Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Dthat', 'Three theses about dispositions' and 'Culture and Value'

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3 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 2. Wise People
While faith is a passion (as Kierkegaard says), wisdom is passionless [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Culture and Value [1945], 53e)
     A reaction: [Idea from SY] Personally I don't agree that wisdom is passionless. At the very least, Aristotle allows the wise person to be appropriately angry. [PG]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Dispositions are second-order properties, the property of having some property [Jackson/Pargetter/Prior, by Armstrong]
     Full Idea: It was proposed that dispositions are second-order properties of objects: the property of having some property.
     From: report of Jackson/Pargetter/Prior (Three theses about dispositions [1982]) by David M. Armstrong - Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' p.xvii
     A reaction: It seems more plausible to say that dispositions are first-order properties - that is, properties are dispositions, which are causal powers. A disposition to smoke is to have a causal power which leads to smoking.
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / b. Causal reference
Are causal descriptions part of the causal theory of reference, or are they just metasemantic? [Kaplan, by Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Kaplan notes that the causal theory of reference can be understood in two quite different ways, as part of the semantics (involving descriptions of causal processes), or as metasemantics, explaining why a term has the referent it does.
     From: report of David Kaplan (Dthat [1970]) by Jonathan Schaffer - Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson 1
     A reaction: [Kaplan 'Afterthought' 1989] The theory tends to be labelled as 'direct' rather than as 'causal' these days, but causal chains are still at the heart of the story (even if more diffused socially). Nice question. Kaplan takes the meta- version as orthodox.