8 ideas
| 18935 | Semantic theory should specify when an act of naming is successful [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: A semantic theory of names should deliver a specification of the conditions under which a name names an individual, and hence a specification of the conditions under which a name is empty. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Naming can be private, like naming my car 'Bertrand', but never tell anyone. I like Plato's remark that names are 'tools'. Do we specify conditions for successful spanner-usage? The first step must be individuation, preparatory to naming. |
| 18945 | Millians say a name just means its object [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: The Millian view of direct reference says that the meaning of a name is the object named. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 4) | |
| A reaction: Any theory that says meaning somehow is features of the physical world strikes me as totally misguided. Napoleon is a man, so he can't be part of a sentence. He delegates that job to words (such as 'Napoleon'). |
| 18934 | Sentences with empty names can be understood, be co-referential, and even be true [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Some empty names sentences can be understood, so appear to be meaningful ('Pegasus was sired by Poseidon'), ...some appear to be co-referential ('Santa Claus'/'Father Christmas'), and some appear to be straightforwardly true ('Pegasus doesn't exist'). | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: Hang on to this, when the logicians arrive and start telling you that your talk of empty names is vacuous, because there is no object in the 'domain' to which a predicate can be attached. Meaning, reference and truth are the issues around empty names. |
| 18938 | Frege's compositional account of truth-vaues makes 'Pegasus doesn't exist' neither true nor false [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: In Frege's account sentences such as 'Pegasus does not exist' will be neither true nor false, since the truth-value of a sentence is its referent, and the referent of a complex expression is determined by the referent of its parts. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: We can keep the idea of 'sense', which is very useful for dealing with empty names, but tweak his account of truth-values to evade this problem. I'm thinking that meaning is compositional, but truth-value isn't. |
| 18947 | Definites descriptions don't solve the empty names problem, because the properties may not exist [Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: If it were possible for a definite description to be empty - not in the sense of there being no object that satisfies it, but of there being no set of properties it refers to - the problem of empty names would not have been solved. | |
| From: Sarah Sawyer (Empty Names [2012], 5) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer is thinking of properties like 'is a unicorn', which are clearly just as vulnerable to being empty as 'the unicorn' was. It seems unlikely that 'horse', 'white' and 'horn' would be empty. |
| 15785 | Our commitments are to an 'ontology', but also to an 'ideology', or conceptual system [Hintikka] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish between what we are committed to existing in the actual world or a possible world ('ontology'), and what we are committed to as a part of our ways of dealing with the world conceptually, as a part of our conceptual system ('ideology'). | |
| From: Jaakko Hintikka (Semantics for Propositional Attitudes [1969], p.95), quoted by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 02 | |
| A reaction: I think this is the most illuminating idea I have read on the subject of ontological commitment. I'm fighting for the idea that what we think is true should be kept separate from what we think exists. Ideology is a nice addition to the mix. |
| 15786 | Commitment to possible worlds is part of our ideology, not part of our ontology [Hintikka] |
| Full Idea: Quantification over members of one particular world is a measure of ideology, quantification that crosses possible worlds is often a measure of ideology. | |
| From: Jaakko Hintikka (Semantics for Propositional Attitudes [1969], p.95), quoted by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 02 | |
| A reaction: I like this. See Idea 15785 for the underlying distinction. It leaves the question open of what we might mean by 'ideological commitment'. |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |