30 ideas
| 3123 | Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5) |
| 3125 | Psychology studies the way rationality links desires and beliefs to causality [Segal] |
| Full Idea: A person's desires and beliefs tend to cause what they tend to rationalise. This coordination of causality and rationalisation lies at the heart of psychology. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5.3) |
| 10633 | 'Some critics admire only one another' cannot be paraphrased in singular first-order [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The Geach-Kaplan sentence 'Some critics admire only one another' provably has no singular first-order paraphrase using only its predicates. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a choice of either going second-order (picking out a property), or going plural (collectively quantifying), or maybe both. |
| 10638 | A pure logic is wholly general, purely formal, and directly known [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The defining features of a pure logic are its absolute generality (the objects of discourse are irrelevant), and its formality (logical truths depend on form, not matter), and its cognitive primacy (no extra-logical understanding is needed to grasp it). | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This strikes me as very important. The above description seems to contain no ontological commitment at all, either to the existence of something, or to two things, or to numbers, or to a property. Pure logic seems to be 'if-thenism'. |
| 10635 | Second-order quantification and plural quantification are different [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Second-order quantification and plural quantification are generally regarded as different forms of quantification. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2) |
| 10641 | Traditionally we eliminate plurals by quantifying over sets [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The traditional view in analytic philosophy has been that all plural locutions should be paraphrased away by quantifying over sets, though Boolos and other objected that this is unnatural and unnecessary. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 5) |
| 10640 | Instead of complex objects like tables, plurally quantify over mereological atoms tablewise [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Plural quantification can be used to eliminate the commitment of science and common sense to complex objects. We can use plural quantification over mereological atoms arranged tablewise or chairwise. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hossack and van Ingwagen] |
| 10636 | Plural plurals are unnatural and need a first-level ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Higher-order plural quantification (plural plurals) is often rejected because plural quantification is supposedly ontological innocent, with no plural things to be plural, and because it is not found in ordinary English. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: [Summary; he cites Boolos as a notable rejector] Linnebo observes that Icelandic contains a word 'tvennir' which means 'two pairs of'. |
| 10639 | Plural quantification may allow a monadic second-order theory with first-order ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Plural quantification seems to offer ontological economy. We can pay the price of a mere first-order theory and then use plural quantification to get for free the corresponding monadic second-order theory, which would be an ontological bargain. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He mentions Hellman's modal structuralism in mathematics] |
| 10643 | We speak of a theory's 'ideological commitments' as well as its 'ontological commitments' [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers speak about a theory's 'ideological commitments' and not just about its 'ontological commitments'. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a third strategy for possibly evading one's ontological duty, along with fiddling with the words 'exist' or 'object'. An ideological commitment to something to which one is not actually ontologically committed conjures up stupidity and dogma. |
| 10637 | Ordinary speakers posit objects without concern for ontology [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Maybe ordinary speakers aren't very concerned about their ontological commitments, and sometimes find it convenient to posit objects. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the whole truth about the ontological commitment of ordinary language. We bring abstraction under control by pretending it is a world of physical objects. The 'left wing' in politics, 'dark deeds', a 'huge difference'. |
| 3105 | Is 'Hesperus = Phosphorus' metaphysically necessary, but not logically or epistemologically necessary? [Segal] |
| Full Idea: It is metaphysically necessary that Hesperus is Phosphorus, but not logically necessary, since logical deduction could not reveal its truth, and it is not epistemologically necessary, as the ancient Greeks didn't know the identity. (Natural necessity?) | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.6) |
| 3106 | If claims of metaphysical necessity are based on conceivability, we should be cautious [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Since conceivability is the chief method of assessing the claims of metaphysical necessity, I think such claims are incautious. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.6) |
| 3113 | The success and virtue of an explanation do not guarantee its truth [Segal] |
| Full Idea: The success and virtue of an explanation do not guarantee its truth. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) |
| 3112 | Folk psychology is ridiculously dualist in its assumptions [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Commonsense psychology is a powerful explanatory theory, and largely correct, but it seems to be profoundly dualist, and treats minds as immaterial spirits which can transmigrate and exist disembodied. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Fans of folk psychology tend to focus on central normal experience, but folk psychology also seems to range from quirky to barking mad. A 'premonition' is a widely accepted mental event. |
| 3108 | If 'water' has narrow content, it refers to both H2O and XYZ [Segal] |
| Full Idea: My view is that the concepts of both the Earth person and the Twin Earth person refer to BOTH forms of diamonds or water (H2O and XYZ). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Fair enough, though that seems to imply that my current concepts may actually refer to all sorts of items of which I am currently unaware. But that may be so. |
| 3110 | Humans are made of H2O, so 'twins' aren't actually feasible [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Humans are largely made of H2O, so there could be no twin on Twin Earth, and (as Kuhn noted) nothing with a significantly different structure from H2O could be macroscopically very like water (but topaz and citrine will do). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: A small point, but one that appeals to essentialists like me (see under Natural Theory/Laws of Nature). We can't learn much metaphysics from impossible examples. |
| 3124 | Externalists can't assume old words refer to modern natural kinds [Segal] |
| Full Idea: The question of what a pre-scientific term extends over is extremely difficult for a Putnam-style externalist to answer. …There seems no good reason to assume that they extend over natural kinds ('whale', 'cat', 'water'). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: The assumption seems to be that they used to extend over descriptions, and now they extend over essences, or expert references. This can't be right. They have never changed, but now contain fewer errors. |
| 3117 | Concepts can survive a big change in extension [Segal] |
| Full Idea: We need to think of concepts as organic entities that can persist through changes of extension. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This would be 'organic' in the sense of modifying and growing. This is exactly right, and the interesting problem becomes the extreme cases, where an individual stretches a concept a long way. |
| 3104 | Must we relate to some diamonds to understand them? [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Is a relationship with diamonds necessary for having a concept of diamonds? | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Probably not, given that I have a concept of kryptonite, and that I can invent my own concepts. Suppose I was brought up to believe that diamonds are a myth? |
| 3103 | Maybe content involves relations to a language community [Segal] |
| Full Idea: It has been argued (e.g. by Tyler Burge) that certain relations to other language users are determinants of content. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Burge's idea (with Wittgenstein behind him) strikes me as plausible (more plausible than water and elms determining the content). Our concepts actually shift during conversations. |
| 3111 | Externalism can't explain concepts that have no reference [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Empty terms and concepts provide the largest problem for the externalist thesis of the world dependence of concepts. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A speculative concept could then become a reality (e.g. an invention). The solution seems to be to say that there is an internal and an external component to most concepts. |
| 3109 | If content is external, so are beliefs and desires [Segal] |
| Full Idea: If we accept Putnam's externalist conclusion about the meaning of a word, it is a short step to a similar conclusion about the contents of the twins' beliefs, desires and so on. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key step which has launched a whole new externalist view of the nature of the mind. It is one thing to say that I don't quite know what my words mean, another that I don't know my own beliefs. |
| 3116 | Maybe experts fix content, not ordinary users [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Putnam and Burge claim that there could be two words that a misinformed subject uses to express different concepts, but that express just one concept of the experts. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This pushes the concept outside the mind of the user, which leaves an ontological problem of what concepts are made of, how you individuate them, and where they are located. |
| 3121 | If content is narrow, my perfect twin shares my concepts [Segal] |
| Full Idea: To say that contents of my belief are narrow is to say that they are intrinsic to me, hence that any perfect twin of mine would have beliefs with the same contents. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5) | |
| A reaction: I personally find this more congenial than externalism. If my twin and I studied chemistry, we would reach identical conclusions about water, as long as we remained perfect twins. |
| 3118 | If thoughts ARE causal, we can't explain how they cause things [Segal] |
| Full Idea: If we identify a psychological property with its causal role then we lose the obvious explanation of why the event has the causal role that it has. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints very nicely one of the biggest errors in modern philosophy. There are good naturalistic reasons to reduce everything to causal role, but there is a deeper layer. Essences! |
| 3119 | Even 'mass' cannot be defined in causal terms [Segal] |
| Full Idea: We can't define mass in terms of its causal powers because massive objects do different things in different physical systems. …What an object (or concept) with a given property does depends on what it interacts with. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This leaves an epistemological problem, that we believe in mass, but can only get at it within a particular gravitational or inertial system. Don't give up on ontology at this point. |
| 10634 | Predicates are 'distributive' or 'non-distributive'; do individuals do what the group does? [Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: The predicate 'is on the table' is 'distributive', since some things are on the table if each one is, whereas the predicate 'form a circle' is 'non-distributive', since it is not analytic that when some things form a circle, each one forms a circle. | |
| From: Øystein Linnebo (Plural Quantification [2008], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The first predicate can have singular or plural subjects, but the second requires a plural subject? Hm. 'The rope forms a circle'. The second is example is not true, as well as not analytic. |
| 20721 | Punctuality and justice in dealings are excellent for raising a man in the world [Franklin] |
| Full Idea: After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to raising a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings. | |
| From: Benjamin Franklin (Advice to a Young Tradesman [1748], p.87-), quoted by Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 2 | |
| A reaction: A perfect illustration of the self-interest that drives morality in the social contract view. |
| 20720 | Time is money, ..credit is money, ..and money breeds more money [Franklin] |
| Full Idea: Remember that time is money, …and that credit is money, …and that money can beget money. | |
| From: Benjamin Franklin (Advice to a Young Tradesman [1748], p.87-), quoted by Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 2 | |
| A reaction: [snippets] A wonderful quotation rescued by Max Weber, showing that Franklin understood capitalism with crystal clarity, before it had even barely begun |