18 ideas
| 18890 | Putnam smuggles essentialism about liquids into his proof that water must be H2O [Salmon,N on Putnam] |
| Full Idea: In the full exposition of Putnam's mechanism for generating the necessary truth that water is H2O, we find that the mechanism employs a certain nontrivial general principle of essentialism concerning liquid substances as a crucial premise. | |
| From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Nathan Salmon - Reference and Essence (1st edn) 6.23.1 | |
| A reaction: This charge, that Kripke and Putnam smuggle the essentialism into their semantics, rather than deriving it, is the nub of Salmon's criticism of them. It seems to me that a new world view emerged while those two where revising the semantics. |
| 3158 | Theories of intentionality presuppose rationality, so can't explain it [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Intentional theory is vacuous as psychology because it presupposes and does not explain rationality or intelligence. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology [1978], p.15?) | |
| A reaction: Virtually every philosophical theory seems to founder because it presupposes something like the thing it is meant to explain. I agree that 'intentionality' is a slightly airy concept that would probably reduce to something better. |
| 7705 | The Twin Earth theory suggests that intentionality is independent of qualia [Jacquette on Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment suggests that two thinkers can have identical qualia, despite intending different objects on Earth and Twin Earth, and hence that qualia and intentionality must be logically independent of one another. | |
| From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 4099, Idea 3208, Idea 7612 for Twin Earth]. Presumably my thought of 'the smallest prime number above 10000' would be a bit thin on qualia too. Does that make them 'logically' independent? Depends what we reduce qualia or intentionality to. |
| 3159 | Beliefs and desires aren't real; they are prediction techniques [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Intentional systems don't really have beliefs and desires, but one can explain and predict their behaviour by ascribing beliefs and desires to them. This strategy is pragmatic, not right or wrong. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainstorms:Essays on Mind and Psychology [1978], p.7?) | |
| A reaction: If the ascription of beliefs and desires explains behaviour, then that is good grounds for thinking they might be real features of the brain, and even if that is not so, they are real enough as abstractions from brain events, like the 'economic climate'. |
| 4099 | If Twins talking about 'water' and 'XYZ' have different thoughts but identical heads, then thoughts aren't in the head [Putnam, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: Putnam claims that the Twins have different thoughts even though their heads are the same, so their thoughts (about 'water' or 'XYZ') cannot be in their heads. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 4.37 | |
| A reaction: Is Putnam guilty of a simple confusion of de re and de dicto reference? |
| 12026 | We say ice and steam are different forms of water, but not that they are different forms of H2O [Forbes,G on Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Putnam presumes it is correct to say that ice and steam are forms of water, rather than that ice, water and steam are three forms of H2O. If we allow the latter, then 'water is H2O' is not an identity, but elliptical for 'water is H2O in liquid state'. | |
| From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 8.2 | |
| A reaction: This nice observation seems to reveal that the word 'water' is ambiguous. I presume the ambiguity preceded the discovery of its chemical construction. Shakespeare would have hesitated over whether to say 'water is ice'. Context would matter. |
| 3208 | Does 'water' mean a particular substance that was 'dubbed'? [Putnam, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Putnam argued that "water" refers to H2O by virtue of causal chains extending from present use back to early dubbing uses of it that were in fact dubbings of the substance H2O (although, of course, the original users of the word didn't know this). | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 9.2.1 | |
| A reaction: This is the basic idea of the Causal Theory of Reference. Nice conclusion: most of us don't know what we are talking about. Maybe the experts on H2O are also wrong... |
| 3893 | Often reference determines sense, and not (as Frege thought) vice versa [Putnam, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Putnam argues that, Frege notwithstanding, it is often the case that reference determines sense, and not vice versa. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 19.6 | |
| A reaction: Does this say anything more than that once you have established a reference, you can begin to collect information about the referent? |
| 20937 | The state should produce higher civilisations for all, in tune with the economic apparatus [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The role of the State is always that of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the 'civilisation' and the morality of the broades popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Collective') | |
| A reaction: This makes education virtually the prime role of the state. Reminiscent of Sir John Reith's original dream, in the 1930s, for the BBC. Many marxists feel that the economy is in direct conflict with morality and civilisation. |
| 20935 | Eventually political parties lose touch with the class they represent, which is dangerous [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: At a certain point in their lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In that particular form ...the parties are no longer recognised by their class as its exopression. ...The field is then open for violent solutions. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parties') | |
| A reaction: Left wing parties pursue ideologies that don't connect with the actual current interests of the working class, and righ wing parties are taken over by rich elites who don't value safe traditonal communities. (This thought is resonant in the 2018 UK). |
| 20936 | Caesarism emerges when two forces in society are paralysed in conflict [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Caesarism (as the emergence of a 'heroic' personality) expresses a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner ...which can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Caesarism') | |
| A reaction: He goes on to distinguish progressive and reactionary versions of Caesarism. Gramsci's interest is in the circumstances that throw up such people. Marx had identified 'Bonapartism'. |
| 20941 | Totalitarian parties cut their members off from other cultural organisations [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: A totalitarian party ensures that members find in that particular party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations. They break the threads that bind them to extraneous cultural organisms. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Organisation') | |
| A reaction: British parties traditionally had a 'club house', where you could do most of your socialising. Presumably Nazis left the church, and various interest groups. |
| 20939 | What is the function of a parliament? Does it even constitute a part of the State structure? [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The question has to be asked: do parliaments, even in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is the real function? | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parliament') | |
| A reaction: Nice question. In the UK it is only the cabinet which has active power. Backbench MPs are usually very frustrated, especially if their party has a comfortable majority, and their vote is not precious. They are privileged lobbyists. |
| 20938 | Liberalism's weakness is its powerful rigid bureaucracy [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism's weakness is the bureacracy - the crystallisation of the leading personnel - which exercises power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Hegemony') | |
| A reaction: This sounds more like what is called 'the Establishment' in Britain, which is the hidden controllers of power, rather than the administrators (whose role is only despised by right-wingers). |
| 20940 | Perfect political equality requires economic equality [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality ...remains correct. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'The State') | |
| A reaction: In the west we are living in a period (2018) when the top 0.1% of the wealthy are racing away, creating huge inequality. Their wealth controls the media, and it seems unrestrainable. The belief that we live in a 'democracy' is an illusion. |
| 11191 | The hidden structure of a natural kind determines membership in all possible worlds [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: If there is a hidden structure, then generally it determines what it is to be a member of the natural kind, ...in all possible worlds. Put another way, it determines what we can and cannot counterfactually suppose about the natural kind. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975], p.241) | |
| A reaction: This is the arrival of the bold new view of natural kinds (which is actually the original view - see Idea 8153). One must be careful of the necessity here. There is causal context, vagueness etc. |
| 11192 | If causes are the essence of diseases, then disease is an example of a relational essence [Putnam, by Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Putnam takes causes to be the essence of disease kinds, and they are distinct from the diseases they cause, both in identity and in proper parthood. These are relational properties, so Putnam gives examples of natural kinds with relational essences. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Neil E. Williams - Putnam's Traditional Neo-Essentialism §4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a nice point, since scientific essentialism invariable takes itself to be pursuing instrinsic properties when it unravels the essences of natural kinds. Probably the best response is the Putnam has got muddled. |
| 11190 | Archimedes meant by 'gold' the hidden structure or essence of the stuff [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: When Archimedes asserted that something was gold, he was not just saying that it had the superficial characteristics of gold; he was saying that it had the same general hidden structure (the same 'essence', so to speak) as any normal piece of local gold. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975], p.235) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the key announcements of the new scientific essentialism, and seems to me to be totally correct. Obviously Archimedes could say 'this is really gold, even if it no way appears to be gold'. |