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7 ideas
15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
Full Idea: In its unquantified form 'If p then q' the indicative conditional is perhaps best represented as suffering a truth-value gap whenever its antecedent is false. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: That is, the clear truth-functional reading of the conditional (favoured by Lewis, his pupil) is unacceptable. Quine favours the Edgington line, that we are only interested in situations where the antecedent might be true. |
15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
Full Idea: The ordinary conditional loses its point when the truth value of its antecedent is known. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: A beautifully simple point that reveals a lot about what conditionals are. |
15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional depends, like indirect quotation and more so, on a dramatic projection: we feign belief in the antececent and see how convincing we then find the consequent. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: This seems accurate. It means that we are only interested in when the antecedent is true, and when it is false is irrelevant. |
15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
Full Idea: The traits to suppose preserved in a counterfactual depend on sympathy for the fabulist's purpose. Compare 'If Caesar were in command, he would use the atom bomb', and 'If Caesar were in command, he would use catapults'. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: This seems to be an important example for the Lewis approach, since you are asked to consider the 'nearest' possible world, but that will depend on context. |
15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional is seen at its most respectable in the disposition terms. ...The reason is that they are conceived as built-in, enduring structural traits. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: Surprisingly, this is very sympathetic to a metaphysical view that seems a long way from Quine, since dispositions seem to invite commitment to modal features of reality. But the structural traits are not, of course, modal, in any way! |
15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional has no place in an austere canonical notation for science - but that ban is less restrictive than would at first appear. | |
From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
A reaction: Idea 15723 shows what he has in mind - that what science aims for is accounts of dispositional mechanisms, which then leave talk of other possible worlds (in Lewis style) as unnecessary. I may be with Quine one this one. |
19440 | How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya] |
Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility. | |
From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this. |