display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 4099 | If Twins talking about 'water' and 'XYZ' have different thoughts but identical heads, then thoughts aren't in the head [Putnam, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: Putnam claims that the Twins have different thoughts even though their heads are the same, so their thoughts (about 'water' or 'XYZ') cannot be in their heads. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 4.37 | |
| A reaction: Is Putnam guilty of a simple confusion of de re and de dicto reference? |
| 12026 | We say ice and steam are different forms of water, but not that they are different forms of H2O [Forbes,G on Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Putnam presumes it is correct to say that ice and steam are forms of water, rather than that ice, water and steam are three forms of H2O. If we allow the latter, then 'water is H2O' is not an identity, but elliptical for 'water is H2O in liquid state'. | |
| From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 8.2 | |
| A reaction: This nice observation seems to reveal that the word 'water' is ambiguous. I presume the ambiguity preceded the discovery of its chemical construction. Shakespeare would have hesitated over whether to say 'water is ice'. Context would matter. |
| 3208 | Does 'water' mean a particular substance that was 'dubbed'? [Putnam, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Putnam argued that "water" refers to H2O by virtue of causal chains extending from present use back to early dubbing uses of it that were in fact dubbings of the substance H2O (although, of course, the original users of the word didn't know this). | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 9.2.1 | |
| A reaction: This is the basic idea of the Causal Theory of Reference. Nice conclusion: most of us don't know what we are talking about. Maybe the experts on H2O are also wrong... |
| 3408 | Two identical brain states could have different contents in different worlds [Kim] |
| Full Idea: States that have the same intrinsic properties - the same neural/physical properties - may have different contents if they are embedded in different environments. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.146) | |
| A reaction: This is a way of expressing externalism. It depends what you mean by 'contents'. I struggle to see how "H2O" could be the content of the word 'water' among ancient Greeks. |
| 3420 | Two types of water are irrelevant to accounts of behaviour [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The difference in the two types of 'water' in the Twin Earth experiment seem psychologically irrelevant, for behaviour causation or explanation. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.203) | |
| A reaction: A rather important point. No matter how externalist you are about what content really is, people can only act on the internal aspects of it. |
| 3418 | 'Arthritis in my thigh' requires a social context for its content to be meaningful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The example of someone claiming "arthritis in my thigh" shows that the content of belief depends, at least in part but crucially, on the speech practices of the linguistic community in which we situate the subject. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.197) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find this social aspect to meaning to be more convincing that Putnam's idea that the physical world is part of meaning. It connects nicely with the social aspects of justification. |
| 3421 | Content is best thought of as truth conditions [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is standard to take contents as truth conditions. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.203) | |
| A reaction: This tradition runs from Frege to Davidson, and has been extended to truth conditions in possible worlds. Rivals will involve intentions, or eliminativism about meaning. |
| 3416 | Content may match several things in the environment [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If content is said to be 'covariance' with something in the environment, then the belief that there are horses in the field covaries reliably with the presence of horses in the field, but also the presence of horse genes in the field. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.192) | |
| A reaction: That's the end of that interesting proposal, then. Or is it? Looking at the field from a distance this is right, but down the microscope, the covariance varies. The theory lives on. |
| 3417 | Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim] |
| Full Idea: An objection to the 'covariance' theory of content is that what you believe is influenced, often crucially, by what else you believe. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.193) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a reply to this, if the covariance theory is suggesting that content just IS covariance of mental states with the environment. Externalism says that mind extends into the world. |
| 3419 | Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim] |
| Full Idea: No external factors seem to be required for Fred's belief that he is in pain, or that he exists, or that there are no unicorns. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.198) | |
| A reaction: This is an extremely important observation for anyone who was getting over-excited about external accounts of content. Unicorns might connect externally to horns and horses. |