15 ideas
| 9218 | Maybe what distinguishes philosophy from science is its pursuit of necessary truths [Sider] |
| Full Idea: According to one tradition, necessary truth demarcates philosophical from empirical inquiry. Science identifies contingent aspects of the world, whereas philosophical inquiry reveals the essential nature of its objects. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Reductive Theories of Modality [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: I don't think there is a clear demarcation, and I would think that lots of generalizations about contingent truths are in philosophical territory, but I quite like this idea - even if it does make scientists laugh at philosophers. |
| 13917 | Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The central task of metaphysics is to chart the possibilities of existence by identifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency in which beings of different categories stand to one another. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to think that he is right about the second one, and that dependency and grounding relations are the name of the game. I don't have Lowe's confidence that philosophers can parcel up reality in neat and true ways. |
| 13919 | Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The central task of philosophy is the cultivation of insights into natures or essences, and not the 'analysis of concepts', with which it is apt to be confused. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a false dichotomy. I like the idea of trying to understand the true natures of things, but how are we going to do it in our armchairs? |
| 6396 | A sentence is held true because of a combination of meaning and belief [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: A sentence is held true because of two factors: what the holder takes the sentence to mean, and what he believes. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.20) | |
| A reaction: A key question is whether a belief (e.g. an imagistic one, or one held by an animal) could be true, even though no sentence is involved. Linguistic philosophers tend to avoid this question, or assume the answer is 'no'. |
| 13918 | Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Holes are things of such a kind that they can coincide without being identical - as are, for example, shadows and spots of light. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that they thereby fail one of the standard tests for being an 'object'. |
| 13921 | All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Things must have an essence, in the sense of 'what it is to be the individual of that kind', or it would make no sense to say we can talk or think comprehendingly about things at all. If we don't know what it is, how can we think about it? | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: Lowe presents this as a sort of Master Argument for essences. I think he is working with the wrong notion of essence. All he means is that things must have identities to be objects of thought. Why equate identity with essence, and waste a good concept? |
| 13922 | Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: To know something's essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: I think he is wrong about this, or at least is working with an unhelpful notion of essence. Identity is one thing, and essence is another. I take essences to be certain selected features of things, which explain their nature. |
| 13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Any individual thing must be a thing of some general kind - because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
| A reaction: Where does the law that 'everything must have a category' come from? I'm baffled by remarks of this kind. Where do we get the categories from? From observing the individuals. So which has priority? Not the categories. Is God a kind? |
| 11145 | Having a belief involves the possibility of being mistaken [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Someone cannot have a belief unless he understands the possibility of being mistaken. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.170) | |
| A reaction: If you pretend to throw a ball for a dog, but don't release it, the dog experiences being mistaken very dramatically. |
| 6397 | The concept of belief can only derive from relationship to a speech community [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We have the idea of belief from its role in the interpretation of language; as a private attitude it is not intelligible except in relation to public language. So a creature must be a member of a speech community to have the concept of belief. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.22) | |
| A reaction: This shows how Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (e.g. Idea 4152) hovers behind Davidson's philosophy. The idea is quite persuasive. A solitary creature just follows its mental states. The question of whether it believes them is a meta-thought. |
| 6392 | Thought depends on speech [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The thesis I want to refine and then argue for is that thought depends on speech. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.8) | |
| A reaction: This has the instant and rather implausible implication that animals don't think. He is not, of course, saying that all thought is speech, which would leave out thinking in images. You can't do much proper thought without concepts and propositions. |
| 6393 | A creature doesn't think unless it interprets another's speech [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: A creature cannot have a thought unless it is an interpreter of the speech of another. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.9) | |
| A reaction: His use of the word 'creature' shows that he is perfectly aware of the issue of whether animals think, and he is, presumably, denying it. At first glance this sounds silly, but maybe animals don't really 'think', in our sense of the word. |
| 11144 | Concepts are only possible in a language community [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: A private attitude is not intelligible except as an adjustment to the public norms provided by language. It follows that a creature must be a member of speech community if it is to have the concept of belief. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.170) | |
| A reaction: This obviously draws on Wittgenstein's private language argument, and strikes me as blatantly wrong, because I take higher animals to have concepts without language. Pure vision gives rise to concepts. I don't even think they are necessarily conscious. |
| 6395 | An understood sentence can be used for almost anything; it isn't language if it has only one use [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Once a sentence is understood, an utterance of it may be used to serve almost any extra-linguistic purpose; an instrument that could be put to only one use would lack autonomy of meaning, which means it should not be counted as language. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.17) | |
| A reaction: I find this point very appealing, in opposition to the Wittgenstein view of meaning as use. Passwords seem to me a striking case of the separation of meaning and use. I like the phrase 'autonomy of meaning'. Random sticks can form a word. |
| 6394 | The pattern of sentences held true gives sentences their meaning [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Although most utterances are not concerned with truth, it is the pattern of sentences held true that gives sentences their meaning. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.14) | |
| A reaction: Davidson's distinctive version of meaning holism, as opposed to Quine's rather behaviouristic version. I agree that we relate to people through the pattern of sentences they hold true, but I am unconvinced that this 'gives sentences their meaning'. |