Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Sign of Four', 'Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed)' and 'Personal Identity and Memory'

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8 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 4. Logic by Convention

12394	If the result is bad, we change the rule; if we like the rule, we reject the result [Goodman]
	Full Idea: A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.64)
	A reaction: This is clearly in tune with Quine's assertion that logic is potentially revisable, and the idea is pragmatist in spirit. It is hard to deny that intuitions about what makes a good argument control our logic. I say the world controls our intuitions.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / a. Dispositions

14292	Dispositions seem more ethereal than behaviour; a non-occult account of them would be nice [Goodman]
	Full Idea: Dispositions of a thing are as important to us as overt behaviour, but they strike us by comparison as rather ethereal. So we are moved to enquire whether we can bring them down to earth, and explain disposition terms without reference to occult powers.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], II.3)
	A reaction: Mumford quotes this at the start of his book on dispositions, as his agenda. I suspect that the 'occult' aspect crept in because dispositions were based on powers, and the dominant view was that these were the immediate work of God.

14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction

22200	If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle]
	Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
	From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6)
	A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible.

14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem

18749	Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
	Full Idea: Goodman constructed arguments that purported to show that a satisfactory syntactic analysis of the confirmation relation can never be found. In response, philosophers of science tried to model it in probabilistic terms.
	From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R - Mathematical Methods in Philosophy 4
	A reaction: I take this idea to say that Bayesianism was developed in response to the grue problem. This is an interesting light on 'grue', which never bothered me much. The point is it scuppered formal attempts to model induction.

17646	Goodman showed that every sound inductive argument has an unsound one of the same form [Goodman, by Putnam]
	Full Idea: Goodman has shown that no purely formal criterion can distinguish arguments that are intuitively sound inductive arguments for unsound ones: for every sound one there is an unsound one of the same form. The predicates in the argument make the difference.
	From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Causation'
	A reaction: This is to swallow grue whole. I think a bit more chewing is called for. By this date Putnam strikes me as a crazy relativist who has lost his grip on the world. Note the word 'formal' - but Putnam seems to think the argument is important.

16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self

1389	If memory is the sole criterion of identity, we ought to use it for other people too [Shoemaker]
	Full Idea: If memory were the sole criterion of personal identity it would have to be the sole criterion that we use in making identity statements about persons other than ourselves.
	From: Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §4)
	A reaction: From Locke's point of view, he is much less certain about the continued identity of other people, because he allows the possibility of transference of minds. Even we might reject physical identity, if a person had suffered a severe trauma.

1390	Bodily identity is one criterion and memory another, for personal identity [Shoemaker, by PG]
	Full Idea: Bodily identity must be one of the criteria for personal identity (to establish that a rememberer was present at a past event), but memory itself must also be accepted as one of the criteria.
	From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Personal Identity and Memory [1959], §5) by PG - Db (ideas)
	A reaction: This concerns the epistemology of personal identity, not the ontology. Someone with total amnesia would probably accept a driving licence as a criterion. Is personal identity a mental state, or a precondition which makes mental states possible?

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 3. Laws and Generalities

4794	We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman]
	Full Idea: Rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.21), quoted by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §5.4
	A reaction: This smacks of dodgy pragmatism, and sounds deeply wrong. The perception of a law has to be prior to making the prediction. Why do we make the prediction, if we haven't spotted a law. Goodman is mesmerised by language instead of reality.