22 ideas
| 17729 | Examining concepts can recover information obtained through the senses [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: My idea is that conceptual examination might be a way of recovering information previously obtained through the senses. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.8) | |
| A reaction: Now you're talking! This is really interesting conceptual analysis, rather than the sort of stamp-collecting approach to analsis practised by the duller sort of philosopher. But why bother with conceptual examination, when you have senses? |
| 8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
| Full Idea: It is the quest for system and simplicity that has kept driving the scientist to posit further entities as values of his variables. By positing molecules, Boyles' law of gases could be assimilated into a general theory of bodies in motion. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.262) | |
| A reaction: Interesting that a desire for simplicity might lead to multiplications of entities. In fact, I presume molecules had been proposed elsewhere in science, and were adopted in gas-theory because they were thought to exist, not because simplicity is nice. |
| 8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In classical arithmetic, ratios were posited to make division generally applicable, negative numbers to make subtraction generally applicable, and irrationals and finally imaginaries to make exponentiation generally applicable. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.263) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Quine's proposal (c.f. Idea 8207) that entities have to be multiplied in order to produce simplicity. He is speculating. Maybe they are proposed because they are just obvious, and the generality is a nice side-effect. |
| 17740 | Instead of correspondence of proposition to fact, look at correspondence of its parts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Instead of considering only a proposition's 'correspondence to the facts', we should also consider the correspondence between parts of the proposition and parts of the world (a 'correspondence-as-congruence' view). | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Final - Branching) | |
| A reaction: This is something like Russell's Othello example (1912), except that the parts there, with relations seemed to add up to the whole proposition. For Jenkins, presumably parts might correspond, but the whole proposition fail to. |
| 17730 | Combining the concepts of negation and finiteness gives the concept of infinity [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: We might arrive to the concept of infinity by composing concepts of negation and finiteness. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably lots of concepts can be arrived at by negating prior concepts (such as not-wet, not-tall, not-loud, not-straight). So not-infinite is perfectly plausible, and is a far better account than some a priori intuition of pure infinity. Love it. |
| 17719 | Arithmetic concepts are indispensable because they accurately map the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: The indispensability of arithmetical concepts is evidence that they do in fact accurately represent features of the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be by far the best account of the matter. So why is the world so arithmetical? Dunno, mate; ask someone else. |
| 17717 | Senses produce concepts that map the world, and arithmetic is known through these concepts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I propose that arithmetical truths are known through an examination of our own arithmetical concepts; that basic arithmetical concepts map the arithmetical structure of the world; that the map obtains in virtue of our normal sensory apparatus. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Pref) | |
| A reaction: She defends the nice but unusual position that arithmetical knowledge is both a priori and empirical (so that those two notions are not, as usually thought, opposed). I am a big Carrie Jenkins fan. |
| 17724 | It is not easy to show that Hume's Principle is analytic or definitive in the required sense [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: A problem for the neo-Fregeans is that it has not proved easy to establish that Hume's Principle is analytic or definitive in the required sense. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: It is also asked how we would know the principle, if it is indeed analytic or definitional (Jenkins p.119). |
| 8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
| Full Idea: An account of events just in terms of physical bodies does not distinguish between events that happen to take up just the same portion of space-time. A man's whistling and walking would be identified with the same temporal segment of the man. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.260) | |
| A reaction: We wouldn't want to make his 'walking' and his 'strolling' two events. Whistling and walking are different because different objects are involved (lips and legs). Hence a man is not (ontologically) a single object. |
| 17727 | We can learn about the world by studying the grounding of our concepts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: What concept grounding does for us is ensure that our concepts, like the results of our empirical tests, can be treated as a source of information about the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we learn our concepts hand-in-hand with experience, so learning our concepts is itself learning about the world. Later checking of concepts and their relations largely confirms what we already knew? |
| 17720 | There's essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive dependence [Jenkins, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Dependence comes in essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive forms. | |
| From: report of Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 1.2) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to look up Jenkins for the details. |
| 17728 | The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Concepts which are indispensably useful for categorising, understanding, explaining, and predicting our sensory input are likely to be ones which map the structure of that input well. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Anti-realists about classification seem to think that we just invent an array of concepts, and then start classifying with them. The truth seems to be that the actual classes of worldly thing have generated our concepts. |
| 8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The need to add a note of necessity to 'all black crows are black' could be met by a generalisation over classes (what belongs to sets x and y belongs to y), or maybe be quantifying over possible particulars. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.262) | |
| A reaction: He dislikes the second strategy because 'unactualized particulars are an obscure and troublesome lot'. The second is the strategy of Lewis. I think necessity starts to creep back in as soon as you ask WHY a generalisation holds true. |
| 17726 | Examining accurate, justified or grounded concepts brings understanding of the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Examining accurate concepts can help us acquire true beliefs about the world, examining justified concepts can help us acquire justified beliefs about the world, and examining grounded concepts can help us acquire knowledge of it. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Jenkins's empirical account of concepts, and I love it all to bits. I feel that contemporary philosophy is beginning to produce a coherent naturalistic worldview which can replace religion. Bar the rituals. We can have priests... |
| 17734 | It is not enough that intuition be reliable - we need to know why it is reliable [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: The mere reliability of intuition is not a satisfactory ground for saying it is a source of knowledge - we need to know why it is reliable to understand whether it can be a source of knowledge. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: My theory is that intuition is simply believing things for reasons which we have either forgotten, or (more likely) reasons which are too complex or subtle to be articulated. Intuition feels rational, because it is rational. Updated view of mind needed. |
| 17723 | Knowledge is true belief which can be explained just by citing the proposition believed [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I propose that knowledge is true belief which can be well explained .....just by citing the proposition believed. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this appealing, and my reservation about Jenkins's book is her reliabilist, externalist epistemology. I would add an internalist coherentist epistemology to her very nice theory. 'I believe there are fairies at the bottom of my garden'? |
| 17739 | The physical effect of world on brain explains the concepts we possess [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I think the physical effects of the world on the brain explain our possessing the concepts we do. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for a thought which strikes me as exactly right. |
| 17718 | Grounded concepts are trustworthy maps of the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Grounded concepts are like trustworthy on-board maps of the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: You'll probably need more than one concept for it to qualify as a 'map', but I like this idea a lot. The world, rather than we ourselves, creates our concepts. The opposite of the view of Geach in 'Mental Acts'. |
| 17731 | Verificationism is better if it says meaningfulness needs concepts grounded in the senses [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I find an updated verificationism plausible, in which we say something meaningful just in case we employ only concepts whose possession could be justified or disjustified by sensory input. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Wow! This is the first time I have ever had the slightest sympathy for verificationism. It saves my favourite problem case - of wild but meaningful speculation, for example about the contents of another universe. A very nice idea. |
| 17732 | Success semantics explains representation in terms of success in action [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Success semantics is the attempt to understand mental representation by thinking about the ways in which representing the world can lead to success in action. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be what is also known as 'teleological semantics'. It sounds to me as if this might help to explain success in action, but isn't going to explain the representations that result in the success. |
| 17725 | 'Analytic' can be conceptual, or by meaning, or predicate inclusion, or definition... [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytic' might mean conceptually true, or true in virtue of meaning, or where the predicate is contained in the subject, or for sentences which define something, or where meaning is sufficient for the truth. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: The second one says meaning grounds the truth, where the last one says meaning entails the truth. |
| 16764 | The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus] |
| Full Idea: Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted. | |
| From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763. |