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All the ideas for 'The Nature of Things', 'Vagueness: a global approach' and 'Semantic Relationism'

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34 ideas

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 7. Natural Sets
A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton]
     Full Idea: To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement.
     From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
     A reaction: He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 6. Classical Logic
Indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: I now believe that the existence of indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3)
     A reaction: I think that prior to this Fine had defended classical logic. Presumably the difficulty is over Bivalence. Nietzsche spotted this problem, despite not being a logician. Logic has to simplify the world. Hence philosophy is quite different from logic.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 4. Variables in Logic
The usual Tarskian interpretation of variables is to specify their range of values [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The usual Tarskian way of indicating how a variable is to be interpreted is to simply specify its range of values.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.B)
Variables can be viewed as special terms - functions taking assignments into individuals [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The alternative Tarskian way of indicating how a variable is to be interpreted is that a variable x will be a special case of the semantic value of the term; it will be a function which takes each assignment into the individual which it assigns to x.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.B)
It seemed that Frege gave the syntax for variables, and Tarski the semantics, and that was that [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Once Frege had provided a clear syntactic account of variables and once Tarski had supplemented this with a rigorous semantic account, it would appear that there was nothing more of significance to be said.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1)
     A reaction: He later remarks that there are now three semantic accounts: the Tarskian, the instantial, and the algebraic [see xref ideas]. He offers a fourth account in his Semantic Relationism. This grows from his puzzles about variables.
In separate expressions variables seem identical in role, but in the same expression they aren't [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: When we consider the semantic role of 'x' and 'y' in two distinct expressions x>0 and y>0, their semantic roles seems the same. But in the same expression, such as x>y, their roles seem to be different.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.A)
     A reaction: [compressed] This new puzzle about variables leads Fine to say that the semantics of variables, and other expressions, is not intrinsic to them, but depends on their external relations. Variables denote any term - unless another variable got there first.
The 'algebraic' account of variables reduces quantification to the algebra of its component parts [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: In the 'algebraic' approach to variables, we move from a quantified sentence to the term specifying a property (the λ-term), and then reducing to the algebraic operations for atomic formulas.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.C)
     A reaction: [Bealer is a source for this view] Fine describes it as an 'algebra of operations'. I presume this is a thoroughly formalist approach to the matter, which doesn't seem to get to the heart of the semantic question.
'Instantial' accounts of variables say we grasp arbitrary instances from their use in quantification [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: According to the 'instantial' approach to variables, a closed quantified sentence is to be understood on the basis of one of its instances; from an understanding of an instance we understand satisfaction by an arbitrary individual.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.D)
     A reaction: Fine comments that this is intuitively plausible, but not very precise, because it depends on 'abstraction' of the individual from the expression.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive
Cicero/Cicero and Cicero/Tully may differ in relationship, despite being semantically the same [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: There may be a semantic relationship between 'Cicero' and 'Cicero' that does not hold between 'Cicero' and 'Tully', despite the lack of an intrinsic semantic difference between the names themselves.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.E)
     A reaction: This is the key idea of Fine's book, and a most original and promising approach to a rather intractable problem in reference. He goes on to distinguish names which are 'strictly' coreferential (the first pair) from those that are 'accidentally' so.
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 1. Semantics of Logic
Classical semantics has referents for names, extensions for predicates, and T or F for sentences [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: A precise language is often assigned a classical semantics, in which the semantic value of a name is its referent, the semantic value of a predicate is its extension (the objects of which it is true), and the value of a sentence is True or False.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: Helpful to have this clear statement of how predicates are treated. This extensionalism in logic causes trouble when it creeps into philosophy, and people say that 'red' just means all the red things. No it doesn't.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / a. Problem of vagueness
Local indeterminacy concerns a single object, and global indeterminacy covers a range [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Vagueness concerns 'local' indeterminacy, such as whether one man in the lineup is bald, and 'global' indeterminacy, applying to a range of cases, as when it is indeterminate how 'bald' applies to the lineup. But how do these relate?
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: This puts the focus either on objects or on predicates which are vague.
Conjoining two indefinites by related sentences seems to produce a contradiction [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: If 'P is red' and 'P is orange' are indefinite, then 'P is red and P is orange' seems false, because red and orange are exclusive. But if two conjoined indefinite sentences are false, that makes 'P is red and P is red' false, when it should be indefinite.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: [compressed] This is the problem of 'penumbral connection', where two indefinite values are still logically related, by excluding one another. Presumably 'P is red and P is of indefinite shape' can be true? Doubtful about this argument.
Standardly vagueness involves borderline cases, and a higher standpoint from which they can be seen [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Standard notions of vagueness all accept borderline cases, and presuppose a higher standpoint from which a judgement of being borderline F, rather than simply being F or being not F, can be made.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3)
     A reaction: He says that the concept of borderline cases is an impediment to understanding vagueness. Proposing a third group when you are struggling to separate two other groups doesn't seem helpful, come to think of it. Limbo cases.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / c. Vagueness as ignorance
Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: We can see Epistemicism [vagueness as ignorance] as a common and misguided tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. We are unsure how to characterise vagueness, and identify it with the resulting ignorance, instead of explaining it.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: Love it. This echoes my repeated plea in these reactions to stop identifying features of reality with the functions which embody them or the patterns they create. We need to explain them, and must dig deeper.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / f. Supervaluation for vagueness
Supervaluation can give no answer to 'who is the last bald man' [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Under supervaluation there should always be someone who is the last bald man in the sequence, but there is always an acceptable way to make some other man the last bald man.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: Fine seems to take this as a conclusive refutation of the supervaluation approach. Fine says (p.41) that supervaluation says there is a precisification for every instance.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton]
     Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention.
     From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
     A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 5. Natural Properties
The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton]
     Full Idea: The naturalness of a class depends as essentially on the nature of the observers who classify as it does on the nature of the objects that they classify. ...It depends on our perceptual apparatus, and on our relatively mutable needs and interests.
     From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
     A reaction: This seems to translate 'natural' as 'natural for us', which is not much use to scientists, who spend quite a lot of effort combating folk wisdom. Do desirable sports cars constitute a natural class?
Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton]
     Full Idea: To say there are properties is to say there are natural classes, classes introduction to some of whose members enables people to pick out others without hesitation and in agreement.
     From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
     A reaction: Aristotle would like this approach, but it doesn't find many friends among modern logician/philosophers. We should go on to ask why people agree on these things. Causal powers will then come into it.
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 4. Uninstantiated Universals
Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton]
     Full Idea: Properties that have no concrete instances must be defined in terms of those that have.
     From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
     A reaction: I wonder what the dodo used to smell like?
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / b. Individuation by properties
An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: Quinton proposes that an individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position.
     From: report of Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], Pt I) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §5
     A reaction: This seems the obvious defence of a bundle account of objects against the charge that indiscernibles would have to be identical. It introduces, however, 'positions' into the ontology, but maybe that price must be paid. Materialism needs space.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
We do not have an intelligible concept of a borderline case [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: We simply have no intelligible notion of local indeterminacy or of a borderline case.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 2)
     A reaction: He mentions cases which are near a borderline, and cases which are hard to decide, but denies that these are intrinsically borderline. If there are borderline cases between red and orange, what are the outer boundaries of the border?
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 1. Concept of Identity
I can only represent individuals as the same if I do not already represent them as the same [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: I can only represent two individuals as being the same if I do not already represent them as the same.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A)
     A reaction: A very nice simple point. If I say 'Hesperus is Hesperus' I am unable to comment on the object, but 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' has a different expressive power. Start from contexts where it is necessary to say that two things are actually one.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 5. Self-Identity
If Cicero=Tully refers to the man twice, then surely Cicero=Cicero does as well? [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: 'Cicero=Cicero' and 'Cicero=Tully' are both dyadic predications. It is unnatural to suppose that the use of the same name converts a dyadic predicate into a reflexive predicate, or that there is one reference to Cicero in the first and two in the second.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A)
     A reaction: I am deeply suspicious of the supposed 'property' of being self-identical, but that may not deny that it could be a genuine truth (shorthand for 'the C you saw is the same as the C I saw'). Having an identity makes equality with self possible.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Pace Parfit and others, it boggles the mind that survival could be independent of any relation of identity between the currently existing object and the objects that subsequently exist.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3)
     A reaction: Yes. If the self or mind just consists of a diachronic trail of memories such that the two ends of the trail have no connection at all, that isn't the kind of survival that any of us want. I want to live my life, not a life.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 5. Mental Files
Mental files are devices for keeping track of basic coordination of objects [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Mental files should be seen as a device for keeping track of when objects are coordinated (represented as-the-same) and, rather than understand coordination in terms of mental files, we should understand mental files in terms of coordination.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A)
     A reaction: Personally I think that the metaphor of a 'label' is much closer to the situation than that of a 'file'. Thus my concept of Cicero is labelled 'Tully', 'Roman', 'orator', 'philosophical example'... My problem is to distinguish the concept from its labels.
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
You cannot determine the full content from a thought's intrinsic character, as relations are involved [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: There is no determining the full content of what someone thinks or believes from the individual things that he thinks or believes; we must also look at the threads that tie the contents of these thoughts or beliefs together.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: I'm not sure what 'full' content could possibly mean. Does that include all our background beliefs which we hardly ever articulate. Content comes in degrees, or needs an arbitrary boundary?
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
The standard aim of semantics is to assign a semantic value to each expression [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The aim of semantics, as standardly conceived, is to assign a semantic value to each (meaningful) expression of the language under consideration.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.G)
     A reaction: Fine is raising the difficulty that these values can get entangled with one another. He proposes 'semantic connections' as a better aim.
That two utterances say the same thing may not be intrinsic to them, but involve their relationships [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: In my 'Semantic Relationism' the fact that two utterances say the same thing is not entirely a matter of their intrinsic semantic features; it may also turn on semantic relationships among the utterances of their parts not reducible to those features.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: You'll need to read the book slowly several times to get the hang of this, but at least it allows that two different utterances might say the same thing (express the same proposition, I would say).
The two main theories are Holism (which is inferential), and Representational (which is atomistic) [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: For holists a proper theory will be broadly inferential, while for their opponents it will be representational in character, describing relations between expressions and reality. Representational semantics is atomist, holist semantics inferential.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: Fine presents these as the two main schools in semantics. His own theory then proposes a more holistic version of the Representational view. He seeks the advantages of Frege's position, but without 'sense'.
We should pursue semantic facts as stated by truths in theories (and not put the theories first!) [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: A 'semantics' is a body of semantic facts, and a 'semantic theory' is a body of semantic truths. The natural order is a theory being understood as truths, which state facts. Davidson, alas, reversed this order, with facts understood through theories.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.C)
     A reaction: [compressed; he cites Davidson 1967, and calls it 'one of the most unfortunate tendencies in modern philosophy of language, ..as if chemistry were understood in terms of formulae rather than chemical facts'].
Referentialist semantics has objects for names, properties for predicates, and propositions for connectives [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The standard referentialist semantics for a language with names is that the semantic value of the name is the object, the content of a predicate is a property, and the content of a logical connective is an operation on propositions.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.F)
     A reaction: My particular bęte noire is the idea that every predicate names a property. It is the tyranny of having to have a comprehensive semantic theory that drives this implausible picture. And I don't see how an object can be a semantic value…
Fregeans approach the world through sense, Referentialists through reference [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Fregeans emphasise an orientation towards the speaker: possession of sense makes language meaningful, and language relates to the world through sense. For the Referentialist its representational relationships make it meaningful, and relate it to the world
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.G)
     A reaction: The Referentialist approach is for Kripkean fans of direct reference, rather than the Fregean reference through descriptions. I am inclined to favour the old-fashioned, deeply discredited, much mocked Fregean approach.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 9. Indexical Semantics
I take indexicals such as 'this' and 'that' to be linked to some associated demonstration [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Demonstrative uses of an indexical such as 'this' or 'that' should be taken to be anaphoric on an associated demonstration. It is a semantic requirement on the use of the indexical that it be coreferential with the demonstration.
     From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Post 'Indexicals')
     A reaction: Similarly 'now' must connect to looking at a clock, and 'I' to pointing at some person. The demonstration could be of a verbal event, as much as a physical one.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / a. Regularity theory
We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: There is a common tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. Hence we are not sure how to characterise a law, and so we identify it with the regularities to which it gives rise.
     From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
     A reaction: A lovely clear identification of my pet hate, which is superficial accounts of things, which claim to be the last word, but actually explain nothing.