16 ideas
19086 | Does the pragmatic theory of meaning support objective truth, or make it impossible? [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: Peirce and Sellars takes Peirce's conception of meaning, on which pragmatism is founded, to support an adequate account of objective truth; James, Dewey and Rorty say it forecloses all possibility of such an account. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.169) | |
A reaction: Ah. Very helpful. I thought there was a pragmatic theory of truth, then began to think that it was just a denial of truth. I've long suspected that Peirce is wonderful, and James is not very good (on this topic). |
19093 | Greek mathematics is wholly sensory, where ours is wholly inferential [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: Ancient mathematical concepts were essentially sensory; they were not mathematical in our sense - that is, wholly constituted by their inferential potential. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.187) | |
A reaction: The latter view is Frege's, though I suppose it had been emerging for a couple of centuries before him. I like the Greek approach, and would love to see that reunited with the supposedly quite different modern view. (Keith Hossack is attempting it). |
16052 | 'Superdupervenience' is supervenience that has a robustly materialistic explanation [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: The idea of a ontological supervenience that is robustly explainable in a materialistically explainable way I hereby dub 'superdupervenience'. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: [He credits William Lycan with the actual word] His assumption prior to this introduction is that mere supervenience just adds a new mystery. I take supervenience to be an observation of 'tracking', which presumably needs to be explained. |
16053 | 'Global' supervenience is facts tracking varying physical facts in every possible world [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: The idea of 'global supervenience' is standardly expressed as 'there are no two physically possible worlds which are exactly alike in all physical respects but different in some other respect'. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
A reaction: [Jaegwon Kim is the source of this concept] The 'local' view will be that they do indeed track, but they could, in principle, come apart. A zombie might be a case of them possibly coming apart. Zombies are silly. |
16056 | Don't just observe supervenience - explain it! [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Although the task of explaining supervenience has been little appreciated and little discussed in the philosophical literature, it is time for that to change. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
A reaction: I would offer a strong addition to this: be absolutely sure that you are dealing with two distinct things in the supervenience relationship, before you waste time trying to explain how they relate to one another. |
16055 | Materialism requires that physics be causally complete [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Any broadly materialistic metaphysical position needs to claim that physics is causally complete. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §6) | |
A reaction: Since 'physics' is a human creation, I presume he means that physical reality is causally complete. The interaction problem that faced Descartes seems crucial - how could something utterly non-physical effect a physical change? |
16054 | Physicalism needs more than global supervenience on the physical [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Global supervenience seems too weak to capture the physical facts determining all the facts. …There could be two spatio-temporal regions alike in all physical respects, but different in some intrinsic non-physical respect. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
A reaction: I.e. there might be two physically identical regions, but one contains angels and the other doesn't (so the extra fact isn't tracking the physical facts). Physicalism I take to be the simple denial of the angels. Supervenience is an explanandum. |
17771 | How we evaluate evidence depends on our background beliefs [Bayne] |
Full Idea: A claim that might be very plausible given one set of background beliefs might be highly implausible when evaluated in the light of a different set of background beliefs. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.7) |
17770 | Clifford's dictum seems to block our beliefs in morality, politics and philosophy [Bayne] |
Full Idea: Endorsing Clifford's dictum threatens to undermine our right to hold many of our most cherished beliefs about morality, politics, and philosophy, for these are domains in which it is notoriously difficult to secure consensus. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: I would say that those beliefs are amenable to evidence, but the evidence is often highly generalised, which is what makes those subjects notoriously difficult. The existence of a convention is a sort of evidence. |
19091 | Seeing reality mathematically makes it an object of thought, not of experience [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: As mathematically understood, the world is not an object of experience but instead an object of thought. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.183) | |
A reaction: Since I am keen on citing biology to show that science does not have to be mathematical, this nicely shows that there is something wrong with a science which places a large gap between itself and the world. |
16057 | Instrumentalism normally says some discourse is useful, but not genuinely true [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Instrumentalist views typically attribute utility to the given body of discourse, but deny that it expresses genuine truths. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
A reaction: To me it is obvious to ask why anything could have a high level of utility (especially in accounts of the external physical world) without being true. Falsehoods may sometimes (though I doubt it) be handy in human life, but useful in chemistry…? |
17766 | Physicalism correlates brain and mind, explains causation by thought, and makes nature continuous [Bayne] |
Full Idea: The motivations for physicalism about the mind are that it accounts for correlations between states of the brain and states of thought, ...that it accounts for the causal role of thoughts, ...and that it does justice to the continuity of nature. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: [summary] That is a pretty good summary of why I am a physicalist about the mind. I take all other theories to be dead footnotes in the history of thought - unless someone can produce a really good new argument. Which they can't. |
17768 | Perception reveals what animals think, but humans can disengage thought from perception [Bayne] |
Full Idea: One striking feature of human thought involves our ability to disengage the focus of thought from that of our perceptual attention. ...To get a fix on what an animal is thinking about, one need only determine the object of its perceptual attention. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: What happens when an animal closes its eyes, or stirs violently during sleep? I take the hallmark of human thought to be its multi-level character, and this offers nice evidence for that view. Doing philosophy while driving a car is very revealing. |
17769 | Some people centre space on themselves; others centre space on the earth [Bayne] |
Full Idea: Egocentric conceptions of space employ a frame of reference that is focused on oneself; ...geocentric conceptions of space, by contrast, employ a frame of reference that is centred on the earth. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Famously, Europeans nearly always employ the egocentric conception, but many other cultures are geocentric. Thus the salt cellar is either 'to my left' or 'to the west'. In the latter view, everyone always knows their orientation (even indoors?). |
17767 | The alternative to a language of thought is map-like or diagram-like thought [Bayne] |
Full Idea: One could think that the structure of thought has more in common with that of maps or diagrams, and is not particularly language-like. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: It seems unwise to be ensnared by analogies on this one, since the phenomenon is buried deep. You can no more infer what goes on underneath than you can infer electrons from looking at trees? |
19088 | For pragmatists a concept means its consequences [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: In the pragmatist view, the meaning of a concept is exhausted by its consequences. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.173) | |
A reaction: I'm unclear why the concept of a volcanic eruption only concerns its dire consequences, and is supposed to contain nothing of its causes. Pragmatists seem to be all future, and no past. Very American. |