41 ideas
| 17311 | Real definitions don't just single out a thing; they must also explain its essence [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: A statement expressing a real definition must also accomplish more than simply to offer two different ways of singling out the same entity, since the definiens must also be explanatory of the essential nature of the definiendum. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: This is why Aristotelian definitions are not just short lexicographical definitions, but may be quite length. Effectively, a definition IS an explanation. |
| 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. |
| 17312 | It is more explanatory if you show how a number is constructed from basic entities and relations [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Being the successor of the successor of 0 is more explanatory than being predecessor of 3 of the nature of 2, since it mirrors more closely the method by which 2 is constructed from a basic entity, 0, and a relation (successor) taken as primitive. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: This assumes numbers are 'constructed', which they are in the axiomatised system of Peano Arithmetic, but presumably the numbers were given in ordinary experience before 'construction' occurred to anyone. Nevertheless, I really like this. |
| 17314 | The relata of grounding are propositions or facts, but for dependence it is objects and their features [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The relata of the grounding relation are typically taken to be facts or propositions, while the relata of ontological dependence ...are objects and their characteristics, activities, constituents and so on. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.5 n25) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Good riddance to propositions here, but this seems a bit unfair to facts, since I take facts to be in the world. Audi's concept of 'worldly facts' is what we need here. |
| 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.... |
| 17313 | Modern views want essences just to individuate things across worlds and times [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: According to the approach of Plantinga, Forbes and Mackie, the primary job of essences is to individuate the entities whose essences they are across worlds and times at which these entities exist. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.4 n13) | |
| A reaction: A helpful simplification of what is going on. I wish those authors would just say this one their first pages. They all get in a right tangle, because individuation is either too easy, or hopeless. 'Tracking' is a good word for this game. |
| 17309 | For Fine, essences are propositions true because of identity, so they are just real definitions [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Fine assumes that essences can be identified with collections of propositions that are true in virtue of the identity of a particular object, or objects. ...There is not, on this approach, much of a distinction between essences and real definitions. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: This won't do, because the essence of a physical object is not a set of propositions, it is some aspects of the object itself, which are described in a definition. Koslicki notes that psuché is an essence, and the soul is hardly a set of propositions! |
| 17315 | We need a less propositional view of essence, and so must distinguish it clearly from real definitions [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: To make room for a less propositional conception of essence than that assumed by Fine, I urge that we distinguish more firmly between essences and real definitions (which state these essences in the form of propositions). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: Yes. The idea that essence is just a verbal or conceptual entity would be utterly abhorrent to Aristotle (a hero for Fine), and it is anathema to me too. We intend essences to be in the world (even if we are deceived about that). They explain! |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge 'that' is descriptive, and knowledge 'why' is explanatory, and it is the latter that provides scientific understanding of our world. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree, but of course, knowing 'why' may require a lot of knowing 'that'. People with extensive knowledge 'that' things are so tend to understand why something happens more readily than the rest of us ignoramuses. |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is an extremely vague concept. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: True, I suppose, but we usually recognise understanding when we encounter it, and everybody has a pretty clear notion of an 'increase' in understanding. I suspect that the concept is perfectly clear, but we lack any scale for measuring it. |
| 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. |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Various kinds of correlations exist that provide excellent bases for prediction, but because no suitable causal relations exist (or are known), these correlations do not furnish explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There may be problem cases for the claim that all explanations are causal, but I certainly think that this idea is essentially right. Prediction can come from induction, but inductions may be true and yet baffling. |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There is a centuries-old philosophical tradition, sometimes referred to by the name of 'instrumentalism', that has denied the claim that science has explanatory power. For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Coffa] Presumably it is just a matter of matching the world to the readings on the instruments, aiming at van Fraassen's 'empirical adequacy'. If there are no scientific explanations, does that mean that there are no explanations at all? Daft! |
| 13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Inductive logicians have a 'requirement of total evidence': induction is strong if 1) it has true premises, 2) it has correct inductive form, and 3) no additional evidence that would change the degree of support is available at the time. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: The evidence might be very close at hand, but not quite 'available' to the person doing the induction. |
| 13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that scientific explanation involves reduction of the unfamiliar to the familiar. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle sometimes seems to imply this account of explanation, and I would have to agree with Salmon's view of it. Aristotle is also, though, aware of real explanations, definitions and essences. People are 'familiar' with some peculiar things. |
| 13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are evidence-seeking why-questions, as well as explanation-seeking why-questions. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Surely we would all prefer an explanation to mere evidence? It seems to me that they are all explanation-seeking, but that we are grateful for some evidence when no full explanation is available. Explanation renders evidence otiose. |
| 17317 | A good explanation captures the real-world dependence among the phenomena [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible to think that an explanation, when successful, captures or represents (by argument, or a why? question) an underlying real-world relation of dependence which obtains among the phenomena cited. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: She cites causal dependence as an example. I'm incline to think that 'grounding' is a better word for the target of good explanations than is 'dependence' (which can, surely, be mutual, where ground has the directionality needed for explanation). |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are three basic conceptions of scientific explanation - modal, epistemic, and ontic - which can be discerned in Aristotle, and that have persisted down the ages. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The 'inferential' conception of scientific explanation is the thesis that all legitimate scientific explanations are arguments of one sort or another. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that someone has to be persuaded of something, and hence seems a rather too pragmatic view. I presume an explanation might be no more than dumbly pointing at conclusive evidence of a cause. Man with smoking gun. |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Proponents of the ontic conception of explanation can say that explanations exist in the world as facts, or that they are reports of such facts (as opposed to the view of explanations as arguments, or as speech acts). | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I am strongly drawn to the ontic approach, but not sure whether we want facts, or reports of them. The facts are the causal nexus, but which parts of the nexus provide the main aspect of explanation? I'll vote for reports, for now. |
| 13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The problem is to distinguish between laws and accidental generalizations, for laws have explanatory force while accidental generalizations, even if they are true, do not. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing Hempel and Oppenheim 1948] This seems obviously right, but I can only make sense of the explanatory power if we have identified the mechanism which requires the generalisation to continue in future cases. |
| 13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The deductive-nomological view has an explanation/prediction symmetry thesis - that a correct explanation could be a scientific prediction, and that any deductive prediction could serve as a deductive-nomological explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Of course, not all predictions will explain, or vice versa. Weird regularities become predictable but remain baffling. Good explanations may be of unrepeatable events. It is the 'law' in the account that ties the two ends together. |
| 13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: To provide an adequate explanation of any given fact, we need to provide information that is relevant to the occurrence of that fact - information that makes a difference to its occurrence. It is not enough to subsume it under a general law. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bromberger for this idea] Salmon is identifying this idea as the beginnings of trouble for the covering-law account of explanation, and it sounds exactly right. |
| 13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The height of the flagpole explains the length of the shadow because the interaction between the sunlight and the flagpole occurs before the interaction between the sunlight and the ground. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: [Bromberger produced the flagpole example] This seems to be correct, and would apply to all physical cases, but there may still be cases of explanation which are not causal (in mathematics, for example). |
| 13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: My basic feeling about explanation in the quantum realm is that it will involve mechanisms, but mechanisms that are quite different from those that seem to work in the macrocosm. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Since I take most explanation to be by mechanisms (or some abstraction analogous to mechanisms), then I think this is probably right (rather than being by new 'laws'). |
| 13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: In functional explanation, there is a disagreement over whether an item has a function the first time it occurs. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: This question arises particularly in evolutionary contexts, and would obviously not generally arise in the case of human artefacts. |
| 13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I favour an ontic conception of explanation, that explanations reveal the mechanisms, causal or other, that produce the facts we are trying to explain. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [He also cites Coffa and Peter Railton] A structure may explain, and only be supported by causal powers, but it doesn't seem to be the causal powers that do the explaining. Is a peg fitting a hole explained causally? |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be one of the reasons why explanation must ultimately reside at the level of individual objects and events, rather than residing with generalisations and laws. |
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Statistical relevance, not high probability, is the key desideratum in statistical explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is because the explanation will not ultimately be probabilistic at all, but mechanical and causal. Hence the link is what counts, which is the relevance. He notes that relevance needs two values instead of one high value. |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps we should think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Coffa 1974 for this] I find this suggestion very appealing, as it connects up with dispositions and powers, which I take to be the building blocks of all explanation. It is, of course, easier to render frequencies numerically. |
| 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. |
| 17316 | We can abstract to a dependent entity by blocking out features of its bearer [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: In 'feature dependence', the ontologically dependent entity may be thought of as the result of a process of abstraction which takes the 'bearer' as its starting point and arrives at the abstracted entity by blocking out all the irrelevant features. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Varieties of Ontological Dependence [2012], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: She seems unaware that this is traditional abstraction, found in Aristotle, and a commonplace of thought until Frege got his evil hands on abstraction and stole it for other purposes. I'm a fan. |
| 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? |