14 ideas
17082 | Paradox: why do you analyse if you know it, and how do you analyse if you don't? [Ruben] |
Full Idea: The alleged paradox of analysis asserts that if one knew what was involved in the concept, one would not need the analysis; if one did not know what was involved in the concept, no analysis could be forthcoming. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 1) | |
A reaction: This is the sort of problem that seemed to bug Plato a lot. You certainly can't analyse something if you don't understand it, but it seems obvious that you can illuminatingly analyse something of which you have a reasonable understanding. |
8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
17087 | The 'symmetry thesis' says explanation and prediction only differ pragmatically [Ruben] |
Full Idea: The 'symmetry thesis' holds that there is only a pragmatic, or epistemic, but no logical, difference between explaining and predicting. …The only difference is in what the producer of the deduction knows just before the deduction is produced. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 4) | |
A reaction: He cites Mill has holding this view. It seems elementary to me that I can explain something but not predict it, or predict it but not explain it. The latter case is just Humean habitual induction. |
17081 | Usually explanations just involve giving information, with no reference to the act of explanation [Ruben] |
Full Idea: Plato, Aristotle, Mill and Hempel believed that an explanatory product can be characterized solely in terms of the kind of information it conveys, no reference to the act of explaining being required. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 1) | |
A reaction: Achinstein says it's about acts, because the same information could be an explanation, or a critique, or some other act. Ruben disagrees, and so do I. |
17092 | An explanation needs the world to have an appropriate structure [Ruben] |
Full Idea: Objects or events in the world must really stand in some appropriate 'structural' relation before explanation is possible. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 7) | |
A reaction: An important point. These days people talk of 'dependence relations'. Some sort of structure to reality (mainly imposed by the direction of time and causation, I would have thought) is a prerequisite of finding a direction to explanation. |
17090 | Most explanations are just sentences, not arguments [Ruben] |
Full Idea: Typically, full explanations are not arguments, but singular sentences, or conjunctions thereof. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 6) | |
A reaction: This is mainly objecting to the claim that explanations are deductions from laws and facts. I agree with Ruben. Explanations are just information, I think. Of course, Aristotle's demonstrations are arguments. |
17094 | The causal theory of explanation neglects determinations which are not causal [Ruben] |
Full Idea: The fault of the causal theory of explanation was to overlook the fact that there are more ways of making something what it is or being responsible for it than by causing it. …Causation is a particular type of determinative relation. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 7) | |
A reaction: The only thing I can think of is that certain abstract facts are 'determined' by other abtract facts, without being 'caused' by them. A useful word. |
17088 | Reducing one science to another is often said to be the perfect explanation [Ruben] |
Full Idea: The reduction of one science to another has often been taken as paradigmatic of explanation. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 5) | |
A reaction: It seems fairly obvious that the total reduction of chemistry to physics would involve the elimination of all the current concepts of chemistry. Could this possibly enhance our understanding of chemistry? I would have thought not. |
17089 | Facts explain facts, but only if they are conceptualised or named appropriately [Ruben] |
Full Idea: Facts explain facts only when the features and the individuals the facts are about are appropriately conceptualized or named. | |
From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 5) | |
A reaction: He has a nice example that 'Cicero's speeches stop in 43 BCE' isn't explained by 'Tully died then', if you don't know that Cicero was Tully. Ruben is not defending pragmatic explanation, but to this extent he must be right. |
8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
21906 | Political theory should not focus on the state or economy, but on the small scale of power [Deleuze/Guattari, by May] |
Full Idea: Liberals who focus on the state and Marxists who focus on the economy are macropolitical theorists. They overlook the small elements that comprise our political lives. To understand how we are constructed and power works we must turn to the smaller scale. | |
From: report of G Deleuze / F Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus [1980]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.04 | |
A reaction: This seems to be precisely in tune with the ideas of Foucault. I'm not sure that a study of power within the family or the office throws much light on macropolitics. How the micro intrudes into the micro seems more interesting. |