Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Reply to Hellman' and 'Attitudes De Dicto and De Se'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 2. Propositional Attitudes
Attitudes involve properties (not propositions), and belief is self-ascribing the properties [Lewis, by Solomon]
     Full Idea: Lewis suggests that we take attitudes to have properties, rather than propositions, as contents. To stand in the belief relation to a property is to self-ascribe that property.
     From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Robert C. Solomon - Erotic Love as a Moral Virtue 05.1
     A reaction: This is the sort of convoluted suggestion that Lewis has to come up with, in pursuit of his project of a wholly consistent metaphysics. Examine Lewis's account of properties before you judge this proposal! Self-ascribing is joining a set!
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 9. Indexical Thought
Lewis's popular centred worlds approach gives an attitude an index of world, subject and time [Lewis, by Recanati]
     Full Idea: Many philosophers now prefer Lewis's centred worlds framework for indexicals …It is two-dimensional, saying an attitude only has a truth-value when evaluated with respect to a contextual index, containing a subject and time, as well as a world.
     From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 18.2
     A reaction: [compressed; this is said to have largely ousted the older Kaplan-Perry view] You only begin to understand the possible worlds game when you see how many problems find proposed 'solutions' there.