of what a proposition is supposed to be (since there seems to be very little agreement about that). Stalnaker goes on to sketch a theory. |
14616 | A 'Russellian proposition' is an ordered sequence of individual, properties and relations [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: A 'Russellian proposition' is an ordered sequence containing the individual, along with properties and relations. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Merely Possible Propositions [2010], p.22) | |
A reaction: Since Russell took properties and relations to be features of reality, this made the whole proposition a feature of reality. This is utterly different from what I understand by the word 'proposition', which is a feature of thought, not of the world. |
16446 | Propositions presumably don't exist if the things they refer to don't exist [Stalnaker] |
Full Idea: It seems plausible that singular propositions are object-dependent in the sense that the proposition would not exist if the individual did not. It is also plausible that some objects exist contingently, and there are singular propositions about them. | |
From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2) | |
A reaction: This replies to the view that possible worlds are maximal sets of propositions, and so must exist for the worlds to exist; e.g. Lowe 1999:248. That is yet another commonplace of contemporary philosophy which I find utterly bewildering. |
10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: There are many statements which are plausibly viewed as conceptual truths (such as 'what is yellow is extended') which do not qualify as analytic under Frege's definition (as provable using only logical laws and definitions). | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is because the early assumptions of Frege were mathematical and logical, and he was trying to get away from Kant. That yellow is extended is a truth for non-linguistic beings. |
18052 | An assertion aims to add to the content of a context [Stalnaker, by Magidor] |
Full Idea: Stalnaker starts with the general thesis that the role of a successful assertion of s is to update the context by adding to it the content of s. | |
From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.3.2 | |
A reaction: This is to be compared with criteria of meaningfulness, such as verificationism, and with Grice's rules of conversational implicature. Presumably if you assert what the context presupposes, you fail to assert, without being meaningless. |
14718 | An assertion is an attempt to rule out certain possibilities, narrowing things down for good planning [Stalnaker, by Schroeter] |
Full Idea: Stalnaker's guiding idea is that in making an assertion the speaker is trying to get the audience to rule out certain possibilities. ....If all goes well, further planning will proceed on the basis of a smaller and more accurate range of possibilities. | |
From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics | |
A reaction: This sounds intuitively rather plausible, and is a nice original thought. This is what we pay clever chaps like Stalnaker to come up with. It seems to imply some notion of verisimilitude (qv. under 'truth'), depending on how much narrowing happens. |
6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Like the word 'good', the word 'beautiful', when deprived of contextual support, is nearly contentless. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: If I say with, for example, Oscar Wilde that beauty is the highest ideal in life, this doesn't strike me as contentless, but I still sympathise with Fogelin's notion that beauty is rooted in particulars. |
6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: "It is all a matter of taste" may be an all-purpose stopper of discussions of aesthetic values, but it also completely severs the connection with the actual properties of the object under consideration. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: This remark grows out of his discussion of Hume. I like this remark, which ties in with Particularism in morality, and with the central role of experiments in science. The world forces beliefs on us. |
6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Cynics are usually unswerving in their commitment to a moral ideal, but disappointed or disgusted by humanity's failure to meet it. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: I felt quite suicidal the other day when I saw someone park diagonally across two parking spaces. They can't seem to grasp the elementary Kantian slogan 'What if everybody did that?' It's all hopeless. I wonder if I am becoming a bit of a Cynic? |
6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The purposes of punishment include deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and retribution, but they don't always sit well together. Deterrence is best served by making prisons miserable places, but this may run counter to rehabilitation. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: It seems to most educated people that retribution should be pushed far down the list if we are to be civilised (see Idea 1659), and yet personal revenge for a small act of aggression seems basic, normal and acceptable. We dream of rehabilitation. |
6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: A strict retributivist is likely to say that once a crime is paid for, that's that; a deterrence theorist is likely to say that the protection of potential victims overrides the released convict's right to a free and fresh start. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting since the retributivist here has the more liberal attitude. Reformists will also have a dilemma when years in prison have failed to reform the convict. Virtue theorists like balance, and sensitively consider our relations with the criminals. |