33 ideas
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
| A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
| 14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Mackie (1983) dismisses the Principle of Sufficient Reason quickly, arguing that it is self-refuting: there is no sufficient reason to accept it. However, a principle is not invalidated by not applying to itself; it can be a powerful heuristic tool. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VI) | |
| A reaction: If God was entirely rational, and created everything, that would be a sufficient reason to accept the principle. You would never, though, get to the reason why God was entirely rational. Something will always elude the principle. |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
| A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
| A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
| A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
| 14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: The problem with the redundancy theory of truth is that it conflates the metalinguistic notion of bivalence with a theorem of the object language, namely the law of excluded middle. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr3) |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
| A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
| A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
| 8358 | There are no rules for the exact logic of ordinary language, because that doesn't exist [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950], §5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that it is impossible to find precise logical forms, because of the pragmatic element in language, but I don't see why. Even more extreme modern pragmatics (where meaning is shifted) doesn't rule out precise underlying propositions. |
| 6413 | 'The present King of France is bald' presupposes existence, rather than stating it [Strawson,P, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Strawson argues that in saying 'the present King of France is bald' one is not stating that a present King of France exists, but presupposing or assuming that it does. | |
| From: report of Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: We have the notion of a leading question, such as 'when did you stop beating your wife?' But is a presupposition not simply an implied claim, as Russell said it was? |
| 8354 | Russell asks when 'The King of France is wise' would be a true assertion [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: The way in which Russell arrived at his analysis was by asking himself what would be the circumstances in which we would say that anyone who uttered the sentence 'The King of France is wise' had made a true assertion. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950], §1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to connect Russell's theory of definite descriptions with the truth conditions theory of meaning which is associated (initially) with Frege. Truth will require some reference to what actually exists. |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
| 14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: If there are any genuine relations at all between spatio-temporal objects, then they are all either spatio-temporal or causal. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds too easy, but I have wracked my brains for counterexamples and failed to find any. How about qualitative relations? |
| 14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held, and I think correctly so, that a necessary condition for the existence of relations is that both of the relata exist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This is either trivial or false. Relations in the actual world self-evidently relate components of it. But I seem able to revere Sherlock Holmes, and speculate about relations between possible entities. |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
| A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general ..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
| A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
| 8356 | The meaning of an expression or sentence is general directions for its use, to refer or to assert [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: To give the meaning of an expression is to give general directions for its use to refer to or mention particular objects or persons; in like manner, sentences are for use to make true or false assertions. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950], §2) | |
| A reaction: The influence of Wittgenstein? I don't like it. The general idea that you can say what something is by giving directions for its use is what I think of as the Functional Fallacy: confusing the role of x with its inherent nature. Shirt as goalpost. |
| 10430 | Reference is mainly a social phenomenon [Strawson,P, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: Strawson's early work gave a new direction to the study of reference by stressing that it is a social phenomenon. | |
| From: report of Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: The question is whether speakers refer, or sentences, or expressions, or propositions. The modern consensus seems to be that some parts of language are inherently referring, but speakers combine such tools with context. Sounds right. |
| 10448 | If an expression can refer to anything, it may still instrinsically refer, but relative to a context [Bach on Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Strawson claimed that virtually any expression that can be used to refer to one thing in one context can be used to refer to something else in another context. Maybe expressions still refer, but only relative to a context. | |
| From: comment on Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950]) by Kent Bach - What Does It Take to Refer? 22.2 | |
| A reaction: If there is complete freedom, then Bach's criticism doesn't sound plausible. If something is semantically referential, that should impose pretty tight restrictions on speakers. Why distinguish names as intrinsically referential, and descriptions as not? |
| 8355 | Expressions don't refer; people use expressions to refer [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentioning', or 'referring', is not something an expression does; it is something that someone can use an expression to do. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950], §2) | |
| A reaction: That can't be whole story, because I might make a mistake when referring, so that I used the expression to refer to x, but unfortunately the words themselves referred to y. The power of language exceeds the intentions of speakers. |
| 8357 | If an utterance fails to refer then it is a pseudo-use, though a speaker may think they assert something [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: If an utterance is not talking about anything, then the speaker's use is not a genuine one, but a spurious or pseudo-use; he is not making either a true or a false assertion, though he may think he is. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (On Referring [1950], §2) | |
| A reaction: This is Strawson's verdict on 'The present King of France is bald'. His view puts speculative statements in no man's land. What do we make of 'Elvis lives' or 'phlogiston explains fire'? |
| 14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity, with its definition of simultaneity, is shot through with verificationist assumptions. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIc) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Sklar with this] I love hearing such points made, because all my instincts have rebelled against Einstein's story, even after I have been repeatedly told how stupid I am, and how I should study more maths etc. |
| 14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity denies absolute simultaneity, and therefore requires a past and a future, as well as a present. The Presentist, however, only requires the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VII) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to accuse Relativity of ontological extravagence. When it 'requires' past and future, that may not be a massive commitment, since the whole theory is fairly operationalist, according to Putnam. |
| 14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction). | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III) | |
| A reaction: [My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism. |
| 14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: 'No-Futurists' believe in the real existence of the past and present but not the future, and hold that the world grows as more and more facts come into existence. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIb) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997] My sympathies are with Presentism, but there seems not denying that past events fix truths in a way that future events don't. The unchangeability of past events seems to make them factual. |
| 14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Presentists have a difficulty with how they can help themselves to the notion of 'earlier than' without having to invoke real relata, and how presentism can distinguish the past from the future. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 2.IV) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is to infer the past from the present (fossils), and infer the future from the present (ticking bomb). But what is it that is being inferred, if the past and future are denied a priori? Tricky! |
| 14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It seems that presentism cannot accommodate causation at all. In a true instance of 'c causes e', it seems to follow that both c and e exist, and it is widely accepted that c is earlier than e. But for presentists that means c and e can't coexist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: A nice problem. Obviously if the flying ball smashed the window, we are left with only the effect existing - otherwise we could intercept the ball and prevent the disaster. To say this cause and this effect coexist would be even dafter than the problem. |
| 14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Since for presentism there is an ontologically significant and basic sense in which events are present, we should expect a definition of simultaneity in terms of presentness, rather than the other way round. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: Love it. I don't see how you can even articulate questions about simultaneity if you don't already have a notion of presentness. What are the relata you are enquiring about? |
| 14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Theories of time are in two broad categories, the tenseless and the tensed theories. In tenseless theories, all times are equally real, as are all objects located at them, and there is no passage of time from future to present to past. It's the B-series. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIa) | |
| A reaction: It might solve a few of the problems, but is highly counterintuitive. Presumably it makes the passage of time an illusion, and gives no account of how events 'happen', or of their direction, and it leaves causation out on a limb. I'm afraid not. |
| 14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Objects in the B-series are earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with each other, whereas objects in the A-series are earlier than, later than or simultaneous with the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIb) | |
| A reaction: Must we choose? Two past events relate to each other, but there is a further relation when 'now' falls between the events. If I must choose, I suppose I go for the A-series view. The B-series is a subsequent feat of imagination. McTaggart agreed. |
| 14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: We say that time 'flows', that the past is 'fixed' but the future is 'open'; we only dread the future, but not the past; we remember the past but not the future; we plan for the future but not the past. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro III) | |
| A reaction: These seem pretty overwhelming reasons for accepting an asymmetry between the past and the future. If you reject that, you seem to be mired in a multitude of contradictions. Your error theory is going to be massive. |