display all the ideas for this combination of texts
12 ideas
| 18407 | Indexicality is not significantly connected to agency [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: There are no interesting or distinctive explanatory connections between indexicality and agency. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.8) |
| 18404 | It is assumed that indexical content is needed to represent the perspective of perception [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: Because our perceptual states typically represent the world as seen from a perspective, it is sometimes thought that some distinctively indexical kind of content is needed to characterise those states. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: They are summarising this view precisely so that they can oppose it, and I think they are right. |
| 18426 | All information is objective, and purely indexical information is not much use [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: Fundamentally, all information is objective information. ...[176] What we want is fully portable information, and information that co-ordinates on the world, rather than on us, is best suited for the task. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with their thesis. We just pick up information about ourselves, such as who and where we are, which is just like equivalent information about other people. It is isn't a special type of information. |
| 18427 | If some of our thought is tied to its context, it will be hard to communicate it [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: It is bad news if some of our contents are essentially tied to particular contexts. ...If information needs to be assessed relative to some ur-context, later recipients won't know what to do with it. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) |
| 18428 | You don't remember your house interior just from an experienced viewpoint [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: When you recall the look of the inside of your house ....where things are relative to one another is what persists in memory, not where they were relative to you when seen. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very telling example, though you could postulate some system which converts perspectival input into objective information. But why bother? We seek objective information, not perspectives. |
| 18429 | Our beliefs and desires are not organised around ourselves, but around the world [Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: Our view on the world is not primarily a view from a perspective. Our beliefs and desires are not organized around us. They are instead organized around the world itself. Our view is a view from everywhere. | |
| From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
| A reaction: Slipping in the claim that our desires are also organised around the world is not quite as persuasive as the claim about beliefs. If you want to draw a freehand straight line, focus on the far end of it. The world will guide your hand. |
| 9144 | Fine's 'procedural postulationism' uses creative definitions, but avoids abstract ontology [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: Fine says creative definitions can found mathematics. His 'procedural postulationism' says one stipulates not truths, but certain procedures for extending a domain. The procedures can be stated without invoking an abstract ontology. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], 100) by R Cook / P Ebert - Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' 4 | |
| A reaction: (For creative definitions, see Idea 9143) This sounds close in spirit to fictionalism, but with the emphasis on the procedure (which can presumably be formalized) rather than a pure act of imaginative creation. |
| 10141 | Many different kinds of mathematical objects can be regarded as forms of abstraction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Many different kinds of mathematical objects (natural numbers, the reals, points, lines, figures, groups) can be regarded as forms of abstraction, with special theories having their basis in a general theory of abstraction. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This result, if persuasive, would be just the sort of unified account which the whole problem of abstact ideas requires. |
| 10135 | We can abstract from concepts (e.g. to number) and from objects (e.g. to direction) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A principle of abstraction is 'conceptual' when the items upon which it abstracts are concepts (e.g. a one-one correspondence associated with a number), and 'objectual' if they are objects (parallel lines associated with a direction). | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I) |
| 9142 | Fine considers abstraction as reconceptualization, to produce new senses by analysing given senses [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: Fine considers abstraction principles as instances of reconceptualization (rather than implicit definition, or using the Context Principle). This centres not on reference, but on new senses emerging from analysis of a given sense. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], 035) by R Cook / P Ebert - Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' 2 | |
| A reaction: Fine develops an argument against this view, because (roughly) the procedure does not end in a unique result. Intuitively, the idea that abstraction is 'reconceptualization' sounds quite promising to me. |
| 10137 | Abstractionism can be regarded as an alternative to set theory [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The uncompromising abstractionist rejects set theory, seeing the theory of abstractions as an alternative, rather than as a supplement, to the standard theory of sets. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.1) | |
| A reaction: There is also a 'compromising' version. Presumably you still have equivalence classes to categorise the objects, which are defined by their origin rather than by what they are members of... Cf. Idea 10145. |
| 10138 | An object is the abstract of a concept with respect to a relation on concepts [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We can see an object as being the abstract of a concept with respect to a relation on concepts. For example, we may say that 0 is the abstract of the empty concept with respect to the relation of one-one correspondence. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.2) | |
| A reaction: This is Fine's attempt to give a modified account of the Fregean approach to abstraction. He says that the reference to a relation will solve the problem of identity between abstractions. |