19044
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Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world.
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From:
Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39
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A reaction:
If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved....
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6493
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We are not conscious of pure liquidity, but of the liquidity of water [Firth]
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Full Idea:
We are not conscious of liquidity, coldness, and solidity, but of the liquidity of water, the coldness of ice, and the solidity of rocks.
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From:
Roderick Firth (Sense Data and the Percept Theory [1949]), quoted by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.7
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A reaction:
A nice point, but it might not be entirely true in a blindfold test, where one might only report properties like 'sticky' or 'warm', without having any clear concept of the substance being experienced. Firth is proposing the 'percept theory'.
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6400
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Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
The third dogma of empiricism is the dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, which cannot be made intelligible and defensible. If we give it up, it is not clear that any distinctive empiricism remains.
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From:
Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.189)
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A reaction:
The first two dogmas were 'analyticity' and 'reductionism', as identified by Quine in 1953. Presumably Hume's Principles of Association (Idea 2189) would be an example of a scheme. A key issue is whether there is any 'pure' content.
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