31 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| Full Idea: A single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I take this to imply that multiple viewpoints lead us towards objectivity. The single viewpoint of an expert is of much greater value than that of a novice, on the whole. |
| 8868 | Objective truth arises from interpersonal communication [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The source of the concept of objective truth is interpersonal communication. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991], p.209) | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctively Davidsonian idea, arising out of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument. We could go a step further, and just say that 'objectivity is a social concept'. Davidson more or less pleads guilty to pragmatism in this essay. |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| Full Idea: Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of single underlying fact is like a musician's relief at discovering harmony. …The passion for economy of means in thought is the philosophic passion par excellence. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: We do, though, possess an inner klaxon warning against stupid simplistic reductions. Reducing all the miseries of life to the workings of the Devil is not satisfactory, even it it is economical. Simplicities are dangerously tempting. |
| 15527 | Defining terms either enables elimination, or shows that they don't require elimination [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To define theoretical terms might be to show how to do without them, but it is better to say that it shows there is no good reason to want to do without them. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], Intro) |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| Full Idea: Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose. Conceptions, 'kinds', are teleological instruments. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Could there not be ways of classifying which suit all of our purposes? If there were a naturally correct way to classifying things, then any pragmatist would probably welcome that. (I don't say there is such a way). |
| 15530 | A logically determinate name names the same thing in every possible world [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A logically determinate name is one which names the same thing in every possible world. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be rigid designation, before Kripke introduced the new word. |
| 8867 | A belief requires understanding the distinctions of true-and-false, and appearance-and-reality [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Having a belief demands in addition appreciating the contrast between true belief and false, between appearance and reality, mere seeming and being. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991], p.209) | |
| A reaction: This sets the bar very high for belief (never mind knowledge), and seems to imply that animals don't have beliefs. How should we describe their cognitive states then? I would say these criteria only apply to actual knowledge. |
| 10347 | Objectivity is intersubjectivity [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: An entity is objective in so far as it is intersubjective. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This thought baffled me until I saw it in the context of socialised epistemology. Effectively objectivity is subsumed under justification, which in turn is seen in a social context, not private to individuals. |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| Full Idea: What is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Clifford's famous principle. He isn't actually contraverting the principle, but it is a nice point about evidence. Simple empiricists think detectives only have to stare at the evidence and the solution creates itself. |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| Full Idea: Each tester of the truth of a theory …acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.42) | |
| A reaction: This is almost exactly Popper's falsificationist proposal for science, which interestingly shows the close relationship of his view to pragmatism. Believe it as long as it is still working. |
| 15528 | A Ramsey sentence just asserts that a theory can be realised, without saying by what [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If we specify a theory with all of its terms, and then replace all of those terms with variables, we can then say that some n-tuples of entities can satisfy this formula. This Ramsey sentence then says the theory is realised, without specifying by what. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], II) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed Lewis, and cut out the symbolism] |
| 15526 | There is a method for defining new scientific terms just using the terms we already understand [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I contend that there is a general method for defining newly introduced terms in a scientific theory, one which uses only the old terms we understood beforehand. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Lewis is game is to provide bridge laws for a reductive account of nature, without having to introduce something entirely new to achieve it. The idea of bridge laws in scientific theory is less in favour these days. |
| 15529 | It is better to have one realisation of a theory than many - but it may not always be possible [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A uniquely realised theory is, other things being equal, certainly more satisfactory than a multiply realised theory. We should insist on unique realisation as a standard of correctness unless it is a standard too high to be met. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], III) | |
| A reaction: The point is that rewriting a theory as Ramsey sentences just says there is at least one realisation, and so it doesn't meet the highest standards for scientific theories. The influence of set-theoretic model theory is obvious in this approach. |
| 15531 | The Ramsey sentence of a theory says that it has at least one realisation [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The Ramsey sentence of a theory says that it has at least one realisation. | |
| From: David Lewis (How to Define Theoretical Terms [1970], V) |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| Full Idea: That nature will follow tomorrow the same laws that she follows today is a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.39) | |
| A reaction: The stability of nature is something to be assessed, not something taken for granted. If you arrive in a new city and it all seems quiet, you keep your fingers crossed and treat it as stable. But revolution or coup could be just round the corner. |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| Full Idea: The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof solely by the size of a vulgar fraction, is as ideally inept as it is practically impossible. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: James probably didn't know about Bayes, but this is directed at the Bayesian approach. My view is that full rational assessment of coherence is a much better bet than a Bayesian calculation. Factors must be weighted. |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| Full Idea: Alongside the passion for simplification …is the passion for distinguishing; it is the passion to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.22) | |
| A reaction: As I child I dismantled almost every toy I was given. This seems to be the motivation for a lot of analytic philosophy, but Aristotle also tended to think that way. |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| Full Idea: It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Hands evolved for manipulating tools end up playing the piano. Minds evolved for action can be afflicted with boredom. He's not wrong, but he is risking the etymological fallacy (origin = purpose). I take navigation to be the original purpose of mind. |
| 8866 | If we know other minds through behaviour, but not our own, we should assume they aren't like me [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If the mental states of others are known only through their behavioral and other outward manifestations, while this is not true of our own mental states, why should we think our own mental states are anything like those of others? | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991], p.207) | |
| A reaction: His point is that if you seriously doubt other minds, you should follow through on the implications. But that is to treat it as a theory about other minds, rather an a sceptical worry. Descartes didn't walk into walls while writing Meditation 1. |
| 10346 | Knowing other minds rests on knowing both one's own mind and the external world [Davidson, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Davidson argues that knowledge of other minds presupposes knowledge of one's own mind, and that there is no knowledge of other minds without knowledge of the external world. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991]) by Michael Dummett - Common Sense and Physics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Davidson't argument is actually hard to swallow because it is so long and complex. Compressing the point makes it begin to sound like a variant of the argument from analogy. |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| Full Idea: A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of what is going to happen next. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Good. A nice corrective to people like myself who are tempted to inflate animal rationality, in order to emphasise human evolutionary continuity with them. It is hard to disagree with his observation. But dogs do make judgements! True/false! |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| Full Idea: Can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is the perennial problem in deciding grounds, and in deciding what to treat as primitive. The stoics see the whole of nature as rational. Cf how can the ground of what is physical be itself physical? |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| Full Idea: I think there are very good grounds for upholding the view that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feelings of irrationality. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.20) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting proposal. Nothing is more basic to logic (well, plausible versions of logic) than the principle of non-contradiction - perhaps because it is the foundation of our natural intellectual equipment. |
| 8870 | Content of thought is established through communication, so knowledge needs other minds [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Until a baseline has been established by communication with someone else, there is no point is saying one's own thoughts have a propositional content. Hence knowledge of another mind is essential all thought and all knowledge. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991], p.213) | |
| A reaction: This really is building a skyscraper on the slightly shaky claims of the Private Language Argument (e.g. Idea 4158). Animals are so important in discussions of this kind. Is an albatross more or less devoid of thought and belief? |
| 8869 | The principle of charity attributes largely consistent logic and largely true beliefs to speakers [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Concerning charity, the Principle of Coherence seeks logical consistency in the thought of the speaker, and the Principle of Correspondence seeks a similar response to features of the world to that of an interpreter. The speaker has logic and true belief. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Three Varieties of Knowledge [1991], p.211) | |
| A reaction: Davidson adds a Kantian commitment to pure and universal reason to the very sceptical framework created by Quine. I agree with Davidson, but it seems more like faith than like an argument or an empirical observation. |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44) | |
| A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives. |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| Full Idea: The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly the psychological motivation for trying to identify 'the' cause of something, but James always tries to sell such things as subjective. 'Useless' to one person is a subjective criterion; useless to anyone is much more objective. |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
| Full Idea: In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.36) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche says these are the virtues of a good slave. Previous virtues were dominated by military needs, but the new virtues are those of large cities, where communal living with strangers is the challenge. |