5 ideas
| 10355 | Facts can't make claims true, because they are true claims [Brandom, by Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Brandom says that facts do not make claims true, because facts simply are true claims. | |
| From: report of Robert B. Brandom (Making It Explicit [1994], p.327) by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: Nice. Notoriously, anyone defending the correspondence theory of truth in terms of facts had better say what they mean by a 'fact'. Personally I take a fact to be a non-verbal, mind-independent situation in the world, so I disagree with Brandom. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 7765 | The use of a sentence is its commitments and entitlements [Brandom, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Brandom develops a particular conception of 'use', according to which a sentence's use is the set of commitments and entitlements associated with public utterance of that sentence. | |
| From: report of Robert B. Brandom (Articulating Reasons: Intro to Inferentialism [2000]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: It immediately strikes me that a sentence could only have commitments and entitlements if it already had a meaning. However, the case of money shows how there might be nothing more to a thing's significance than its entitlements. |
| 20761 | If existence is absurd it can never have a meaning [Beauvoir] |
| Full Idea: To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed. | |
| From: Simone de Beauvoir (Ethics of Ambiguity [1948], p.129), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Bad' | |
| A reaction: Absurdity precludes meaning, but being meaningless doesn't entail absurdity. Asteroids are meaningless. Presumably if existence is meaningless now (as in a depression), but it might possibly become meaningful, then it can't qualify as 'absurd'. |
| 20746 | One is not born, but rather becomes a woman [Beauvoir] |
| Full Idea: One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. | |
| From: Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex [1952], p.301 (or 267)), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: This has become the principle idea in modern discussions of gender. It divides gender from sex, rather as Locke divided person from human being. It is an abstraction. It is part of the Hegelian-Marxist idea that persons are moulded by culture. |