10 ideas
15787 | Maybe Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle [Lycan] |
Full Idea: It might be said that Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle. | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 02) | |
A reaction: I don't buy this, if it meant to be dismissive of the relevance of the principle to truth. A deep question might be, what is so aesthetically attractive about simplicity? I'm inclined to think that application of the Razor has delivered terrific results. |
15784 | The Razor seems irrelevant for Meinongians, who allow absolutely everything to exist [Lycan] |
Full Idea: A Meinongian has already posited everything that could, or even could not, be; how, then, can any subsequent brandishing of Ockham's Razor be to the point? | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 02) | |
A reaction: See the ideas of Alexius Meinong. Presumably these crazy Meinongians must make some distinction between what actually exists in front of your nose, and the rest. So the Razor can use that distinction too. |
15792 | Maybe non-existent objects are sets of properties [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Meinong's Objects have sometimes been construed as sets of properties. | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
A reaction: [Lycan cites Castaņeda and T.Parsons] You still seem to have the problem with any 'bundle' theory of anything. A non-existent object is as much intended to be an object as anything on my desk right now. It just fails to be. |
10990 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but unassertable in tricky cases? [Grice, by Read] |
Full Idea: The 'conversational defence' of the truth-functional view of conditionals is that a conditional may not be assertible in difficult cases. | |
From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 |
15795 | Treating possible worlds as mental needs more actual mental events [Lycan] |
Full Idea: A mentalistic approach to possible worlds is daunted by the paucity of actual mental events. | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
A reaction: Why do they have to be actual, any more than memories have to be conscious? The mental events just need to be available when you need them. They are never all required simultaneously. This isn't mathematical logic! |
15796 | Possible worlds must be made of intensional objects like propositions or properties [Lycan] |
Full Idea: I believe the only promising choice of actual entities to serve as 'worlds' is that of sets of intensional objects, such as propositions or properties with stipulated interrelations. | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 12) | |
A reaction: This is mainly in response to Lewis's construction of them out of actual concrete objects. It strikes me as a bogus problem. It is just a convenient way to think precisely about possibilities, and occasionally outruns our mental capacity. |
15794 | If 'worlds' are sentences, and possibility their consistency, consistency may rely on possibility [Lycan] |
Full Idea: If a 'world' is understood as a set of sentences, then possibility may be understood as consistency, ...but this seems circular, in that 'consistency' of sentences cannot adequately be defined save in terms of possibility. | |
From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
A reaction: [Carnap and Hintikka propose the view, Lewis 'Counterfactuals' p.85 objects] Worlds as sentences is not, of course, the same as worlds as propositions. There is a lot of circularity around in 'possible' worlds. |
10991 | Key conversational maxims are 'quality' (assert truth) and 'quantity' (leave nothing out) [Grice, by Read] |
Full Idea: Grice particularly identified two maxims as guiding conversation: the maxim of 'quality' (that one should assert only what one believes to be true and justified), and of 'quantity' (one should not assert less than one can). | |
From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
A reaction: I think it would be very foolish to boldly embrace the second maxim when talking to strangers. If white lies are occasionally acceptable, then what is the status of the first 'maxim'? Is it a moral maxim? |
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. |