7 ideas
| 18487 | We want to know what makes sentences true, rather than defining 'true' [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: The generalisation 'What makes a (any) sentence true?' is not a request for definitions of 'true' (the concept), but rather requests for (partial) explanations of why certain particular sentences are true. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: McFetridge is responding to the shortcomings of Tarski's account of truth. The mystery seems to be why some of our representations of the world are 'successful', and others are not. |
| 7771 | We need 'events' to explain adverbs, which are adjectival predicates of events [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: To deal with the truth conditions for some adverbs, Davidson introduced a domain of 'events', and made adverbs into adjectival predicates of events. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a striking case of a procedure of which I heartily disapprove - deriving you ontology from your semantics. Do all languages have adverbs? |
| 8860 | Language-learning is not good enough evidence for the existence of events [Yablo on Davidson] |
| Full Idea: One needs a better reason for believing in events than the help they provide with language-learning. | |
| From: comment on Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967], §8) by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence §8 | |
| A reaction: I can almost believe in micro-events at the quantum level, but I cannot believe that the Renaissance (made of events within events within events) is an event, even though I may 'quantify over it', and discuss its causes and effects. |
| 18488 | We normally explain natural events by citing further facts [McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: If one were asked 'What makes salt soluble in water?', the most natural answer would be something of the style 'The fact that it has such-and-such structure'. | |
| From: Ian McFetridge (Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would want to talk about its 'powers' (dispositional properties), rather than its 'structure' (categorical properties). This defends facts, but you could easily paraphrase 'fact' out of this reply (as McFetridge realised). |
| 15002 | If the best theory of adverbs refers to events, then our ontology should include events [Davidson, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Davidson argued that the best linguistic theory of adverbial modification assigns truth-conditions quantifying over events; thus we must embrace an ontology of events. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 07.8 | |
| A reaction: Sider is critical and I agree. This is just the sort of linguistic manoeuvre that gets philosophy a bad name. As Yablo remarks, we have a terrible tendency to want to thingify everything. |
| 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. |