display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 3507 | Universal grammar doesn't help us explain anything [Searle] |
| Full Idea: No further predictive or explanatory power is added by saying that there is in addition a level of deep unconscious rules of universal grammar. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.IV) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that neuroscientists would be very interested in this prediction, if it were convincing enough. Nothing to stop us from trying to infer the nature of something which is beyond our reach. |
| 8189 | Truth-condition theorists must argue use can only be described by appeal to conditions of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To demonstrate the necessity of a truth-conditional theory of meaning, a proponent of such a theory must argue that use cannot be described without appeal to the conditions for the truth of statements. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Unlike Dummett, I find that argument rather appealing. How do you decide the possible or appropriate use for a piece of language, if you don't already know what it means. Basing it all on social conventions means it could be meaningless ritual. |
| 8191 | The truth-conditions theory must get agreement on a conception of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is not enough for the truth-condition theorist to argue that we need the concept of truth: he must show that we should have the same conception of truth that he has. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson invites us to accept Tarski's account of truth. It invites the question of what the theory would be like with a very robust correspondence account of truth, or a flabby rather subjective coherence view, or the worst sort of pragmatic view. |