Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Changes in Events and Changes in Things', 'Reply to Second Objections' and 'The Varieties of Reference'

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8 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / b. Types of fact

15201	That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b
	A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito

3622	The Cogito is not a syllogism but a self-evident intuition [Descartes]
	Full Idea: When someone says 'I am thinking, therefore I am, or I exist', he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognises it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind.
	From: René Descartes (Reply to Second Objections [1641], 140)

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception

12580	Experiences have no conceptual content [Evans, by Greco]
	Full Idea: In Evans's work experiences are conceived of as not having a conceptual content at all.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal
	A reaction: I presume it is this view which provoked McDowell's contrary view in 'Mind and World'. I say this is a job for neuroscience, and I struggle to see what philosophical questions hang on the outcome. I think I side with Evans.

7643	We have far fewer colour concepts than we have discriminations of colour [Evans]
	Full Idea: Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are shades colour that we can sensibly discriminate?
	From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 7.5)
	A reaction: This is the argument (rejected by McDowell) that experience cannot be conceptual because experience is too rich. We should not confuse lack of concepts with lack of words. I may have a concept of a colour between two shades, but no word for it.

18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content

23794	Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte]
	Full Idea: Evans introduced the idea that there are some representational states, for example perceptual experiences, which have content that is nonconceptual.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 3.4
	A reaction: McDowell famously disagree, and whether all experience is inherently conceptualised is a main debate from that period. Hard to see how it could be settled, but I incline to McDowell, because minimal perception hardly counts as 'experience'.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 1. Concepts / a. Nature of concepts

16366	The Generality Constraint says if you can think a predicate you can apply it to anything [Evans]
	Full Idea: If a subject can be credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being G of which he has conception. This condition I call the 'Generality Constraint'.
	From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], p.104), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 5.3
	A reaction: Recanati endorses the Constraint in his account of mental files. Apparently if I can entertain the thought of a circle being round, I can also entertain the thought of it being square, so I am not too sure about this one.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / b. Concepts as abilities

12575	Concepts have a 'Generality Constraint', that we must know how predicates apply to them [Evans, by Peacocke]
	Full Idea: Evans's 'Generality Constraint' says that if a thinker is capable of attitudes to the content Fa and possesses the singular concept b, then he is capable of having attitudes to the content Fb.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 4.3) by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 1.1
	A reaction: So having an attitude becomes the test of whether one possesses a concept. I suppose if one says 'You know you've got a concept when you are capable of thinking about it', that is much the same thing. Sounds fine.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series

22899	'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive'
	A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein?