Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Notes on Logic' and 'Sameness and Substance'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins]
     Full Idea: The realist conceptualist may cheerfully admit that the sortal concepts of which we are possessed are the creatures of our interests; …and also that there need be no one way in which we must articulate reality.
     From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.2)
     A reaction: Wiggins calls himself a 'realist conceptualist'. In his terminology, I seem to be an 'anti-conceptualist realist'. The issue concerns aspects of reality that extend beyond our concepts. The 99th d.p. of the mass of the electron.
Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins]
     Full Idea: What Conceptualism entails is that, although horses and stars are not inventions or artefacts, in order to single out these things we must deploy a conceptual scheme which has been formed in such a way as to make singling them out possible.
     From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.5)
     A reaction: I don't quite see why the 'singling out' role of the concepts is the only one that generates them, or makes them fit for purpose. In general, of course, our conceptual scheme is necessarily a response to our experience of the world.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / d. Negative facts
Facts can be both positive and negative [Wittgenstein, by Potter]
     Full Idea: In 1913 Wittgenstein was explicit that there are both positive and negative facts.
     From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notes on Logic [1913], B7) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 47 'Mole'
     A reaction: This is a prelude to the Tractatus, in which negative facts are denied in T1.11 (and in a 1919 letter), but then affirmed in T2.06.