20 ideas
| 14231 | We should always apply someone's theory of meaning to their own utterances [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: We should interpret philosophers as if their own theory of the meaning of their utterances were true, whether or not we agree with that theory. | |
| From: David Liggins (Nihilism without Self-Contradiction [2008], 8) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give legitimate grounds for some sorts of ad hominem objections. It would simply be an insult to a philosopher not to believe their theories, and then apply them to what they have said. This includes semantic theories. |
| 17325 | Truth-maker theory can't cope with non-causal dependence [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: My charge is that truth-maker theory cannot be integrated into an attractive general account of non-causal dependence. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: [You'll have to read Liggins to see why] |
| 17318 | Truthmakers for existence is fine; otherwise maybe restrict it to synthetic truths? [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers agree that true existential propositions have a truth-maker, but some go further, claiming that every true proposition has a truth-maker. More cautious theorists specify a class of truths, such as synthetic propositions. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; Armstrong is the ambitious one, and Rodriguez-Pereyra proposes the synthetic propositions] Presumably synthetic propositions can make negative assertions, which are problematic for truth-makers. |
| 14232 | We normally formalise 'There are Fs' with singular quantification and predication, but this may be wrong [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: It is quite standard to interpret sentences of the form 'There are Fs' using a singular quantifier and a singular predicate, but this tradition may be mistaken. | |
| From: David Liggins (Nihilism without Self-Contradiction [2008], 8) | |
| A reaction: Liggins is clearly in support of the use of plural quantification, referring to 'there are some xs such that'. |
| 17320 | Either p is true or not-p is true, so something is true, so something exists [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Either p or not-p. If p, then the proposition 'p' is true. If not p, then the proposition 'not p' is true. Either way, something is true. Thus something exists. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.3 n5) | |
| A reaction: Liggins offers this dodgy argument as an objection to conceptual truths having truth-makers. |
| 17326 | The dependence of {Socrates} on Socrates involves a set and a philosopher, not facts [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: The dependence of {Socrates} on Socrates appears to involve a set and a philosopher, neither of which is a fact. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: He points out that defenders of facts as the basis of dependence could find a suitable factual paraphrase here. Socrates is just Socrates, but the singleton has to be understood in a particular way to generate the dependence. |
| 17327 | Non-causal dependence is at present only dimly understood [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Non-causal dependence is at present only dimly understood. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.8) | |
| A reaction: Not very helpful, you may be thinking, but it is always helpful to know where we have got to in the enquiry. |
| 17322 | Necessities supervene on everything, but don't depend on everything [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Necessities supervene upon everything, but they do not depend on everything. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if merely existing together counts as sufficiently close to be 'supervenience'. If 2+2 necessitates 4, that hardly seems to 'supervene' on the Eiffel Tower. If so, how close must things be to qualify for supervenience? |
| 14233 | Nihilists needn't deny parts - they can just say that some of the xs are among the ys [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: We can interpret '..is a part of..' as '..are among..': the xs are a part of the ys just when the xs are among the ys (though if the ys are 'one' then they would not have parts). | |
| From: David Liggins (Nihilism without Self-Contradiction [2008], 9) | |
| A reaction: The trouble is that this still leaves us with gerrymandered 'parts', in the form of xs that are scattered randomly among the ys. That's not what we mean by 'part'. No account of identity works if it leaves out coherent structure. |
| 17324 | 'Because' can signal an inference rather than an explanation [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: 'Because' can signal an inference rather than an explanation. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.5) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle starts from words like 'why?', but it can be a deceptive approach to explanation. |
| 17321 | Value, constitution and realisation are non-causal dependences that explain [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: 'It is wrong because it produces pain for fun', and 'these constitute a table because they are arranged tablewise', and 'tea is poisonous because it contains arsenic' are clearly non-causal uses of 'because', and neither are they conceptual. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: The general line seems to be that any form of determination will underwrite an explanation. He talks later of the 'wrongmaker' and 'poisonmaker' relationships to add to the 'truthmaker'. The table example is the 'object-maker' dependence relation. |
| 17323 | If explanations track dependence, then 'determinative' explanations seem to exist [Liggins] |
| Full Idea: If explanation often tracks dependence, then we have a theoretical reason to expect such explanations to exist. Let us call such explanations 'determinative'. | |
| From: David Liggins (Truth-makers and dependence [2012], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an emerging understanding that this 'determination' relation is central to all of explanation - with causal explanations, for example, being a particular instance of it. I like it. These are real, not conventional, explanations. |
| 23514 | The cerbellum has a huge number of neurons, but little involvement in consciousness [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The cerebellum [at the back] has about four times as many neurons as the rest of the brain put together, but seems barely involved in consciousness. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.2) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if it also has four times as many connections? |
| 23513 | Single neurons can carry out complex functions [Seth] |
| Full Idea: It is increasingly apparent that even single neurons are capable of carrying out highly complex functions all by themselves. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.1 n) | |
| A reaction: Bang goes the simple connectionist account of consciousness. |
| 23516 | Maybe a system is conscious if the whole generates more information than its parts [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The main claim of Tononi's 'integrated information theory' is that a system is conscious to the extent that its whole generates more information than its parts. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.3) | |
| A reaction: Seth seems to present this as an 'interesting' proposal. I find it unlikely that consciousness could be explain in terms of information, or that a machine constructed on this principle would thus become conscious. (Databases pass this test). |
| 23519 | The self is embodied, perspectival, volitional, narrative and social [Seth, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The elements of a self are 1) embodied - related directly to the body, 2) perspectival - having a viewpoint, 3) volitional - being an agent, 4) narrative - aware of past and future, and 5) social - as others perceive me. | |
| From: report of Anil Seth (Being You [2021], III.8) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: [summarised] Seth says there are distinctive emotions associated with each of these aspects of the self. This list is very helpful, as a discouragement for anyone who wants to pick one of these as the sole true nature of the self. |
| 23518 | Modern AI is mostly machine-based pattern recognition [Seth] |
| Full Idea: Much of today's AI is best described as sophisticated machine-based pattern recognition. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], IV.13) | |
| A reaction: Personally I wouldn't want to underestimate the extent to which human intelligence is also pattern recognition (across time as well as in space). |
| 23517 | Volition is felt as doing what you want, with possible alternatives, and a source from within [Seth] |
| Full Idea: The experience of volition is defined by 1) the feeling that I am doing what I want to do, 2) that I could have done otherwise, and 3) that voluntary actions seem to come from within. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], III.11) | |
| A reaction: Note that these can all be cited without reference to their feeling 'free'. |
| 23515 | Human exceptionalism plagues biology, and most other human thinking [Seth] |
| Full Idea: Human exceptionalism has repeatedly plagued biology, and has darkened the history of human thought everywhere. | |
| From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.2) | |
| A reaction: I increasingly agree with this, as much in philosophy as in biology. We really need to get used to our place in evolution. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |