75 ideas
| 12644 | Who cares what 'philosophy' is? Most pre-1950 thought doesn't now count as philosophy [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Who cares what gets called 'philosophy'? It's my impression that most of what happened in philosophy before 1950 wouldn't qualify according to the present usage. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
| A reaction: A rather breath-taking remark. Fodor is, of course, a devotee of David Hume, and of Descartes, but he never seems to refer to Greeks at all. Personally I presume that if you aren't doing what Plato and Aristotle were interested in, it ain't philosophy. |
| 12633 | Definitions often give necessary but not sufficient conditions for an extension [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Attempts to define a term frequently elicit necessary but not sufficient conditions for membership of its extension. This is called the 'X problem', as in 'kill' means 'cause to die' plus X. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1 n3) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is one of the great sceptics about definition. I just don't see why we have to have totally successful definitions before we can accept the process as a worthwhile endeavour. |
| 4767 | Traditionally, rational beliefs are those which are justified by reasons [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of Reason is that all beliefs should be justified (that is, backed up by reasons) in order to be rational. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: I think it is the duty of all philosophers to either defend this traditional view, or quit philosophy for some other activity. Rorty suggests hermeneutics. In a democracy, rulers should be continually required to give reasons for their decisions. |
| 3750 | "It is true that x" means no more than x [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: It is evident that "It is true that Caesar was murdered" means no more than that Caesar was murdered. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Facts and Propositions [1927]) | |
| A reaction: At the very least, saying it is true adds emphasis. One sentence is about Caesar, the other about a proposal concerning Caesar, so they can't quite be the same. Note Frege's priority in making this suggestion. |
| 12664 | A truth-table, not inferential role, defines 'and' [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I'm inclined to think that 'and' is defined by its truth-table (and not, for example, by its 'inferential-role'). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right, on my general principle that something can only have a function if it has an intrinsic nature. The truth-table just formalises normal understanding of 'and', according to what it makes true. |
| 12648 | Names in thought afford a primitive way to bring John before the mind [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Names in thought (in contrast to, say, descriptions in thought) afford a primitive way of bringing John before the mind. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: I think the 'file' account of concepts which Fodor has now latched onto gives a wonderful account of names. They are simple if you haven't opened the file yet (like 'Louis', in Evans's example). |
| 12650 | 'Paderewski' has two names in mentalese, for his pianist file and his politician file [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Paderewski (as pianist and as politician) has two names in Mentalese. If you think there are two Paderewskis, it's important that what you get when you retrieve the pianist file differs from the politician file. You can then merge the two files. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: The same will apply to 'Hespherus' and 'Phosphorus'. We can re-separate the 'morning star' and 'evening star' files if we wish to discuss ancient Egyptian attitudes to such things. I love this idea of Fodor's. Explanations flow from it. |
| 12656 | P-and-Q gets its truth from the truth of P and truth of Q, but consistency isn't like that [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The truth of P-and-Q is (roughly) a function of the truth of P and the truth of Q; but the consistency of P&Q isn't a function of the consistency of P and the consistency of Q. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.5 n33) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice deep issue. Fodor is interested in artificial intelligence at this point, but I am interested in the notion of coherence, as found in good justifications. Even consistency isn't elementary logic, never mind coherence. |
| 4810 | Valid deduction is monotonic - that is, it remains valid if further premises are added [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Valid deductive arguments have the property of monotonicity; if the conclusion Q follows from the premises P, then it will also follow if further premises P* are added to P. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: For perversity's sake we could add a new premise which contradicted one of the original ones ('Socrates is a god'). Or one premise could be 'I believe..', and the new one could show that the belief was false. Induction is non-monotonic. |
| 4768 | The 'epistemic fallacy' is inferring what does exist from what can be known to exist [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The move from what can (or cannot) be known to exist to what does (or does not) exist has been dubbed the 'epistemic fallacy'. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: This should be a standard concept in all philosophical discussion. It is the commonest, simplest, and most profound blunder made by philosophers, and they do it all the time. |
| 12653 | There's statistical, logical, nomological, conceptual and metaphysical possibility [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Statistically, logically, nomologically, conceptually, and metaphysically possible. That's all the kinds of possibility there are this week, but feel free to add others. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.3) | |
| A reaction: There's also epistemic possibility (possibility 'for all I know'), but I suppose that isn't the real thing. How about 'imaginative possibility' (possibility 'as far as I can imagine')? |
| 12651 | Some beliefs are only inferred when needed, like 'Shakespeare had not telephone' [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Maybe some of your beliefs are inferred 'online' from what you have in your files, along with your inferential rules. 'Shakespeare didn't have a telephone' is a classic example, which we infer if the occasion arises. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: A highly persuasive example. There seem to be a huge swathe of blatantly obvious beliefs (especially negative ones) which may never cross our minds during an entire lifetime, but to which we certainly subscribe. |
| 12628 | Knowing that must come before knowing how [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Thought about the world is prior to thought about how to change the world. Accordingly, knowing that is prior to knowing how. Descartes was right, and Ryle was wrong. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The classical example is knowing how to ride a bicycle, when few people can explain what is involved. Clearly you need quite a bit of propositional knowledge before you step on a bike. How does Fodor's claim work for animals? |
| 12625 | Pragmatism is the worst idea ever [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatism is perhaps the worst idea that philosophy ever had. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Not an argument, but an interesting sign of the times. Most major modern American philosophers, such as Quine, seem to fit some loose label of 'pragmatist'. I always smell a feeble relativism, and a refusal to face the interesting questions. |
| 4807 | A good barometer will predict a storm, but not explain it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be predictions without explanations, as when a barometer successfully predicts storms, but on its own it does not explain them. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.8) | |
| A reaction: Actually, barometers contribute to explanations. A reasonable predictor might offer no explanation ('if he's out, she's probably out too'), but an infallible predictor is almost certain to involve causation, which helps a lot in explanation. |
| 4808 | If we say where Mars was two months ago, we offer an explanation without a prediction [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be explanations without predictions, as when we explain a previous position of Mars from its present one, plus a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.9) | |
| A reaction: If we don't mind stretching the word, I think we can 'predict' the past, as where I predict the location of an Egyptian tomb from my study of papyruses. |
| 4811 | Induction (unlike deduction) is non-monotonic - it can be invalidated by new premises [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Unlike deductive arguments, induction is non-monotonic - that is, it can be invalidated by the addition of new premises. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy way of stating the obvious, which is that induction is not a type of deduction. Hume is sometimes accused of this false assumption. Presumably induction is rational, even if it is not actually logical. |
| 4812 | Explanation is either showing predictability, or showing necessity, or showing causal relations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three types of explanation are 'epistemic' (the event is expectable because of a law), or 'modal' (the event is necessary because of a law), or 'ontic' (it is shown how the event fits into the world's causal structure). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §11.1) | |
| A reaction: Prediction, necessity or causes. It is hard to think of any other way to explain something. Presumably you would exclude necessities if you didn't believe in them. Hume would go for prediction, on the basis of regularities. Personally, I want it all. |
| 4802 | Just citing a cause does not enable us to understand an event; we also need a relevant law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Explanation has to do with understanding; just citing a cause would not offer an adequate understanding, unless it was accompanied by the citation of a law that connects the two events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: It is surely undeniable that being told the cause but not the law will increase our understanding. Understanding and explanation come in degrees. Full understanding would require an explanation of the law, and beyond. Any relevant truth helps. |
| 4804 | The 'covering law model' says only laws can explain the occurrence of single events [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The 'deductive-nomological' model became known as the 'covering law model': its main thesis is that laws and only laws adequately explain the occurrence of singular events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: But presumably you need other events to derive a law, so you could say that a singular event can only be explained if it isn't singular. A regularity pattern would offer a partial explanation, before any law had been derived. |
| 4805 | If laws explain the length of a flagpole's shadow, then the shadow also explains the length of the pole [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If we use geometry and optics to explain the length of shadow cast by a flag-pole, this seems to be reversible, so that the shadow will explain the length of the pole. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.5) | |
| A reaction: A neat example which presumably implies that an explanation must involve temporal statements. The laws of physics are totally reversible in time, and so will not suffice to explain events on their own. Time's arrow becomes an axiom of explanation? |
| 4395 | There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crucial basic point, which must be drummed into the minds of ruthless Quinean naturalists, who want to explain everything by quarks and electrons |
| 4806 | An explanation can just be a 'causal story', without laws, as when I knock over some ink [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Knocking over an ink bottle explains the stain on the carpet, and it is not in doubt because you cannot quote the laws involved; a 'causal story' can give a complete explanation without a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.6) | |
| A reaction: But why is he so clumsy, and the bottle so unstable? Was it really (Freudian) an 'accident'? There is no end to complete explanation. But 'I was clumsy this once' and 'I am always clumsy' are equally good explanations. |
| 4404 | Maybe explanation is entirely relative to the interests and presuppositions of the questioner [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers focus on the so-called 'pragmatics of explanation' - that an explanation is an answer to a 'why' question, and the relevant answer will depend on the presuppositions or interests of the questioner. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me right. Explanation is an entirely human business, not a feature of nature, and most explanations will track back to the big bang if you have the patience, but they always terminate because of pragmatic considerations. But fobbing off? |
| 4803 | An explanation is the removal of the surprise caused by the event [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: An explanation amounts to the removal of the initial surprise that accompanied the occurrence of the event. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice simple point. It makes explanation relative. God requires no explanations, small children require many. The implication is that explanations make events predictable, which means they must either offer inductive generalisations, or laws. |
| 12636 | Mental states have causal powers [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mental states have causal powers. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.3) | |
| A reaction: I quote this because it gives you the link between a general account of causal powers as basic to reality, and an active account of what the mind is. It has to be a key link in a decent modern unified account of the world. See Idea 12638. |
| 12661 | The different types of resemblance don't resemble one another [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The ways in which different kinds of thing are similar to one another aren't, in general, similar to one another. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
| A reaction: Nice, but I think one would say that they lack similarity at the level of primary thought, but have obvious similarity (as concept-connectors) at the level of meta-thought. |
| 4769 | It is hard to analyse causation, if it is presupposed in our theory of the functioning of the mind [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There is a problem if causation is the object of our analysis, but is also presupposed (as an empirical principle of human psychology) for the functioning of the mind. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.7) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound like a major problem. If it is, it is presumably impossible to analyse the mind, because a mind is presupposed in the process of analysis. |
| 12632 | In the Representational view, concepts play the key linking role [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If the Representational Theory of Mind is true, then concepts are constituents of beliefs, the units of semantic evaluation, a locus of causal interactions among mental representations, and formulas in Mentalese. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this aspect of the theory, but then I can't really think of a theory about how the mind works that doesn't make concepts central to it. |
| 12624 | Only the labels of nodes have semantic content in connectionism, and they play no role [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Connectionism has no truck with mental representations; on the one hand, only the node labels in 'neural networks' have semantic content, and, on the other, the node labels play no role in mental processes, in standard formulations. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Connectionism must have some truth in it, yet mere connections can't do the full job. The difficulty is that nothing else seems to do the 'full job' either. Fodor cites productivity, systematicity, compositionality, logical form as the problems. |
| 12640 | Associative thinking avoids syntax, but can't preserve sense, reference or truth [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The virtue of associative theories of thinking is that they don't require thoughts to have syntactic structure. But they can't be right, since association doesn't preserve either sense or reference (to say nothing of truth). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3 n28) | |
| A reaction: This is using the empiricist idea that knowledge is built from mechanical associations to give a complete account of what thinking is. Fodor resolutely opposes it. |
| 12641 | Connectionism gives no account of how constituents make complex concepts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Connectionist architectures provide no counterpart to the relation between a complex concept and its constituents. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3 n29) | |
| A reaction: This is the compositionality of thought, upon which Fodor is so insistent. Not that a theory of how the mind is built up from the body is quite likely to give you a theory about what thinking is. I try to keep them separate, which may be wrong. |
| 12643 | Ambiguities in English are the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: That there are ambiguities in English is the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
| A reaction: I have always been impressed by this simple observation, which is my main reason for believing in propositions (as brain events). 'Propositions' may just be useful chunks of mentalese. |
| 12647 | Mental representations name things in the world, but also files in our memory [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mental representations can serve both as names for things in the world and as names of files in the memory. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: I am laughed at for liking this idea (given the present files of ideas before you), but I think this it is very powerful. Chicken before egg. I was drawn to databases precisely because they seemed to map how the mind worked. |
| 12649 | We think in file names [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We think in file names. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: This is Fodor's new view. He cites Treisman and Schmidt (1982) for raising it, and Pylyshyn (2003) for discussing it. I love it. It exactly fits my introspective view of how I think, and I think it would fit animals. It might not fit some other people! |
| 12655 | Frame Problem: how to eliminate most beliefs as irrelevant, without searching them? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The frame problem is, precisely: How does one know that none of one's beliefs about Jupiter are germane to the current question, without having to recall and search one's beliefs about Jupiter? | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably good chess-playing computers have made some progress with this problem. The only answer, as far as I can see, is that brains have a lot in common with relational databases. The mind is structured around a relevance-pattern. |
| 12630 | If concept content is reference, then my Twin and I are referring to the same stuff [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If the content of a concept is its reference, we can stop worrying about Twin Earth. If there are no senses, there is no question of whether my twin and I have the same WATER concept. Our WATER concepts aren't even coextensive. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a neat solution. So do 'tap water' and 'holy water' have the same content to a Christian and non-Christian, when they co-refer to the contents of the font? |
| 12658 | Nobody knows how concepts are acquired [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I don't know how concepts are acquired. Nor do you. Nor does anybody else. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
| A reaction: This comes in the context of quietly modifying his earlier claim that concepts weren't acquired, because they were largely innate. Presumably we are allowed to have theories of concept acquisition? I quite like abstractionism. |
| 12662 | We have an innate capacity to form a concept, once we have grasped the stereotype [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: What's learned are stereotypes. What's innate is the disposition to grasp such and such a concept (to lock to such a property) in consequence of having learned such and such a stereotype. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the late Fodor much ameliorated view, after a lot of scoffing about the idea of the tin-opener being innate in all of us. There may be a suspicion of circularity here, if we ask what mental abilities are needed to form a stereotype. |
| 12635 | Having a concept isn't a pragmatic matter, but being able to think about the concept [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatism about concepts really is dead, and the only alternative about concept possession is Cartesianism. That is, it's the thesis that having concept C is being able to think about Cs (as such). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.2) | |
| A reaction: I like this. It is very hard to pick out from Fodor the bits where he is clearly right, but this seems to be one of them. I don't like the pragmatic or Wittgensteinian line that having concepts is all about abilities and uses (like sorting or inferring). |
| 12652 | Concepts have two sides; they are files that face thought, and also face subject-matter [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We think in file names, and file names are Janus-faced: one face turned towards thinking and the other face turned towards what is thought about. I do think that is rather satisfactory. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
| A reaction: So do I. I do hope the philosophical community take up this idea (which they probably won't, simply because Fodor is in the late stages of his career!). |
| 12626 | Cartesians put concept individuation before concept possession [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Cartesians think that concept individuation is prior, in order of analysis, to concept possession. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Peacocke is someone who seems to put possession first, to the point where individuation is thereby achieved. The background influence there is Wittgenstein. I think I am more with Fodor, that concepts are entities, which need to be understood. |
| 12637 | Frege's puzzles suggest to many that concepts have sense as well as reference [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers in droves have held that Frege cases are convincing arguments that concepts have not just referents but also senses. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.2) | |
| A reaction: [Frege cases are puzzles where simple reference seems to lead to confusion] I take the Fregean approach to concepts (of Dummett, Peacocke) to attempt to give an account of the sense, once the reference is decided. Idea 12629 gives Fodor's view. |
| 12638 | If concepts have sense, we can't see the connection to their causal powers [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: How are we to understand the connection between the identity of a concept and its causal powers if concepts are (or have) senses? Answer: I haven't a clue. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key to Fodor's attack on Peacocke and other Fregeans - that while they pay lip-service to the project of naturalising thought, they are actually committing us to some sort of neo-platonism, by losing the causal links. See Idea 12636. |
| 12639 | Belief in 'senses' may explain intentionality, but not mental processes [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Supposing the mind to be conversant with senses can, maybe, provide for a theory of the intentionality of mental states; but it seems to shed no light at all on the nature of mental processes (i.e. of mental state transitions). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
| A reaction: I would track this back to Frege's hostility to 'psychologism'. That is, Fregeans don't care about Fodor's problem, because all their accounts (of mathematics, of logic, and of concepts) treat the subject-matter as self-contained sui generis. |
| 12654 | You can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog' [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You can think 'brown dog' without thinking 'cat', but you can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog'. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.3) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is talking about concepts in thought, not about words. The claim is that such concepts have to be compositional, and it is hard to disagree. |
| 12659 | Maybe stereotypes are a stage in concept acquisition (rather than a by-product) [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We needn't say that learning a stereotype is just a by-product of acquiring the concept; it could rather be a stage in concept acquisition. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
| A reaction: He rejects stereotypes because they don't give concepts the necessary compositionality in thought. But this idea would mean that children were incapable of compositionality until they had transcended the primitive stereotype stage. |
| 12660 | One stereotype might be a paradigm for two difference concepts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The same stereotype can give difference concepts; chickens are paradigmatic instances both of FOOD and of BARNYARD FOWL. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
| A reaction: And I'm guessing that lots of concepts could have two equally plausible stereotypes, even within a single mind. Stereotypes are interesting, but they don't seem to be the key to our understanding of concepts. |
| 12629 | For the referential view of thought, the content of a concept is just its reference [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Pure referentialism is the kind of semantics RTM requires (reference is the only primitive mind-world semantic property). ...So the content of a concept is its reference. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that the meaning of a concept is (typically) a physical object, which seems to be the 'Fido'-Fido view of meaning. It seems to me to be a category mistake to say that a meaning can be a cat. |
| 12631 | Compositionality requires that concepts be atomic [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Atomism must be right about the individuation of concepts because compositionality demands it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch1) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this seems right, though Fodor's own example of 'pet fish' is interesting. What is supposed to happen when you take a concept like 'pet' and put it with 'fish', given that both components shift their atomic (?) meaning in the process? |
| 12657 | Abstractionism claims that instances provide criteria for what is shared [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: In the idea of learning concepts by 'abstraction', experiences of the instances provide evidence about which of the shared properties of things in a concept's extension are 'criterial' for being in the concept's extension. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.2 n6) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is fairly sceptical of this approach, and his doubts are seen in the scare-quotes around 'criterial'. He is defending the idea that only a certain degree of innateness in the concepts can get such a procedure off the ground. |
| 12634 | 'Inferential-role semantics' says meaning is determined by role in inference [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: 'Inferential-role semantics' claims that the meaning of a word (/the content of a concept) is determined by its role in inference. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1.2 n14) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is deeply opposed to this view. At first blush it sounds wrong to me, since there seems to be plenty of thought that can go on before inference takes place. Daydreamy speculation, for example. |
| 18818 | Sentence meaning is given by the actions to which it would lead [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Facts and Propositions [1927], p.51), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought | |
| A reaction: I find this idea quite bizarre. Most sentences have no connection to any action or behavior at all. Do we have to ingeniously contrive some possible action? That is the worst sort of behaviourism. See context - Ramsey wasn't stupid! |
| 12642 | Co-referring terms differ if they have different causal powers [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The representation of 'morning star' must be different from 'evening star' because their tokens differ in their causal powers. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Fodor trying to avoid the standard Fregean move of proposing that there are 'senses' as well as references. See Idea 12629. If these two terms have the same extension, they are the same concept? They 'seem' to have two referents. |
| 12663 | We refer to individuals and to properties, and we use singular terms and predicates [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I assume that there are two kinds of reference: reference to individuals and to properties. This means, from the syntactic point of view, that the vehicles of reference are exhaustively singular terms and predicates. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The immediate possibility that comes to mind is plural quantification. See George Boolos, who confidently says that he can refer to 'some Cheerios' in his breakfast bowl, and communicate very well. He then looks to formalise such talk. |
| 12645 | Semantics (esp. referential semantics) allows inferences from utterances to the world [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: All you need for inferring from John's utterance to the world is the sort of thing that a semantics (i.e. referential semantics) provides. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is very good at saying nice simple things like that. But it is not enough to infer what objects are being discussed. All the hard cases must be covered (denials of existence, reference to non-existence, intentional contexts, modal claims). |
| 12646 | Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Semantics is about constitutive relations between representations and the world. There is, as a matter of principle, no such thing as a psychological theory of meaning. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
| A reaction: The second sentence is in capital letters, but I am still not convinced. The classic difficulty seems to be that you have to use language to pick out the things in the world that are being referred to. Of course, at some point you just see the objects. |
| 12627 | Before you can plan action, you must decide on the truth of your estimate of success [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You can't think a plan of action unless you can think how the world would be if the action were to succeed; and thinking the world will be such and such if all goes well is thinking the kind of thing that can be true or false. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Fodor's attack on the pragmatic view of concepts (that they should be fully understood in terms of action, rather than of thought). I take Fodor to be blatantly correct. This is counterfactual thinking. |
| 4770 | Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Hume's is/ought claim - what he calls the mind 'spreading itself'. It is a powerful claim. Personally I think we have become TOO sceptical here, and have the delusion that crucial features of nature are created within our minds. |
| 4403 | We can't base our account of causation on explanation, because it is the wrong way round [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: We cannot distinguish between good and bad explanations of some phenomena, unless we first distinguish between causal and non-causal explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but it pushes us towards the idea that causation is non-analysable, and must be taken as a metaphysically basic axiom. If naturalistic accounts fail, that may be only alternative. |
| 4399 | Causes clearly make a difference, are recipes for events, explain effects, and are evidence [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The platitudes of causation are that 1) causes make a difference (counterfactually or probabilistically), 2) causes are recipes for events, 3) causes explain their effects, and 4) causes are evidence for effects. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A nice piece of analysis which offers some problems for anyone (like Russell) who wants to analyse causation completely out of our conceptual scheme. |
| 4400 | Theories of causation are based either on regularity, or on intrinsic relations of properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: While Humeans base their theories on the intuition of regularity, their opponents base theirs on the intuition that there is an intrinsic relation between the properties of two particular things involved (like a hammer and a vase). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I favour the intrinsic relation of properties view, but this leaves the question of whether we can explain a relation, apart from observing the regularities associated with the properties. |
| 4789 | Three divisions of causal theories: generalist/singularist, intrinsic/extrinsic, reductive/non-reductive [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three ways to divide theories on causation are: between generalist and singularist, between intrinsic and extrinsic characterisations of the causal relationship, and between reductive and non-reductive approaches. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5) | |
| A reaction: Okay. I vote for singularist, intrinsic and reductive. I'm guessing that that pushes me towards Salmon and Dowe's theory of the 'transfer of conserved quantities', which is certainly reductive, doesn't need regularities in the events, and seems intrinsic. |
| 4790 | If causation is 'intrinsic' it depends entirely on the properties and relations of the cause and effect [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If causation is taken to be an 'intrinsic' relation, then that c causes e will have to depend entirely on the properties of c and e, and the relations between c and e. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This view would move us towards 'essentialism', that the essences of objects produce the events and the laws, rather than external imposed forces and laws. |
| 4402 | Empiricists tried to reduce causation to explanation, which they reduced to logic-plus-a-law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The logical empiricists (esp. Hempel) analysed the concept of causation in terms of causal explanation, and analysed the latter as a species of deductive argument, with one premises stating a universal law (the so-called Deductive-Nomological model). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This feels wrong, as deduction seems insufficiently naturalistic, and the assumption of a law as premise seems to beg heaps of questions. |
| 4774 | Counterfactual claims about causation imply that it is more than just regular succession [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If counterfactual claims can be made about causation, this suggests that there is more to it than mere regular succession. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Even Hume makes counterfactual claims in his first definition of cause, and all claims of causation seem to go beyond the immediate evidence. |
| 4793 | "All gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" is a true universal generalisation, but not a law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The statement "all gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" seems to have all the features demanded of a lawlike statement, yet it can hardly be said to express a law. It is a merely true universal generalisation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.3) | |
| A reaction: Nice example. A trickier case is "all cubes of uranium are smaller than one cubic mile", which sounds like part of a law. It suggests a blurred borderline between the two. How much gold is there in the universe? Is that fact a natural necessity? |
| 4397 | Regularity doesn't seem sufficient for causation [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A rather important objection to Humeanism has been that regularity is not sufficient for causation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a crucial problem, but the Humean view can defend itself by introducing other constant conjunctions. We don't observe events in isolation, but as part of a pattern of regularities. |
| 4792 | A Humean view of causation says it is regularities, and causal facts supervene on non-causal facts [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view depends on the conjunction of two general theses: first, causation is tied to regularity; secondly, causal facts supervene on non-causal facts. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: If causation is just regularities, this means it is patterns observed by us, which means causation doesn't actually exist. So Hume is wrong. Singular causation is possible, and needs explanation. |
| 4801 | The regularity of a cock's crow is used to predict dawn, even though it doesn't cause it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A regularity can be used to predict a future event irrespective of whether it is deemed causal or not. A farmer can predict that dawn has broken on hearing the cock's crow. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a highly significant criticism of any view that says regularity leads to causation, which is the basis of induction, which leads to counterfactual claims, and thus arrives a the laws of nature. |
| 4401 | It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Good example, but it doesn't demolish the regularity view. We should come to conscious minds last. There aren't many other unfailing regularities that are not laws. |
| 4796 | Laws are sets of regularities within a simple and strong coherent system of wider regularities [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In the 'web-of-laws' approach, laws are those regularities that are members of a coherent system of regularities, in particular, a system that can be represented as a deductive axiomatic system, striking a good balance between simplicity and strength. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.6) | |
| A reaction: Psillos attribute this view to Mill, Ramsey and Lewis. It is the obvious candidate for a fully developed Humean empiricist system, where regularities reinforce one another. I think laws are found in mechanisms, not in regularities, which are symptoms. |
| 4799 | Dispositional essentialism can't explain its key distinction between essential and non-essential properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers will find dispositional essentialism unappealing, not least because it seems to fail to explain how (and in virtue of what) there is this supposed fundamental distinction between essential and non-essential properties. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002]) | |
| A reaction: Maybe there is no precise definition, but any idiot can see that some properties of gold are essential (mass) and others non-essential (attractive to jackdaws). It's a fair question, but is this the strongest objection to essentialism? |
| 4780 | In some counterfactuals, the counterfactual event happens later than its consequent [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In "had the acrobat jumped, there would have been a safety net" the antecedent of the counterfactual (the jumping) is temporally later than the consequent (the installation of the net). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: This blocks anyone (e.g. David Lewis) who tries to define counterfactual claims entirely in terms of a condition followed by a consequence. Nice example. |
| 4791 | Counterfactual theories say causes make a difference - if c hadn't occurred, then e wouldn't occur [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual theory is a non-Humean relation between singular events; the thought is that causation makes a difference - to say that c causes e is to say that if c hadn't occurred, e wouldn't have occurred either. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. I'm beginning to think that this theory is wrong. It gives an account of how we see causation, and a test for it, but it says nothing about what causation actually is. |