63 ideas
| 10308 | Questions about objects are questions about certain non-vacuous singular terms [Hale] |
| Full Idea: I understand questions about the Fregean notion of an object to be inseparable from questions in the philosophy of language - questions of the existence of objects are tantamount to questions about non-vacuous singular terms of a certain kind. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This view hovers somewhere between Quine and J.L. Austin, and Dummett is its originator. I am instinctively deeply opposed to the identification of metaphysics with semantics. |
| 11051 | Frege's logical approach dominates the analytical tradition [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Pure logic constantly controls Frege's philosophy, and in turn Frege's logically oriented philosophy constantly controls the analytic tradition. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Hanna seeks to reintroduce the dreaded psychological aspect of logic, and I say 'good for him'. |
| 11054 | Scientism says most knowledge comes from the exact sciences [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Scientism says that the exact sciences are the leading sources of knowledge about the world. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I almost agree, but I would describe the exact sciences as the chief 'evidence' for our knowledge, with the chief 'source' being our own ability to make coherent sense of the evidence. Exact sciences rest on mathematics. |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I shall make use of the admittedly imprecise notions of consilience, simplicity, analogy and fitting into a web of belief, or in short of 'coherence'. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.06) | |
| A reaction: Coherence sounds like a family of tests, rather than a single unified concept. I still like coherence, though. |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Not mere self-coherence, but comprehensiveness belongs to the notion of coherence. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) |
| 10314 | An expression is a genuine singular term if it resists elimination by paraphrase [Hale] |
| Full Idea: An expression ... should be reckoned a genuine singular term only if it resists elimination by paraphrase. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as extraordinarily optimistic. It will be relative to a language, and the resources of a given speaker, and seems open to the invention of new expressions to do the job (e.g. an equivalent adjective for every noun in the dictionary). |
| 11070 | 'Denying the antecedent' fallacy: φ→ψ, ¬φ, so ¬ψ [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'denying the antecedent' is of the form φ→ψ, ¬φ, so ¬ψ. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.4) |
| 11071 | 'Affirming the consequent' fallacy: φ→ψ, ψ, so φ [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'affirming the consequent' is of the form φ→ψ, ψ, so φ. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.4) |
| 11088 | We can list at least fourteen informal fallacies [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Informal fallacies: appeals to force, circumstantial factors, ignorance, pity, popular consensus, authority, generalisation, confused causes, begging the question, complex questions, irrelevance, equivocation, black-and-white, slippery slope etc. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 7.3) |
| 11059 | Circular arguments are formally valid, though informally inadmissible [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: A circular argument - one whose conclusion is to be found among its premises - is inadmissible in most informal contexts, even though it is formally valid. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is a matter of conversational implicature - that you are under a conventional obligation to say things which go somewhere, rather than circling around their starting place. |
| 11089 | Formally, composition and division fallacies occur in mereology [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Informal fallacies of composition and division go over into formal fallacies of mereological logic. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 7.3) |
| 11058 | Logic is explanatorily and ontologically dependent on rational animals [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Logic is explanatorily and ontologically dependent on rational animals. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendid defiance of the standard Fregean view of logic as having an inner validity of its own, having nothing to do with the psychology of thinkers. But if Hanna is right, why does logical consequence seem to be necessary? |
| 11072 | Logic is personal and variable, but it has a universal core [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Beyond an innate and thus universally share protologic, each reasoner's mental logic is only more or less similar to the mental logic of any other reasoner. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the main thesis of Hanna's book. I like the combination of this idea with Stephen Read's remark that each student should work out a personal logic which has their own private endorsement. |
| 11061 | Intensional consequence is based on the content of the concepts [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In intensional logic the consequence relation is based on the form or content of the concepts or properties expressed by the predicates. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.2) |
| 10316 | We should decide whether singular terms are genuine by their usage [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The criteria for a genuine singular term should pick out not the singular terms themselves but their uses, since they may be genuine in one context and not another. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: [rephrased] This will certainly meet problems with vagueness (e.g. as the reference of a singular term is gradually clarified). |
| 10312 | Often the same singular term does not ensure reliable inference [Hale] |
| Full Idea: In 'the whale is increasingly scarce' and 'the whale is much improved today' (our pet whale), we cannot infer that there is something that is much improved and increasingly scarce, so this singular term fails Dummett's criterion based on inference. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: [much rephrased] This is not just a problem for a few cunningly selected examples. With contortions almost any singular term can be undermined in this way. Singular terms are simply not a useful guide to the existence of abstracta. |
| 10313 | Plenty of clear examples have singular terms with no ontological commitment [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Some examples where a definite singular noun phrase is not 'genuine' (giving ontological commitment): 'left us in the lurch'; 'for my mother's sake'; 'given the sack'; 'in the nick of time', 'the whereabouts of the PM', 'the identity of the murderer'. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: These are not just freakish examples. If I 'go on a journey', that doesn't involve extra entities called 'journeys', just because the meaning is clearer and a more commonplace part of the language. |
| 10322 | If singular terms can't be language-neutral, then we face a relativity about their objects [Hale] |
| Full Idea: If we lack any general, language-neutral characterization of singular terms, must not a parallel linguistic relativity infect the objects which are to be thought of as their non-linguistic correlates? | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.III) | |
| A reaction: Hale thinks he can answer this, but I would have thought that this problem dooms the linguistic approach from the start. There needs to be more imagination about how very different a language could be, while still qualifying as a language. |
| 11063 | Logicism struggles because there is no decent theory of analyticity [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: All versions of the thesis that arithmetic is reducible to logic remain questionable as long as no good theory of analyticity is available. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: He rejects the attempts by Frege, Wittgenstein and Carnap to provide a theory of analyticity. |
| 11055 | Supervenience can add covariation, upward dependence, and nomological connection [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: 'Strong supervenience' involves necessary covariation of the properties, and upward dependence of higher level on lower level. ...If we add a nomological connection between the two, then we have 'superdupervenience'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Very helpful. A superdupervenient relationship between mind and brain would be rather baffling if they were not essentially the same thing. (which is what I take them to be). |
| 10512 | The abstract/concrete distinction is based on what is perceivable, causal and located [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The 'concrete/abstract' distinction has a strong intuitive feel, and can seem to be drawable by familiar contrasts, between what can/cannot be perceived, what can/cannot be involved in causal interactions, and is/is not located in space and time. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.I) | |
| A reaction: Problems arise, needless to say. The idea of an abstraction can be causal, and abstractions seem to change. If universals are abstract, we seem to perceive some of them. They can hardly be non-spatial if they have a temporal beginning and end. |
| 10517 | Colours and points seem to be both concrete and abstract [Hale] |
| Full Idea: It might seem that colours would qualify both as concrete and as abstract objects. ...and geometrical points also seem to be borderline. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.II) | |
| A reaction: The theory of tropes exploits this uncertainty. Dummett (1973:ch.14) notes that we can point to colours, but also slip from an adjectival to a noun usage of colour-terms. He concludes that colours are concrete. I think I agree. |
| 10519 | The abstract/concrete distinction is in the relations in the identity-criteria of object-names [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Noonan suggests that the distinction between abstract and concrete objects should be seen as derivative from a difference between the relations centrally involved in criteria of identity associated with names of objects. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Noonan 1976, but I've lost it] I don't understand this, but collect it as a lead to something that might be interesting. A careful reading of Hale might reveal what Noonan meant. |
| 10520 | Token-letters and token-words are concrete objects, type-letters and type-words abstract [Hale] |
| Full Idea: In familiar, though doubtless not wholly problematic jargon, token-letters and token-words are concrete objects, type-letters and type-words abstract. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: This is indeed problematic. The marks may be tokens, but the preliminary to identifying the type is to see that the marks are in fact words. To grasp the concrete, grasp the abstraction. An excellent example of the blurring of the distinction. |
| 10524 | There is a hierarchy of abstraction, based on steps taken by equivalence relations [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The domain of the abstract can be seen as exemplifying a hierarchical structure, with differences of level reflecting the number of steps of abstraction, via appropriate equivalence relations, required for recognition at different levels. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right, and so does almost everyone else, since people cheerfully talk of 'somewhat' abstract and 'highly' abstract. Don't dream of a neat picture though. You might reach a level by two steps from one direction, and four from another. |
| 10318 | Realists take universals to be the referrents of both adjectives and of nouns [Hale] |
| Full Idea: On the traditional realist's view abstract qualities (universals) are the common referents of two quite different sorts of expression - of ordinary adjectives (predicates), and of abstract nouns referring to them. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: This fact alone should make us suspicious, especially as there isn't an isomorphism between the nouns and the adjectives, and the match-up will vary between languages. |
| 10521 | If F can't have location, there is no problem of things having F in different locations [Hale] |
| Full Idea: If Fs are incapable of spatial location, it is impossible for a and b to be at the same time in different places and yet be the same F. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark from Hale which strikes me as incredibly significant. The very idea of a 'one-over-many' is that there are many locations for the thing, so to conclude that the thing is therefore non-located seems to negate the original problem. |
| 10511 | It is doubtful if one entity, a universal, can be picked out by both predicates and abstract nouns [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of universals, resting as it does upon the idea that some single type of entity is picked out by expressions of such radically different logical types as predicates and abstract nouns, is of doubtful coherence. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3 Intro) | |
| A reaction: A striking case of linguistic metaphysics in action. I don't believe in universals, but I don't find this persuasive, as our capacity to express the same proposition by means of extremely varied syntax is obvious. Is 'horse' an abstract noun? |
| 10310 | Objections to Frege: abstracta are unknowable, non-independent, unstatable, unindividuated [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Objections to Frege's argument for abstract objects: that the objects would not have the right sort of independence; that we could have no knowledge of them; that the singular term statements can't be had; that thoughts of abstracta can't be identified. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] [See Idea 10309 for the original argument] It is helpful to have this list, even if Hale rejects them all. They are also created but then indestructible, and exist in unlimited profusion, and seem relative to a language. Etc! |
| 10518 | Shapes and directions are of something, but games and musical compositions are not [Hale] |
| Full Idea: While a shape or a direction is necessarily of something, games, musical compositions or dance routines are not of anything at all. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.II) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, because Frege's abstraction principle works nicely for abstractions 'of' some objects, but is not so clear for abstracta that are sui generis. |
| 10513 | Many abstract objects, such as chess, seem non-spatial, but are not atemporal [Hale] |
| Full Idea: There are many plausible example of abstract objects which, though non-spatial, do not appear to satisfy the suggested requirement of atemporality, such as chess, or the English language. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Given the point that modern physics is committed to 'space-time', with no conceivable separation of them, this looks dubious. Though I think the physics could be challenged. Try Idea 7621, for example. |
| 10514 | If the mental is non-spatial but temporal, then it must be classified as abstract [Hale] |
| Full Idea: If mental events are genuinely non-spatial, but not atemporal, its effect is to classify them as abstract; the distinction between the abstract and the mental simply collapses. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is important. You can't discuss this sort of metaphysics in isolation from debates about the ontology of mind. Functionalists do treat mental events as abstractions. |
| 10523 | Being abstract is based on a relation between things which are spatially separated [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The abstract/concrete distinction is, roughly, between those sortals whose grounding relations can hold between abstract things which are spatially but not temporally separated, those concrete things whose grounding relations cannot so hold. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: Thus being a father is based on 'begat', which does not involve spatial separation, and so is concrete. The relation is one of equivalence. |
| 10307 | The modern Fregean use of the term 'object' is much broader than the ordinary usage [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The notion of an 'object' first introduced by Frege is much broader than that of most comparable ordinary uses of 'object', and is now fairly standard and familiar. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This makes it very difficult to get to grips with the metaphysical issues involved, since the ontological claims disappear into a mist of semantic vagueness. |
| 10315 | We can't believe in a 'whereabouts' because we ask 'what kind of object is it?' [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Onotological outrage at such objects as the 'whereabouts of the Prime Minister' derives from the fact that we seem beggared for any convincing answer to the question 'What kind of objects are they?' | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: I go further and ask of any object 'what is it made of?' When I receive the answer that I am being silly, and that abstract objects are not 'made' of anything, I am tempted to become sarcastic, and say 'thank you - that makes it much clearer'. |
| 10522 | The relations featured in criteria of identity are always equivalence relations [Hale] |
| Full Idea: The relations which are featured in criteria of identity are always equivalence relations. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.3.III) | |
| A reaction: This will only apply to strict identity. If I say 'a is almost identical to b', this will obviously not be endlessly transitive (as when we get to k we may have lost the near-identity to a). Are 'two threes' identical to 'three twos'? |
| 10321 | We sometimes apply identity without having a real criterion [Hale] |
| Full Idea: Not every (apparent) judgement of identity involves application of anything properly describable as a criterion of identity, ...such as being able to pronounce that mercy is the quality of being merciful. | |
| From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.2.II) | |
| A reaction: This suggests some distinction between internal criteria (e.g. grammatical, conceptual) and external criteria (existent, sensed). |
| 11083 | A sentence is necessary if it is true in a set of worlds, and nonfalse in the other worlds [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: On my view, necessity is the truth of a sentence in every member of a set of possible worlds, together with its nonfalsity in every other possible worlds. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) |
| 11086 | Metaphysical necessity can be 'weak' (same as logical) and 'strong' (based on essences) [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Weak metaphysical necessity is either over the set of all logically possible worlds (in which case it is the same as logical necessity), or it is of a smaller set of worlds, and is determined by the underlying essence or nature of the actual world. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: I take the first to be of no interest, as I have no interest in a world which is somehow rated as logically possible, but is not naturally possible. The second type should the principle aim of all human cognitive enquiry. The strong version is synthetic. |
| 11084 | Logical necessity is truth in all logically possible worlds, because of laws and concepts [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Logical necessity is the truth of a sentence by virtue of logical laws or intrinsic conceptual connections alone, and thus true in all logically possible worlds. Put in traditional terms, logical necessity is analyticity. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) |
| 11085 | Nomological necessity is truth in all logically possible worlds with our laws [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Physical or nomological necessity is the truth of a sentence in all logically possible worlds governed by our actual laws of nature. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think 'natural necessity' is the best label for this, as it avoids firm commitment to reductive physicalism, and it also avoids commitment to actual necessitating laws. |
| 11077 | Intuition includes apriority, clarity, modality, authority, fallibility and no inferences [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The nine features of intuition are: a mental act, apriority, content-comprehensiveness, clarity and distinctness, strict-modality-attributivity, authoritativeness,noninferentiality, cognitive indispensability, and fallibility. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [See Hanna for a full explanation of this lot] Seems like a good stab at it. Note the trade-off between authority and fallibility. |
| 11080 | Intuition is more like memory, imagination or understanding, than like perception [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why intuition should be cognitively analogous not to sense perception but instead to either memory, imagination, or conceptual understanding. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: It is Russell's spotting the analogy with memory that made me come to believe that a priori knowledge is possible, as long as we accept it as being fallible. [Hanna has a good discussion of intuition; he votes for the imagination analogy] |
| 11078 | Intuition is only outside the 'space of reasons' if all reasons are inferential [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Intuition is outside the 'space of reasons' if we assume that all reasons are inferential, but inside if we assume that reasons need not always be inferential. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: I take it that intuition can be firmly inside the space of reasons, and that not all reasons are inferential. |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The simplest way of fitting the putative observed phenomena of telepathy or clairvoyance into my web of belief is to refuse to take them at face value. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07-8) | |
| A reaction: Love it. It is very disconcerting for the sceptical naturalist to be faced with adamant claims that the paranormal has occurred, but my response is exactly the same as Smart's. I reject the reports, no matter how passionately they are asserted. |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| Full Idea: You could imagine a person using the angle from a theodolite to decide a suitable spot to cut the height of the flagpole, …but since such circumstances would be very unusual we naturally say the flagpole subtends the angle because of its height. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.14) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he mentions Van Fraassen 1980:132-3 for a similar point] As a response this seems a bit lame, if the direction is fixed by what is 'usual'. I think the key point is that the direction of explanation is one way or the other, not both. |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The theory of the expansion of the universe renders the red shift no longer puzzling, whereas he expansion of the universe is hardly rendered less puzzling by facts about the red shift. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.15) | |
| A reaction: The direction of explanation is, I take it, made obvious by the direction of causation, with questions about what is 'puzzling' as mere side-effects. |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I want to characterise explanation of some fact as a matter of fitting belief in this fact into a system of beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good to me. Simple facts slot straight into daily beliefs, and deep obscure facts are explained when we hook them up to things we have already grasped. Quark theory fits into prior physics of forces, properties etc. |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| Full Idea: An explanation may be bad if it fits only into a bad web of belief. It can also be bad if it fits into a (possibly good) web of belief in a bad sort of way. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.09) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you think someone has an absurd web of beliefs, then it counts against some belief (for you) if it fits beautifully into the other person's belief system. Judgement of coherence comes in at different levels. |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The Hempelian deductive-nomological model of explanation clearly fits in well with the notion of explanation in terms of coherence. One way of fitting a belief into a system is to show that it is deducible from other beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.13) | |
| A reaction: Smart goes on to reject the law-based deductive approach, for familiar reasons, but at least it has something in common with the Smart view of explanation, which is the one I like. |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| Full Idea: One explanation will be a better explanation that another if it also explains a set of phenomena from a different field ('consilience'). | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) | |
| A reaction: This would count as 'unexpected accommodation', rather than prediction. It is a nice addition to Lipton's comparison of mere accommodation versus prediction as criteria. It sounds like a strong criterion for a persuasive explanation. |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I class mathematical explanation with scientific explanation. This would be resisted by those who, unlike me, regard the notion of causation as essential to scientific explanation. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02-3) | |
| A reaction: I aim to champion mathematical explanation, in terms of axioms etc., so I am realising that my instinctive attraction to exclusively causal explanation won't do. What explanation needs is a direction of dependence. |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The history of science suggests that most often explanation is reduction to the unfamiliar. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Boyle was keen to reduce things to the familiar, but that was early days for science, and some nasty shocks were coming our way. What would Boyle make of quantum non-locality? |
| 11053 | Explanatory reduction is stronger than ontological reduction [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: As standardly construed, reduction can be either explanatory or ontological. Explanatory reduction is the strongest sort of reduction. ...Ontological reduction can still have an 'explanatory gap'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.1) |
| 11081 | Imagination grasps abstracta, generates images, and has its own correctness conditions [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Three features of imagination are that its objects can be abstract, that it generates spatial images directly available to introspection, and its correctness conditions are not based on either efficacious causation or effective tracking. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Hanna makes the imagination faculty central to our grasp of his proto-logic. |
| 11082 | Should we take the 'depictivist' or the 'descriptivist/propositionalist' view of mental imagery? [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In the debate in cognitive science on the nature of mental imagery, there is a 'depictivist' side (Johnson-Laird, Kosslyn, Shepard - good images are isomorphic), and a 'descriptivist' or 'propositionalist' side (Pylyshyn and others). | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Hanna votes firmly in favour of the first view, and implies that they have more or less won the debate. |
| 11067 | Rational animals have a normative concept of necessity [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: A rational animal is one that is a normative-reflective possessor of the concepts of necessity, certainty and unconditional obligation. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: The addition of obligation shows the Kantian roots of this. It isn't enough just to possess a few concepts. You wouldn't count as rational if you didn't desire truth, as well as understanding it. Robots be warned. |
| 11068 | One tradition says talking is the essence of rationality; the other says the essence is logic [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In the tradition of Descartes, Chomsky and Davidson, rational animals are essentially talking animals. But in the view of Kant, and perhaps Fodor, it is the cognitive capacity for logic that is the essence of human rationality. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 4.9) |
| 11047 | Hegelian holistic rationality is the capacity to seek coherence [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'holistic' (Hegelian) sense of rationality means the capacity for systematically seeking coherence (or 'reflective equilibrium') across a network or web of beliefs, desires, emotions, intentions and volitions. Traditionally 'the truth is the whole'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: On the whole this is my preferred view (which sounds Quinean as well as Hegelian), though I reject the notion that truth is a whole. I take coherence to be the hallmark of justification, though not of truth, and reason aims to justify. |
| 11048 | Humean Instrumental rationality is the capacity to seek contingent truths [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'instrumental' (Humean) sense of rationality means a capacity for generating or recognizing contingent truths, contextually normative rules, consequentialist obligations, and hypothetical 'ought' claims. Reason is 'the slave of the passions'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 11046 | Kantian principled rationality is recognition of a priori universal truths [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'principled' (Kantian) sense of rationality means the possession of a capacity for generating or recognizing necessary truths, a priori beliefs, strictly universal normative rules, nonconsequentialist moral obligations, and categorical 'ought' claims. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 11045 | Most psychologists are now cognitivists [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Most psychologists have now dropped behaviourism and adopted cognitivism: the thesis that the rational human mind is essentially an active innately specified information-processor. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Newtonian celestial mechanics does not explain the advance of the perihelion of Mercury, while Einstein's general theory of relativity does. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.03) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of why explanation is the central concept in science, and probably in all epistemological activity. The desire to know is the desire for an explanation. Once the explanation is obvious, we know. |