12 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. |
| 8463 | Maths can be reduced to logic and set theory [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Researches in the foundations of mathematics have made it clear that all of (interpreted) mathematics can be got down to logic and set theory, and the objects needed for mathematics can be got down to the category of classes (and classes of classes..). | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a retreat from pure logicism, presumably influenced by Gödel. So can set theory be reduced to logic? Crispin Wright is the one the study. |
| 8461 | The category of objects incorporates the old distinction of substances and their modes [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The category of objects embraces indiscriminately what would anciently have been distinguished as substances and as modes or states of substances. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §6) | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures Quine's elimination of properties, by presenting them as inseparable from their objects/substances. Armstrong calls this 'Ostrich Nominalism' (for refusing to address the universals problem) but Quineans are unshaken. |
| 18925 | If talking donkeys are possible, something exists which could be a talking donkey [Williamson, by Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Williamson's view on modality is that everything that could exist does exist: since there could exist a talking donkey there actually exists some thing that could be a talking donkey. | |
| From: report of Timothy Williamson (Modal Logic as Metaphysics [2013], n20) by Ross P. Cameron - Truthmaking for Presentists n20 | |
| A reaction: Well that thing certainly isn't me, or Tim Williamson. I'm guessing that the thing is an actual donkey, probably a rather bright one. Actually, I think this is one of those views that invites the incredulous stare. (Barcan formulae). |
| 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. |
| 8462 | A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A physical ontology has a place for states of mind. An inspiration or a hallucination can, like the fit of ague, be identified with its host for the duration. It leaves our mentalistic idioms fairly intact, but reconciles them with a physical ontology. | |
| From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI) | |
| A reaction: Quine is employing the same strategy that he uses for substances and properties (Idea 8461): take the predication as basic, rather than reifying the thing being predicated. The ague analogy suggests that Quine is an incipient functionalist. |