49 ideas
13985 | A true proposition seems true of one fact, but a false proposition seems true of nothing at all. [Ryle] |
Full Idea: Whereas there might be just one fact that a true proposition was like, we would have to say that a false proposition was unlike any fact. We could not speak of the fact that it was false of, so we could not speak of its being false of anything at all. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
A reaction: Ryle brings out very nicely the point Russell emphasised so much, that the most illuminating studies in philosophy are of how falsehood works, rather than of how truths work. If I say 'the Queen is really a man' it is obvious what that is false of. |
13984 | Two maps might correspond to one another, but they are only 'true' of the country they show [Ryle] |
Full Idea: One map of Sussex is like another, but it is not true of that other map, but only of the county. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
A reaction: One might question whether a map is in any sense 'true' of Sussex, though one must admit that there are good and bad maps of Sussex. The point is a nice one, which shows that there is no simple account of truth as correspondence. |
13979 | Logic studies consequence, compatibility, contradiction, corroboration, necessitation, grounding.... [Ryle] |
Full Idea: Logic studies the way in which one thing follows from another, in which one thing is compatible with another, contradicts, corroborates or necessitates another, is a special case of another or the nerve of another. And so on. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
A reaction: I presume that 'and so on' would include how one thing proves another. This is quite a nice list, which makes me think a little more widely about the nature of logic (rather than just about inference). Incompatibility isn't a process. |
13988 | Many sentences do not state facts, but there are no facts which could not be stated [Ryle] |
Full Idea: There are many sentences which do not state facts, while there are no facts which (in principle) could not be stated. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Substitute') | |
A reaction: Hm. This seems like a nice challenge. The first problem would be infinite facts. Then complex universal facts, beyond the cognizance of any mind. Then facts that change faster than thinking can change. Do you give up yet? Then there's.... |
15682 | Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman] |
Full Idea: All organisms form categories: even mealworms have category-based preferences, and higher-order animals such as pigeons or octopi can display quite sophisticated categorical judgements. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
A reaction: [She cites some 1980 research to support this] This comes as no surprise, as I take categorisation as almost definitive of what a mind is. My surmise is that some sort of 'labelling' system is at the heart of it (like Googlemail labels!). |
15691 | Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman] |
Full Idea: By five children assume that a variety of categories have rich inductive potential, are stable over outward transformations, include crucial nonobvious properties, have innate potential, privilege causal features, can be explained causally, and are real. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Intro') | |
A reaction: This is Gelman's helpful summary of the findings of research on childhood essentialising, and says the case for this phenomenon is 'compelling'. |
15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
Full Idea: The notion of caste in India is more essentialized among upper-caste than lower-caste individuals. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro') | |
A reaction: In a book defending fairly innate essentialism in the human race, Gelman offers this point as a warning that large cultural ingredients can be involved. Racism is the classic difficulty with essentialism. |
15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
Full Idea: The two views contrasting with essentialism naturally emerging in childhood are the claim that essentialism is a historical accident emerging from Western philosophy, and that essentialism is an inherent consequence of naming things. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Background') | |
A reaction: Helpful. I take Idea 15682 to rule out the idea that it is just a feature of western culture. I can't conceive of early man surviving without essentialism. I don't think it rules out the naming view. Animals may do what emerges in us as full 'naming'. |
15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Children incorporate a variety of nonobvious features into their concepts, including internal parts, functions, causes, and ontological distinctions. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
A reaction: This remark sums up the general thesis of her book, which she supports with a wealth of first-hand evidence. It supports my view, that the desire and need for explanation is at the root of essentialist concepts. It's hard wired in us. |
15681 | Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman] |
Full Idea: We map types of essentialism by asking is it in the world or in our representations, is it sortal or causal or ideal, and is it specific particulars or placeholders for the unknown? | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
A reaction: I am struck by the way that this practising experimental psychologist gets to ask questions and make distinctions much more extensively than most armchair philosophers on the subject. She focuses on the representational, causal, placeholder view. |
15678 | Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Essentialism is the view that categories have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly but that gives an object its identity. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Intro') | |
A reaction: I think the introduction of categories here is a misunderstanding. Does an uncategorisable thing therefore have no identity (even though it has properties)? If categories give objects their identity, what gives categories their identity? |
15683 | Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman] |
Full Idea: I suggest that sortals are likewise required for determining essence. One cannot answer the question 'What is the essence of this?' without supplying the sortal - of this 'what'. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
A reaction: I remain baffled by this view. I take the category to be an inductive generalisation from other similar individuals. It can't get off the ground if you don't start with the individuals. Sortals are just a shorthand. |
15697 | Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman] |
Full Idea: With kind essentialism the person assumes that the world is divided up into preexisting natural categories. Individual essentialism seems not to require any such commitment to kind realism. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism') | |
A reaction: This pinpoints my difficulty: how do we decide whether some category or attributed essence is part of a preexisting natural kind? Some natural kinds are self-evident, like water (roughly), but others need subtle teasing out. How is the teasing done? |
15687 | Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Kinship is essentialized, but admits of degrees, ...and people can be essentialist even about categories they do not view as fixed over time, such as age groupings. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 03 'Summary') | |
A reaction: Given my notion of essence are necessarily explanatory, I embrace both of these points. Being very athletic comes in degrees, and changes over times. |
15679 | Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Essentialism has its source in the cognitive requirement of categorization in certain domains - particularly as they affect the young learner. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Essentialist') | |
A reaction: I think the phenomenon is better understood as part of the cognitive requirement to understand and explain. Categorisation is just one way to aid explanation. Children try to understand (essentially) a new animal without categorisation. |
15698 | We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman] |
Full Idea: We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children. ...Mothers teach children about kinds, not about essences, and mothers help children identify which categories are richly structured. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 07 'Conclusions') | |
A reaction: This is a psychologist who specialises in this topic. If you think essentialism is inculcated by a our culture, you will have to blame the fathers. |
15709 | Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Essentialism is a reasoning heuristic that allows us to make fairly good predictions much of the time, but it should not be confused with the structure of reality. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Discussion') | |
A reaction: She particularly cites biology as the area where it might be inaccurate. I'm beginning to think that the operations of induction are the place to look for an good understanding of essentialism. |
15696 | Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman] |
Full Idea: People favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is. ...An object looking like a knife is less likely to be called 'a knife' if it is described as having been created by accident. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism') | |
A reaction: I like this because it talks, suggestively, of 'historical paths' rather than of 'origin'. Thus we might judge a person's identity by their traumatic experience rather than by their birth. This doesn't challenge necessity of origin, but affects labels. |
15707 | There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman] |
Full Idea: The modes of understanding (or modes of construal) which have been proposed are intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist (perhaps), and deontological. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening') | |
A reaction: She cites psychological research to support this, and calls it 'a relatively small number' of modes. Compare Aristotle's four modes of cause/explanation. |
13983 | Representation assumes you know the ideas, and the reality, and the relation between the two [Ryle] |
Full Idea: The theory of Representative Ideas begs the whole question, by assuming a) that we can know these 'Ideas', b) that we can know the realities they represent, and c) we can know a particular 'idea' to be representative of a particular reality. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
A reaction: Personally I regard the ideas as immediate (rather than acquired by some knowledge process), and I am dimly hoping that they represent reality (or I'm in deep trouble), and I am struggling to piece together the reality they represent. I'm happy with that. |
15703 | Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Memory is notorious for conforming to theory (rather than memory being a neutral source of information). | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory') | |
A reaction: This observation by a psychologist is music to sceptics about objectivity. Memory is so fundamental to our basic epistemology that it could even be the nature of thought itself. |
15708 | Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Inductive success is rewarded with more induction. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening') | |
A reaction: I love this one. Neat, accurate, and central to how we understand the world. I take inductive success to be stored as labels, concepts, categories, words and general truths, which are then our resource for further attempts. |
15694 | Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman] |
Full Idea: We suggest that children overestimate the power of a single example. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
A reaction: This conclusion arises from extensive psychological research. 'My grandma smoked, and she lived to be 97' - adults do this too. Wittgenstein says assuming other minds because of your own is induction from one example! |
15695 | Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Because of their narrow focus, children's sensitivity to categories as the basis of induction is a reasoning bias that, though useful much of the time, results in systematic errors. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
A reaction: This is the bad sense of 'essentialism' which worries its opponents. Presumably, though, my favoured scientific essentialism will be 'scientific', and avoid this problem. The relation between categories and induction needs to be clear. |
15692 | People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman] |
Full Idea: People tend to be satisfied with rather shallow explanations. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Is essentialism') | |
A reaction: She cites some psychological research to support this. Pretty obvious really. I take the so-called 'scientific method' to be nothing more than ceasing to be satisfied with such shallowness. |
15680 | Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman] |
Full Idea: The three components of essentialism as a folk belief are the idea that certain categories are natural kinds, the idea that some unobservable property causes the way things are, and the idea that words reflect real structures. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') |
13980 | If you like judgments and reject propositions, what are the relata of incoherence in a judgment? [Ryle] |
Full Idea: Those who find 'judgments' everywhere and propositions nowhere find that some judgments cohere whereas others are incoherent. What is the status of the terms between which these relations hold? | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
A reaction: Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but this strikes me as a nice point. I presume Russell after 1906 is the sort of thinker he has in mind. |
15686 | Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Labels may signal categories that are believed to embody an essence. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 02 'Privileged') | |
A reaction: This is quoted by her, as a summary of a substantial body of research which she endorses. I cite it because it pinpoints my own view. I take 'labels' to be basic to minds, as organisers of thought, and this ties essences to labels. Satisfying picture. |
15690 | Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Properties that enter into causally meaningful links are better remembered and are treated as more central to the category than properties that are not causally meaningful. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation2') | |
A reaction: This is a summary of considerable psychological research. This account not only sounds plausible, but would fit better withy why we form concepts and categories in the first place. We are trying to relate to the causations of nature. |
15688 | Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman] |
Full Idea: On prototype views, categories are characterized by distance from a prototype. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation') | |
A reaction: Gelman observes that this view makes no reference to any causal features of things. This cuts them off from using underlying essences in the process of categorisation and concept-formation. How do you spot a prototype, with no category? |
15689 | Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Theory-based approaches to categories are a response to the limitations of mere similarities holding the category together, and require knowledge-rich explanatory models to say which features are more central to a concept. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation1') | |
A reaction: I see a promising account in linking theory theory to essentialism. For a physical object (or even for a process) infer a structure, and then identify what is most important in that structure. That gives you your stable, agreed concept. |
15699 | Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Language does not appear to be necessary for forming categories, since prelinguistic infants acquire many categories, and even use categories to form inferences about unknown properties. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro') | |
A reaction: She cites lots of research in support of this claim. The idea may come as a surprise to some people, but not to me. I take it that categorisation is what a brain is for, including animal brains. |
13978 | Husserl and Meinong wanted objective Meanings and Propositions, as subject-matter for Logic [Ryle] |
Full Idea: It is argued by Husserl and (virtually) by Meinong that only if there are such entities as objective Meanings - and propositions are just a species of Meaning - is there anything for Logic to be about. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
A reaction: It is presumably this proposal which led to the scepticism about meanings in Wittgenstein, Quine and Kripke. The modern view, which strikes me as right, is that logic is about inference, and so doesn't need a subject-matter. |
13977 | When I utter a sentence, listeners grasp both my meaning and my state of mind [Ryle] |
Full Idea: If I have uttered my sentence aloud, a listener can both understand what I say or grasp my meaning, and also infer to my state of mind. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], I) | |
A reaction: This simple observations seems rather important. If we shake written words onto the floor, they might add up to a proper sentence, but half of the point of a sentence is missing. Irony trades on the gap between meaning and state of mind. |
13976 | 'Propositions' name what is thought, because 'thoughts' and 'judgments' are too ambiguous [Ryle] |
Full Idea: As the orthodox terms 'thoughts' and 'judgments' are equivocal, since they may equally well denote 'thinkings' as 'what-is-thought', the 'accusatives' of acts of thinking have come to be called 'propositions'. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], I) | |
A reaction: I have understood propositions to be capable of truth or falsity. 'What is thought' could be a right old jumble of images and disjointed fragments. Propositions are famous for their unity! |
13981 | Several people can believe one thing, or make the same mistake, or share one delusion [Ryle] |
Full Idea: We ordinarily find no difficulty in saying of a given thing that several people believe it and so, if they think it false, 'make the same mistake' or 'labour under the same delusion'. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], IV) | |
A reaction: Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but this (like 13980) strikes me as quite good support for propositions. I suppose you can describe these phenomena as assent to sentences, but they might be very different sentences to express the same delusion. |
13987 | We may think in French, but we don't know or believe in French [Ryle] |
Full Idea: Although we speak of thinking in French, we never talk of knowing or believing or opining in French. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Substitute') | |
A reaction: Once again Ryle is playing devil's advocate, but he does it rather well, and offers good support for my belief in propositions. I love this. 'I know, in French, a bank where the wild thyme blows'. |
13989 | There are no propositions; they are just sentences, used for thinking, which link to facts in a certain way [Ryle] |
Full Idea: There are no substantial propositions...There is just a relation between grammatical structure and the logical structure of facts. 'Proposition' denotes the same as 'sentence' or 'statement'. A proposition is not what I think, but what I think or talk in. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Conclusions') | |
A reaction: The conclusion of Ryle's discussion, but I found his support for propositions much more convincing than his critique of them, or his attempt at an alternative linguistic account. He never mentioned animals, so he self-evidently hasn't grasped the problem. |
13982 | If we accept true propositions, it is hard to reject false ones, and even nonsensical ones [Ryle] |
Full Idea: All the arguments for the subsistence of true propositions seem to hold good for the subsistence of false ones. We might even have to find room for absurd or nonsensical ones like 'some round squares are not red-headed'. | |
From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Objections') | |
A reaction: A particularly nice example of a Category Mistake from the man who made them famous. Why can't we just make belief a proposition attitude, so I equally believe 'sea is blue', 'grass is pink' and 'trees are bifocal', but the status of my belief varies? |
23169 | Democratic institutions become impossible in a fanatical democracy [Russell] |
Full Idea: Even democracy, when it becomes fanatical, as it did …in the French Revolution, ceases to be Liberal. Indeed, a fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.26) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is because the supposed 'will of the people' is continually placed in opposition to the institutions. For example, there is a problem if a referendum is held, which produces a result in conflict with the institutions. |
23170 | Liberal opinions are tentative rather than dogmatic, and are always responsive to new evidence [Russell] |
Full Idea: The essence of the Liberal outlook lies ...in how opinions are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively (as they are in science), and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.26) | |
A reaction: A nice assessment. Russell shows himself finally to be a Liberal. This flexible approach to opinions is what infuriates dogmatists from both the left and the right. It might be said that the basic evidence rarely changes. |
23172 | Empiricist Liberalism is the only view for someone who favours scientific evidence and happiness [Russell] |
Full Idea: Empiricist Liberalism (not incompatible with democratic socialism) is, as in Locke's time, the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who demands some scientific evidence for beliefs, and also desires human happiness more than some party or creed. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.31) | |
A reaction: I like this way of presenting liberalism. In the modern world we are sunk if we don't pay attention to experts, so we all need a critical understanding of what counts as good evidence. Tricky in a world of lying media. |
23171 | Empiricism is ethically superior, because dogmatism favours persecution and hatred [Russell] |
Full Idea: Empiricism is to be commended not only on the grounds of its greater truth, but also on ethical grounds. Dogma demands authority rather than intelligent thought; it requires persecution of heretics and unbelievers, and favours systematic hatred. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.31) | |
A reaction: He links empiricism with the liberal outlook. At its best, the respect by empiricists for evidence is a sort of humility. |
15693 | One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman] |
Full Idea: We can confidently determine the chemical composition of gold from just a single sample, but we cannot determine the height of trees from just a single tree. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
A reaction: The tricky word here is 'confidently'. If you meet one Latvian who is nice, do you assume they are all nice? At what point do you decide gold etc. really are natural kinds, where one sample tells all? Evolution of species... |
15701 | Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Children judged personal characteristics as more stable when they were referred to by a noun ('She is a carrot eater') than by a verbal predicate ('She eats carrots whenever she can') | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Naming') | |
A reaction: This fits with my feeling that 'labels' are the basis of how the mind works. The noun invokes a genuine category of thing, where a predicate attaches to some preselected category ('she'). Gelman says names encourage inductions. |
15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Essentialism encourages a 'scientific' mindset in thinking about the natural world, a belief that intensive study of a natural domain will yield ever more underlying properties. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Intro') | |
A reaction: Maybe scientists must be committed to essences, the way mathematicians must be committed to numbers? This idea spendidly opposes the doubts expressed by Popper. |
15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
Full Idea: Essentialism does not entail that people know what the essence is. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory') | |
A reaction: This is a fundamental and (I would say) fairly obvious point, but it needs to be made to the more passionate opponents of essentialism. |
15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
Full Idea: If my speculations are correct, then essentialism starts out strictly as a belief that many categories are richly structured kinds, then additionally becomes a search for underlying inherent properties. | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 10 'Figuring') | |
A reaction: This is her summary of extensive essentialist research among children. She favours the priority of kinds and categories. We actually change taxonomies on the basis of revisions in our accounts of essence. Science negotiates. |
15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |
Full Idea: One major argument against the view that essences are real is the rampant essentializing of categories that are socially constructed (such as race, caste and occupation). | |
From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Is essentialism') | |
A reaction: You can't argue with that. It raises the question of whether the approach of scientific essentialism has any value in the social, rather than physical, sciences. We jokingly essentialise groups of people such as referees or Oxonians. |