41 ideas
| 14519 | It is a great good to show reverence for a wise man [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: To show reverence for a wise man is itself a great good for him who reveres [the wise man]. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 32) | |
| A reaction: It is characteristic of Epicurus to move up a level in his thinking, and not merely respect wisdom, but ask after the value of his own respect. Compare Idea 14517. Nice. |
| 14518 | In the study of philosophy, pleasure and knowledge arrive simultaneously [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: In philosophy the pleasure accompanies the knowledge. For the enjoyment does not come after the learning but the learning and the enjoyment are simultaneous. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 27) |
| 1627 | Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.43) |
| 1623 | Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.26) |
| 9204 | Quine's arguments fail because he naively conflates names with descriptions [Fine,K on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's logical argument against modality presupposes a naïve view of singular terms under which no significant distinction is to be drawn between the use of names and descriptions. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 6 | |
| A reaction: See Idea 9201 for Quine's argument. The question is whether '9' and 'the number of planets' are names or descriptions. The 'number of planets' is not remotely descriptive of 9, so it must be referential. So '9' is a name? Hm. |
| 17738 | Quine blurs the difference between knowledge of arithmetic and of physics [Jenkins on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine cannot deal with the intuition that there is a difference in kind between our knowledge of arithmetic and our knowledge of physics. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5 | |
| A reaction: The endorses this criticism, which she says is widespread. I'm not convinced that there is a clear notion of 'difference in kind' here. Jenkins gets arithmetic from concepts and physics from the world. Is that a sharp distinction? |
| 19492 | Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology [Yablo on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's advice is to countenance numbers iff the literal part of our theory quantifies over them; and to count the part of our theory that quantifies over numbers literal iff there turn out really to be numbers. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? XIII | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit devastating. Presumably it is indeed the choice of a best theory which results in the ontological commitment, so it is not much help to then read off the ontology from the theory. |
| 1628 | If physical objects are a myth, they are useful for making sense of experience [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.44) |
| 14524 | Bodies are combinations of shape, size, resistance and weight [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Epicurus said that body was conceived as an aggregate of shape and size and resistance and weight. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: [Source Sextus 'Adversus Mathematicos' 10.257] Note that this is how we 'conceive' them. They might be intrinsically different, except that Epicurus is pretty much a phenomenalist. |
| 10929 | Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian notion of essence was the forerunner of the modern notion of intension or meaning. ...Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1) | |
| A reaction: Quine first wants to jettison de re necessity (essence of the object), by shifting it to de dicto necessity (necessity in meaning), but he subsequently rejects that as well, presumably because he doesn't even believe in meanings. |
| 12188 | Contrary to some claims, Quine does not deny logical necessity [Quine, by McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: Nothing in Quine's argument seems to be said directly against the view that the propositions of logic are necessary truths, ..though Crispin Wright has represented him as saying this at the end of 'Two Dogmas'. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §3 | |
| A reaction: Quine famously denies that logical truths are merely a matter of convention, so the question is, if he believes in logical necessity, what does he think is the basis of it? Answers, as always, on a postcard. |
| 15090 | Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction sought to contract, if not to empty, the class of truths that are called necessary. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity I | |
| A reaction: The thought was that absolutely everything, including, for example, basic logic, became potentially revisable. See the last section of Quine's paper. |
| 9383 | Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine showed the vacuity of the metaphysical concept of analyticity and the futility of the underwritten project - the linguistic theory of necessity. But that doesn't effect the epistemic notion of analyticity needed for a priori knowledge. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered Concl | |
| A reaction: This summarise Boghossian's view, that a priori knowledge is still analytic, once we get clear about analyticity. See Idea 9368 for his two types of analyticity. Horwich attacks the view. |
| 12424 | Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher] |
| Full Idea: The last section of Quine's article challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 04.5 | |
| A reaction: That is, Quine does not deny that there are truths which rest entirely on meaning. It is a 'dogma of empiricism' that the a priori can be equated with the analytic (and the necessary). |
| 9338 | Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's arguments provide no reason to doubt the existence of a priori knowledge outside the domain of science. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
| A reaction: This rather ignores Quine's background view of thoroughgoing physicalism, so that the domain of science is the domain of nature, which is the domain of everything. See his naturalising of epistemology, for example. Maths is part of his science. |
| 9337 | Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Quine says scientific beliefs follow empirical adequacy, simplicity and conservatism; science and rationality support this view; hence any hypothesis can be abandoned to increase simplicity; so no scientific belief is a priori. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
| A reaction: [Compressed] I just don't accept this claim. If science wants to drop simple arithmetic or the laws of thought, so much the worse for science - they've obviously taken a wrong turning somewhere. We must try to infer God's logic. |
| 9340 | Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine] |
| Full Idea: I think logic, arithmetic and geometry are subject to Quine's empirical revisability argument: quantum logic may turn out to be the best overall theory; so these things are justified a posteriori. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §11 | |
| A reaction: Not much of an argument, because 'quantum logic' may also turn out to be a will-o'-the-whisp. Until it is established (which I doubt, because quantum theory is so poorly understood), I think we should be highly suspicious of the Quinean view. |
| 1629 | Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The outer edge of our empirical system must be kept squared with experience; the rest, with all its elaborate myths and fictions, has as its objective the simplicity of laws. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.45) |
| 1620 | Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine] |
| Full Idea: One dogma of empiricism is that there is some fundamental cleavage between truths that are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of facts, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.20) |
| 19488 | The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Quine's second dogma of empiricism is the reductionism that finds every statement to be linkable by fixed correspondence rules to a determinate range of confirming observations. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? V | |
| A reaction: Quine's response to this is to embrace holism about theories, instead of precise connections with Humean impressions. I'm thinking that Lewis disagrees with Quine, when his Humean supervenience rests on a 'mosaic' of small qualities. |
| 1625 | Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience as a corporate body [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My suggestion, following Carnap, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.41) |
| 14521 | If everything is by necessity, then even denials of necessity are by necessity [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: He who claims that everything occurs by necessity has no complaint against him who claims that everything does not occur by necessity. For he makes the very claim in question by necessity. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 40) |
| 1626 | It is troublesome nonsense to split statements into a linguistic and a factual component [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My present suggestion is that it is nonsense, and the root of much nonsense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.42) | |
| A reaction: I take the language and its subject matter to be obviously separate, but it is right that we can't separate these two components within a sample of language. |
| 7317 | 'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to see that intersubstitutability salva veritate is not a sufficient condition for synonymy. 'Renate' (with kidney) and 'cordate' (with heart) can be substituted in a purely extensional language, but are plainly not synonymous. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key example (along with Hesperus, and many others) in mapping out synonymy, meaning, analyticity, sense, reference, extension, intension, and all that stuff. |
| 1621 | Once meaning and reference are separated, meaning ceases to seem important [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once theory of meaning and of reference are separated it is a short step to recognising as the primary business of theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and analyticity of statements; meanings themselves may be abandoned. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.22) | |
| A reaction: I can't buy the abandonment of meaning, because when I introspect my own speech there is clearly what I want to say formulating in my mind before the words are settled. |
| 9371 | Analytic statements are either logical truths (all reinterpretations) or they depend on synonymy [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Analytic statements fall into two classes: 'no unmarried man is married' typifies the first class, of logical truths; it remains true under all reinterpretations. 'No bachelor is married' is analytic if synonyms replace synonyms, and there's the problem. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1) | |
| A reaction: Boghossian emphasises this passage. In other papers Quine argues that logical truths also cannot be purely analytic, although he does not deny that there are logical truths. |
| 8803 | Erasing the analytic/synthetic distinction got rid of meanings, and saved philosophy of language [Davidson on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Erasing the line between the analytic and the synthetic saved philosophy of language as a serious subject by showing how it could be pursued without what there cannot be: determinate meanings. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Donald Davidson - Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge p.158 | |
| A reaction: Note that this comes from the most famous modern champion of one of the main theories of meaning (as truth-conditions). Did anyone ever believe in reified objects called 'meanings'? |
| 17737 | The analytic needs excessively small units of meaning and empirical confirmation [Quine, by Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Quine rejects the analytic on the grounds that it assumes a smaller unit of meaning than a total theory, and he does not think it makes sense to talk about such smaller units of meaning because there are no smaller units of empirical confirmation. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5 | |
| A reaction: A very helpful account of the famous Quine argument, showing how it arises out of his particular holistic view of empiricism. |
| 1622 | Did someone ever actually define 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man'? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: How do we find that 'bachelor' is defined as unmarried man? Who defined it thus, and when? Not the lexicographer, who is a scientist recording antecedent facts. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.24) | |
| A reaction: All mid-20th C philosophy of language is too individualistic in its strategy. Eventually later Wittgenstein sank in, and socially agreed meanings for 'water' and 'elm'. |
| 1624 | If we try to define analyticity by synonymy, that leads back to analyticity [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In defining analyticity an appeal to meanings seems natural, but that reduces to synonymy or definition. Definition is a will-o'-the-wisp, and synonymy is best understood by a priori appeal to analyticity, so we are back at the problem of analyticity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Quine is full of these over-neat sceptical arguments, saying everything is circular, or can never get started. Compare Aristotle's benign circle of virtuous people and virtuous actions. |
| 9366 | Quine's attack on analyticity undermined linguistic views of necessity, and analytic views of the a priori [Quine, by Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack on analyticity devastated the philosophical programs that depend upon a notion of analyticity - specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §I | |
| A reaction: Note that much more would be needed to complete Quine's aim of more or less eliminating both necessity and the a priori from his scientific philosophy. Quine was trying to complete a programme initiated by C.I. Lewis (q.v.). |
| 14473 | Quine attacks the Fregean idea that we can define analyticity through synonyous substitution [Quine, by Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack argues against the Fregean attempt to define 'analyticity' in terms of synonymy - where analytical truths are logical truths ('unmarried men are unmarried'), or become logical truths by synonymous replacement ('bachelors are unmarried'). | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 02.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a very helpful explanation of what is going on in Quine. Why won't philosophers explain clearly what they are attacking, before they attack it? |
| 7321 | The last two parts of 'Two Dogmas' are much the best [Miller,A on Quine] |
| Full Idea: The arguments of the final two sections of 'Two Dogmas' have received more acceptance than the arguments of the first four sections, which are now generally acknowledged to be unsuccessful. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4 Read | |
| A reaction: The early sections are the 'circular' argument against analyticity; the later parts are further discussions of the concept. We don't have to take Miller's word for this, but it is a useful pointer when reading the paper. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 14522 | What happens to me if I obtain all my desires, and what if I fail? [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: One should bring this question to bear on all one's desires: what will happen to me if what is sought by desire is achieved, and what will happen if it is not? | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 71) | |
| A reaction: Yet another example of Epicurus moving up a level in his thinking about ethical issues, as in Idea 14517 and Idea 14519. The mark of a true philosopher. This seems to be a key idea for wisdom - to think further ahead than merely what you desire. |
| 3563 | Pleasure and virtue entail one another [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible to live pleasantly without living intelligently and finely and justly, nor to live intelligently and finely and justly without living pleasantly. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 5), quoted by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: A person with all these virtues might still suffer from depression. And I don't see why having limited intelligence should stop someone from living pleasantly. Just be warm-hearted. |
| 3560 | Justice is merely a contract about not harming or being harmed [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: There is no such things as justice in itself; in people's relations with one another in any place and at any time it is a contract about not harming or being harmed. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 33), quoted by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 13.2 |
| 14517 | We value our own character, whatever it is, and we should respect the characters of others [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: We value our characters as our own personal possessions, whether they are good and envied by men or not. We must regard our neighbours' characters thus too, if they are respectable. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 15) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it introduces a metaethical dimension to the whole problem of virtue. We should value our own character - so should we try to improve it? Should we improve so much as to become unrecognisable? |
| 14513 | Justice is a pledge of mutual protection [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: The justice of nature is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, neither to harm one another nor to be harmed. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 31) | |
| A reaction: Notice that justice is not just reciprocal usefulness, but a 'pledge' to that effect. This implies a metaethical value of trust and honesty in keeping the pledge. Is it better to live by the pledge, or to be always spontaneously useful? |
| 14515 | A law is not just if it is not useful in mutual associations [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: If someone passes a law and it does not turn out to be in accord with what is useful in mutual associations, this no longer possesses the nature of justice. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 37) |
| 14520 | It is small-minded to find many good reasons for suicide [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: He is utterly small-minded for whom there are many plausible reasons for committing suicide. | |
| From: Epicurus (Principle Doctrines ('Kuriai Doxai') (frags) [c.290 BCE], 38) | |
| A reaction: It is a pity that the insult of 'small-minded' has slipped out of philosophy. The Greeks use it all the time, and know exactly what it means. We all recognise small-mindedness, and it is a great (and subtle) vice. |