12 ideas
| 13365 | Russell's Paradox is a stripped-down version of Cantor's Paradox [Priest,G on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Russell's Paradox is a stripped-down version of Cantor's Paradox. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Letters to Frege [1902]) by Graham Priest - The Structure of Paradoxes of Self-Reference §2 |
| 10711 | Russell's paradox means we cannot assume that every property is collectivizing [Potter on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Russell's paradox showed that we cannot consistently assume what is sometimes called the 'naïve comprehension principle', namely that every property is collectivizing. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Letters to Frege [1902]) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy 03.6 |
| 1635 | Mathematics reduces to set theory (which is a bit vague and unobvious), but not to logic proper [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics reduces only to set theory, and not to logic proper… but set theory cannot claim the same firmness and obviousness as logic. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.69-70) |
| 9127 | Russell refuted Frege's principle that there is a set for each property [Russell, by Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Russell refuted Frege's principle that there is a set for each property. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Letters to Frege [1902], 1904.12.12) by Roy Sorensen - Vagueness and Contradiction 6.1 | |
| A reaction: This is the principle stumbling block to any attempt to explain properties purely in terms of sets. I would say that Russell proved there couldn't be a set for each predicate. You can't glibly equate proper properties with predicates. |
| 7627 | You can't reduce epistemology to psychology, because that presupposes epistemology [Maund on Quine] |
| Full Idea: There is something seriously misguided about Quine's project of reducing epistemology to psychology, since psychology, like any of the natural sciences, presupposes an epistemology. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: I wonder if epistemology presupposes psychology? Belief, for example, is a category of folk psychology, which could be challenged. There is a quiet battle going on between philosophy and science. |
| 8871 | We should abandon a search for justification or foundations, and focus on how knowledge is acquired [Quine, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Quine is suggesting that philosophy should abandon the attempt to provide a foundation for knowledge, or otherwise justify it, and should instead give an account of how knowledge is acquired. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Donald Davidson - Epistemology Externalized p.193 | |
| A reaction: If you are going to explain how 'knowledge' is acquired, you'd better know what knowledge is. My suspicion is that Quine would be quite happy (in the pragmatist tradition) to just focus on belief, and forget about knowledge entirely. |
| 8826 | If we abandon justification and normativity in epistemology, we must also abandon knowledge [Kim on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine asks us to set aside the entire framework of justification-centered epistemology, ..and repudiate normativity. ..But then knowledge itself drops out of epistemology, for our concept of knowledge is inseparably tied to that of justification. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - What is 'naturalized epistemology'? p.305 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would not bother Quine, who wants to hand so-called 'epistemology' over to the psychologists. A psychological account of belief seems plausible. Presumably false beliefs could only be pragmatically characterised. |
| 8827 | Without normativity, naturalized epistemology isn't even about beliefs [Kim on Quine] |
| Full Idea: If normativity is wholly excluded from naturalized epistemology it cannot even be thought of as being about beliefs. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - What is 'naturalized epistemology'? p.306 | |
| A reaction: And if it doesn't refer to beliefs, it certainly doesn't refer to knowledge. One might try to subsume normativity under evolutionary pragmatic 'drives', or something. Quine's project would then become wildly speculative, and hence boring. |
| 8899 | Epistemology is a part of psychology, studying how our theories relate to our evidence [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Epistemology falls into place as a chapter of psychology, and hence of natural science. ..We study meagre input and torrential output, to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's theory of nature transcends any available evidence. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.83) | |
| A reaction: It depends what you are interested in. If you just want to know what makes humans tick, then Quine is your man, but if you want to know things in general, and want to know how to get it right, then the normative side of epistemology is unavoidable. |
| 7531 | We don't assert private thoughts; the objects are part of what we assert [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I believe Mont Blanc itself is a component part of what is actually asserted in the proposition 'Mont Blanc is more than 4000 metres high'; we do not assert the thought, which is a private psychological matter, but the object of the thought. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Letters to Frege [1902], 1904.12.12), quoted by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This would appear to be pretty much externalism about concepts, given that Russell would accept that other people know much more about Mont Blanc than he does, and their knowledge is included in what he asserts. |
| 8898 | Inculcations of meanings of words rests ultimately on sensory evidence [Quine] |
| Full Idea: All inculcation of meanings of words must rest ultimately on sensory evidence. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.75) | |
| A reaction: This betrays Quine's behaviourist tendencies, and rules out introspection, definitions and inferences. Quine's conclusion is fairly total scepticism about meaning, but that is not surprising, given his external and meaningless starting point. |
| 8900 | In observation sentences, we could substitute community acceptance for analyticity [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the controversial notion of analyticity can be dispensed with, in our definition of observation sentences, in favour of the straightforward attitude of community-wide acceptance. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.86) | |
| A reaction: That might be a reasonable account of 'bachelors'. If the whole community accepts 'God exists', does that make it analytic? If a whole (small!) community claims to actually observe a ghost or a flying saucer, is that then analytic? |