Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM, Sarah Sawyer and Galileo Galilei

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these philosophers


14 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names
Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful [Sawyer]
     Full Idea: A semantic theory of names should deliver a specification of the conditions under which a name names an individual, and hence a specification of the conditions under which a name is empty.
     From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1)
     A reaction: Naming can be private, like naming my car 'Bertrand', but never tell anyone. I like Plato's remark that names are 'tools'. Do we specify conditions for successful spanner-usage? The first step must be individuation, preparatory to naming.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / c. Names as referential
Millians say a name just means its object [Sawyer]
     Full Idea: The Millian view of direct reference says that the meaning of a name is the object named.
     From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 4)
     A reaction: Any theory that says meaning somehow is features of the physical world strikes me as totally misguided. Napoleon is a man, so he can't be part of a sentence. He delegates that job to words (such as 'Napoleon').
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names
Sentences with empty names can be understood, be co-referential, and even be true [Sawyer]
     Full Idea: Some empty names sentences can be understood, so appear to be meaningful ('Pegasus was sired by Poseidon'), ...some appear to be co-referential ('Santa Claus'/'Father Christmas'), and some appear to be straightforwardly true ('Pegasus doesn't exist').
     From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1)
     A reaction: Hang on to this, when the logicians arrive and start telling you that your talk of empty names is vacuous, because there is no object in the 'domain' to which a predicate can be attached. Meaning, reference and truth are the issues around empty names.
Frege's compositional account of truth-vaues makes 'Pegasus doesn't exist' neither true nor false [Sawyer]
     Full Idea: In Frege's account sentences such as 'Pegasus does not exist' will be neither true nor false, since the truth-value of a sentence is its referent, and the referent of a complex expression is determined by the referent of its parts.
     From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 2)
     A reaction: We can keep the idea of 'sense', which is very useful for dealing with empty names, but tweak his account of truth-values to evade this problem. I'm thinking that meaning is compositional, but truth-value isn't.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / c. Theory of definite descriptions
Definites descriptions don't solve the empty names problem, because the properties may not exist [Sawyer]
     Full Idea: If it were possible for a definite description to be empty - not in the sense of there being no object that satisfies it, but of there being no set of properties it refers to - the problem of empty names would not have been solved.
     From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 5)
     A reaction: Swoyer is thinking of properties like 'is a unicorn', which are clearly just as vulnerable to being empty as 'the unicorn' was. It seems unlikely that 'horse', 'white' and 'horn' would be empty.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 3. Levels of Reality
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.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
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.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
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.
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.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities
Heat and colour don't exist, so cannot mislead about the external world [Galileo, by Tuck]
     Full Idea: Galileo argued that there is no such thing as heat (and hence also as colour) in the external world, so there is no reason to conclude from colour-blindness that we cannot know the truth about the world.
     From: report of Galileo Galilei (Il Saggiatore ('The Assayer') [1623]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1
     A reaction: This key idea, taken up by Gassendi, Descartes and Locke, seems to me to be one of the most important (and, in retrospect, rather obvious) facts ever worked out by the human mind. Why does anyone still doubt it?
Tastes, odours and colours only reside in consciousness, and would disappear with creatures [Galileo]
     Full Idea: I think tastes, odours, colours, and so on are mere names as far as the objects are concerned, and only reside in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.
     From: Galileo Galilei (Il Saggiatore ('The Assayer') [1623]), quoted by Brian Ellis - The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism Ch.3
     A reaction: A nice bold assertion of the primary/secondary distinction from the first great scientist. I agree, and to disagree (and hence side with Berkeley and Hume) is to head for metaphsical and epistemological confusion.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / i. Explanations by mechanism
Galileo introduced geometrico-mechanical explanation, based on Archimedes [Galileo, by Machamer/Darden/Craver]
     Full Idea: The modern idea of explaining with mechanisms became current in the 17th century when Galileo articulated a geometrico-mechanical form of explanation based on Archimedes' simple machines. This became the 'mechanical philosophy'.
     From: report of Galileo Galilei (Il Saggiatore ('The Assayer') [1623]) by Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C - Thinking About Mechanisms 5.2
     A reaction: So is Archimedes the source? I would say that mechanical explanation is just commonsense, and is predominant in all human thinking, even in tiny infants.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 4. Mathematical Nature
To understand the universe mathematics is essential [Galileo]
     Full Idea: The great book of the universe cannot be understood unless one can understand the language in which it is written - the language of mathematics.
     From: Galileo Galilei (Il Saggiatore ('The Assayer') [1623], VI.232)
     A reaction: Nice, though one might say that humans created the language of maths to help them discuss the patterns they perceived in nature. Maybe what is special is order, and all order can be described mathematically.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / b. Laws of motion
Galileo mathematised movement, and revealed its invariable component - acceleration [Galileo, by Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: Galileo conceives of movement in mathematical terms. ...In doing so, he uncovered, beyond the variations of position and speed, the mathematical invariant of movement - that is to say, acceleration.
     From: report of Galileo Galilei (Two Chief World Systems [1632]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 5
     A reaction: That is a very nice advert for the mathematical physics which replaced the Aristotelian substantial forms. ...And yet, is acceleration some deep fact about nature, or a concept which is only needed if you insist on being mathematical?