31 ideas
| 2557 | Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: There is nowadays little attempt to bring "analytic philosophy" to self-consciousness by explaining how to tell a successful from an unsuccessful analysis. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.1) |
| 2556 | Rational certainty may be victory in argument rather than knowledge of facts [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: We can think of "rational certainty" as a matter of victory in argument rather than relation to an object known. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 3.4) |
| 13838 | A decent modern definition should always imply a semantics [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Today we expect that anything worth calling a definition should imply a semantics. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §10) | |
| A reaction: He compares this with Gentzen 1935, who was attempting purely syntactic definitions of the logical connectives. |
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers. | |
| From: report of Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This may be a caricature of Rorty, but he certainly seems to be in the business of denying truth as much as possible. This strikes me as the essence of pragmatism, and as a kind of philosophical nihilism. |
| 2549 | For James truth is "what it is better for us to believe" rather than a correct picture of reality [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Truth is, in James' phrase, "what it is better for us to believe", rather than "the accurate representation of reality". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Intro) |
| 13833 | 'Thinning' ('dilution') is the key difference between deduction (which allows it) and induction [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: 'Dilution' (or 'Thinning') provides an essential contrast between deductive and inductive reasoning; for the introduction of new premises may spoil an inductive inference. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.2) | |
| A reaction: That is, inductive logic (if there is such a thing) is clearly non-monotonic, whereas classical inductive logic is monotonic. |
| 13834 | Gentzen's Cut Rule (or transitivity of deduction) is 'If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C' [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C. This generalises to: If Γ|-A,Θ and Γ,A |- Θ, then Γ |- Θ. Gentzen called this 'cut'. It is the transitivity of a deduction. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.3) | |
| A reaction: I read the generalisation as 'If A can be either a premise or a conclusion, you can bypass it'. The first version is just transitivity (which by-passes the middle step). |
| 13835 | Only Cut reduces complexity, so logic is constructive without it, and it can be dispensed with [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Only the cut rule can have a conclusion that is less complex than its premises. Hence when cut is not used, a derivation is quite literally constructive, building up from components. Any theorem obtained by cut can be obtained without it. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §08) |
| 13845 | The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe English is by nature classical or intuitionistic etc. These are abstractions made by logicians. Logicians attend to numerous different objects that might be served by 'If...then', like material conditional, strict or relevant implication. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §15) | |
| A reaction: The idea that they are 'abstractions' is close to my heart. Abstractions from what? Surely 'if...then' has a standard character when employed in normal conversation? |
| 13840 | First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with a Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 13844 | A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Henkin proved that there is no first-order treatment of branching quantifiers, which do not seem to involve any idea that is fundamentally different from ordinary quantification. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: See Hacking for an example of branching quantifiers. Hacking is impressed by this as a real limitation of the first-order logic which he generally favours. |
| 13842 | Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Second-order logic has no chance of a completeness theorem unless one ventures into intensional entities and possible worlds. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 13837 | With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: My doctrine is that the peculiarity of the logical constants resides precisely in that given a certain pure notion of truth and consequence, all the desirable semantic properties of the constants are determined by their syntactic properties. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §09) | |
| A reaction: He opposes this to Peacocke 1976, who claims that the logical connectives are essentially semantic in character, concerned with the preservation of truth. |
| 13839 | Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: For some purposes the variables of first-order logic can be regarded as prepositions and place-holders that could in principle be dispensed with, say by a system of arrows indicating what places fall in the scope of which quantifier. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §11) | |
| A reaction: I tend to think of variables as either pronouns, or as definite descriptions, or as temporary names, but not as prepositions. Must address this new idea... |
| 13843 | If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: A Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for anything which, on my delineation, is a logic. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an unusually conservative view. Shapiro is the chap who can give you an alternative view of these things, or Boolos. |
| 2548 | If knowledge is merely justified belief, justification is social [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: If we have a Deweyan conception of knowledge, as what we are justified in believing, we will see "justification" as a social phenomenon. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this observation highly illuminating (though I probably need to study Dewey to understand it). There just is no absolute about whether someone is justified. How justified do you want to be? |
| 6599 | Knowing has no definable essence, but is a social right, found in the context of conversations [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: If we see knowing not as having an essence, described by scientists or philosophers, but rather as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we see conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Ch.5), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This teeters towards ridiculous relativism (e.g. what if the conversation is among a group of fools? - Ah, there are no fools! Politically incorrect!). However, knowledge can be social, provided we are healthily elitist. Scientists know more than us. |
| 2566 | You can't debate about whether to have higher standards for the application of words [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: The decision about whether to have higher than usual standards for the application of words like "true" or "good" or "red" is, as far as I can see, not a debatable issue. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.6) |
| 2553 | The mind is a property, or it is baffling [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: All that is needed for the mind-body problem to be unintelligible is for us to be nominalist, to refuse firmly to hypostasize individual properties. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Edelman says the mind is a process rather than a property. It might vanish if the clockspeed was turned right down? Nominalism here sounds like behaviourism or instrumentalism. Would Dennett plead guilty? |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: We can't define the mental as intentional because pains aren't about anything, and we can't define it as phenomenal because beliefs don't feel like anything. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Nice, but simplistic? There is usually an intentional object for a pain, and the concepts which we use to build beliefs contain the residue of remembered qualia. It seems unlikely that any mind could have one without the other (even a computer). |
| 2554 | Is intentionality a special sort of function? [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Following Wittgenstein, we shall treat the intentional as merely a subspecies of the functional. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing but obscure. Sounds wrong to me. The intentional refers to the content of thoughts, but function concerns their role. They have roles because they have content, so they can't be the same. |
| 2565 | Nature has no preferred way of being represented [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no preferred way of being represented. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Tree rings accidentally represent the passing of the years. If God went back and started again would she or he opt for a 'preferred way'? |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: For cooler heads there must be some middle view between "meanings remain and beliefs change" and "meanings change whenever beliefs do". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: The second one seems blatanty false. How could we otherwise explain a change in belief? But obviously some changes in belief (e.g. about electrons) produce a change in meaning. |
| 2562 | A theory of reference seems needed to pick out objects without ghostly inner states [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: The need to pick out objects without the help of definitions, essences, and meanings of terms produced, philosophers thought, a need for a "theory of reference". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Frege's was very perceptive in noting that meaning and reference are not the same. Whether we need a 'theory' of reference is unclear. It is worth describing how it occurs. |
| 2559 | Davidson's theory of meaning focuses not on terms, but on relations between sentences [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: A theory of meaning, for Davidson, is not an assemblage of "analyses" of the meanings of individual terms, but rather an understanding of the inferential relations between sentences. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the influence of Frege on Davidson is obvious. Purely algebraic expressions can have inferential relations, using variables and formal 'sentences'. |
| 2558 | Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Only since Hegel have philosophers begun toying with the idea that the individual apart from his society is just one more animal. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.3) |
| 6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are three hierarchies of natural kinds: objects or substances (substantive universals), events or processes (dynamic universals), and properties or relations (tropic universals). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Most interesting here is the identifying of natural kinds with universals, making universals into the families of nature. Universals are high-level sets of natural kinds. To grasp universals you must see patterns, and infer the underlying order. |
| 6616 | Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005]) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects. |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action. |
| 6614 | A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out. |
| 6612 | Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90) | |
| A reaction: Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences. |