22 ideas
| 11103 | We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it bit by bit, plank by plank. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting commitment to Strawson's 'revisionary' metaphysics, rather than its duller cousin 'descriptive' metaphysics. Good for Quine. Remember, though, Davidson's 'On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme'. |
| 22246 | A train of reasoning must be treated as all happening simultaneously [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: For logic purposes, a train of reasoning has to be construed as synchronic. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: If we are looking for a gulf between logic and the real world this is a factor to be considered, along with Nietzsche's observation about necessary simplification. [ref to Kaplan 'Afterthoughts' 1989, 584-5] |
| 11092 | A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts. Identification of the river bathed in once with the river bathed in again is just what determines our subject matter to be a river process as opposed to a river stage. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: So if we take a thing which has stages, but instead of talking about the stages we talk about a single thing that endures through them, then we are talking about a process. Sounds very good to me. |
| 11093 | We don't say 'red' is abstract, unlike a river, just because it has discontinuous shape [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Red' is surely not going to be opposed to 'Cayster' [name of a river], as abstract to concrete, merely because of discontinuity in geometrical shape? | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I've been slow to grasp the truth of this. However, Quine assumes that 'red' is concrete because 'Cayster' is, but it is perfectly arguable that 'Cayster' is an abstraction, despite all that water. |
| 11101 | General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The use of general terms does not commit us to admitting a corresponding abstract entity into our ontology, but an abstract singular term, including the law of putting equals for equals, flatly commits us to an abstract entity named by the term. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that in 'for the sake of the children', I have to believe in 'sakes' if I can find a synonym which will substitute for it? |
| 11096 | Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I pick this out because I think it is important. There is a continually shifting domain in any conversation ('what we are talking about'), and speech cannot be understand if the shifting domain or department has not been grasped. |
| 11099 | Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine] |
| Full Idea: No more need be demanded of 'is square' than that our listener learn when to expect us to apply it to an object and when not; there is no need for the phrase itself to be the name in turn of a separate object of any kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) |
| 11094 | 'Red' is a single concrete object in space-time; 'red' and 'drop' are parts of a red drop [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why not view 'red' as naming a single concrete object extended in space and time? ..To say a drop is red is to say that the one object, the drop, is a spatio-temporal part of the other, red, as a waterfall is part of a river. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) |
| 11097 | Red is the largest red thing in the universe [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Red is the largest red thing in the universe - the scattered total thing whose parts are all the red things. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 3) |
| 17595 | To unite a sequence of ostensions to make one object, a prior concept of identity is needed [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The concept of identity is central in specifying spatio-temporally broad objects by ostension. Without identity, n acts of ostension merely specify up to n objects. ..But when we affirm identity of object between ostensions, they refer to the same object. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine says that there is an induction involved. On the whole, Quine seems to give a better account of identity than Geach or Wiggins can offer. |
| 11095 | We should just identify any items which are indiscernible within a given discourse [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We might propound the maxim of the 'identification of indiscernibles': Objects indistinguishable from one another within the terms of a given discourse should be construed as identical for that discourse. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the correct way to discuss such things. Identity is largely contextual, and two things can be viewed as type-identical for practical purposes (e.g. teaspoons), but distinguished if it is necessary. |
| 22247 | Indexicality is not just a feature of language; examples show it also occurs in thought [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: People once took indexicality to be exclusively a property of language, ....but a series of examples seemed to establish that the thought expressed by uttering an indexical sentence is itself indexical (and is thus 'essential'). | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Perry's example of not realising it is him leaking the sugar in a supermarket is the best known example. Was this a key moment for realising that philosophy of thought is (pace Dummett) more important than philosophy of language? |
| 22248 | How can we communicate indexical thoughts to people not in the right context? [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Indexical thoughts create an obvious problem with regard to communication. How can we manage to communicate such thoughts to those who are not in the right context? | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: One answer is that you often cannot communicate them. If I write on a wall 'I am here now', that doesn't tell the next passer-by very much. But 'it's raining here' said in a telephone call works fine - if you know the location of the caller. |
| 22242 | Mental files are concepts, which are either collections or (better) containers [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Mental files are entries in the mental encyclopedia, that is, concepts. Some, following Grice, say they are information collections, but I think of them as containers. Collections are determined by their elements, but containers have independent identity. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], Pref) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] [Grice reference is 'Vacuous Names' (1969)] I agree with Recanati. The point is that you can invoke a file by a label, even when you don't know what the content is. |
| 22243 | The Frege case of believing a thing is both F and not-F is explained by separate mental files [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Frege's Constraint says if a subject believes an object is both F and not-F (as in 'Frege cases'), then the subject thinks of that object under distinct modes of presentation. Having distinct mental files of the object is sufficient to generate this. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], Pref) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] When you look at how many semantic puzzles (notably from Frege and Kripke) are solved by the existence of labelled mental files, the case for them is overwhelming. |
| 11104 | Concepts are language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are language. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: Hm. This seems to mean that animals and pre-linguistic children have no concepts. I just don't believe that. |
| 11102 | Apply '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, to get second-level abstract singular terms [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Applying the operator '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, we get second-level abstract singular terms. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the derivation of abstract concepts by naming classes, rather than by deriving equivalence classes. Any theory which doesn't allow multi-level abstraction is self-evidently hopeless. Quine says Frege and Russell get numbers this way. |
| 22245 | A linguistic expression refers to what its associated mental file refers to [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Mental files determine the reference of linguistic expressions: an expression refers to what the mental file associated with it refers to (at the time of tokening). | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 5) | |
| A reaction: Invites the question of how mental files manage to refer, prior to the arrival of a linguistic expression. A mental file is usually fully of descriptions, but it might be no more than a label. |
| 22250 | There are speakers' thoughts and hearers' thoughts, but no further thought attached to the utterance [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: There is the speaker's thought and the thought formed by the hearer. That is all there is. We don't need an additional entity, the thought expressed by the utterance. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: This fits my view of propositions nicely. They are the two 'thoughts'. The notion of some further abstract 'proposition' with its own mode of independent existence strikes me as ontologically absurd. |
| 22249 | The Naive view of communication is that hearers acquire exactly the thoughts of the speaker [Recanati] |
| Full Idea: The Naive Conception of Communication rests on the idea that communication is the replication of thoughts: the thought the hearer entertains when he understands what the speaker is saying is the very thought which the speaker expressed. | |
| From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to believe that any modern thinker would believe such a view, given holistic views of language etc. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |