32 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. |
| 18369 | There are at least fourteen candidates for truth-bearers [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Among the candidates [for truthbearers] are beliefs, propositions, judgments, assertions, statements, theories, remarks, ideas, acts of thought, utterances, sentence tokens, sentence types, sentences (unspecified), and speech acts. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I vote for propositions, but only in the sense of the thoughts underlying language, not the Russellian things which are supposed to exist independently from thinkers. |
| 19318 | A 'sequence' of objects is an order set of them [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: A 'sequence' of objects is like a set of objects, except that, unlike a set, the order of the objects is important when dealing with sequences. ...An infinite sequence satisfies 'x2 is purple' if and only if the second member of the sequence is purple. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This explains why Tarski needed set theory in his metalanguage. |
| 19319 | If one sequence satisfies a sentence, they all do [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: If one sequence satisfies a sentence, they all do. ...Thus it matters not whether we define truth as satisfaction by some sequence or as satisfaction by all sequences. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: So if the striker scores a goal, the team has scored a goal. |
| 19320 | If we define truth by listing the satisfactions, the supply of predicates must be finite [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Because the definition of satisfaction must have a separate clause for each predicate, Tarski's method only works for languages with a finite number of predicates, ...but natural languages have an infinite number of predicates. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: He suggest predicates containing natural numbers, as examples of infinite predicates. Davidson tried to extend the theory to natural languages, by (I think) applying it to adverbs, which could generate the infinite predicates. Maths has finite predicates. |
| 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. |
| 19315 | In quantified language the components of complex sentences may not be sentences [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: In a quantified language it is possible to build new sentences by combining two expressions neither of which is itself a sentence. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: In propositional logic the components are other sentences, so the truth value can be given by their separate truth-values, through truth tables. Kirkham is explaining the task which Tarski faced. Truth-values are not just compositional. |
| 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. |
| 19317 | An open sentence is satisfied if the object possess that property [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: An object satisfies an open sentence if and only if it possesses the property expressed by the predicate of the open sentence. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This applies to atomic sentence, of the form Fx or Fa (that is, some variable is F, or some object is F). So strictly, only the world can decide whether some open sentence is satisfied. And it all depends on things called 'properties'. |
| 17486 | Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is not an ontological relationship, being just modally robust property co-variance. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Ontol') | |
| A reaction: I take supervenience to be nothing more than an interesting phenomenon that requires explanation. I suppose Humean Supervenience is a priori metaphysics, since you could hardly explain it. |
| 19322 | Why can there not be disjunctive, conditional and negative facts? [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: It has been said that there are no disjunctive facts, conditional facts, or negative facts. ...but it is not at all clear why there cannot be facts of this sort. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: I love these sorts of facts, and offer them as a naturalistic basis for logic. You probably need the world to have modal features, but I have those in the form of powers and dispositions. |
| 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? |
| 17481 | Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Given relevant laws of nature (quantum mechanics, the exclusion principle) nuclear charge determines and explains electronic structure and spectroscopic behaviour, but not vice versa. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: I argue that the first necessary condition for essentialism is a direction of explanation, and here we seem to have one. |
| 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. |
| 17478 | Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: One suggestion is that any two different substance, however alike, exhibit a positive entropy change on mixing. So absence of entropy change on isothermal mixing provides a criterion of sameness of kind. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Paul Needham 2000] This sounds nice, because at a more amateur level we can say that stuff is the same if mixing two samples of it produces no difference. I call it the Upanishads Test. |
| 17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Some deny that that microstructure is what makes it water; substance identity and difference should be determined instead by macroscopic similarities and differences. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: Very plausible. Is the essential nature of human beings to be found in the structure of our cells? |
| 17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Whatever earns something membership of the extension of 'krypton' must be a property that can survive chemical change and, therefore, the gain and loss of electrons. Hence what makes it krypton must be a nuclear property. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: A very nice illuminating example of essentialism in chemistry. The 'nature' is what survives through change, just like what Aristotle said, innit? |
| 17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: If they do count as water, individual H2O molecules are the smallest items that can qualify as water on their own account. Hydroxyl ions and protons, in contrast, qualify as water only as part of a larger body. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: As Aristotle might say, this is the homoeomerous aspect of water. This is Hendry's own proposal, and seems rather good. |
| 17482 | Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: The distinctness of the isomers ethanol (CH3CH2OH, boiling at 78.4°) and dimethyl ether (CH3OCH3, boiling at -24.9°) must lie in their different molecular structures. ...But structure has continuously varying quantities, like bond length and angle. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to imply that what matters is an idealised abstraction of the structure (i.e. its topology), which is a reason for denying that chemistry is reducible to mere physics. |
| 17483 | Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Macroscopic bodies of water are complex and dynamic congeries of different molecular species, in which there is a constant dissociation of individual molecules, re-association of ions, and formation, growth and disassociation of oligomers. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: The point is that these activities are needed to explain the behaviour of water (such as its conductivity). |
| 17476 | Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Elements survive chemical change, and chemical explanations track them from one composite substance to another, thereby explaining both the direction of the chemical change, and the properties of the substances they compose. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [The 16,000th idea of this database, entered on Guy Fawkes' Day 2013] |
| 17477 | Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: In 1923 elements were defined as populations of atoms with the same nuclear charge (i.e. atomic number), allowing that atoms of the same element may have different masses. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Chem') | |
| A reaction: The point is that it allowed isotopes of the same element to come under one heading. This is fine for the heavier elements, but a bit dubious for the very light ones (where an isotope makes a bigger difference). |
| 17480 | Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: In general, nuclear charge is the overwhelming determinant of an element's chemical behaviour, while nuclear mass is a negligible factor. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: The exception is the isotopes of very light elements light hydrogen. |