28 ideas
| 9376 | A sentence may simultaneously define a term, and also assert a fact [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: It doesn't follow from the fact that a given sentence is being used to implicitly define one of its ingredient terms, that it is not a factual statement. 'This stick is a meter long at t' may define an ingredient terms and express something factual. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a rather good point, but it is tied in with a difficulty about definition, which is deciding which sentences are using a term, and which ones are defining it. If I say 'this stick in Paris is a meter long', I'm not defining it. |
| 18996 | A statement S is 'partly true' if it has some wholly true parts [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: A statement S is 'partly true' insofar as it has wholly true parts: wholly true implications whose subject matter is included in that of S. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 01.6) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that if we have rival theories, we agree that it is one or the other. And 'we may have pork for dinner, or human flesh' is partly true. |
| 19006 | An 'enthymeme' is an argument with an indispensable unstated assumption [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: An 'enthymeme' is a deductive argument with an unstated assumption that must be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 11.1) |
| 18999 | y is only a proper part of x if there is a z which 'makes up the difference' between them [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The principle of Supplementation says that y is properly part of x, only if a z exists that 'makes up the difference' between them. [note: that is, z is disjoint from y and sums with y to form x] | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 03.2) |
| 19001 | 'Pegasus doesn't exist' is false without Pegasus, yet the absence of Pegasus is its truthmaker [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: 'Pegasus does not exist' has a paradoxical, self-undermining flavour. On the one hand, the empty name makes it untrue. But now, why is the name empty? Because Pegasus does not exist. 'Pegasus does not exist' is untrue because Pegasus does not exist. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 05.7 n20) | |
| A reaction: Beautiful! This is Yablo's reward for continuing to ask 'why?' after everyone else has stopped in bewilderment at the tricky phenomenon. |
| 9375 | Conventionalism agrees with realists that logic has truth values, but not over the source [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Conventualism is a factualist view: it presupposes that sentences of logic have truth values. It differs from a realist view in its conception of the source of those truth values, not on their existence. I call the denial of truths Non-Factualism. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: It barely seems to count as truth is we say 'p is true because we say so'. It is a truth about an agreement, not a truth about logic. Driving on the left isn't a truth about which side of the road is best. |
| 19002 | A nominalist can assert statements about mathematical objects, as being partly true [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: If I am a nominalist non-Platonist, I think it is false that 'there are primes over 10', but I want to be able to say it like everyone else. I argue that this because the statement has a part that I do believe, a part that remains interestingly true. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 05.8) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously a key motivation for Yablo's book, as it reinforces his fictional view of abstract objects, but aims to capture the phenomena, by investigating what such sentences are 'about'. Admirable. |
| 18998 | Parthood lacks the restriction of kind which most relations have [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Most relations obtain only between certain kinds of thing. To learn that x is a part of y, however, tells you nothing about x and y taken individually. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Too sweeping. To be a part of crowd you have to be a person. To be part of the sea you have to be wet. It might depend on whether composition is unrestricted. |
| 9369 | 'Snow is white or it isn't' is just true, not made true by stipulation [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Isn't it overwhelmingly obvious that 'Either snow is white or it isn't' was true before anyone stipulated a meaning for it, and that it would have been true even if no one had thought about it, or chosen it to be expressed by one of our sentences? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: Boghossian would have to believe in propositions (unexpressed truths) to hold this - which he does. I take the notion of truth to only have relevance when there are minds around. Otherwise the so-called 'truths' are just the facts. |
| 9367 | The a priori is explained as analytic to avoid a dubious faculty of intuition [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The central impetus behind the analytic explanation of the a priori is a desire to explain the possibility of a priori knowledge without having to postulate a special evidence-gathering faculty of intuition. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: I don't see at all why one has to postulate a 'faculty' in order to talk about intuition. I take an intuition to be an apprehension of a probable truth, combined with an inability to articulate how the conclusion was arrived at. |
| 9373 | That logic is a priori because it is analytic resulted from explaining the meaning of logical constants [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The analytic theory of the apriority of logic arose indirectly, as a by-product of the attempt to explain in what a grasp of the meaning of the logical constants consists. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: Preumably he is referring to Wittgenstein's anguish over the meaning of the word 'not' in his World War I notebooks. He first defined the constants by truth tables, then asserted that they were purely conventional - so logic is conventional. |
| 9380 | We can't hold a sentence true without evidence if we can't agree which sentence is definitive of it [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: If there is no sentence I must hold true if it is to mean what it does, then there is no basis on which to argue that I am entitled to hold it true without evidence. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: He is exploring Quine's view. Truth by convention depends on agreeing which part of the usage of a term constitutes its defining sentence(s), and that may be rather tricky. Boghossian says this slides into the 'dreaded indeterminacy of meaning'. |
| 9384 | We may have strong a priori beliefs which we pragmatically drop from our best theory [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: It is consistent with a belief's being a priori in the strong sense that we should have pragmatic reasons for dropping it from our best overall theory. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], n 6) | |
| A reaction: Does 'dropping it' from the theory mean just ignoring it, or actually denying it? C.I. Lewis is the ancestor of this view. Could it be our 'best' theory, while conflicting with beliefs that were strongly a priori? Pragmatism can embrace falsehoods. |
| 9374 | If we learn geometry by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: If we learn geometrical truths by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This refers to the development of non-Euclidean geometries, though the main misleading concerns parallels, which involves infinity. Boghossian cites 'distance' as a concept the Euclideans had misunderstood. Why shouldn't intuitions be wrong? |
| 19004 | Gettier says you don't know if you are confused about how it is true [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: We know from Gettier that if you are right to regard Q as true, but you are sufficiently confused about HOW it is true - about how things stand with respect to its subject matter - then you don't know that Q. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 07.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to approach Gettier by focusing on the propositions being expressed, where his cases tend to focus on the literal wording of the sentences. What did the utterer mean by the sentences - not what did they appear to say. |
| 19007 | A theory need not be true to be good; it should just be true about its physical aspects [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: A physical theory need not be true to be good, Field has argued, and I agree. All we ask of it truth-wise is that its physical implications should be true, or, in my version, that it should be true about the physical. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 12.5) | |
| A reaction: Yablo is, of course, writing a book here about the concept of 'about'. This seems persuasive. The internal terminology of the theory isn't committed to anything - it is only at its physical periphery (Quine) that the ontology matters. |
| 18993 | If sentences point to different evidence, they must have different subject-matter [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: 'All crows are black' cannot say quite the same as 'All non-black things are non-crows', for the two are confirmed by different evidence. Subject matter looks to be the distinguishing feature. One is about crows, the other not. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], Intro) | |
| A reaction: You might reply that they are confirmed by the same evidence (but only in its unobtainable totality). The point, I think, is that the sentences invite you to start your search in different places. |
| 19003 | Most people say nonblack nonravens do confirm 'all ravens are black', but only a tiny bit [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The standard response to the raven paradox is to say that a nonblack nonraven does confirm that all ravens are black. But it confirms it just the teeniest little bit - not as much as a black raven does. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: It depends on the proportion between the relevant items. How do you confirm 'all the large animals in this zoo are mammals'? Check for size every animal which is obviously not a mammal? |
| 3102 | Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee] |
| Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?' | |
| From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose. |
| 18992 | Sentence-meaning is the truth-conditions - plus factors responsible for them [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: A sentence's meaning is to do with its truth-value in various possible scenarios, AND the factors responsible for that truth-value. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The thesis of his book, which I welcome. I'm increasingly struck by the way in which much modern philosophy settles for a theory being complete, when actually further explanation is possible. Exhibit A is functional explanations. Why that function? |
| 9378 | If meaning depends on conceptual role, what properties are needed to do the job? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual Role Semantics must explain what properties an inference or sentence involving a logical constant must have, if that inference or sentence is to be constitutive of its meaning. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: This is my perennial request that if something is to be defined by its function (or role), we must try to explain what properties it has that make its function possible, and those properties will be the more basic explanation. |
| 9377 | 'Conceptual role semantics' says terms have meaning from sentences and/or inferences [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: 'Conceptual role semantics' says the logical constants mean what they do by virtue of figuring in certain inferences and/or sentences involving them and not others, ..so some inferences and sentences are constitutive of an expression's meaning. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III) | |
| A reaction: If the meaning of the terms derives from the sentences in which they figure, that seems to be meaning-as-use. The view that it depends on the inferences seems very different, and is a more interesting but more risky claim. |
| 9372 | Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Could there be a fact of the matter about what each expression means, but no fact of the matter about whether they mean the same? | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §II) | |
| A reaction: He is discussing Quine's attack on synonymy, and his scepticism about meaning. Boghossian and I believe in propositions, so we have no trouble with two statements having the same meaning. Denial of propositions breeds trouble. |
| 18994 | The content of an assertion can be quite different from compositional content [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Assertive content - what a sentence is heard as saying - can be at quite a distance from compositional content. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the obvious reason why semantics cannot be entirely compositional, since there is nearly always a contextual component which then has to be added. In the case of irony, the compositional content is entirely reversed. |
| 18997 | Truth-conditions as subject-matter has problems of relevance, short cut, and reversal [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: If the subject-matter of S is how it is true, we get three unfortunate results: S has truth-value in worlds where its subject-matter draws a blank; learning what S is about tells you its truth-value; negating S changes what it's about. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 02.8) | |
| A reaction: Together these make fairly devastating objections to the truth-conditions (in possible worlds) theory of meaning. The first-objection concerns when S is false |
| 17721 | There are no truths in virtue of meaning, but there is knowability in virtue of understanding [Boghossian, by Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Boghossian distinguishes metaphysical analyticity (truth purely in virtue of meaning, debunked by Quine, he says) from epistemic analyticity (knowability purely in virtue of understanding - a notion in good standing). | |
| From: report of Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 2.4 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This fits with Jenkins's claim that we have a priori knowledge just through understanding and relating our concepts. She, however, rejects that idea that a priori is analytic. |
| 9368 | Epistemological analyticity: grasp of meaning is justification; metaphysical: truth depends on meaning [Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The epistemological notion of analyticity: a statement is 'true by virtue of meaning' provided that grasp of its meaning alone suffices for justified belief in its truth; the metaphysical reading is that it owes its truth to its meaning, not to facts. | |
| From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I) | |
| A reaction: Kripke thinks it is neither, but is a purely semantic notion. How could grasp of meaning alone be a good justification if it wasn't meaning which was the sole cause of the statement's truth? I'm not convinced by his distinction. |
| 19005 | Not-A is too strong to just erase an improper assertion, because it actually reverses A [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The idea that negation is, or can be, a cancellation device raises an interesting question. What does one do to wipe the slate clean after an improper assertion? Not-A is too strong; it reverses our stand on A rather than nullifying it. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 09.8) | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing a remark of Strawson 1952] It seems that 'not' has two meanings or uses: a weak use of 'nullifying' an assertion, and a strong use of 'reversing' an assertion. One could do both: 'that's not right; in fact, it's just the opposite'. |