39 ideas
| 4037 | Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §9) | |
| A reaction: This presumably follows from an assumption that all beliefs need reasons, but is that the case? The Principle of Sufficient Reason precedes Ockham's Razor. |
| 9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The standard sense of a 'contextual definition' permits the eliminating of the defined expression, by transforming any sentence containing it into an equivalent one not containing it. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: So the whole definition might be eliminated by a single word, which is not equivalent to the target word, which is embedded in the original expression. Clearly contextual definitions have some problems |
| 9820 | In classical logic, logical truths are valid formulas; in higher-order logics they are purely logical [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For sentential or first-order logic, the logical truths are represented by valid formulas; in higher-order logics, by sentences formulated in purely logical terms. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 3) |
| 9896 | A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 11) | |
| A reaction: We might say that the only way of 'reaching' or 'constructing' a prime is by incrementing by one till you reach it. That seems a pretty good definition. 64, for example, can be reached by a large number of different routes. |
| 18255 | Addition of quantities is prior to ordering, as shown in cyclic domains like angles [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to a quantitative domain of any kind that there should be an operation of adding its elements; that this is more fundamental thaat that they should be linearly ordered by magnitude is apparent from cyclic domains like that of angles. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
| 9895 | A number is a multitude composed of units [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A number is a multitude composed of units. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 2) | |
| A reaction: This is outdated by the assumption that 0 and 1 are also numbers, but if we say one is really just the 'unit' which is preliminary to numbers, and 0 is as bogus a number as i is, we might stick with the original Greek distinction. |
| 9852 | We understand 'there are as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them as by counting them [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A child understands 'there are just as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them off as by counting them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: I find it very intriguing that you could know that two sets have the same number, without knowing any numbers. Is it like knowing two foreigners spoke the same words, without understanding them? Or is 'equinumerous' conceptually prior to 'number'? |
| 9829 | The identity of a number may be fixed by something outside structure - by counting [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The identity of a mathematical object may sometimes be fixed by its relation to what lies outside the structure to which it belongs. It is more fundamental to '3' that if certain objects are counted, there are three of them. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as Dummett being pushed (by his dislike of the purely abstract picture given by structuralism) back to a rather empiricist and physical view of numbers, though he would totally deny that. |
| 9828 | Numbers aren't fixed by position in a structure; it won't tell you whether to start with 0 or 1 [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The number 0 is not differentiated from 1 by its position in a progression, otherwise there would be no difference between starting with 0 and starting with 1. That is enough to show that numbers are not identifiable just as positions in structures. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds conclusive, but doesn't feel right. If numbers are a structure, then where you 'start' seems unimportant. Where do you 'start' in St Paul's Cathedral? Starting sounds like a constructivist concept for number theory. |
| 9876 | Set theory isn't part of logic, and why reduce to something more complex? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The two frequent modern objects to logicism are that set theory is not part of logic, or that it is of no interest to 'reduce' a mathematical theory to another, more complex, one. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Dummett says these are irrelevant (see context). The first one seems a good objection. The second one less so, because whether something is 'complex' is a quite different issue from whether it is ontologically more fundamental. |
| 9884 | The distinction of concrete/abstract, or actual/non-actual, is a scale, not a dichotomy [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between concrete and abstract objects, or Frege's corresponding distinction between actual and non-actual objects, is not a sharp dichotomy, but resembles a scale upon which objects occupy a range of positions. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This might seem right if you live (as Dummett chooses to) in the fog of language, but it surely can't be right if you think about reality. Is the Equator supposed to be near the middle of his scale? Either there is an equator, or there isn't. |
| 9869 | Realism is just the application of two-valued semantics to sentences [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Fully fledged realism depends on - indeed, may be identified with - an undiluted application to sentences of the relevant kind of straightforwards two-valued semantics. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of account you get from a whole-heartedly linguistic philosopher. Personally I would say that Dummett has got it precisely the wrong way round: I adopt a two-valued semantics because my metaphysics is realist. |
| 4027 | Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: Note that this definition does not mention a causal role for properties. |
| 4029 | Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: Objects might be grasped without language, but events cannot be understood, and explanations of events seem inconceivable without properties (implying that they are essentially causal). |
| 9880 | Nominalism assumes unmediated mental contact with objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The nominalist superstition is based ultimately on the myth of the unmediated presentation of genuine concrete objects to the mind. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to favour nominalism and a representative theory of perception, which acknowledges some 'mediation', but of a non-linguistic form. Any good theory here had better include animals, which seem to form concepts. |
| 9885 | The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: This remark follows after Idea 9884, which says the abstract/concrete distinction is a sliding scale. Personally I take the distinction to be fairly sharp, and it is therefore probably the single most important problem in the whole of human thought. |
| 9858 | Abstract objects nowadays are those which are objective but not actual [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Objects which are objective but not actual are precisely what are now called abstract objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Why can there not be subjective abstract objects? 'My favourites are x, y and z'. 'I'll decide later what my favourites are'. 'I only buy my favourites - nothing else'. |
| 9859 | It is absurd to deny the Equator, on the grounds that it lacks causal powers [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: If someone argued that assuming the existence of the Equator explains nothing, and it has no causal powers, so everything would be the same if it didn't exist, so we needn't accept its existence, we should gape at the crudity of the misunderstanding. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Not me. I would gape if someone argued that latitude 55° 14' (and an infinity of other lines) exists for the same reasons (whatever they may be) that the Equator exists. A mode of description can't create an object. |
| 9860 | 'We've crossed the Equator' has truth-conditions, so accept the Equator - and it's an object [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: 'We've crossed the Equator' is judged true if we are nearer the other Pole, so it not for philosophers to deny that the Earth has an equator, and we see that the Equator is not a concept or relation or function, so it must be classified as an object. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of linguistic philosophy in action (and so much the worse for that, I would say). A useful label here, I suggest (unoriginally, I think), is that we should label such an item a 'semantic object', rather than a real object in our ontology. |
| 9872 | Abstract objects need the context principle, since they can't be encountered directly [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise that there is no objection in principle to abstract objects requires acknowledgement that some form of the context principle is correct, since abstract objects can neither be encountered nor presented. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an immensely important idea. I consider myself to be a philosopher of thought rather than a philosopher of language (Dummett's distinction, he being one of the latter). Thought connects to the world, but does it connect to abstracta? |
| 9848 | Content is replaceable if identical, so replaceability can't define identity [Dummett, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl says the only ground for assuming the replaceability of one content by another is their identity; we are therefore not entitled to define their identity as consisting in their replaceability. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is a direct challenge to Frege. Tricky to arbitrate, as it is an issue of conceptual priority. My intuition is with Husserl, but maybe the two are just benignly inerdefinable. |
| 9842 | Frege introduced criteria for identity, but thought defining identity was circular [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In his middle period Frege rated identity indefinable, on the ground that every definition must take the form of an identity-statement. Frege introduced the notion of criterion of identity, which has been widely used by analytical philosophers. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: The objection that attempts to define identity would be circular sounds quite plausible. It sounds right to seek a criterion for type-identity (in shared properties or predicates), but token-identity looks too fundamental to give clear criteria. |
| 16422 | The necessity of a proposition concerns reality, not our words or concepts [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: The necessity or contingency of a proposition has nothing to do with our concepts or the meanings of our words. The possibilities would have been the same even if we had never conceived of them. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds in need of qualification, since some of the propositions will be explicitly about words and concepts. Still, I like this idea. |
| 16423 | Conceptual possibilities are metaphysical possibilities we can conceive of [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual possibilities are just (metaphysical) possibilities that we can conceive of. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) |
| 16421 | Critics say there are just an a priori necessary part, and an a posteriori contingent part [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Critics say there are no irreducible a posteriori truths. They can be factored into a part that is necessary, but knowable a priori through conceptual analysis, and a part knowable only a posteriori, but contingent. 2-D semantics makes this precise. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: [Critics are Sidelle, Jackson and Chalmers] Interesting. If gold is necessarily atomic number 79, or it wouldn't be gold, that sounds like an analytic truth about gold. Discovering the 79 wasn't a discovery of a necessity. Stalnaker rejects this idea. |
| 16429 | A 'centred' world is an ordered triple of world, individual and time [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: A 'centred' possible world is an ordered triple consisting of a possible world, an individual in the domain of that world, and a time. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) |
| 16428 | Meanings aren't in the head, but that is because they are abstract [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Meanings ain't in the head. Putnam's famous slogan actually fits Frege's anti-psychologism better than it fits Purnam's and Burge's anti-individualism. The point is that intensions of any kind are abstract objects. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: If intensions are abstract, that leaves (for me) the question of what they are abstracted from. I take it that there are specific brain events that are being abstractly characterised. What do we call those? |
| 9849 | Maybe a concept is 'prior' to another if it can be defined without the second concept [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: One powerful argument for a thesis that one notion is conceptually prior to another is the possibility of defining the first without reference to the second. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: You'd better check whether you can't also define the second without reference to the first before you rank their priority. And maybe 'conceptual priority' is conceptually prior to 'definition' (i.e. definition needs a knowledge of priority). Help! |
| 9850 | An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: One might still have to decide priority between two equally simple (or complex) concepts. I begin to wonder whether 'priority' has any other than an instrumental meaning (according to which direction you wish to travel - is London before Edinburgh?). |
| 9873 | Abstract terms are acceptable as long as we know how they function linguistically [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To recognise abstract terms as perfectly proper items of a vocabulary depends upon allowing that all that is necessary for the lawful introduction of a range of expressions into the language is a coherent account of how they are to function in sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Why can't the 'coherent account' of the sentences include the fact that there must be something there for the terms to refer to? How else are we to eliminate nonsense words which obey good syntactical rules? Cf. Idea 9872. |
| 4039 | Abstractions lack causes, effects and spatio-temporal locations [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Abstract entities (such as sets) are usually understood as lacking causes, effects, and spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg some questions. Has the ideal of 'honour' never caused anything? Young men dream of pure velocity. |
| 9993 | There is no reason why abstraction by equivalence classes should be called 'logical' [Dummett, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Dummett uses the term 'logical abstraction' for the construction of the abstract objects as equivalence classes, but it is not clear why we should call this construction 'logical'. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind n 14 | |
| A reaction: This is a good objection, and Tait offers a much better notion of 'logical abstraction' (as involving preconditions for successful inference), in Idea 9981. |
| 9857 | We arrive at the concept 'suicide' by comparing 'Cato killed Cato' with 'Brutus killed Brutus' [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: We arrive at the concept of suicide by considering both occurrences in the sentence 'Cato killed Cato' of the proper name 'Cato' as simultaneously replaceable by another name, say 'Brutus', and so apprehending the pattern common to both sentences. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This is intended to illustrate Frege's 'logical abstraction' technique, as opposed to wicked psychological abstraction. The concept of suicide is the pattern 'x killed x'. This is a crucial example if we are to understand abstraction... |
| 9833 | To abstract from spoons (to get the same number as the forks), the spoons must be indistinguishable too [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To get units by abstraction, units arrived at by abstraction from forks must the identical to that abstracted from spoons, with no trace of individuality. But if spoons can no longer be differentiated from forks, they can't differ from one another either. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Dummett makes the point better than Frege did. Can we 'think of a fork insofar as it is countable, ignoring its other features'? What are we left thinking of? Frege says it must still be the whole fork. 'Nice fork, apart from the colour'. |
| 16432 | One view says the causal story is built into the description that is the name's content [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: In 'causal descriptivism' the causal story is built into the description that is the content of the name (and also incorporates a rigidifying operator to ensure that the descriptions that names abbreviate have wide scope). | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 5) | |
| A reaction: Not very controversial, I would say, since virtually every fact about the world has a 'causal story' built into it. Must we insist on rigidity in order to have wide scope? |
| 9836 | Fregean semantics assumes a domain articulated into individual objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean semantics assumes a domain already determinately articulated into individual objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: A more interesting criticism than most of Dummett's other challenges to the Frege/Davidson view. I am beginning to doubt whether the semantics and the ontology can ever be divorced from the psychology, of thought, interests, focus etc. |
| 16430 | Two-D says that a posteriori is primary and contingent, and the necessity is the secondary intension [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism says the necessity of a statement is constituted by the fact that the secondary intensions is a necessary proposition, and their a posteriori character is constituted by the fact that the associated primary intension is contingent. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: This view is found in Sidelle 1989, and then formalised by Jackson and Chalmers. I like metaphysical necessity, but I have some sympathy with the approach. The question must always be 'where does this necessity derive from'? |
| 16431 | In one view, the secondary intension is metasemantic, about how the thinker relates to the content [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: On the metasemantic interpretation of the two-dimensional framework, the second dimension is used to represent the metasemantic facts about the relation between a thinker or speaker and the contents of her thoughts or utterances. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Conceptual truth and metaphysical necessity [2003], 4) | |
| A reaction: I'm struggling to think what facts there might be about the relation between myself and the contents of my thoughts. I'm more or less constituted by my thoughts. |
| 18257 | Why should the limit of measurement be points, not intervals? [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: By what right do we assume that the limit of measurement is a point, and not an interval? | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |