7 ideas
| 7746 | We don't normally think of names as having senses (e.g. we don't give definitions of them) [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If Tully=Cicero is synthetic, the names must have different senses, which seems implausible, for we don't normally think of proper names as having senses in the way that predicates do (we do not, e.g., give definitions of proper names). | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.89) | |
| A reaction: It is probably necessary to prize apart the question of whether Tully 'has' (intrinsically) a sense, from whether we think of Tully in that way. Stacks of books have appeared about this one, since Kripke. |
| 7747 | How can a proper name be correlated with its object if it hasn't got a sense? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It seems that a proper name could not have a reference unless it did have a sense, for how, unless the name has a sense, is it to be correlated with the object? | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.91) | |
| A reaction: This might (just) be the most important question ever asked in modern philosophy, since it provoked Kripke into answering it, by giving a social, causal, externalist account of how names (and hence lots of language) actually work. But Searle has a point. |
| 7748 | 'Aristotle' means more than just 'an object that was christened "Aristotle"' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle being identical with an object that was originally christened will not suffice, for the force of "Aristotle" is greater than the force of 'identical with an object named "Aristotle"', for not just any object named "Aristotle" will do. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.93) | |
| A reaction: This anticipates Kripke's proposal to base reference on baptism. I remain unsure about how rigid a designation of Aristotle could be, in a possible world where his father died young, and he became an illiterate soldier who hates philosophy. |
| 7749 | Reference for proper names presupposes a set of uniquely referring descriptions [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To use a proper name referringly is to presuppose the truth of certain uniquely referring descriptive statements. ...Names are pegs on which to hang descriptions. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.94) | |
| A reaction: This 'cluster' view of Searle's has become notorious, but I think one could at least try to mount a defence. The objection to Searle is that none of the descriptions are necessary, unlike just being the named object. |
| 7750 | Proper names are logically connected with their characteristics, in a loose way [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If asked whether or not proper names are logically connected with characteristics of the object to which they refer, the answer is 'yes, in a loose sort of way'. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be inviting trouble to assert that a connection is both 'logical' and 'loose'. Clearly Searle has been reading too much later Wittgenstein. This is probably the weakest point in Searle's proposal, which brought a landslide of criticism. |
| 10245 | One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré] |
| Full Idea: One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. | |
| From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Method [1908], p.65), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: This is the culminating view after new geometries were developed by tinkering with Euclid's parallels postulate. |
| 19698 | Deviant causal chain: a reason causes an action, but isn't the reason for which it was performed [Davidson, by Neta] |
| Full Idea: A 'deviant causal chain' is when an agent has a reason for performing an action, and for the reason to cause the performance, without that being the reason for which the agent performed it. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Freedom to Act [1973]) by Ram Neta - The Basing Relation II | |
| A reaction: Davidson's thesis is that 'reasons are causes'. This was a problem he faced. I think this discussion is now obscured by the complex and multi-layered account of action which is emerging from neuroscience. |