183 ideas
| 15209 | Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Just as the tiniest error in navigation may lead to a landfall even on the wrong continent, so the acceptance of apparently innocuous principles can lead to doctrines which, if accepted, would render intellectual life impossible. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: If one lived life by an axiom system, and one of the axioms was a bit off kilter, then this idea would be a powerful one. Note that it is only 'intellectual' life that is screwed up, but even there a plurality of ideas keep correcting one another. |
| 19199 | Some say metaphysics is a highly generalised empirical study of objects [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: For some people metaphysics is a general theory of objects (ontology) - a discipline which is to be developed in a purely empirical way, and which differs from other empirical disciplines in its generality. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 19) | |
| A reaction: Tarski says some people despise it, but for him such metaphysics is 'not objectionable'. I subscribe to this view, but the empirical aspect is very remote, because it's too general for detail observation or experiment. Generality is the key to philosophy. |
| 15215 | Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In our view the task of a philosopher is to devise and critically assess conceptual schemes in the service of some overall vision of the world. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
| A reaction: This makes theology just as genuinely a branch of philosophy as their scientific essentialism. Is there any sort of philosophy, then, which is not 'in the service' of some independent worldview? Interesting. Note 'devise', as well as 'assess'. |
| 19193 | Disputes that fail to use precise scientific terminology are all meaningless [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Disputes like the vague one about 'the right conception of truth' occur in all domains where, instead of exact, scientific terminology, common language with its vagueness and ambiguity is used; and they are always meaningless, and therefore in vain. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 14) | |
| A reaction: Taski taught a large number of famous philosophers in California in the 1950s, and this approach has had a huge influence. Recently there has been a bit of a rebellion. E.g. Kit Fine doesn't think it can all be done in formal languages. |
| 15212 | Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Adequate accounts of those concepts which are neither purely formal nor simply psychological can be achieved by attention to ....the content of our knowledge, content which goes beyond the reports of immediate experience. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I like this one. Most proponents of analysis are either bogged down in trying to reduce all of our talk to formal logic, or else they think that they are just analysing how we think. It's neither, because the concepts arise from the world. |
| 15210 | Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view has led philosophers to suppose that their task is to provide an analysis of key concepts and relations wholly in terms drawn from formal logic, since relations of necessity are, in their view, fundamentally logical relations | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: A very sharp observation about why logic has become central to contemporary philosophy. As far as I can see, logic steadily increases its dominance, to the point where ordinary metaphysical thought is being squeezed out. |
| 15236 | Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Positivism is the doctrine that the content of scientific propositions is exhausted by what can be immediately experienced. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.I) | |
| A reaction: The simple thing missing from positivism is inference to the best explanation. Also, if you actually rule out other propositions as 'meaningless', you rule out speculation, which would certainly cripple science. |
| 19179 | For a definition we need the words or concepts used, the rules, and the structure of the language [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: We must specify the words or concepts which we wish to use in defining the notion of truth; and we must also give the formal rules to which the definition should conform. More generally, we must describe the formal structure of the language. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 01) | |
| A reaction: This, of course, is a highly formal view of how definition should be achieved, offered in anticipation of one of the most famous definitions in logic (of truth, by Tarski). Normally we assume English and classical logic. |
| 15227 | Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: From a logical point of view all definitions look exactly alike, that is, they contain a logical subject and a set of predicates which are attributed of necessity to that subject. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) |
| 16295 | Tarski proved that truth cannot be defined from within a given theory [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's Theorem states that under fairly generally applicable conditions, the assumption that there is a definition of truth within a given theory for the language of that same theory leads to a contradiction. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 1 | |
| A reaction: That might leave room for a definition outside the given theory. I take the main motivation for the axiomatic approach to be a desire to get a theory of truth within the given theory, where Tarski's Theorem says traditional approaches are just wrong. |
| 15342 | Tarski proved that any reasonably expressive language suffers from the liar paradox [Tarski, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's Theorem on the undefinability of truth says in a language sufficiently rich to talk about itself (which Gödel proved possible, via coding) the liar paradox can be carried out. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 02.2 | |
| A reaction: The point is that truth is formally indefinable if it leads inescapably to contradiction, which the liar paradox does. This theorem is the motivation for all modern attempts to give a rigorous account of truth. |
| 19069 | 'True sentence' has no use consistent with logic and ordinary language, so definition seems hopeless [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of a consistent use of 'true sentence' which is in harmony with the laws of logic and the spirit of everyday language seems to be very questionable, so the same doubt attaches to the possibility of constructing a correct definition. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is often cited as Tarski having conclusively proved that 'true' cannot be defined from within a language, but his language here is much more circumspect. Modern critics say the claim depends entirely on classical logic. |
| 10153 | In everyday language, truth seems indefinable, inconsistent, and illogical [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: In everyday language it seems impossible to define the notion of truth or even to use this notion in a consistent manner and in agreement with the laws of logic. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (works [1936]), quoted by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic Int III | |
| A reaction: [1935] See Logic|Theory of Logic|Semantics of Logic for Tarski's approach to truth. |
| 19178 | Definitions of truth should not introduce a new version of the concept, but capture the old one [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The desired definition of truth does not aim to specify the meaning of a familiar word used to denote a novel notion; on the contrary, it aims to catch hold of the actual meaning of an old notion. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 01) | |
| A reaction: Tarski refers back to Aristotle for an account of the 'old notion'. To many the definition of Tarski looks very weird, so it is important to see that he is trying to capture the original concept. |
| 19177 | A definition of truth should be materially adequate and formally correct [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The main problem of the notion of truth is to give a satisfactory definition which is materially adequate and formally correct. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 01) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that it covers all cases of being true and failing to be true, and it fits in with the logic. The logic is explicitly classical logic, and he is not aiming to give the 'nature' or natural language understanding of the concept. |
| 19186 | A rigorous definition of truth is only possible in an exactly specified language [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The problem of the definition of truth obtains a precise meaning and can be solved in a rigorous way only for those languages whose structure has been exactly specified. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 06) | |
| A reaction: Taski has just stated how to exactly specify the structure of a language. He says definition can only be vague and approximate for natural languages. (The usual criticism of the correspondence theory is its vagueness). |
| 19194 | We may eventually need to split the word 'true' into several less ambiguous terms [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: A time may come when we find ourselves confronted with several incompatible, but equally clear and precise, conceptions of truth. It will then become necessary to abandon the ambiguous usage of the word 'true', and introduce several terms instead. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 14) | |
| A reaction: There may be a whiff of the pragmatic attitude to truth here, though that view is not necessarily pluralist. Analytic philosophy needs much more splitting of difficult terms into several more focused terms. |
| 16296 | Tarski's Theorem renders any precise version of correspondence impossible [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's Theorem applies to any sufficient precise version of the correspondence theory of truth, and all the other traditional theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 1 | |
| A reaction: This is the key reason why modern thinkers have largely dropped talk of the correspondence theory. See Idea 16295. |
| 10672 | Tarskian semantics says that a sentence is true iff it is satisfied by every sequence [Tarski, by Hossack] |
| Full Idea: Tarskian semantics says that a sentence is true iff it is satisfied by every sequence, where a sequence is a set-theoretic individual, a set of ordered pairs each with a natural number as its first element and an object from the domain for its second. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Keith Hossack - Plurals and Complexes 3 |
| 13338 | '"It is snowing" is true if and only if it is snowing' is a partial definition of the concept of truth [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Statements of the form '"it is snowing" is true if and only if it is snowing' and '"the world war will begin in 1963" is true if and only if the world war will being in 1963' can be regarded as partial definitions of the concept of truth. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.404) | |
| A reaction: The key word here is 'partial'. Truth is defined, presumably, when every such translation from the object language has been articulated, which is presumably impossible, given the infinity of concatenated phrases possible in a sentence. |
| 19180 | It is convenient to attach 'true' to sentences, and hence the language must be specified [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: For several reasons it appears most convenient to apply the term 'true' to sentences, and we shall follow this course. Consequently, we must always relate the notion of truth, like that of a sentence, to a specific language. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 02) | |
| A reaction: Personally I take truth to attach to propositions, since sentences are ambiguous. In Idea 17308 the one sentence expresses three different truths (in my opinion), even though a single sentence (given in the object language) specifies it. |
| 19181 | In the classical concept of truth, 'snow is white' is true if snow is white [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: If we base ourselves on the classical conception of truth, we shall say that the sentence 'snow is white' is true if snow is white, and it is false if snow is not white. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 04) | |
| A reaction: I had not realised, prior to his, how closely Tarski is sticking to Aristotle's famous formulation of truth. The point is that you can only specify 'what is' using a language. Putting 'true' in the metalanguage gives specific content to Aristotle. |
| 19196 | Scheme (T) is not a definition of truth [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to regard scheme (T) as a definition of truth. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 15) | |
| A reaction: The point is, I take it, that the definition is the multitude of sentences which are generated by the schema, not the schema itself. |
| 19183 | Each interpreted T-sentence is a partial definition of truth; the whole definition is their conjunction [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: In 'X is true iff p' if we replace X by the name of a sentence and p by a particular sentence this can be considered a partial definition of truth. The whole definition has to be ...a logical conjunction of all these partial definitions. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 04) | |
| A reaction: This seems an unprecedented and odd way to define something. Define 'red' by '"This tomato is red" iff this tomato is red', etc? Define 'stone' by collecting together all the stones? The complex T-sentences are infinite in number. |
| 19182 | Use 'true' so that all T-sentences can be asserted, and the definition will then be 'adequate' [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: We wish to use the term 'true' in such a way that all the equivalences of the form (T) [i.e. X is true iff p] can be asserted, and we shall call a definition of truth 'adequate' if all these equivalences follow from it. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 04) | |
| A reaction: The interpretation of Tarski's theory is difficult. From this I'm thinking that 'true' is simply being defined as 'assertible'. This is the status of each line in a logical proof, if there is a semantic dimension to the proof (and not mere syntax). |
| 19198 | We don't give conditions for asserting 'snow is white'; just that assertion implies 'snow is white' is true [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Semantic truth implies nothing regarding the conditions under which 'snow is white' can be asserted. It implies only that, whenever we assert or reject this sentence, we must be ready to assert or reject the correlated sentence '"snow is white" is true'. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 18) | |
| A reaction: This appears to identify truth with assertibility, which is pretty much what modern pragmatists say. How do you distinguish 'genuine' assertion from rhetorical, teasing or lying assertions? Genuine assertion implies truth? Hm. |
| 15339 | Tarski gave up on the essence of truth, and asked how truth is used, or how it functions [Tarski, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Tarski emancipated truth theory from traditional philosophy, by no longer posing Pilate's question (what is truth? or what is the essence of truth?) but instead 'how is truth used?', 'how does truth function?' and 'how can its functioning be described?'. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 02.2 | |
| A reaction: Horsten, later in the book, does not give up on the essence of truth, and modern theorists are trying to get back to that question by following Tarski's formal route. Modern analytic philosophy at its best, it seems to me. |
| 16302 | Tarski did not just aim at a definition; he also offered an adequacy criterion for any truth definition [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski did not settle for a definition of truth, taking its adequacy for granted. Rather he proposed an adequacy criterion for evaluating the adequacy of definitions of truth. The criterion is his famous Convention T. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 3 | |
| A reaction: Convention T famously says the sentence is true if and only if a description of the sentence is equivalent to affirming the sentence. 'Snow is white' iff snow is white. |
| 19135 | Tarski enumerates cases of truth, so it can't be applied to new words or languages [Davidson on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Tarski does not tell us how to apply his concept of truth to a new case, whether the new case is a new language or a word newly added to a language. This is because enumerating cases gives no clue for the next or general case. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 1 | |
| A reaction: His account has been compared to a telephone directory. We aim to understand the essence of anything, so that we can fully know it, and explain and predict how it will behave. Either truth is primitive, or I demand to know its essence. |
| 19138 | Tarski define truths by giving the extension of the predicate, rather than the meaning [Davidson on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Tarski defined the class of true sentences by giving the extension of the truth predicate, but he did not give the meaning. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 1 | |
| A reaction: This is analogous to giving an account of the predicate 'red' as the set of red objects. Since I regard that as a hopeless definition of 'red', I am inclined to think the same of Tarski's account of truth. It works in the logic, but so what? |
| 4699 | Tarski made truth relative, by only defining truth within some given artificial language [Tarski, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's account doesn't hold for natural languages. The general notion of truth is replaced by "true-in-L", where L is a formal language. Hence truth is relativized to each artificial language. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty good indication that Tarski's theory is NOT a correspondence theory, even if its structure may sometimes give that impression. |
| 19324 | Tarski has to avoid stating how truths relate to states of affairs [Kirkham on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Tarski has to define truths so as not to make explicit the relation between a true sentence and an obtaining state of affairs. ...He has to list each sentence separately, and simply assign it a state of affairs. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.8 | |
| A reaction: He has to avoid semantic concepts like 'reference', because he wants a physicalist theory, according to Kirkham. Thus the hot interest in theories of reference in the 1970s/80s. And also attempts to give a physicalist account of meaning. |
| 15410 | Truth only applies to closed formulas, but we need satisfaction of open formulas to define it [Burgess on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: In Tarski's theory of truth, although the notion of truth is applicable only to closed formulas, to define it we must define a more general notion of satisfaction applicable to open formulas. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by John P. Burgess - Philosophical Logic 1.8 | |
| A reaction: This is a helpful pointer to what is going on in the Tarski definition. It culminates in the 'satisfaction of all sequences', which presumable delivers the required closed formula. |
| 18811 | Tarski uses sentential functions; truly assigning the objects to variables is what satisfies them [Tarski, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Tarski invoked the notion of a sentential function, where components are replaced by appropriate variables. A function is then satisfied by assigning objects to variables. An assignment satisfies if the function is true of the things assigned. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 3.2 | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This use of sentential functions, rather than sentences, looks like the key to Tarski's definition of truth. |
| 15365 | We can define the truth predicate using 'true of' (satisfaction) for variables and some objects [Tarski, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The truth predicate, says Tarski, should be defined in terms of the more primitive satisfaction relation: the relation of being 'true of'. The fundamental notion is a formula (containing the free variables) being true of a sequence of objects as values. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 06.3 |
| 19314 | For physicalism, reduce truth to satisfaction, then define satisfaction as physical-plus-logic [Tarski, by Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Tarski, a physicalist, reduced semantics to physical and/or logicomathematical concepts. He defined all semantic concepts, save satisfaction, in terms of truth. Then truth is defined in terms of satisfaction, and satisfaction is given non-semantically. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.1 | |
| A reaction: The term 'logicomathematical' is intended to cover set theory. Kirkham says you can remove these restrictions from Tarski's theory, and the result is a version of the correspondence theory. |
| 19316 | Insight: don't use truth, use a property which can be compositional in complex quantified sentence [Tarski, by Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's great insight is find another property, since open sentences are not truth. It must be had by open and genuine sentences. Clauses having it must generate it for the whole sentence. Truth can be defined for sentences by using it. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.4 | |
| A reaction: The proposed property is 'satisfaction', which can (unlike truth) be a feature open sentences (such as 'x is green', which is satisfied by x='grass'), |
| 19175 | Tarski gave axioms for satisfaction, then derived its explicit definition, which led to defining truth [Tarski, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Tarski turned his axiomatic characterisation of satisfaction into an explicit definition of the satisfaction-predicate using some fancy set theoretical apparatus, and this in turn leads to the explicit definition of the truth predicate. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 7 |
| 19184 | The best truth definition involves other semantic notions, like satisfaction (relating terms and objects) [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: It turns out that the simplest and most natural way of obtaining an exact definition of truth is one which involves the use of other semantic notions, e.g. the notion of satisfaction (...which expresses relations between expressions and objects). | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 05) | |
| A reaction: While the T-sentences appear to be 'minimal' and 'deflationary', it seems important to remember that 'satisfaction', which is basic to his theory, is a very robust notion. He actually mentions 'objects'. But see Idea 19185. |
| 19191 | Specify satisfaction for simple sentences, then compounds; true sentences are satisfied by all objects [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: To define satisfaction we indicate which objects satisfy the simplest sentential functions, then state the conditions for compound functions. This applies automatically to sentences (with no free variables) so a true sentence is satisfied by all objects. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 11) | |
| A reaction: I presume nothing in the domain of objects can conflict with a sentence that has been satisfied by some of them, so 'all' the objects satisfy the sentence. Tarski doesn't use the word 'domain'. Basic satisfaction seems to be stipulated. |
| 19188 | We can't use a semantically closed language, or ditch our logic, so a meta-language is needed [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: In a 'semantically closed' language all sentences which determine the adequate usage of 'true' can be asserted in the language. ...We can't change our logic, so we reject such languages. ...So must use two different languages to discuss truth. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 08-09) | |
| A reaction: This section explains why a meta-language is required. It rests entirely on the existence of the Liar paradox is a semantically closed language. |
| 19189 | The metalanguage must contain the object language, logic, and defined semantics [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Every sentence which occurs in the object language must also occur in the metalanguage, or can be translated into the metalanguage. There must also be logical terms, ...and semantic terms can only be introduced in the metalanguage by definition. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 09) | |
| A reaction: He suggest that if the languages are 'typed', the meta-languag, to be 'richer', must contain variables of a higher logica type. Does this mean second-order logic? |
| 19134 | Tarski defined truth for particular languages, but didn't define it across languages [Davidson on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Tarski defined various predicates of the form 's is true in L', each applicable to a single language, but he failed to define a predicate of the form 's is true in L' for variable 'L'. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 1 | |
| A reaction: You might say that no one defines 'tree' to be just 'in English', but we might define 'multiplies' to be in Peano Arithmetic. This indicates the limited and formal nature of what Tarski was trying to achieve. |
| 16304 | Tarski didn't capture the notion of an adequate truth definition, as Convention T won't prove non-contradiction [Halbach on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Every really adequate theory of truth should also prove the law of non-contradiction. Therefore Tarski's notion of adequacy in Convention T fails to capture the intuitive notion of adequacy he is after. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 3 | |
| A reaction: Tarski points out this weakness, in a passage quoted by Halbach. This obviously raises the question of what truth theories should prove, and this is explored by Halbach. If they start to prove arithmetic, we get nervous. Non-contradiction and x-middle? |
| 2571 | Tarski says that his semantic theory of truth is completely neutral about all metaphysics [Tarski, by Haack] |
| Full Idea: Tarski says "we may remain naïve realists or idealists, empiricists or metaphysicians… The semantic conception is completely neutral toward all these issues." | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Susan Haack - Philosophy of Logics 7.5 |
| 10821 | Physicalists should explain reference nonsemantically, rather than getting rid of it [Tarski, by Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Tarski work was to persuade physicalist that eliminating semantics was on the wrong track, and that we should explicate notions in the theory of reference nonsemantically rather than simply get rid of them. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Hartry Field - Tarski's Theory of Truth §3 |
| 10822 | A physicalist account must add primitive reference to Tarski's theory [Field,H on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: We need to add theories of primitive reference to Tarski's account if we are to establish the notion of truth as a physicalistically acceptable notion. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Hartry Field - Tarski's Theory of Truth §4 | |
| A reaction: This is the main point of Field's paper, and sounds very plausible to me. There is something major missing from Tarski, and at some point there needs to be a 'primitive' notion of thought and language making contact with the world, as it can't be proved. |
| 10824 | If listing equivalences is a reduction of truth, witchcraft is just a list of witch-victim pairs [Field,H on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: By similar standards of reduction to Tarski's, one might prove witchcraft compatible with physicalism, as long as witches cast only a finite number of spells. We merely list witch-and-victim pairs, with no mention of the terms of witchcraft theory. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 04) by Hartry Field - Tarski's Theory of Truth §4 |
| 16303 | Tarski made truth respectable, by proving that it could be defined [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's proof of the definability of truth allowed him to establish truth as a respectable notion by his standards. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 3 |
| 10969 | Tarski had a theory of truth, and a theory of theories of truth [Tarski, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Besides a theory of truth of his own, Tarski developed a theory of theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: The famous snow biconditional is the latter, and the recursive account based on satisfaction is the former. |
| 17746 | Tarski's 'truth' is a precise relation between the language and its semantics [Tarski, by Walicki] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's analysis of the concept of 'truth' ...is given a precise treatment as a particular relation between syntax (language) and semantics (the world). | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Michal Walicki - Introduction to Mathematical Logic History E.1 | |
| A reaction: My problem is that the concept of truth seems to apply to animal minds, which are capable of making right or wrong judgements, and of realising their errors. Tarski didn't make universal claims for his account. |
| 10904 | Tarskian truth neglects the atomic sentences [Mulligan/Simons/Smith on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The Tarskian account of truth neglects the atomic sentences. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Mulligan/Simons/Smith - Truth-makers §1 | |
| A reaction: Yes! The whole Tarskian edifice is built on a foundation which it is taboo even to mention. If truth is just the assignment of 'T' and 'F', that isn't even the beginnings of a theory of 'truth'. |
| 15322 | Tarski's had the first axiomatic theory of truth that was minimally adequate [Tarski, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's work is the earliest axiomatic theory of truth that meets minimal adequacy conditions. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 01.1 | |
| A reaction: This shows a way in which Tarski gave a new direction to the study of truth. Subsequent theories have been 'stronger'. |
| 16306 | Tarski defined truth, but an axiomatisation can be extracted from his inductive clauses [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski preferred a definition of truth, but from that an axiomatisation can be extracted. His induction clauses can be turned into axioms. Hence he opened the way to axiomatic theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 3 |
| 19141 | Tarski thought axiomatic truth was too contingent, and in danger of inconsistencies [Tarski, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Tarski preferred an explicit definition of truth to axioms. He says axioms have a rather accidental character, only a definition can guarantee the continued consistency of the system, and it keeps truth in harmony with physical science and physicalism. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (works [1936]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 2 n2 | |
| A reaction: Davidson's summary, gleaned from various sources in Tarski. A big challenge for modern axiom systems is to avoid inconsistency, which is extremely hard to do (given that set theory is not sure of having achieved it). |
| 19190 | We need an undefined term 'true' in the meta-language, specified by axioms [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: We have to include the term 'true', or some other semantic term, in the list of undefined terms of the meta-language, and to express fundamental properties of the notion of truth in a series of axioms. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 10) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if Tarski semantic theory gives truth for the object language, but then an axiomatic theory of truth is also needed for the metalanguage. Halbch and Horsten seem to want an axiomatic theory in the object language. |
| 19197 | Truth can't be eliminated from universal claims, or from particular unspecified claims [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Truth can't be eliminated from universal statements saying all sentences of a certain type are true, or from the proof that 'all consequences of true sentences are true'. It is also needed if we can't name the sentence ('Plato's first sentence is true'). | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 16) | |
| A reaction: This points to the deflationary view of truth, if its only role is in talking about other sentences in this way. Tarski gives the standard reason for rejecting the Redundancy view. |
| 19185 | Semantics is a very modest discipline which solves no real problems [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Semantics as it is conceived in this paper is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions to being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 05) | |
| A reaction: Written in 1944. This remark encourages the minimal or deflationary interpretation of his theory of truth, but see the robust use of 'satisfaction' in Idea 19184. |
| 19195 | Truth tables give prior conditions for logic, but are outside the system, and not definitions [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Logical sentences are often assigned preliminary conditions under which they are true or false (often given as truth tables). However, these are outside the system of logic, and should not be regarded as definitions of the terms involved. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 15) | |
| A reaction: Hence, presumably, the connectives are primitives (with no nature or meaning), and the truth tables are axioms for their use? This opinion of Tarski's may have helped shift the preference towards natural deduction introduction and elimination rules. |
| 19369 | Lull's combinatorial art would articulate all the basic concepts, then show how they combine [Lull, by Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: Lull proposed a combinatorial art. He wanted to reconcile Islam and Christianity by articulating the basic concepts that their belief systems held in common, and then inventing a device that would allow these concepts to be combined. | |
| From: report of Ramon (Ars Magna [1305]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 2 Intro | |
| A reaction: Leibniz's Universal Characteristic was an attempt at continuing Lull's project. Lull's plan rested on Aristotle's categories. |
| 10152 | Set theory and logic are fairy tales, but still worth studying [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: People have asked me, 'How can you, a nominalist, do work in set theory and in logic, which are theories about things you do not believe in?' ...I believe that there is a value even in fairy tales and the study of fairy tales. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (talk [1965]), quoted by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic | |
| A reaction: This is obviously an oversimplification. I don't think for a moment that Tarski literally believed that the study of fairy tales had as much value as the study of logic. Why do we have this particular logic, and not some other? |
| 10048 | There is no clear boundary between the logical and the non-logical [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: No objective grounds are known to me which permit us to draw a sharp boundary between the two groups of terms, the logical and the non-logical. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (works [1936]), quoted by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §3 | |
| A reaction: Musgrave is pointing out that this is bad news if you want to 'reduce' something like arithmetic to logic. 'Logic' is a vague object. |
| 13337 | A language: primitive terms, then definition rules, then sentences, then axioms, and finally inference rules [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: For a language, we must enumerate the primitive terms, and the rules of definition for new terms. Then we must distinguish the sentences, and separate out the axioms from amng them, and finally add rules of inference. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.402) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This lays down the standard modern procedure for defining a logical language. Once all of this is in place, we then add a semantics and we are in business. Natural deduction tries to do without the axioms. |
| 18812 | Split out the logical vocabulary, make an assignment to the rest. It's logical if premises and conclusion match [Tarski, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Tarski made a division of logical and non-logical vocabulary. He then defined a model as a non-logical assignment satisfying the corresponding sentential function. Then a conclusion follows logically if every model of the premises models the conclusion. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1936]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 3.2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Tarski's account of logical consequence, which follows on from his account of truth. 'Logical validity' is then 'true in every model'. Rumfitt doubts whether Tarski has given the meaning of 'logical consequence'. |
| 10694 | Logical consequence is when in any model in which the premises are true, the conclusion is true [Tarski, by Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's 1936 definition of logical consequence is that in any model in which the premises are true, the conclusion is true too (so that no model can make the conclusion false). | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (works [1936]) by JC Beall / G Restall - Logical Consequence 3 | |
| A reaction: So the general idea is that a logical consequence is distinguished by being unstoppable. Sounds good. But then we have monotonic and non-monotonic logics, which (I'm guessing) embody different notions of consequence. |
| 10479 | Logical consequence: true premises give true conclusions under all interpretations [Tarski, by Hodges,W] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's definition of logical consequence (1936) is that in a fully interpreted formal language an argument is valid iff under any allowed interpretation of its nonlogical symbols, if the premises are true then so is the conclusion. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (works [1936]) by Wilfrid Hodges - Model Theory 3 | |
| A reaction: The idea that you can only make these claims 'under an interpretation' seems to have had a huge influence on later philosophical thinking. |
| 13344 | X follows from sentences K iff every model of K also models X [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: The sentence X follows logically from the sentences of the class K if and only if every model of the class K is also a model of the sentence X. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1936], p.417) | |
| A reaction: [see Idea 13343 for his account of a 'model'] He is offering to define logical consequence in general, but this definition fits what we now call 'semantic consequence', written |=. This it is standard practice to read |= as 'models'. |
| 19192 | The truth definition proves semantic contradiction and excluded middle laws (not the logic laws) [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: With our definition of truth we can prove the laws of contradiction and excluded middle. These semantic laws should not be identified with the related logical laws, which belong to the sentential calculus, and do not involve 'true' at all. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 12) | |
| A reaction: Very illuminating. I wish modern thinkers could be so clear about this matter. The logic contains 'P or not-P'. The semantics contains 'P is either true or false'. Critics say Tarski has presupposed 'classical' logic. |
| 18759 | Identity is invariant under arbitrary permutations, so it seems to be a logical term [Tarski, by McGee] |
| Full Idea: Tarski showed that the only binary relations invariant under arbitrary permutations are the universal relation, the empty relation, identity and non-identity, thus giving us a reason to include '=' among the logical terms. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Vann McGee - Logical Consequence 6 | |
| A reaction: Tarski was looking for a criterion to distinguish logical from non-logical terms, since his account of logical validity depended on it. This idea lies behind whether a logic is or is not specified to be 'with identity' (i.e. using '='). |
| 10823 | A name denotes an object if the object satisfies a particular sentential function [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: To say that the name x denotes a given object a is the same as to stipulate that the object a ... satisfies a sentential function of a particular type. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933], p.194) |
| 18756 | Tarski built a compositional semantics for predicate logic, from dependent satisfactions [Tarski, by McGee] |
| Full Idea: Tarski discovered how to give a compositional semantics for predicate calculus, defining truth in terms of satisfaction, and showing how satisfaction for a complicated formula depends on satisfaction of the simple subformulas. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Vann McGee - Logical Consequence 4 | |
| A reaction: The problem was that the subformulas may contain free variables, and thus not be sentences with truth values. 'Satisfaction' can handle this, where 'truth' cannot (I think). |
| 19313 | Tarksi invented the first semantics for predicate logic, using this conception of truth [Tarski, by Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Tarski invented a formal semantics for quantified predicate logic, the logic of reasoning about mathematics. The heart of this great accomplishment is his theory of truth. It has been called semantic 'theory' of truth, but Tarski preferred 'conception'. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.1 |
| 13335 | Semantics is the concepts of connections of language to reality, such as denotation, definition and truth [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Semantics is the totality of considerations concerning concepts which express connections between expressions of a language and objects and states of affairs referred to by these expressions. Examples are denotation, satisfaction, definition and truth. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.401) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, he notes that it 'is not commonly recognised' that truth is part of semantics. Nowadays truth seems to be the central concept in most semantics. |
| 13336 | A language containing its own semantics is inconsistent - but we can use a second language [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: People have not been aware that the language about which we speak need by no means coincide with the language in which we speak. ..But the language which contains its own semantics must inevitably be inconsistent. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.402) | |
| A reaction: It seems that Tarski was driven to propose the metalanguage approach mainly by the Liar Paradox. |
| 13339 | A sentence is satisfied when we can assert the sentence when the variables are assigned [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Here is a partial definition of the concept of satisfaction: John and Peter satisfy the sentential function 'X and Y are brothers' if and only if John and Peter are brothers. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.405) | |
| A reaction: Satisfaction applies to open sentences and truth to closed sentences (with named objects). He uses the notion of total satisfaction to define truth. The example is a partial definition, not just an illustration. |
| 13340 | Satisfaction is the easiest semantical concept to define, and the others will reduce to it [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: It has been found useful in defining semantical concepts to deal first with the concept of satisfaction; both because the definition of this concept presents relatively few difficulties, and because the other semantical concepts are easily reduced to it. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.406) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 13339 for his explanation of satisfaction. We just say that a open sentence is 'acceptable' or 'assertible' (or even 'true') when particular values are assigned to the variables. Then sentence is then 'satisfied'. |
| 16323 | The object language/ metalanguage distinction is the basis of model theory [Tarski, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's distinction between object and metalanguage forms the basis of model theory. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 11 |
| 13343 | A 'model' is a sequence of objects which satisfies a complete set of sentential functions [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: An arbitrary sequence of objects which satisfies every sentential function of the sentences L' will be called a 'model' or realization of the class L of sentences. There can also be a model of a single sentence is this way. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1936], p.417) | |
| A reaction: [L' is L with the constants replaced by variables] Tarski is the originator of model theory, which is central to modern logic. The word 'realization' is a helpful indicator of what he has in mind. A model begins to look like a possible world. |
| 13341 | Using the definition of truth, we can prove theories consistent within sound logics [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Using the definition of truth we are in a position to carry out the proof of consistency for deductive theories in which only (materially) true sentences are (formally) provable. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Establishment of Scientific Semantics [1936], p.407) | |
| A reaction: This is evidently what Tarski saw as the most important first fruit of his new semantic theory of truth. |
| 8940 | Tarski avoids the Liar Paradox, because truth cannot be asserted within the object language [Tarski, by Fisher] |
| Full Idea: In Tarski's account of truth, self-reference (as found in the Liar Paradox) is prevented because the truth predicate for any given object language is never a part of that object language, and so a sentence can never predicate truth of itself. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Jennifer Fisher - On the Philosophy of Logic 03.I | |
| A reaction: Thus we solve the Liar Paradox by ruling that 'you are not allowed to say that'. Hm. The slightly odd result is that in any conversation about whether p is true, we end up using (logically speaking) two different languages simultaneously. Hm. |
| 19187 | The Liar makes us assert a false sentence, so it must be taken seriously [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: In my judgement, it would be quite wrong and dangerous from the point of view of scientific progress to depreciate the importance of nhtinomies like the Liar Paradox, and treat them as jokes. The fact is we have been compelled to assert a false sentence. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 07) | |
| A reaction: This is the heartfelt cry of the perfectionist, who wants everything under control. It was the dream of the age of Frege to Hilbert, which gradually eroded after Gödel's Incompleteness proof. Short ordinary folk panic about the Liar? |
| 15273 | Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Points can be 'dense' by indefinitely prolonged division. To be 'continuous' is more stringent; the points must be cut into two sets, and meet the condition laid down by Boscovich and Dedekind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This idea goes with Idea 15274, which lays down the specification of the Dedekind Cut, which is the criterion for the real (and continuous) numbers. Harré and Madden are interested in whether time can support continuity of objects. |
| 15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Divide points into left and right set. They're 'continuous' if that point is either last member of left set, and greatest lower bound of right (so no least member), or least upper bound of left set (so no last member) and first member of right set. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: The best attempt I have yet encountered to explain a Dedekind Cut for the layperson. I gather modern mathematicians no longer rely on this way of defining the real numbers. |
| 10157 | Tarski improved Hilbert's geometry axioms, and without set-theory [Tarski, by Feferman/Feferman] |
| Full Idea: Tarski found an elegant new axiom system for Euclidean geometry that improved Hilbert's earlier version - and he formulated it without the use of set-theoretical notions. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (works [1936]) by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic Ch.9 |
| 10154 | Tarski's theory of truth shifted the approach away from syntax, to set theory and semantics [Feferman/Feferman on Tarski] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's theory of truth has been most influential in eventually creating a shift from the entirely syntactic way of doing things in metamathematics (promoted by Hilbert in the 1920s, in his theory of proofs), towards a set-theoretical, semantic approach. | |
| From: comment on Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic Int III |
| 15211 | There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The assumption that there is an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the psychological is, in our view, an error of enormous consequence. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this, and am opposed to the Fregean view of the matter. The psychology is the bridge between the physical world and the logic. Frege had to be a platonist, so that the formalism could latch onto something. |
| 15261 | Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate. |
| 15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: On our view, 'event' is to be understood in terms of the ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: It has quite hard to take either objects or events, given that they seem to be amenable to analysis. I am tempted to take essences as primitive. They fix identity, endure change, bear accidental properties (including temporary intrinsics). |
| 15257 | The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: By a shift from events to things we claim to make the big problem of induction tractable. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: [You'll have to read their chapter to get the whole picture] The idea of basing a metaphysics on 'events' gives me the creeps, given the difficulty of individuating an event. Events are not primitive; even animals can analyse their components. |
| 15300 | Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Fundamental particulars are incapable of change. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
| A reaction: I quote this in order to challenge it. If the proton can decay (which seems to be the case) maybe everything can. The fundamentals of a lawn mower eventually rust away; it may be thus with universe. What evidence could deny this? |
| 15319 | Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is no metaphysical justification whatever for treating the solid, bounded, material object as the determiner of all thing concepts. Fluids are no less material things than are hard solid blocks. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: We don't tend to talk of a fluid as 'a' thing, and without distinct objects there would be virtually no structure, or interest, in nature, so what gives identity to the blocks must interest the metaphysician. |
| 15320 | Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The magnetic and the gravitation field can occupy all the same places without merging. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: We can divide stuff into two classes, then, according to whether they usually merge if coextensive in space. Oil and water can be mixed, but eventually separate again. |
| 15318 | Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The region around a magnetic body, the space between earth and moon, and the vicinity of an electric cable remain obstinately and, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: Ouch, if you are a strict 'materialist'! I call myself a 'naturalist', in a hand-wavy sort of way. On materialism and determinism I remain vague. |
| 15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A state of affairs consists of structures of particulars that endure (of which physical objects would be one type), the properties and powers of those particulars, and the relations obtaining among them. A common 'event' is a change in state of affairs. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I find 'event' to be so vague, and so dependent on pragmatic interests, that it has hard to find a place for it in an ontological system. Ditto with state of affairs. They overlap. States of affairs can survive change (like a political majority). |
| 15281 | Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The connectivity of ensembles of predicates is characteristic of natural science, while the independence of empirical predicates is the requirement of the Humean position. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: This is yet another excellent reason for getting rid of the hyperempirical Humean view of these things. The best explanation of the world is that its ingredients are clearly not 'independent' of each other. |
| 15279 | Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of energy was introduced into physics precisely to make possible the application of the 'store of potency' paradigm in cases like the contact of billiard balls, since the moving ball is clearly an agent of change. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I find this to be a hugely revealing little observation. For years the nature of energy has bothered me, and I have been struck by the active character of nature. I am beginning to understand the world! |
| 15276 | Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Some powerful particulars require to be stimulated before their powers are manifested. Others will manifest their powers whenever the impediments to action, the constraints, are removed. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.V) | |
| A reaction: Sounds nice and clear, but if gunpowder explodes at a certain temperature, how can you distinguish temperatures as the 'stimulus' ones and the 'release' ones? We just remove the constraint of low temperature. |
| 15305 | Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Contrasted with variable powers are those powers which cannot be diminished or augmented without loss of identity for the particular to which they are ascribed. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
| A reaction: They give the example of a Deputy Sheriff's powers, as one that cannot vary. I suppose the powers of an electron are in the fixed category. Fair enough. Can a fundamental power be variable (or only 'complex' powers)? |
| 15218 | Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: For scientists 'copper' refers to something having the properties of malleability, fusibility, ductility, electric conductivity, density 8.92, atomic weight 63.54, and atomic number 19. All but the last of these are dispositional. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: This is important because it is tempting to pick the atomic number as the essence of copper, but it is the only one on the list which is structural rather than dispositional. The deep question is why that substance has those dispositions. |
| 15302 | We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The power of particulars are always made understandable by the natures of those particulars, but finally such explanations come to rest with a power of a particular that has no explanation in the nature of that thing or bit of material. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: I'm glad they faced up to this matter. The question is whether the fundamental powers which are the terminus of explanation are the same sort of thing as the powers which were said to be the target for explanations. Just complex powers? |
| 15303 | Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: As the most promising candidate for entities which intrinsically qualify as ultimate because their nature is in principle identical with their powers we will offer a physical field. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: An electron comes fairly close to being nothing but a bundle of powers, but fields seem to have a slightly more basic role in physics, so this strikes me as a good suggestion. It meets Ladyman's mocking of the 'microbangings' view. |
| 15258 | Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: An attribution of a power opens up a certain direction of empirical investigation. It is not an attribution of an occult quality, because it is not a quality-attribution at all. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.II) | |
| A reaction: They seem to have a rather behaviouristic view of powers, which I am inclined to think misses how fundamental powers are. I see fundamental powers as the terminus of empirical investigation (which focuses on how powers combine). |
| 15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: How are we to conceive of a field of potentials when the very point of the notion is that it serves to describe what would happen at various places, and is not a description of what did or is happening? | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the answer is induction. If there were no events, the field would be beyond us. We infer the field from observed events, and infer possible events from the patterns of behaviour in the field, and its nature. |
| 10151 | I am a deeply convinced nominalist [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: I am a nominalist. This is a very deep conviction of mine. ...I am a tortured nominalist. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (talk [1965]), quoted by Feferman / Feferman - Alfred Tarski: life and logic Int I | |
| A reaction: I too am of the nominalist persuasion, but I don't feel justified in such a strong commitment. |
| 15272 | The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In being properly critical about the merits of the concept of substance, ...the Humean finds he has lost the vitally important concept of a thing as well. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This is the whole reason that Aristotle and others started talking about substances in the first place. The big mistake is to think that Aristotle believes in a thing called 'substance'. The notion is a placeholder for whatever holds a thing together. |
| 15304 | We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The importance of the field concept (as ultimate) is that it allows us to escape from the apparently pervasive concepts of substance and its properties. A field has no substance other than its powers (or its potentials). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: You can't run away from substance by only thinking about what is ultimate. Are they going to ignore separate objects? What gives them identity? Do they have any properties? What has the properties? More work needed here. |
| 15309 | The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The assumption that shape and solidity are the fundamental mechanical qualities requires an implausible hypothesis of a substance or material filling the space of bodies. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This is 'substance' in the sense of matter, rather than in the sense of an Aristotelian essence. They defend fields (rather than particles) as the fundamentals of the physical world. |
| 15264 | The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
| A reaction: Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'. |
| 15262 | In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I) | |
| A reaction: This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity? |
| 15297 | We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
| A reaction: This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science. |
| 15266 | We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
| A reaction: They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265). |
| 15220 | To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Talk about particulars remaining the same and yet lacking their usual capacities and powers is at once to assert and deny that a certain object or sample of material has a given nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: They imply that this is a contradiction, and hence impossible. So what do we say about something in which the powers fade? Do they both retain and lose their identity? Or can we separate essence from identity?? Aha! |
| 15222 | Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary! |
| 15296 | A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II) | |
| A reaction: If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'. |
| 15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do? |
| 15271 | If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose. |
| 15256 | Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together. |
| 15290 | What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.IV) | |
| A reaction: This is a deeply stirring idea, because it suddenly opens up a research project of narrowing the possibilities, with a stunning Holy Grail at the end of it. Sherlock Holmes said this first, of course. |
| 15291 | There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In addition to absolute necessity ('p is strictly implied by ¬p'), i.e. p strictly implied by any proposition whatever, C.I. Lewis also distinguished relative necessity ('p implied by what is given or known'). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: Once you accept this distinction you find that the 'relative' one comes in all sorts of degrees. You "have to" put more salt in this soup. (Deontic' necessity, someone on Twitter tells me!) |
| 15230 | Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the logical form of a statement is offered as the grounds for the judgement that it cannot be true we have logical necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a truth about logical necessity, but certainly not a full account of it, because contingent statements also have logical form. I can't think of any other criterion than the finding of a contradiction buried in the logical form. |
| 15214 | Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity is neither a mere reflection of logical necessity nor a roundabout way of referring to empirical contingency. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
| A reaction: They offer a strong defence of natural necessity, which is basic to their scientific essentialism. The key point is that they, unlike some others, are not defending metaphysical necessity about nature, but finding a different type of necessity. Good. |
| 15221 | The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The relation between what a thing is and what it is capable of doing and undergoing is naturally necessary. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: Note that this was written in 1975, and in no way rests of Kripkean notions of rigid designation and necessary identities. Needs thought, but I take it to be an appealing proposal. |
| 15224 | A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is a necessity corresponding to the nature of the actual. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.C) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for the assertion of a genuine and distinct natural necessity. Hence every possible world will have its own distinctive natural necessity. If the actual contains the possible, then there are possible new natural necessities in the actual! |
| 15232 | Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the natures of the operative powerful particulars, the constraining or stimulating effect of conditions and so on are offered as the grounds for the judgement that a certain effect cannot but happen (or fail), we have natural necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I subscribe to, the really right bit of scientific essentialism. Can this view be proved? Hm. I take the opposite view to be the misguided Humean idea that if you can imagine it not happening, then it might not happen. Firey furnace. |
| 15288 | People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: At the basis of all doubts about the rationality of science lies the idea that there is no rational resting place between logical necessity and absolute contingency. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by the fact that when someone says "I have to go now", they express a necessity. Are there thousands of types of necessity, or one conditional necessity resting on thousands of different foundations? |
| 15289 | Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when understood by scientists to be related by generative mechanisms, whose structure and components constitute the essential natures of the world. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: Does that mean that the relationship between an actual state and a possible state is metaphysically necessary, rather than naturally necessary? I think we need dispositions to be part of actuality, and hence replace 'co-existing' with 'possible'. |
| 15231 | Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the conditions for a rational being having knowledge of the nature of a world are offered as the grounds for the judgement that such a world must have certain characteristics, we have transcendental necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: It seems like a rather hard call to decide whether such characteristics pertain to the world, or to the mind of the rational being. Kant is obviously behind this one. You must read his first Critique at least four times to evaluate it. |
| 15234 | There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is logically necessary must be reflected in a corresponding transcendental necessity. But there are a great range of transcendental necessities which are not reflected in any logical necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.C) | |
| A reaction: That is, the world would be unknowable if any of the logical necessities failed to apply to it. I hope that doesn't mean that we are supposed to intuitively know all the logical necessities. Nowadays we are famous for being bad at that. |
| 15260 | Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We understand subjunctive conditionals as statements about possibilities, excluding those actualised. So that form is just right for part of the analysis of a power statement, since to say a thing has a power is to say what behaviour is possible for it. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VII) | |
| A reaction: They seem unaware of the famous work of Stalnaker and Lewis on this type of analysis, but as a fan of powers I find this interesting, and it offers a nice extra piece for my big jigsaw. |
| 15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When a natural necessity is used as the basis for the inclusion or exclusion of the appropriate predicate in the meaning of a concept of a kind of particular, then it is conceptually necessary that that kind of particular has that property or power. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the bolder views of Harré and Madden, since many philosophers would say that conceptual necessity rests entirely on convention rather than on nature. We could cut them out by just saying that most of our conventions rest on nature. |
| 15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Described as a man it is quite contingent that he has a child, but described as a father it is conceptually necessary that he has a child. But that conceptual necessity is a reflection of the natural necessity of the father's role in reproduction. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: This is a (good) response to Quine's claim that necessity depends entirely on the mode of description (and his mathematician cyclist example). |
| 15216 | Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The question about conceptual necessity is whether it is only stipulative and conventional in character or whether it mirrors something about the nature of physical systems. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.A) | |
| A reaction: This is the key question, which fans of conventionalism (such as Sidelle) don't seem to face up to. I take it to be important that our concepts are not created by a committee of fools, but by people constantly relating to the world. |
| 15235 | There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When discoveries about the nature of a thing or substance explain or justify our holding that certain properties are its nominal essence, then the diachronic process of meaning development creates a genuine conceptual necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.VI) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a pretty good account of one of the bases for conceptual necessity. They seem to think that conceptual necessity rests on a mixture of real and nominal essence (but then some of the nominal features are also real). |
| 15228 | Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concepts of necessity and contingency are detached from those of the apriori and the a posteriori. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to arise quite independently of Kripke, from the attack by the authors on the Humean view of modality. They also mention the possibility of the apriori contingent. |
| 15252 | If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Even in cases (such as Goldbach's Conjecture) which, if true, are logically necessary, we may be able to conceive the opposite. We can conceive of there being a number which is not the sum of two primes. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: [attributed to Kneale] Ah, but can we conceive this (as Descartes would say) 'clearly and distinctly'? I can conceive circular squares, as long as I don't concentrate too hard. |
| 15245 | It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: It would be silly to suggest that what is a matter of experience must be justified by reason, and it makes no sense to say that what we are insisting upon as a matter of direct experience must itself be established by experience. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: The first half is now known as the 'Moorean' view (Idea 6349). It does make sense, when faced with a weird experience, to assess and establish it by means of a combination of reason and other experiences. It's called 'coherence'! |
| 15244 | We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: It seems clear that we are never presented with a quality except of some object. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that that 'seems clear'. The idea of sense-data is that while it seems to be of an object, reason suggests that the experience of the quality must precede the object assembled thereby. How do you arbitrate? |
| 15248 | Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: To the objection that one is never aware of inferences in sensation, the unconvincing reply comes that such inferences are automatic, telescoped, non-discursive and unconscious. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: I think the 'unconvincing' reply is a bit more convincing in the light of modern research on the brain, which presents everything it does in a far less conscious light than the traditional view. Even reason seems barely conscious. |
| 15269 | Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean event, the impression, basic to his epistemology, is, as we have seen, instantaneous in nature, punctiform and elemenentary, and from this characterisation follows its atomicity, its lack of internal connections with anything else. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This simple point about Humean associationism is the key to grasping the whole hideous worldview that has gripped twentieth century philosophy. How many impressions make up an apple? And why do they sum to make something? |
| 15286 | Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection. |
| 15283 | Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms). |
| 15316 | The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists. |
| 15225 | Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The task of natural science is to investigate the nature of a thing or substance, and to test hypotheses as to the constitution of that thing or substance. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that science is only concerned with the very small, but it would include facts such as the dramatic change of a lump of uranium when it grows bigger. |
| 15298 | We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
| A reaction: If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302. |
| 15255 | Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: 'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I. |
| 15270 | Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The atomicity of Humean events ensures the sequential independence of properties, ...and this in turn leads to the Humean problem of induction. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as pretty good analysis of what has gone wrong with the Humean account. As far as I can see, the 'problem' of induction just doesn't occur in scientific essentialism. |
| 15284 | Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation. |
| 15285 | The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view. |
| 15287 | The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The generating mechanism that produces black raven-like beings is assumed in the according of potential law status to the statement that all ravens are black. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice succinct statement of what I take to be the scientific essentialist view of induction. It isn't about building up Humean habits of regularity, but of gradually inferring explanatory mechanisms, which might even give necessities. |
| 15306 | Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Only changes require explanation. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
| A reaction: This points to powers as the fundamentals of all explanations, whereas if stasis also has to be explained then structures and matter have to be explained. Why is there something rather than nothing? No explanations allowed! |
| 15293 | If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow. |
| 15294 | Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality. |
| 15254 | If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
| A reaction: They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct. |
| 15317 | Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Usually in science the powers/natures formula does lead to the imagining of hypothetical mechanisms which might be discovered to be real. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: The underlying mechanism is what I take Aristotle to have proposed, and it is the instinctive explanation by children (charted by Susan Gelman). |
| 15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say. |
| 15219 | Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Capacities just as much as powers, what particulars and substances are liable to undergo as well as what they are able to do, are explained by reference to what the thing is in itself. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: This is an important warning against trying to give the whole account in terms of powers - unless the capacities and structures and categorical properties can also be explained in terms of the basic powers. |
| 15301 | The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concepts of power, capacity and the nature of a particular involve generalisations and hence already presuppose that there are grounds for extrapolation. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.V) | |
| A reaction: I take sortal essentialism to be a serious misundertanding, but the mistake needs to be explained, and this idea is helpful towards that. I think the problem resides in the nature of the language we need to describe particulars. |
| 15226 | What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A statement which asserts that a substance or thing must manifest certain properties in order to be identified as a thing or substance of that sort can be laid down a priori. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This observation is encountered in Sidelle, but this is earlier, and seems to be the key to the Twin Earth thing. It is just convention whether we call XYZ water, or whether there are two sorts of jade or one. Science has prestige. |
| 13345 | Sentences are 'analytical' if every sequence of objects models them [Tarski] |
| Full Idea: A class of sentences can be called 'analytical' if every sequence of objects is a model of it. | |
| From: Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1936], p.418) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 13344 and Idea 13343 for the context of this assertion. |
| 15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: To attribute necessity to a condition, an outcome or effect, the truth of a statement, or a conclusion, is to indicate within the relevant context that no alternative is possible. In each context there are appropriate grounds for such judgements. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V) | |
| A reaction: This anticipipates Kit Fine's account of necessity by 25 years, and seems to be the right way to understand it. In ordinary usage, 'there is no alternative' is obvious a quite different claim in very different contexts. |
| 20407 | Taste is the capacity to judge an object or representation which is thought to be beautiful [Tarski, by Schellekens] |
| Full Idea: Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or a dissatisfaction, ...where the object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: We usually avoid the word 'faculty' nowadays, because it implies a specific mechanism, but 'capacity' will do. Kant is said to focus specifically on beauty, whereas modern aestheticians have a broader view of the type of subject matter. |
| 15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity involves the concept of generative mechanisms and powerful particulars, and these in turn can be the basis of a useful notion of a natural kind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. Say gold and silver are two kinds that lead to two outcomes. Each is a natural necessity. How do you distinguish them? Only by one being the gold-necessity and the other the silver-necessity. Circular? |
| 15299 | Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We know from biology that naturally occurring species do not exhibit the constancy required by the concept of natural kind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
| A reaction: This view has been challenged recently. How much constancy does a natural kind need? Even protons decay eventually, it seems. I think a natural kind just needs a fair degree of stability over a reasonable time-period. Tigers qualify. |
| 15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics. |
| 15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different. |
| 15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient. |
| 15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'. |
| 15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered. |
| 15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation. |
| 15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The original Humean suggestion was that lawlike statements must contain only purely qualitative predicates - that is, predicates which do not require in a statement of their meaning a reference to any particular object or spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: Harré and Madden are keen to promote particulars (with powers) as the foundation of scientific theory, and I agree with them. It strikes me as quite elementary that generalisations arise from particulars, so can't fundamentally explain them. |
| 15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The whole idea of a formal analysis of the concept of lawlikeness has come to seem hopeless; every syntactical criterion proposed has a counter-example. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: They seem unaware of Lewis's work in this area, which may be the most sophisticated attempt at a (Humean) attempt at formal analysis. Personally I see nothing in Lewis that would make them change their minds. |
| 15223 | Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Given some general theory specifying the fundamental causal powers and thereby laying down the general lineaments of a world, the necessity of certain effects can be inferred. They will be 'hypothetically necessary' (given those powers). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.B) | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty good statement of the core idea of necessity at the heart of scientific essentialism. Are we to call this 'natural' necessity or 'metaphysical' necessity? Presumably it is 'relative' necessity. Big implications for induction! |
| 15241 | Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Humeans say there can be no element of necessity in the causal relation because the conjunction of a description of a cause with the negation of a description of its usual effect is never self-contradictory. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: We might say there actually is a contradiction, because you assert the existence of something, and then deny that existence by denying that the effect could occur. If the object is inert this is wrong, but if it is defined by its powers it is right. |
| 15240 | In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The only sure way of distinguishing lawful and accidental universal statements is to point out that in the former cases we see why the regularity must hold, while in the latter case we do not. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and also take it to be the solution to the problem of induction. That smoking causes cancer will be a true generalisation but not a law, until we see clearly why it happens. |
| 15239 | We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome. |
| 15243 | We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A moving thing is perceptually distinct from a motionless thing, but takes on no new quality. The perception of its motion is a genuine perception. Its motion is not inferred from observation of its successive occupations of different relative positions. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a response to Russell's reductive 'at-at' account of motion, which always struck me as wrong. It doesn't prove Russell wrong, of course, and they are trying to demonstrate that we perceive causation directly. |
| 15265 | 'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In the case of electron/positron/gamma ray annihilation scientists maintain the paradigm of rational explanation by inventing a quasi-substance as the bearer of continuity, and all three are seen in terms of 'energy'. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
| A reaction: What a relief to see energy described as a 'quasi-substance'. I spent all of my physics studies bewildered by the nature of energy (especially when described as 'pure energy'). What does e=mc^2 mean if e is a quasi-substance? |
| 15280 | 'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The 'store' of kinetic energy is used as a latency concept to explain the power of bringing about changes which is manifested by the moving thing when its motion is arrested. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: These ideas have been most illuminating in connecting for me the general idea of a 'power' to the rather dubious concept of 'energy' in physics. |
| 15321 | Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Space lacks a place, and does not qualify as an individual, since the ordinary notion of individuals relates to place not space. ...But we can think of space as present in every place through the necessary connection between space and all places. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand it being present in every place, given that it is every place. |
| 15259 | Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The same electronic constitution confers two distinct powers upon chemical atoms: the power of entering only into certain chemical combinations and the power to radiate a particular spectrum. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VI) | |
| A reaction: Presumably radioactive elements emit other radiation. Do atoms have passive powers as well as active ones? |
| 15263 | Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Modern chemistry is not, as chemistry, purely structural. ...Thus CO2 is a different substance from SO2. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I ever thought the chemistry was purely structural, but if you go in for the idea that reality is essentially geometrical (inspired by physics, presumably, like Ladyman) then you might make this mistake. |
| 19371 | Nine principles of God: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory [Lull, by Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: Lull restricted himself to only nine 'absolute principles' of God: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory | |
| From: report of Ramon (Ars Magna [1305]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 2 'Combinatorics' | |
| A reaction: Leibniz responded that God's perfections are infinite in number, and thus beyond human comprehension. Lull cut them down to nine, because he was designing a sort of conceptual logic that employed them. |
| 15295 | Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Theism is supposedly a positive view that renders the world more intelligible than its alternatives, and this professed programme requires the production of results. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.VI) | |
| A reaction: A nice articulation of a view of theism which will make believers wince, because Harré and Madden see it as a scientific theory, intended to explain the world. I'm with them. I see Plato's theory of Forms as a scientific theory. |