22 ideas
| 8996 | If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money... [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money then time is money then time is money then if time is money then time is money. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.95) | |
| A reaction: Quine offers this with no hint of a smile. I reproduce it for the benefit of people who hate analytic philosophy, and get tired of continental philosophy being attacked for its obscurity. |
| 8995 | Definition by words is determinate but relative; fixing contexts could make it absolute [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A definition endows a word with complete determinacy of meaning relative to other words. But we could determine the meaning of a new word absolutely by specifying contexts which are to be true and contexts which are to be false. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.89) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginning of Quine's distinction between the interior of 'the web' and its edges. The attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction will break down the boundary between the two. Surprising to find 'absolute' anywhere in Quine. |
| 10064 | Quine quickly dismisses If-thenism [Quine, by Musgrave] |
| Full Idea: Quine quickly dismisses If-thenism. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.327) by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §5 | |
| A reaction: [Musgrave quotes a long chunk of Quine which is hard to compress!] Effectively, he says If-thenism is cheating, or begs the question, by eliminating whole sections of perfectly good mathematics, because they cannot be derived from axioms. |
| 20296 | Logic needs general conventions, but that needs logic to apply them to individual cases [Quine, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Quine argues that logic could not be established by conventions, since the logical truths, being infinite in number, must be given by general conventions rather than singly; and logic is needed in the meta-theory, to apply to individual cases. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935]) by Georges Rey - The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction 3.4 | |
| A reaction: A helpful insight into Quine's claim. If only someone would print these one sentence summaries at the top of classic papers, we would all get far more out of them at first reading. Assuming Rey is right! |
| 8998 | Claims that logic and mathematics are conventional are either empty, uninteresting, or false [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If logic and mathematics being true by convention says the primitives can be conventionally described, that works for anything, and is empty; if the conventions are only for those fields, that's uninteresting; if a general practice, that is false. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.102) | |
| A reaction: This is Quine's famous denial of the traditional platonist view, and the new Wittgensteinian conventional view, preparing the ground for a more naturalistic and empirical view. I feel more sympathy with Quine than with the other two. |
| 8999 | Logic isn't conventional, because logic is needed to infer logic from conventions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If logic is to proceed mediately from conventions, logic is needed for inferring logic from the conventions. Conventions for adopting logical primitives can only be communicated by free use of those very idioms. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.104) | |
| A reaction: A common pattern of modern argument, which always seems to imply that nothing can ever get off the ground. I suspect that there are far more benign circles in the world of thought than most philosophers imagine. |
| 9000 | If a convention cannot be communicated until after its adoption, what is its role? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: When a convention is incapable of being communicated until after its adoption, its role is not clear. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.106) | |
| A reaction: Quine is discussing the basis of logic, but the point applies to morality - that if there is said to be a convention at work, the concepts of morality must already exist to get the conventional framework off the ground. What is it that comes first? |
| 8994 | If analytic geometry identifies figures with arithmetical relations, logicism can include geometry [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Geometry can be brought into line with logicism simply by identifying figures with arithmetical relations with which they are correlated thought analytic geometry. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.87) | |
| A reaction: Geometry was effectively reduced to arithmetic by Descartes and Fermat, so this seems right. You wonder, though, whether something isn't missing if you treat geometry as a set of equations. There is more on the screen than what's in the software. |
| 8997 | There are four different possible conventional accounts of geometry [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We can construe geometry by 1) identifying it with algebra, which is then defined on the basis of logic; 2) treating it as hypothetical statements; 3) defining it contextually; or 4) making it true by fiat, without making it part of logic. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.99) | |
| A reaction: [Very compressed] I'm not sure how different 3 is from 2. These are all ways to treat geometry conventionally. You could be more traditional, and say that it is a description of actual space, but the multitude of modern geometries seems against this. |
| 8993 | If mathematics follows from definitions, then it is conventional, and part of logic [Quine] |
| Full Idea: To claim that mathematical truths are conventional in the sense of following logically from definitions is the claim that mathematics is a part of logic. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.79) | |
| A reaction: Quine is about to attack logic as convention, so he is endorsing the logicist programme (despite his awareness of Gödel), but resisting the full Wittgenstein conventionalist picture. |
| 7658 | Obviously there can't be a functional anaylsis of qualia if they are defined by intrinsic properties [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: If you define qualia as intrinsic properties of experiences considered in isolation from all their causes and effects, logically independent of all dispositional properties, then they are logically guaranteed to elude all broad functional analysis. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a good point - it seems daft to reify qualia and imagine them dangling in mid-air with all their vibrant qualities - but that is a long way from saying there is nothing more to qualia than functional roles. Functions must be exlained too. |
| 7655 | The work done by the 'homunculus in the theatre' must be spread amongst non-conscious agencies [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: All the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater must be distributed among various lesser agencies in the brain, none of which is conscious. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Dennett's account crucially depends on consciousness being much more fragmentary than most philosophers claim it to be. It is actually full of joints, which can come apart. He may be right. |
| 3654 | The pineal gland links soul to body, and unites the two symmetrical sides of the body [Descartes, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The soul is united with the body in just one place, a gland (the pineal) in the centre of the brain. It is placed so that its slightest movement will affect the passions, and it plays the essential role of uniting the two symmetrical sides of the body. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649], §31) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 4862 for Spinoza's nice response to Descartes' proposal. If Descartes had followed brain research for the last four hundred years, at what point would he have wavered? If every single part of the brain seems to 'interact', dualism looks unlikely. |
| 7657 | Intelligent agents are composed of nested homunculi, of decreasing intelligence, ending in machines [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: As long as your homunculi are more stupid and ignorant than the intelligent agent they compose, the nesting of homunculi within homunculi can be finite, bottoming out, eventually, with agents so unimpressive they can be replaced by machines. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [Dennett first proposed this in 'Brainstorms' 1978]. This view was developed well by Lycan. I rate it as one of the most illuminating ideas in the modern philosophy of mind. All complex systems (like aeroplanes) have this structure. |
| 7656 | I don't deny consciousness; it just isn't what people think it is [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I don't maintain, of course, that human consciousness does not exist; I maintain that it is not what people often think it is. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I consider Dennett to be as near as you can get to an eliminativist, but he is not stupid. As far as I can see, the modern philosopher's bogey-man, the true total eliminativist, simply doesn't exist. Eliminativists usually deny propositional attitudes. |
| 4015 | For Descartes passions are God-given preservers of the mind-body union [Descartes, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Descartes sees passions not as opinions, but as functional devices that the Creator has designed for us to help preserve the body-soul substantial union. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
| A reaction: I wonder what Descartes would have made of the theory of evolution? |
| 4313 | Are there a few primary passions (say, joy, sadness and desire)? [Descartes, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Descartes says there are six primary passions (wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness); Spinoza says there are just three (joy, sadness and desire). | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.172 | |
| A reaction: A dubious project. However, it is now agreed that there are a few (six?) basic universal facial expressions, to which these passions may correspond. |
| 23989 | There are six primitive passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness [Descartes, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Descartes said there are six primitive passions, namely wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. The others are either species of these, or composed of them. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649], 353) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: [not sure about ref] It's a nice touch to add 'wonder', which doesn't make it onto anyone else's list. |
| 7654 | What matters about neuro-science is the discovery of the functional role of the chemistry [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Neuro-science matters because - and only because - we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse throughout the brain have functional roles that make important differences. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett that this is the true ground for pessimism about spectacular breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, rather than abstract concerns about irreducible features of the mind like 'qualia' and 'rationality'. |
| 20037 | Merely willing to walk leads to our walking [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Our merely willing to walk has the consequence that our legs move and we walk. | |
| From: René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649], 18), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 1 'Volitionism' | |
| A reaction: Stout attributes this to Descartes' dualism, as if legs are separate from persons. Stout says the idea of a prior mental act is not usually now considered as part of an action, or even to exist at all. If the volition is intentional, there is a regress. |
| 16763 | We don't die because the soul departs; the soul departs because the organs cease functioning [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: We ought to hold, on the contrary, that the soul takes its leave when we die only because this heat ceases and the organs that bring about bodily movement decay. | |
| From: René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649], I.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a pretty major change in our concept of death, given that we all now agree with Descartes. |
| 4016 | Descartes makes strength of will the central virtue [Descartes, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: Descartes makes strength of will the central virtue. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
| A reaction: Presumably strength of will can serve evil ends, so this is a bit confusing. |