18 ideas
| 6405 | Moore's 'The Nature of Judgement' (1898) marked the rejection (with Russell) of idealism [Moore,GE, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The rejection of idealism by Moore and Russell was marked in 1898 by the publication of Moore's article 'The Nature of Judgement'. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This now looks like a huge landmark in the history of British philosophy. |
| 7527 | Analysis for Moore and Russell is carving up the world, not investigating language [Moore,GE, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: For Moore and Russell analysis is not - as is commonly understood now - a linguistic activity, but an ontological one. To analyse a proposition is not to investigate language, but to carve up the world so that it begins to make some sort of sense. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: A thought dear to my heart. The twentieth century got horribly side-tracked into thinking that ontology was an entirely linguistic problem. I suggest that physicists analyse physical reality, and philosophers analyse abstract reality. |
| 1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We are prone to talk about physical and abstract objects. It is hard to know how else to talk, because we are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of understanding or translating the alien sentences. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.I,p.1) |
| 5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
| Full Idea: Quine's well-known slogan "no entity without identity" means that no object should be admitted into our ontology unless its identity conditions, the conditions that say which object it is, have been settled. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960]) by Joseph Melia - Modality Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This invites science fiction scenarios, where we admit the existence of something before we have a clue what it is (whether it is physical, hallucination, divine..). Quine's slogan seems attractive but optimistic. How 'settled'? |
| 7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The lack of a proper identity concept for attributes (properties) is a lack that philosophers feel impelled to supply; for, what sense is there in saying there are attributes when there is no sense in saying when there is one attribute and when two? | |
| From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], IV) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a really crucial question. There is a mistaken tendency to take any possible linguistic predicate as implying a natural property. I sympathise with the sceptics here (see Ideas 4029, 3906, 3322). How to individuate properties? |
| 13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
| Full Idea: There is no denying the access of power that accrues to our conceptual scheme through the positing of abstract objects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], §5) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, both in its use of the word 'posit', and in its general pragmatic claim. So why? If they enable us to grapple with the world better, it must be because of their power of generalisation. They are nets thrown over chunks of reality. |
| 8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
| Full Idea: To adapt Quine's famous slogan ('no entity without identity'), I prefer to say 'no object without identity'. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], p.52) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 7.1 | |
| A reaction: Quine was trying to make us all more scientific, but Lowe is closer to common sense. The sky is an entity, most of us would say, but with very shaky identity-conditions. A wave of the sea is a good example. |
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
| 11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
| A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
| 16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
| A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
| 11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
| 11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
| 11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
| 22302 | Moor bypassed problems of correspondence by saying true propositions ARE facts [Moore,GE, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Moore avoided the problematic correspondence between propositions and reality by identifying the former with the latter; the world consists of true propositions, and there is no difference between a true proposition and the fact that makes it true. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 28 'Refut' | |
| A reaction: This is "the most platonic system of modern times", he wrote (letter 14.8.1898). He then added platonist ethics. This is a pernicious and absurd doctrine. The obvious problem is that false propositions can be indistinguishable, but differ in ontology. |
| 7526 | Hegelians say propositions defy analysis, but Moore says they can be broken down [Moore,GE, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Moore rejected the Hegelian view, that a proposition is a unity that defies analysis; instead, it is a complex that positively cries out to be broken up into its constituent parts, which parts Moore called 'concepts'. | |
| From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Russell was much influenced by this idea, though it may be found in Frege. Anglophone philosophers tend to side instantly with Moore, but the Hegel view must be pondered. An idea comes to us in a unified flash, before it is articulated. |
| 1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We could know the necessary and sufficient stimulatory conditions of every possible act of utterance, in a foreign language, and still not know how to determine what objects the speakers of that language believe in. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.III,p.11) | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe this, because the same scepticism then creeps into discussions of native speakers of a single language, and all communcation is blighted - which is nonsense. |
| 1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Translation of our remote past or future discourse into the terms we now know could be about as tenuous and arbitrary a projection as translation of a heathen language was seen to be. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.V,p.25) | |
| A reaction: Is he seriously saying that we can't understand Shakespeare, because holism implies that we would have to be Elizabethans? So scholarship is in vain? Is yesterday the 'past'? |