22 ideas
4465 | Note that "is" can assert existence, or predication, or identity, or classification [PG] |
Full Idea: There are four uses of the word "is" in English: as existence ('he is at home'), as predication ('he is tall'), as identity ('he is the man I saw'), and as classification ('he is British'). | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: This seems a nice instance of the sort of point made by analytical philosophy, which can lead to horrible confusion in other breeds of philosophy when it is overlooked. |
4686 | Fallacies are errors in reasoning, 'formal' if a clear rule is breached, and 'informal' if more general [PG] |
Full Idea: Fallacies are errors in reasoning, labelled as 'formal' if a clear rule has been breached, and 'informal' if some less precise error has been made. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: Presumably there can be a grey area between the two. |
7415 | Question-begging assumes the proposition which is being challenged [PG] |
Full Idea: To beg the question is to take for granted in your argument that very proposition which is being challenged | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: An undoubted fallacy, and a simple failure to engage in the rational enterprise. I suppose one might give a reason for something, under the mistaken apprehension that it didn't beg the question; analysis of logical form is then needed. |
7414 | What is true of a set is also true of its members [PG] |
Full Idea: The fallacy of division is the claim that what is true of a set must therefore be true of its members. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: Clearly a fallacy, but if you only accept sets which are rational, then there is always a reason why a particular is a member of a set, and you can infer facts about particulars from the nature of the set |
6696 | The Ad Hominem Fallacy criticises the speaker rather than the argument [PG] |
Full Idea: The Ad Hominem Fallacy is to criticise the person proposing an argument rather than the argument itself, as when you say "You would say that", or "Your behaviour contradicts what you just said". | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: Nietzsche is very keen on ad hominem arguments, and cheerfully insults great philosophers, but then he doesn't believe there is such a thing as 'pure argument', and he is a relativist. |
4687 | Minimal theories of truth avoid ontological commitment to such things as 'facts' or 'reality' [PG] |
Full Idea: Minimalist theories of truth are those which involve minimum ontological commitment, avoiding references to 'reality' or 'facts' or 'what works', preferring to refer to formal relationships within language. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: Personally I am suspicious of minimal theories, which seem to be designed by and for anti-realists. They seem too focused on language, when animals can obviously formulate correct propositions. I'm quite happy with the 'facts', even if that is vague. |
6516 | Monty Hall Dilemma: do you abandon your preference after Monty eliminates one of the rivals? [PG] |
Full Idea: The Monty Hall Dilemma: Three boxes, one with a big prize; pick one to open. Monty Hall then opens one of the other two, which is empty. You may, if you wish, switch from your box to the other unopened box. Should you? | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: The other two boxes, as a pair, are more likely contain the prize than your box. Monty Hall has eliminated one of them for you, so you should choose the other one. Your intuition that the two remaining boxes are equal is incorrect! |
24054 | Everything has a probability, something will happen, and probabilities add up [PG] |
Full Idea: The three Kolgorov axioms of probability: the probability of an event is a non-negative real number; it is certain that one of the 'elementary events' will occur; and the unity of probabilities is the sum of probability of parts ('additivity'). | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: [My attempt to verbalise them; they are normally expressed in terms of set theory]. Got this from a talk handout, and Wikipedia. |
3875 | If reality is just what we perceive, we would have no need for a sixth sense [PG] |
Full Idea: Reality must be more than merely what we perceive, because a sixth sense would enhance our current knowledge, and a seventh, and so on. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
3876 | If my team is losing 3-1, I have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals for a draw [PG] |
Full Idea: If my football team is losing 3-1, I seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals to achieve a draw | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
6871 | We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember. |
6872 | Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind. |
6874 | Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4) | |
A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem. |
6873 | Coherent justification seems to require retrieving all our beliefs simultaneously [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem of Concurrent Retrieval is a problem for internalism, notably coherentism, because an agent could ascertain coherence of her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: Sounds neat, but not very convincing. Goldman is relying on scepticism about short-term memory, but all belief and knowledge will collapse if we go down that road. We couldn't do simple arithmetic if Goldman's point were right. |
6875 | Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §6) | |
A reaction: As an argument for externalism this seems bogus. I am not sure that truth is either 'internal' or 'external'. How could the truth of 3+2=5 be external? Facts are mostly external, but I take truth to be a relation between internal and external. |
20921 | How can we state relativism of sweet and sour, if they have no determinate nature? [Theophrastus] |
Full Idea: How could what is bitter for us be sweet and sour for others, if there is not some determinate nature for them? | |
From: Theophrastus (On the Senses [c.321 BCE], 70) | |
A reaction: The remark is aimed at Democritus. This is part of the general question of how you can even talk about relativism, without attaching stable meanings to the concepts employed. |
7734 | Maybe a mollusc's brain events for pain ARE of the same type (broadly) as a human's [PG] |
Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might say that a molluscs's brain events that register pain ARE of the same type as humans, given that being 'of the same type' is a fairly flexible concept. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: But this reduces 'of the same type' to such vagueness that it may become vacuous. You would be left with token-token identity, where the mental event is just identical to some brain event, with its 'type' being irrelevant. |
7735 | Maybe a frog's brain events for fear are functionally like ours, but not phenomenally [PG] |
Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might (also) say that while a frog's brain events for fear are functionally identical to a human's (it runs away), that doesn't mean they are phenomenally identical. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: I take this to be the key reply to the multiple realisability problem. If a frog flees from a loud noise, it is 'frightened' in a functional sense, but that still leaves the question 'What's it like to be a frightened frog?', which may differ from humans. |
3877 | Utilitarianism seems to justify the discreet murder of unhappy people [PG] |
Full Idea: If I discreetly murdered a gloomy and solitary tramp who was upsetting people in my village, if is hard to see how utilitarianism could demonstrate that I had done something wrong. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
6126 | Life is Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth (MRS NERG) [PG] |
Full Idea: The biologists' acronym for the necessary conditions of life is MRS NERG: that is, Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth. | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
A reaction: How strictly necessary are each of these is a point for discussion. A notorious problem case is fire, which (at a stretch) may pass all seven tests. |
3873 | An omniscient being couldn't know it was omniscient, as that requires information from beyond its scope of knowledge [PG] |
Full Idea: God seems to be in the paradoxical situation that He may be omniscient, but can never know that He is, because that involves knowing that there is nothing outside his scope of knowledge (e.g. another God) | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
3874 | How could God know there wasn't an unknown force controlling his 'free' will? [PG] |
Full Idea: How could God be certain that he has free will (if He has), if He couldn't be sure that there wasn't an unknown force controlling his will? | |
From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |