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Single Idea 16525
[filed under theme 13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
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Full Idea
What sortal concepts we can bring to bear upon experience determines what we can find there.
Gist of Idea
Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience
Source
David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.6)
Book Ref
Wiggins,David: 'Sameness and Substance' [Blackwell 1980], p.141
A Reaction
Wiggins would wince at being classed among linguistic relativists of the Sapir-Whorf type, but that's where I'm putting this idea. Wiggins is a realist, who knows there are things out there our concepts miss. He compares it to a fishing net. He's wrong.
The
29 ideas
from 'Sameness and Substance'
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16492
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Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out
[Wiggins]
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16493
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Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers
[Wiggins]
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16496
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Singling out extends back and forward in time
[Wiggins]
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16495
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The only singling out is singling out 'as' something
[Wiggins]
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16494
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We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative
[Wiggins]
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17529
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Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting
[Wiggins]
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16497
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Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity
[Wiggins]
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16498
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Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities
[Wiggins]
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16499
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A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork'
[Wiggins]
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16502
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Identity is primitive
[Wiggins]
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16503
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'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing
[Wiggins]
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16501
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In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is
[Wiggins]
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16505
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By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself!
[Wiggins]
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16506
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Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence
[Wiggins]
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17530
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The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting
[Wiggins]
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16510
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Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual
[Wiggins]
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16509
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Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances
[Wiggins]
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16511
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A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept')
[Wiggins]
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16512
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Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction
[Wiggins]
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16515
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A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed
[Wiggins]
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16514
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Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function
[Wiggins]
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16517
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Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction
[Wiggins]
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16518
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We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us
[Wiggins]
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16521
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A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A
[Wiggins]
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16522
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It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human
[Wiggins]
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16523
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Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts
[Wiggins]
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16524
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Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality
[Wiggins]
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16525
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Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience
[Wiggins]
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16526
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Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed….
[Wiggins]
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