30 ideas
| 19115 | You can 'rebut' an argument's conclusion, or 'undercut' its premises [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: A 'rebut' of an argument establishes that its conclusion is not the case. An 'undercut' of the argument shows that the premises do not support that conclusion. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 3.2) |
| 19119 | We infer that other objects are like some exceptional object, if they share some of its properties [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: The exceptional status of an object with respect to some default is more likely to spread to other objects if they share properties with that object that may play a role in explaining the exceptional status. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is an example of the sort of rational behaviour we exhibit, and which a 'real life' logic would somehow need to capture. I would suggest the essentialist logic designed by Kit Fine as a first port of call. |
| 19111 | Reasoning may be defeated by new premises, or by finding out more about the given ones [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: Most defeasible reasoning is externally dynamic, affected by the addition of further premises. But there is also an internal (or 'diachronic') dynamic, when further analysis reveals more about the given premises. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 1) |
| 19114 | Should we accept Floating Conclusions, derived from two arguments in conflict? [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: There is much discussion of whether Floating Conclusions should be derived, given that they were derived from two arguments which conflict with one another. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 2.3) |
| 19113 | Weakest Link Principle: prefer the argument whose weakest link is the stronger [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: In the Weakest Link Principle, an argument is preferred to another conflicting argument if its weakest defeasible link is stronger than the weakest defeasible link in the conflicting argument. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites John Pollock 1991] This sounds like the elementary principle applied when choosing a rope by which to hang a large weight above your head. It gets non-monotonic logic off the ground - if you know how to evaluate 'weakest'. |
| 19116 | Non-monotonic core: Reflexivity, Cut, Cautious Monotonicity, Left Logical Equivalence, Right Weakening [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: Conservative core of non-monotonic logic:Reflexivity (p proves p), Cut (if p proves q, it proves their joint implications), Cautious Monotonicity, Left Logical Equivalence (equivalences have same consequences), Right Weakening (non-m preserves classical). | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 3.5.1) | |
| A reaction: [Highly compressed, and without symbols] |
| 19117 | We can rank a formula by the level of surprise if it were to hold [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: We can think of an 'ordinal ranking function' κ([φ)] as the level of surprise we would face were φ to hold, up to maximal surprise. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 3.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This suggests that Bayes's Theorem might be relevant to non-monotonic logic. This suggests that registering surprise would need to be an important feature of robot behaviour. |
| 19118 | People don't actually use classical logic, but may actually use non-monotonic logic [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: Test subjects seem to perform very poorly in various reasoning tests (Wason Selection, Suppression Task), suggesting logic has a subordinate role, but this may be using classical logic, where non-monotonic logics would be more appropriate. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 4) | |
| A reaction: Fred Sommers presents his Term Logic (based on Aristotle) as closer to how people actually reason. It is certainly crazy to infer that most people's everyday reasoning is irrational. Induction is highly rational; it's just not deductive. |
| 19110 | In classical logic the relation |= has Monotony built into its definition [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: In classical logic, Monotony follows immediately from the nature of the relation |=, for Γ |= φ holds precisely when φ is true on every interpretation on which all sentences in Γ are true. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: That is, semantic consequence (|=) is defined in terms of a sentence (φ) always being true if some other bunch of sentences (Γ) are true. Hence the addition of further sentences to Γ will make no difference - which is Monotony. |
| 19112 | Cautious Monotony ignores proved additions; Rational Monotony fails if the addition's negation is proved [Antonelli] |
| Full Idea: Basic Monotony: something stays proved if further premises are added. Cautious Monotony: the addition of something which has been proved makes no difference. Rational Monotony: it stays proved as long as the addition's negation hasn't been proved. | |
| From: G. Aldo Antonelli (Non-Monotonic Logic [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: [A compressed and non-symbolic summary] |
| 12270 | Being is one [Melissus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being is one. | |
| From: report of Melissus (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Aristotle - Topics 104b23 | |
| A reaction: I can only really understand this in terms of physics, as the belief that ultimately there is one simple theory which explains everything. That project doesn't look terribly promising, despite the lovely simplifications of modern physics. |
| 20339 | Classes rarely share properties with their members - unlike universals and types [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Classes can share properties with their members (e.g. the class of big things is big), but this is very rare. ....In the case of both universals and types, there will be shared properties. Red things can be exhilarating, and so can redness. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 92) | |
| A reaction: 'Exhilarating' is an extrinsic property, so not the best illustration. This is interesting, but would need checking with a wide range of examples. (Too busy for that right now) |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Much of the time we think and talk of a type as though it were itself a kind of token. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful way of connecting what I call 'objectification' to the more conventional modern philosophical vocabulary. Thus I might claim that beauty is superior to truth, as if they were two tokens. |
| 20342 | Interpretation is performance for some arts, and critical for all arts [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Performative interpretation occurs only with certain arts, but critical intepretation pertains to all. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 38) | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, but this is the first point to make about the concept of 'interpretation'. Does the word in fact have two meanings? Or do I perform a painting when I look carefully at it? |
| 20343 | A love of nature must precede a love of art [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: We could not have a feeling for the beauties of art unless we had been correspondingly moved in front of nature. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 43) | |
| A reaction: Wollheim offers this in defence of Kant's view, without necessarily agreeing. Similarly one could hardly care for fictional characters, but not for real people. So the aesthetic attitude may arise from life, rather than from art. Is art hence unimportant? |
| 20348 | A criterion of identity for works of art would be easier than a definition [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe, rather than defining art, it would be more fruitful, and more realistic, to seek a general method of identifying works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 60) | |
| A reaction: The whole enterprise is ruined by Marcel Duchamp! I'm more interested in identifying or defining good art. |
| 20347 | If beauty needs organisation, then totally simple things can't be beautiful [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is said that beauty cannot consist in organisation because, if it did, we would not be able to predicate beauty of totally simple objects. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 59) | |
| A reaction: [He says this idea originates in Plotinus] I'm struggling to think of an example of something which is 'totally' simple and beautiful. Maybe a patch of colour like the breast of a bullfinch? |
| 20345 | Some say art must have verbalisable expression, and others say the opposite! [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The view that a work of art expresses nothing if it can't be put into other words ...is reduced by the view that a work of art has no value if what it expresses or says can be put into (other) words. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 49) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the second view. Poetry is what is lost in translation. Good art actually seems to evoke emotions which one virtually never feels in ordinary life. But how could that be possible? What are those emotions doing there? |
| 20331 | It is claimed that the expressive properties of artworks are non-physical [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The argument that works of art have properties that physical objects could not have characteristically concentrates on the expressive properties of works of art. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 10) | |
| A reaction: Since the idea of an object having non-physical properties strikes me as ridiculous, this gets off to a bad start. If artworks are abstract objects, then all of their properties are non-physical. |
| 20336 | Style can't be seen directly within a work, but appreciation needs a grasp of style [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: 'Style' would seem to be a concept that cannot be applied to a work solely on the basis of what is represented and yet it is also essential to a proper understanding or appreciation of a work. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. One long held musical note creates an expectation which depends on the presumed style of the piece of music. A single bar from a piece may well not exhibit its characteristic style. |
| 20337 | The traditional view is that knowledge of its genre to essential to appreciating literature [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: From Aristotle onwards it has been a tenet of the traditional rhetoric that the proper understanding of a literary work involves the location of it in the correct genre, that is, as drama, epic or lyric. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 32) | |
| A reaction: Walton argues this persuasively. I've seen the climax of a Jacobean tragedy ruined by laughter from the audience. Genre dictates appropriate responses, so it is a communal concept. |
| 20333 | If artworks are not physical objects, they are either ideal entities, or collections of phenomena [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: In denying that works of art are physical objects, one theory (the 'ideal') withdraws them altogether from experience, and a second theory ('phenomenal') pins them too it inescapably and at all points. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 21) | |
| A reaction: I incline towards them being transient ideals, created by human minds. As with so much, we idealise and objectify them as 'works', and abstract their image from the instance(s) we encounter. |
| 20334 | The ideal theory says art is an intuition, shaped by a particular process, and presented in public [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: The ideal theory of Croce and Collingwood says art is first an inner intuition or expression of the artist, resulting from a particular process of organisation and unification, which can be externalised in public form. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 22) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] As stated this doesn't sound very controversial or 'ideal'. I take it the theory is intended to be more platonist than this expression of it suggests. I think the idea that it is an 'expression' of the artist is wrong. |
| 20335 | The ideal theory of art neglects both the audience and the medium employed [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Because the ideal theory makes a work of art inner or mental, the link between the artist and the audience has been severed .....and it also totally ignores the significance of the medium. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 23) | |
| A reaction: Emily Dickinson had virtually no audience for her poetry. The medium used to perform Bach's 'Art of Fugue' seems unimportant. For paintings of painterly painters paint matters. For some visual art many different media will suffice. |
| 20340 | A musical performance has virtually the same features as the piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: With the usual reservations, there is nothing that can be predicated of a performance of a piece of music that could not also be predicated of that piece of music itself. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: He offers this as evidence that it fits the performance being a token, and music (and all other art) being a type. There are quite a few 'reservations'. Music too difficult to perform. Great music always badly performed. |
| 20341 | An interpretation adds further properties to the generic piece of music [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Interpretation may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 37) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so. If you play accurately everything that is written in the score, then anything else has to be an addition. If you play less than the score, you aren't quite playing that piece of music. |
| 20332 | A drawing only represents Napoleon if the artist intended it to [Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary, if a drawing is to represent Napoleon, that the draughtsman should intend it to be Napoleon. | |
| From: Richard Wollheim (Art and Its Objects [1968], 13) | |
| A reaction: Does a perfect and intended representation of a person also count as a representation of the person's identical twin? The families of both might well order copies. |
| 3059 | There is no real motion, only the appearance of it [Melissus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as real motion, but there only appears to be such. | |
| From: report of Melissus (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.4.3 |
| 5100 | The void is not required for change, because a plenum can alter in quality [Aristotle on Melissus] |
| Full Idea: There is no need for void to be the cause of all change, because it is perfectly possible for a plenum to alter qualitatively (which is something Melissus overlooked). | |
| From: comment on Melissus (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 214a27 | |
| A reaction: In modern physics this presumably gives us fluctuations in a force field. Motion is like a cat being digested by a python. The atomist claim that emptiness is needed if anything is to move still has intuitive appeal. |
| 456 | Nothing could come out of nothing [Melissus] |
| Full Idea: If Nothing existed, in no way could anything come into being out of nothing. | |
| From: Melissus (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B1), quoted by (who?) - where? |