88 ideas
19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
Full Idea: A plausible case can be made for explaining the phenomenon of category mistakes in terms of each of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
A reaction: I want to explain them in terms of (structured) ontology, but she totally rejects that on p.156. Her preferred account is that they are presupposition failures, which is pragmatics. She splits the semantic view into truth-valued and non-truth-valued. |
18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |
Full Idea: It is an empirical fact that people often sincerely report having had dreams which involve category mistakes. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
A reaction: She doesn't give any examples, but I was thinking that this might be the case before I read this idea. Dreams seem to allow you to live with gaps in reality that we don't tolerate when awake. |
18011 | Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The infelicity of category mistakes seems to be universal across languages. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Magidor rightly offers this fact to refute the claim that category mistakes are purely syntax (since syntax obviously varies hugely across languages). I also take the fact to show that category mistakes concern the world, and not merely language. |
18012 | Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor] |
Full Idea: A syntactic theory of category mistakes would require not only general syntactic features such as must-be-human, but also highly particular ones such as must-be-a-grape. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Her grape example comes from Hebrew, but an English example might be the verb 'to hull', which is largely exclusive to strawberries. The 'must-be' form is one of Chomsky's 'selectional features'. |
18013 | Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The embedding data (such as 'John said that the number two is green', compared to '*John said that me likes apples') strongly suggests that category mistakes are not syntactically ill-formed. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.4) | |
A reaction: Sounds conclusive. The report of John's category error, unlike the report of his remark about apples, seems perfectly syntactically acceptable. |
18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The principle that if 'p' and 'q' are meaningful sentences then 'p and q' is a meaningful sentence seems highly plausible. But now consider the following example: 'That is a number and that is green'. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.2) | |
A reaction: This challenges the defence of the meaningfulness of category mistakes on the basis of strong compositionality. |
18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The principle that if a competent speaker understands some terms then they understand a sentence made up of them entails that category mistakes are meaningful (as in understanding 'the number two' and 'is green'). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1) | |
A reaction: [compressed version] It is normal to impose restrictions on plausible compositionality, and thus back away from this claim, but I rather sympathise with it. She adds to a second version of the principle the proviso 'IF the sentence is meaningful'. |
18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Two sentences are synonymous if they have the same meaning, suggesting that they must both be meaningful. On the face of it the English 'two is green' and French 'deux est vert' are synonymous, suggesting meaningful category mistakes. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.3) | |
A reaction: I'm fairly convinced already that most category mistakes are meaningful, and this seems to confirm the view. Some mistakes could be so extreme that no auditor could compute their meaning, especially if you concatenated lots of them. |
18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Metaphors must have literal meanings. …Since many metaphors involving category mistakes manage to achieve their metaphorical purpose, they must also have literal meanings, so category mistakes must be (literally) meaningful. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: Hm. 'This guy is so weird that to meet him is to encounter a circular square'. |
18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
Full Idea: One motivation for taking category mistakes to be meaningless is that one cannot even imagine what it would take for 'Two is green' to be true. …Underlying this complaint is sometimes the thought that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6) | |
A reaction: I defend the view that most sentences are meaningful if they compose from meaningful parts, but you have to acknowledge this view. It seems to come in degrees. Sentences can have fragmentary meaning, or be almost meaningful, or offer a glimpse of meaning? |
18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The meaninglessness view does seem to offer a simple and compelling explanation for the fact that category mistakes are highly infelicitous. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6) | |
A reaction: However, I take there to be quite a large gulf between why meaningless sentences like 'squares turn happiness into incommensurability', which I would call 'category blunders', and subtle category mistakes, which are meaningful. |
18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
Full Idea: No sense experience shows that 'two is green' is true or false. But neither is 'two is green' analytically true or false. So it fails to have legitimate verification conditions and hence, by the lights of traditional verificationism, it is meaningless. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2) | |
A reaction: If a category mistake is an error in classification, then it would seem to be analytically false. If it wrongly attributes a property to something, that makes it verifiably false. The problem is to verify anything at all about 'two'. |
18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
Full Idea: One might argue that conceptual role semantics entails that category mistakes are meaningless. Sentences such as 'two is green' play no role in the cognitive life of any agent. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2) | |
A reaction: [She quotes Block's definition of conceptual role semantics] I would have thought that if a category mistake is believed by an agent, it could play a huge role in their cognitive life. |
18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: One might argue that although 'two' refers to the number two, and 'is green' expresses the property of being green, in 'two is green' the property somehow fails to apply to the number two. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.2) | |
A reaction: It is an interesting thought that you say something which applies a predicate to an object, but the predicate then 'fails to apply' for reasons of its own, over which you have no control. The only possible cause of the failure is the nature of reality. |
18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Having rejected the syntactic approach and the meaninglessness view, one might feel that the last resort for explaining the defectiveness of category mistakes is to claim that they are truth-valueless (even if meaningful). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.3.1) | |
A reaction: She rejects this one as well, and votes for a pragmatic explanation, in terms of presupposition failure. The view I incline towards is just that they are false, despite being well-formed, meaningful and truth-valued. |
18041 | Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor] |
Full Idea: I argue that category mistakes are infelicitous because they suffer from (pragmatic) presupposition failure, ...but I reject the 'naive pragmatic approach' according to which category mistakes are infelicitous because they are trivially true or false. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.1) | |
A reaction: She supports her case quite well, but I vote for them being false. The falsity may involve presuppositions. 'Two is green' is a category mistake, and false, because 'two' lacks the preconditions for anything to be coloured (notably, emitting light). |
18058 | Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The most promising way to characterise the presuppositions involved in category mistakes might be to rephrase them in modal terms ('x is able to be pregnant', 'x is able to be green'). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.3) | |
A reaction: This catches my attention because it suggests that category mistakes contradict dispositions, rather than contradicting classifications or types. 'Let's use a magnet to repel this iron'? The dispositions of 'two' and 'green' in 'two is green'? Hm |
18056 | Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor] |
Full Idea: I am assuming that even in those contexts in which the presupposition of 'the number two is green' fails and the utterance is infelicitious, it nevertheless receives a bivalent truth-value (presumably 'false'). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
A reaction: It seems to me obvious that, in normal contexts, 'the number two is green' is false, rather than meaningless. Is 'the number eight is an odd number' meaningless? |
18055 | In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor] |
Full Idea: My proposal is that the truth-conditional content of 'green' (in 'two is green') is the property of being green, and its presuppositional content is the property of being coloured. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
A reaction: This requires a two-dimensional semantics of truth-conditional and presuppositional content. I fear it may have a problem she spotted elsewhere, of overgenerating presuppositions. Eyes are presupposed by 'green'. Ambient light is required. |
18057 | 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor] |
Full Idea: 'The number two is green' is normally infelicitous, but, interestingly, 'numbers are coloured and the number two is green' is not infelicitous. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1) | |
A reaction: A nice example, which gives good support for her pragmatic account of category mistakes in terms of presupposition failure. But how about 'figures can have contradictory shapes, and this square is circular'? Numbers are not coloured!!! |
18059 | The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor] |
Full Idea: My pragmatic account of category mistakes does not support a key role for them in metaphysics. It is highly doubtful that the presuppositions associated with category mistakes reveal anything about the fundamental nature of ontological categories. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6) | |
A reaction: Thus she dashes my hope, without even bothering to offer a reason. I think she should push her enquiry further, and ask why we presuppose things. Why do we take presuppositions for granted? Why are they obvious? |
15134 | The truthmaker principle requires some specific named thing to make the difference [Williamson] |
Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems compelling, because if a proposition is true, something must be different from a world in which it is false. The principle makes this specific, by treating 'something' as a quantifier binding a variable in name position. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: See Williamson for an examination of the logical implications of this. The point is that the principle seems to require some very specific 'thing', which may be asking too much. For a start, it might be the absence of a thing. |
15140 | The converse Barcan formula will not allow contingent truths to have truthmakers [Williamson] |
Full Idea: The converse Barcan formula does not allow any contingent truths at all to have a truthmaker. Once cannot combine the converse Barcan formula with any truthmaker principle worth having. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: One might reply, so much the worse for the converse Barcan formula, but Williamson doesn't think that. |
15141 | Truthmaker is incompatible with modal semantics of varying domains [Williamson] |
Full Idea: Friends of the truthmaker principle should reject the Kripke semantics of varying domains. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: See other ideas from this paper to get a sense of what that is about. |
15131 | If metaphysical possibility is not a contingent matter, then S5 seems to suit it best [Williamson] |
Full Idea: In S5, necessity and possibility are not themselves contingent matters. This is plausible for metaphysical modality, since metaphysical possibility, unlike practical possibility, does not depend on the contingencies of one's situation. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §1) | |
A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of why S5 might be preferable for metaphysics. See Nathan Salmon for the rival view. Williamson's point sounds pretty persuasive to me. |
15135 | If the domain of propositional quantification is constant, the Barcan formulas hold [Williamson] |
Full Idea: If the domain of propositional quantification is constant across worlds, the Barcan formula and its converse hold. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: So the issue is whether we should take metaphysics to be dealing with a constant or varying domains. Williamson seems to favour the former, but my instincts incline towards the latter. |
15139 | Converse Barcan: could something fail to meet a condition, if everything meets that condition? [Williamson] |
Full Idea: The converse Barcan is at least plausible, since its denial says there is something that could fail to meet a condition when everything met that condition; but how could everything meet that condition if that thing did not? | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: Presumably the response involves a discussion of domains, since everything in a given domain might meet a condition, but something in a different domain might fail it. |
18040 | Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Intensional logic aims to capture necessary relations between certain predicates, such as that 'green all over' and 'red all over' cannot be co-instantiated. Each predicate is allocated a set of points in logical space, and every object has one point. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This produces an intriguing model of reality, as a vast and rich space of multiply overlapping modal predicates. Things can be blue, square, dangerous and large. They can't be small and large, or square and round. Objects are optional extras! |
13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
18492 | Not all quantification is either objectual or substitutional [Williamson] |
Full Idea: We should not assume that all quantification is either objectual or substitutional. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], p.262) | |
A reaction: [see Prior 1971:31-4] He talks of quantifying into sentence position. |
15136 | Substitutional quantification is metaphysical neutral, and equivalent to a disjunction of instances [Williamson] |
Full Idea: If quantification into sentence position is substitutional, then it is metaphysically neutral. A substitutionally interpreted 'existential' quantification is semantically equivalent to the disjunction (possibly infinite) of its substitution instances. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: Is it not committed to the disjunction, just as the objectual reading commits to objects? Something must make the disjunction true. Or is it too verbal to be about reality? |
15138 | Not all quantification is objectual or substitutional [Williamson] |
Full Idea: We should not assume that all quantification is objectual or substitutional. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2) |
17997 | Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Various authors have argued that identity statements arising in the context of the 'Julius Caesar' problem in philosophy of mathematics constitute category mistakes. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1 n1) | |
A reaction: [She cites Benacerraf 1965 and Shapiro 1997:79] |
15137 | If 'fact' is a noun, can we name the fact that dogs bark 'Mary'? [Williamson] |
Full Idea: If one uses 'fact' as a noun, the question arises why one cannot name the fact that dogs bark 'Mary'. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2 n10) | |
A reaction: What an intriguing thought! Must all nouns pass this test? 'The courage of the regiment was called Alfred'? |
18060 | We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Since 'the lump of clay is Romanesque' is a category mistake, a pragmatic account of that phenomenon is key to pursuing the strategy of saying that the problem rests on a false premise. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6) | |
A reaction: [compressed] |
13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
15142 | Our ability to count objects across possibilities favours the Barcan formulas [Williamson] |
Full Idea: Consideration of our ability to count objects across possibilities strongly favour both the Barcan formula and its converse. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure that I can understand counting objects across possibilities. The objects themselves are possibilia, and possibilia seem to include unknowns. The unexpected is highly possible. |
5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
18020 | Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Three views of the semantics of propositional attitudes: they are relations between agents and propositions ('propositional' view); relations between individuals and meanings (Fregean); or relations of individuals and sentences/utterances ('sentential'). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
A reaction: I am a propositionalist on this one. Meanings are too vague, and sentences are too linguistic. |
23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
18035 | Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor] |
Full Idea: It is commonly assumed that meaning and content can come apart: the sentence 'I am writing' and 'Ofra is writing' may have different meanings, even if, as currently uttered, they express the same content. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1) | |
A reaction: From that, I would judge 'content' to mean the same as 'proposition'. |
18018 | To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Is it a necessary condition on possessing the concepts of 'two' and 'green' that one does not believe that two is green? I think this claim is false. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4) | |
A reaction: To see that it is false one only has to consider much more sophisticated concepts, which are grasped without knowing their full implications. I might think two is green because I fully grasp 'two', but have not yet mastered 'green'. |
18008 | Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Generative semanticists claimed that the structure of a sentence is determined by both 'syntactic' and 'semantic' considerations which interact with each other in complex ways. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.3) | |
A reaction: [She mentions George Lakoff for this view] You need to study a range of examples, but this sounds a better view to me than the tidy picture of producing a syntactic structure and then adding a semantics. We make up sentences while speaking them. |
18010 | 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The sentences 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' can have very different deep structure (with the latter concerning John as a pleaser, while the former concerns John as the one being pleased). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This demolishes the old idea of grammar as 'parts of speech' strung together according to superficial rules. The question is whether we now just have deeper syntax, or whether semantics is part of the process. |
18053 | The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The basic semantics of sentences are not truth-conditions, but rather context change potential, which is a rule which determines what the effect of uttering the sentence would be on the context. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
A reaction: [I. Heim's 'renowned' 1983 revision of Stalnaker] This means the semantics of a sentence can vary hugely, depending on context. It is known as 'dynamic semantics'. 'I think you should go ahead and do it'. |
18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
Full Idea: A weaker principle of compositionality states that if a syntactically well-formed sentence is meaningful, then its meaning is a function of the meaning of its parts. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
A reaction: I would certainly accept this as being correct. I take the meaning of a sentence to be something which you assemble in your head as you hear the parts of it unfold. ….However, irony might exhibit meaning that only comes from the whole sentence. Hm. |
17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
Full Idea: In the strong form of the principle of compositionality any meaningful expressions combined in a syntactically well-formed manner compose a meaningful expression. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
A reaction: [She cites Montague as holding this view] I find this plausible, at least. If you look at whole sentences they can seem meaningless, but if you track the process of composition a collective meaning emerges, despite the oddities. |
18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The fact that speakers of natural languages have the capacity to understand indefinitely many new sentences suggests that meaning must be compositional. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1) | |
A reaction: To some extent, the compositionality of meaning is so obvious as to hardly require pointing out. It is the precise nature of the claim, and the extent to which whole sentences can add to the compositional meaning, that is of interest. |
18001 | Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Are there such things as 'partial propositions', which are truth-valueless relative to some possible worlds? | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Presumably this could be expressed without possible worlds. Are there propositions meaningful in New Guinea, and meaningless in England? Do some propositions require the contingent existence of certain objects to be meaningful? |
11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
Full Idea: 'That is red' in a context where the demonstrative fails to refer is truth-valueless, despite being meaningful, as is 'the queen of France in 2010 is bald'. ...The claim that some sentences are meaningful but truth-valueless is, then, widely accepted. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1) | |
A reaction: The lack of truth value is usually because of reference failure. It is best to say the words are meaningful, but no proposition is expressed. |
18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
Full Idea: According to the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are constraints on the context: if a sentence s generates a presupposition p, an assertion of s cannot proceed smoothly unless the context already entails p (p is taken for granted). | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
A reaction: She credits Stalnaker for this approach. There is a choice between the presuppositions being largely driven by internal features of the sentence, or by external features of context. You may not know the context of some statements. |
18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |
Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially true, asserting it would violate the maxim of quantity. For Stalnaker, if p is trivially true, it involves no update to the context-set, and is thus pointless. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2) | |
A reaction: 'Let us remind ourselves, before we proceed, of the following trivial truth: p'. |
18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially false, asserting it would violate the maxim of quality. For Stalnaker if p is trivially false, removing all worlds incompatible with p would result in an empty context-set, preventing any further communication. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2) | |
A reaction: [compressed] I'm not sure whether we need to 'explain' the inappropriateness of uttering trivial falsities. I take the main rule of conversation to be 'don't be boring', but we all violate that. |
18050 | If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor] |
Full Idea: In the traditional account, a sentence s presupposes p if and only if both s and ¬s entail p. Standardly, this entails that if s presupposes p, then whenever p is false, s must be neither true nor false. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
A reaction: 'I'm looking down on the garden' presupposes 'I'm upstairs'. Why would 'I'm not looking down on the garden' entail 'I'm upstairs'? I seem to have missed something. |
18047 | A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The most obvious test for presupposition would be this: if s generates the presupposition p, then an utterance of s would be infelicitous, unless p is taken for granted by participants in the conversation. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.1) | |
A reaction: The principle of charity seems to be involved here - that we try to make people's utterances sound right, so we add in the presuppositions which would achieve that. The problem, she says, is that the infelicity may have other causes. |
18048 | A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor] |
Full Idea: A proposed test for presupposition is the 'Hey, wait a minute' test. S presupposes that p, just in case it would be felictious to respond to an utterance of s with something like 'Hey, wait a minute - I had not idea that p!'. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.2) | |
A reaction: [K. Von Finkel 2004 made the suggestion] That is, you think 'hm ...this statement seems to presuppose p'. She says the suggestion vastly over-generates possible presuppositions - unlikely ones, as well as the obvious ones. |
18049 | The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The most robust tests for presupposition are the projection tests. If s presupposes p, then ¬s does too. If s1 presupposes p, then 'if s1 then s2' presupposes p. If s1 presupposes p, then 's1 and s2' presupposes p. If s presupposes p, then 's?' does too. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] She also discusses quantifiers. In other words, the presupposition remains stable through various transformations of the underlying proposition. |
18054 | Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor] |
Full Idea: We can ask why a range of lexical items (e.g. 'stop' or 'know') trigger the presuppositions they do. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure whether we'll get an answer, but I would approach the question by thinking about mental files. |
18022 | Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The fact that most metaphors involve category mistakes is not a coincidence. …A big part of them is to do with connecting objects and properties that normally seem to belong to disjoint domains. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: Metaphysica poets took disjoint domains and 'yoked them together by violence', according to Dr Johnson. |
18023 | Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor] |
Full Idea: There are theories of metaphors that require them to have literal meanings in order to achieve their metaphorical purpose, and those that do not. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: I take almost any string of proper language to have literal meaning (for compositional reasons), even if the end result is somewhat ridiculous. 'Churchill was a lion' obviously has literal meaning. And so does 'Churchill was a transcendental number'. |
18024 | One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor] |
Full Idea: On standard versions of the simile theory of metaphors, they mean the same as the corresponding simile. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: Magidor points out that this allows the metaphor to work while being meaningless, since all the work is done by the perfectly meaningful simile. But the metaphor must at least mean enough to indicate what the simile is. |
18027 | Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor] |
Full Idea: A problem with the substitution view of metaphors is that the same predicate can have very different metaphorical contributions in different contexts. Consider 'Juliet is the sun' uttered by Romeo, and 'Stalin is the sun' from a devoted communist. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: The substitution view never looked good (especially if you like poetry), and now it looks a lot worse. |
18025 | The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor] |
Full Idea: The simile theory of metaphors makes them too easy to figure out, when they cannot be paraphrased in literal terms, …and it does not explain why we use metaphors as well as similes. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: [She cites Davidson for these points] They might just be similes with the added frisson of leaving out 'like', so that they seem at first to be false, until you work out the simile and see their truth. |
18026 | Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor] |
Full Idea: According to the substitution view of metaphors, a word used metaphorically is merely a substitute for another word or phrase that expresses the same meaning literally. Thus 'John is an ice-cube' is a substitute for 'John is cruel and unemotional'. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to capture the denotation but miss the connotation. Whoever came up with this theory didn't read much poetry. |
18028 | Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor] |
Full Idea: Gricean theories of metaphor …assume that conversational implicatures are generated via literal contents, and hence that a sentence cannot generate an implicature without being literally meaningful. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: Magidor gives not details of such theories, but presumably the metaphor is all in the speaker's intention, which is parasitic on the wayward literal meaning, as in cases of irony. |
18029 | Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor] |
Full Idea: According to non-cognitivists there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning. …The effects on the hearer are induced directly via the literal meaning of the metaphor. | |
From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5) | |
A reaction: [This is said to be Davidson's view] I wonder how many people defended some explicit 'metaphorical meaning', as opposed to connotations that accumulate as you take in the metaphor? Any second meaning is just a further literal meaning. |
6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
15133 | A thing can't be the only necessary existent, because its singleton set would be as well [Williamson] |
Full Idea: That there is just one necessary existent is surely false, for if x is a necessary, {x} is a distinct necessary existent. | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §1) | |
A reaction: You would have to believe that sets actually 'exist' to accept this, but it is a very neat point. |
22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |