22 ideas
2516 | Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz] |
Full Idea: Philosophy, or at least one large part of it, is subsequent to science; it begins where science leaves off. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxi) | |
A reaction: In some sense this has to be true. Without metaphysics there couldn't be any science. Rationalists should not forget, though, the huge impact which Darwin's science has (or should have) on fairly abstract philosophy (e.g. epistemology). |
2510 | Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz] |
Full Idea: The traditional conception of philosophy is that it is an a priori enquiry into the most general facts about reality. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xi) | |
A reaction: I think this still defines philosophy, though it also highlights the weakness of the subject, which is over-confidence about asserting necessary truths. How could the most god-like areas of human thought be about anything else? |
7306 | If the only property of a name was its reference, we couldn't explain bearerless names [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: If having a reference were the only semantic property in terms of which we could explain the functioning of names, we would be in trouble with respect to names that simply have no bearer. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 2.1.1) | |
A reaction: (Miller is discussing Frege) 'Odysseus' is given as an example. Instead of switching to a bundle of descriptions, we could say that we just imagine an object which is stamped with the name. Names always try to refer. |
2521 | 'Real' maths objects have no causal role, no determinate reference, and no abstract/concrete distinction [Katz] |
Full Idea: Three objections to realism in philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects have no space/time location, and so no causal role; that such objects are determinate, but reference to numbers aren't; and that there is no abstract/concrete distinction. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxix) |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
2513 | We don't have a clear enough sense of meaning to pronounce some sentences meaningless or just analytic [Katz] |
Full Idea: Linguistic meaning is not rich enough to show either that all metaphysical sentences are meaningless or that all alleged synthetic a priori propositions are just analytic a priori propositions. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xx) |
2522 | Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz] |
Full Idea: The Leibniz-Kant criticism of empiricism is that experience cannot teach us why mathematical and logical facts couldn't be otherwise than they are. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxxi) |
7322 | Constitutive scepticism is about facts, and epistemological scepticism about our ability to know them [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: We should distinguish 'constitutive scepticism' (about the existence of certain sorts of facts) from the traditional 'epistemological scepticism' (which concedes that the sort of fact in question exists, but questions our right to claim knowledge of it). | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 4.7) | |
A reaction: I would be inclined to call the first type 'ontological scepticism'. Miller is discussing Quine's scepticism about meaning. Atheists fall into the first group, and agnostics into the second. An important, and nicely simple, distinction. |
7325 | Dispositions say what we will do, not what we ought to do, so can't explain normativity [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: Dispositional facts are facts about what we will do, not about what we ought to do, and as such cannot capture the normativity of meaning. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 6.2) | |
A reaction: Miller is discussing language, but this raises a nice question for all behaviourist accounts of mental events. Perhaps there is a disposition to behave in a guilty way if you do something you think you shouldn't do. (Er, isn't 'guilt' a mental event?) |
2517 | Structuralists see meaning behaviouristically, and Chomsky says nothing about it [Katz] |
Full Idea: In linguistics there are two schools of thought: Bloomfieldian structuralism (favoured by Quine) conceives of sentences acoustically and meanings behaviouristically; and Chomskian generative grammar (which is silent about semantics). | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxiv) | |
A reaction: They both appear to be wrong, so there is (or was) something rotten in the state of linguistics. Are the only options for meaning either behaviourist or eliminativist? |
7324 | Explain meaning by propositional attitudes, or vice versa, or together? [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: Grice wants to explain linguistic meaning in terms of the content of propositional attitudes, Dummett has championed the view that propositional attitudes must be explained by linguistic meaning, while Davidson says they must be explained together. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 6.1) | |
A reaction: A useful map. My intuition says propositional attitudes come first, for evolutionary reasons. We are animals first, and speakers second. Thought precedes language. A highly social animal flourishes if it can communicate. |
2519 | It is generally accepted that sense is defined as the determiner of reference [Katz] |
Full Idea: There is virtually universal acceptance of Frege's definition of sense as the determiner of reference. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
A reaction: Not any more, since Kripke and Putnam. It is one thing to say sense determines reference, and quite another to say that this is the definition of sense. |
2520 | Sense determines meaning and synonymy, not referential properties like denotation and truth [Katz] |
Full Idea: Pace Frege, sense determines sense properties and relations, like meaningfulness and synonymy, rather than determining referential properties, like denotation and truth. | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
A reaction: This leaves room for Fregean 'sense', after Kripke has demolished the idea that sense determines reference. |
7323 | If truth is deflationary, sentence truth-conditions just need good declarative syntax [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: On a deflationary concept of truth, for a sentence to possess truth-conditions it is sufficient that it be disciplined by norms of correct usage, and that it possess the syntax distinctive of declarative sentences. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 5.3) | |
A reaction: Idea 6337 gives the basic deflationary claim. He mentions Boghossian as source of this point. So much the worse for the deflationary concept of truth, say I. What are the truth-conditions of "Truth rotates"? |
2518 | Sentences are abstract types (like musical scores), not individual tokens [Katz] |
Full Idea: Sentences are types, not utterance tokens or mental/neural tokens, and hence sentences are abstract objects (like musical scores). | |
From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
A reaction: If sentences are abstract types, then two verbally indistinguishable sentences are the same sentence. But if I say 'I am happy', that isn't the same as you saying it. |
7315 | 'Jones is a married bachelor' does not have the logical form of a contradiction [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: The syntactic notion of contradiction (p and not-p) is well understood, but is no help in explaining analyticity, since "Jones is a married bachelor" is not of that syntactic form. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 4.2) | |
A reaction: This point is based on Quine. This means we cannot define analytic sentences as those whose denial is a contradiction, even though that seems to be true of them. Both the Kantian and the modern logical versions of analyticity are in trouble. |
7328 | The principle of charity is holistic, saying we must hold most of someone's system of beliefs to be true [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: Properly construed, the principle of charity is a holistic constraint applying, not to individual beliefs, but rather to systems of belief: we must interpret a speaker so that most of the beliefs in his system are, by our lights, true. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 8.7) | |
A reaction: This is a lot more plausible than applying the principle to individual sentences, particularly if you are in the company of habitual ironists or constitutional liars. |
7329 | Maybe we should interpret speakers as intelligible, rather than speaking truth [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: A more sophisticated version of the principle of charity holds that we interpret speakers not as necessarily having beliefs that are true by our own lights, but as having beliefs that are intelligible by our own lights. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 8.7) | |
A reaction: Consider Idea 4161 in the light of this. Presumably this means that we treat them as having a coherent set of beliefs, even if they seem to us to fail to correspond to reality. I prefer the stronger version that there has to be some proper truth in there. |
7333 | The Frege-Geach problem is that I can discuss the wrongness of murder without disapproval [Miller,A] |
Full Idea: The main problem faced by non-cognitivism is known as the Frege-Geach problem: if I say "If murder is wrong, then getting your brother to murder people is wrong", that is an unasserted context, and I don't necessarily express disapproval of murder. | |
From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 9.2) | |
A reaction: The emotivist or non-cognitivist might mount a defence by saying there is some second-order or deep-buried emotion involved. Could a robot without feelings even understand what humans meant when they said "It is morally wrong"? |