35 ideas
| 9376 | A sentence may simultaneously define a term, and also assert a fact [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: It doesn't follow from the fact that a given sentence is being used to implicitly define one of its ingredient terms, that it is not a factual statement. 'This stick is a meter long at t' may define an ingredient terms and express something factual. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a rather good point, but it is tied in with a difficulty about definition, which is deciding which sentences are using a term, and which ones are defining it. If I say 'this stick in Paris is a meter long', I'm not defining it. |
| 6345 | Minimalism is incoherent, as it implies that truth both is and is not a property [Boghossian, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Boghossian argues that minimalism is incoherent because it says truth both is and is not a property; the essence of minimalism is that, unlike traditional theories, truth is not a property, yet properties are needed to explain the theory. | |
| From: report of Paul Boghossian (The Status of Content [1990]) by Paul Horwich - Truth (2nd edn) Post.8 | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether this is really going to work as a demolition, because it seems to me that no philosophers are even remotely clear about what a property is. If properties are defined causally, it is not quite clear how truth would ever be a property. |
| 9375 | Conventionalism agrees with realists that logic has truth values, but not over the source [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Conventualism is a factualist view: it presupposes that sentences of logic have truth values. It differs from a realist view in its conception of the source of those truth values, not on their existence. I call the denial of truths Non-Factualism. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: It barely seems to count as truth is we say 'p is true because we say so'. It is a truth about an agreement, not a truth about logic. Driving on the left isn't a truth about which side of the road is best. |
| 16050 | The goodness of a picture supervenes on the picture; duplicates must be equally good [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Characteristic of value-words is that they name 'supervenient' properties. If we are discussing whether a picture is a good picture, ..and there is another picture that is a replica of it, we cannot say 'they are alike, but one is good and the other not'. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Horgan says this is the passage which introduced 'supervenience' into contemporary discussions. I think the best simple word for it is that the goodness of the picture 'tracks' its physical characteristics. It also depend on them. |
| 9369 | 'Snow is white or it isn't' is just true, not made true by stipulation [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Isn't it overwhelmingly obvious that 'Either snow is white or it isn't' was true before anyone stipulated a meaning for it, and that it would have been true even if no one had thought about it, or chosen it to be expressed by one of our sentences? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: Boghossian would have to believe in propositions (unexpressed truths) to hold this - which he does. I take the notion of truth to only have relevance when there are minds around. Otherwise the so-called 'truths' are just the facts. |
| 9367 | The a priori is explained as analytic to avoid a dubious faculty of intuition [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The central impetus behind the analytic explanation of the a priori is a desire to explain the possibility of a priori knowledge without having to postulate a special evidence-gathering faculty of intuition. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: I don't see at all why one has to postulate a 'faculty' in order to talk about intuition. I take an intuition to be an apprehension of a probable truth, combined with an inability to articulate how the conclusion was arrived at. |
| 9373 | That logic is a priori because it is analytic resulted from explaining the meaning of logical constants [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The analytic theory of the apriority of logic arose indirectly, as a by-product of the attempt to explain in what a grasp of the meaning of the logical constants consists. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: Preumably he is referring to Wittgenstein's anguish over the meaning of the word 'not' in his World War I notebooks. He first defined the constants by truth tables, then asserted that they were purely conventional - so logic is conventional. |
| 9380 | We can't hold a sentence true without evidence if we can't agree which sentence is definitive of it [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: If there is no sentence I must hold true if it is to mean what it does, then there is no basis on which to argue that I am entitled to hold it true without evidence. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: He is exploring Quine's view. Truth by convention depends on agreeing which part of the usage of a term constitutes its defining sentence(s), and that may be rather tricky. Boghossian says this slides into the 'dreaded indeterminacy of meaning'. |
| 9384 | We may have strong a priori beliefs which we pragmatically drop from our best theory [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: It is consistent with a belief's being a priori in the strong sense that we should have pragmatic reasons for dropping it from our best overall theory. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], n 6) | |
| A reaction: Does 'dropping it' from the theory mean just ignoring it, or actually denying it? C.I. Lewis is the ancestor of this view. Could it be our 'best' theory, while conflicting with beliefs that were strongly a priori? Pragmatism can embrace falsehoods. |
| 9374 | If we learn geometry by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: If we learn geometrical truths by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This refers to the development of non-Euclidean geometries, though the main misleading concerns parallels, which involves infinity. Boghossian cites 'distance' as a concept the Euclideans had misunderstood. Why shouldn't intuitions be wrong? |
| 9378 | If meaning depends on conceptual role, what properties are needed to do the job? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual Role Semantics must explain what properties an inference or sentence involving a logical constant must have, if that inference or sentence is to be constitutive of its meaning. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This is my perennial request that if something is to be defined by its function (or role), we must try to explain what properties it has that make its function possible, and those properties will be the more basic explanation. |
| 9377 | 'Conceptual role semantics' says terms have meaning from sentences and/or inferences [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: 'Conceptual role semantics' says the logical constants mean what they do by virtue of figuring in certain inferences and/or sentences involving them and not others, ..so some inferences and sentences are constitutive of an expression's meaning. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: If the meaning of the terms derives from the sentences in which they figure, that seems to be meaning-as-use. The view that it depends on the inferences seems very different, and is a more interesting but more risky claim. |
| 9372 | Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Could there be a fact of the matter about what each expression means, but no fact of the matter about whether they mean the same? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §II) | |
| A reaction: He is discussing Quine's attack on synonymy, and his scepticism about meaning. Boghossian and I believe in propositions, so we have no trouble with two statements having the same meaning. Denial of propositions breeds trouble. |
| 17721 | There are no truths in virtue of meaning, but there is knowability in virtue of understanding [Boghossian, by Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Boghossian distinguishes metaphysical analyticity (truth purely in virtue of meaning, debunked by Quine, he says) from epistemic analyticity (knowability purely in virtue of understanding - a notion in good standing). | |
| From: report of Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 2.4 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This fits with Jenkins's claim that we have a priori knowledge just through understanding and relating our concepts. She, however, rejects that idea that a priori is analytic. |
| 9368 | Epistemological analyticity: grasp of meaning is justification; metaphysical: truth depends on meaning [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The epistemological notion of analyticity: a statement is 'true by virtue of meaning' provided that grasp of its meaning alone suffices for justified belief in its truth; the metaphysical reading is that it owes its truth to its meaning, not to facts. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: Kripke thinks it is neither, but is a purely semantic notion. How could grasp of meaning alone be a good justification if it wasn't meaning which was the sole cause of the statement's truth? I'm not convinced by his distinction. |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2855 | In primary evaluative words like 'ought' prescription is constant but description can vary [Hare, by Hooker,B] |
| Full Idea: Hare says words are secondarily evaluative (e.g. 'soft-hearted') if prescriptive meaning varies but description is constant; primarily evaluative words ('good', 'right', 'ought') are the opposite, with the descriptive content varying. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (The Language of Morals [1952]) by Brad W. Hooker - Prescriptivism p.640 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that the prescriptive meaning of the evaluative word could at least vary in strength. You really, really ought to do that. |
| 22331 | Moral statements are imperatives rather than the avowals of emotion - but universalisable [Hare, by Glock] |
| Full Idea: According to Hare's universal prescriptivism, moral statements are closer to imperatives than to avowals of emotion; their purpose is to guide action. But unlike imeperatives they are universalisable. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 2.9 | |
| A reaction: Why isn't 'everyone ought to support West Ham' a moral judgement? |
| 22484 | Universalised prescriptivism could be seen as implying utilitarianism [Hare, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Hare has suggested that a fairly tight form of utilitarianism can be obtained from universalised prescriptivism. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963]) by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.191 | |
| A reaction: All the benefits of Bentham, Kant and Hume, in one neat package! Since I take all three of them to be wrong about ethics, that counts against this idea. |
| 4125 | Hare says I acquire an agglomeration of preferences by role-reversal, leading to utilitarianism [Hare, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: In Hare's theory I apply a "role-reversal test", and then acquire an actual agglomeration of preferences that apply to the hypothetical situation. The result is utilitarianism. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: It hits that traditional stumbling block, of why I should care about the preferences of others. Pure reason and empathy are the options (Kant or Hume). I may, however, lack both. |
| 4126 | If we have to want the preferences of the many, we have to abandon our own deeply-held views [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: Hare's version of utilitarianism requires an agent to abandon any deeply held principle or conviction if a large enough aggregate of contrary preferences, of whatever kind, favours a contrary action. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This nicely attacks any impersonal moral theory, whether it is based on reason or preferences. But where did my personal ideals come from? |
| 4127 | If morality is to be built on identification with the preferences of others, I must agree with their errors [Williams,B on Hare] |
| Full Idea: If there is to be total identification with others, then if another's preferences are mistaken, the preferences I imagine myself into are equally mistaken, and if 'identification' is the point, they should remain mistaken. | |
| From: comment on Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Yes. The core of morality must be judgement. Robots can implement universal utilitarian rules, but they could end up promoting persecutions of minorities. |
| 22483 | A judgement is presciptive if we expect it to be acted on [Hare] |
| Full Idea: We say something prescriptive if and only if, for some act A, some situation S and some person R, if P were to assent (orally) to what we say, and not, in S, do A, he logically must be assenting insincerely. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], p.21), quoted by Philippa Foot - Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? p.190 | |
| A reaction: Foot offers this as Hare's most explicit definition. The use of algebra strikes me as ludicrous. In logic letters have the virtue of not shifting their meaning during an argument, but that is not required here. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 4360 | By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright [Hare] |
| Full Idea: By far the easiest way of seeming upright is to be upright. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Moral Thinking: Its Levels,Method and Point [1981], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Yes. This is the route which takes us from enlightened self-interest to a vision of true morality. Virtue is found to be its own reward, thought that is not how we became virtuous to begin with. |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |
| 6449 | The categorical imperative leads to utilitarianism [Hare, by Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Hare has proposed that utilitarianism is the ultimate standard to which we are led by the categorical imperative. | |
| From: report of Richard M. Hare (Freedom and Reason [1963], p.123-4) by Thomas Nagel - Equality and Partiality | |
| A reaction: It seems to me better to say that Kant starts (unwittingly) from something like utilitarianism, that is, an assumption that human happiness and welfare have some sort of intrinsic value that cannot be demonstrated. Otherwise evil can be universalised. |
| 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? |