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All the ideas for 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences', 'The Trouble with Being Born' and 'The Sign of Four'

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40 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 3. Wisdom Deflated
So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran]
     Full Idea: What is known as 'wisdom' is ultimately only a perpetual 'thinking it over', i.e. non-action as first impulse.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01)
     A reaction: This may be how most people view wisdom. Wisdom is for the spectators, not the actors (perhaps). Wisdom needs a lot of thought, and I don't associate it with extremely active people.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel - three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 07)
     A reaction: I'm not quite clear why intellectual 'despotism' is a dreadful crime. I revere Aristotle, partly because he is systematic, but I reject about 30% of what he says. Still, many people agree with this idea.
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
A culture needs to admit that knowledge is more extensive than just 'science' [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The acknowledgement that the sphere of knowledge is wider than the sphere of 'science' seems to me to be a cultural necessity if we are to arrive at a sane and human view of ourselves or of science.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro)
     A reaction: A very nice remark, with which I intuitively agree, but then you are left with the problem of explaining how something can qualify as knowledge when it can't pass the stringent tests of science. How wide to we spread, and why?
'True' and 'refers' cannot be made scientically precise, but are fundamental to science [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Some non-scientific knowledge is presupposed by science; for example, I have been arguing that 'refers' and 'true' cannot be made scientifically precise; yet truth is a fundamental term in logic - a precise science.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI)
     A reaction: We might ask whether we 'know' what 'true' and 'refers' mean, as opposed to being able to use them. If their usage doesn't count as knowledge, then we could still end up with all actual knowledge being somehow 'scientific'.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 3. Hermeneutics
A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Why embroider upon what excludes commentary? A text explained is not longer a text.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09)
     A reaction: I like that. I'm not a great fan of explicating texts, especially if they are literary, where the whole point is the primary experience, of a novel, poem or play. Philosophy is different, because that is a dialogue between writer and reader.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 1. Truth
'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green [Putnam]
     Full Idea: 'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three)
     A reaction: The word 'warranted' seems to be ambiguous in modern philosophy. See Idea 6150. There seem to be internalist and externalist versions. It seems clear to say that a belief could be well-justified and yet false.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
We need the correspondence theory of truth to understand language and science [Putnam]
     Full Idea: A correspondence theory of truth is needed to understand how language works, and how science works.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro)
     A reaction: Putnam retreated from this position to a more pragmatic one later on, but all my sympathies are with the present view, despite being repeatedly told by modern philosophers that I am wrong. See McGinn (Idea 6085) and Searle (Idea 3508).
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Correspondence between concepts and unconceptualised reality is impossible [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The great nineteenth century argument against the correspondence theory of truth was that one cannot think of truth as correspondence to facts (or 'reality') because one would need to compare concepts directly with unconceptualised reality.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three)
     A reaction: Presumably the criticism was offered by idealists, who preferred a coherence theory. The defence is to say that there is a confusion here between a concept and the contents of a concept. The contents of a concept are designed to be facts.
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 2. Semantic Truth
In Tarski's definition, you understand 'true' if you accept the notions of the object language [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Anyone who accepts the notions of whatever object language is in question - and this can be chosen arbitrarily - can also understand 'true' as defined by Tarski for that object language.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro)
     A reaction: Thus if we say "'snow is white' is true iff snow is white", then if you 'accept the notion' that snow is white in English, you understand what 'true' means. This seems to leave you with the meaning of 'snow is white' being its truth conditions.
Tarski has given a correct account of the formal logic of 'true', but there is more to the concept [Putnam]
     Full Idea: What Tarski has done is to give us a perfectly correct account of the formal logic of the concept 'true', but the formal logic of the concept is not all there is to the notion of truth.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Intro)
     A reaction: I find this refreshing. A lot of modern philosophers seem to think that truth is no longer an interesting philosophical topic, because deflationary accounts have sidelined it, but I take the concept to be at the heart of metaphysics.
Only Tarski has found a way to define 'true' [Putnam]
     Full Idea: There is only one way anyone knows how to define 'true' and that is Tarski's way.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec II.5)
     A reaction: However, Davidson wrote a paper called 'On the Folly of Trying to Define Truth', which seems to reject even Tarski. Also bear in mind Putnam's earlier remark (Idea 6265) that there is more to truth than Tarski's definition. Just take 'true' as primitive.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / c. not
Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Negation never proceeds from reasoning but from something much more obscure and old. Arguments come afterward, to justify and sustain it. Every no rises out of the blood.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02)
     A reaction: Music to my ears. In the Fregean era no one is allowed to talk about the origins of logical relations in the universal facts of physical existence. You can watch dogs saying no.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / i. Deflating being
The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Whether it is spoken by a grocer or a philosopher, the word 'being', apparently so rich, so tempting, so charged with significance, in fact means nothing at all; incredible that a man in his right mind can use it on any occasion whatever.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12)
     A reaction: I entirely agree. It resembles the redundancy view of 'true' (with which I do not agree).
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Realism is a theory, which explains the convergence of science and the success of language [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Realism is an empirical theory; it explains the convergence of scientific theories, where earlier theories are often limiting cases of later theories (which is why theoretical terms preserve their reference); and it explains the success of language.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four)
     A reaction: I agree. Personally, I think of Plato's Theory of Forms and all religions as empirical theories. The response from anti-realists is generally to undermine confidence in the evidence which these 'empirical theories' are said to explain.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran]
     Full Idea: When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02)
     A reaction: Does the same apply to realists? There are at least genuine arguments in both directions. Presumably the thought is that realists have something they care about, but true anti-realists don't.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty
Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran]
     Full Idea: We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 08)
     A reaction: Excellent! I cannot imagine studying anything at all in great depth without it resulting in a dwindling expectation of full understanding. Philosophy in spades, but also probably any topic in history.
Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran]
     Full Idea: To have opinions is inevitable, is natural; to have convictions is less so. Each time I meet someone who has convictions, I wonder what intellectual vice, what flaw has caused him to acquire such a thing.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12)
     A reaction: 'The best lack all conviction/ While the worst are full of passionate intensity' (Yeats). I agree with this. Convictions are so often accompanied by anger.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 8. A Priori as Analytic
If a tautology is immune from revision, why would that make it true? [Putnam]
     Full Idea: If we held, say, 'All unmarried men are unmarried' as absolutely immune from revision, why would this make it true?
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four)
     A reaction: A very nice question. Like most American philosophers, Putnam accepts Quine's attack on the unrevisability of analytic truths. His point here is that defenders of analytic truths are probably desperate to preserve basic truths, but it won't work.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony
Knowledge depends on believing others, which must be innate, as inferences are not strong enough [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Our ability to picture how people are likely to respond may well be innate; indeed, our disposition to believe what other people tell us (which is fundamental to knowledge) could hardly be an inference, as that isn’t good enough for knowledge.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI)
     A reaction: An interesting claim. There could be an intermediate situation, which is a hard-wired non-conscious inference. When dismantled, the 'innate' brain circuits for assessing testimony could turn out to work on logic and evidence.
Empathy may not give knowledge, but it can give plausibility or right opinion [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Empathy with others may give less than 'Knowledge', but it gives more than mere logical or physical possibility; it gives plausibility, or (to revive Platonic terminology) it provides 'right opinion'.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec VI)
     A reaction: See Ideas 174 and 2140 for Plato. Putnam is exploring areas of knowledge outside the limits of strict science. Behind this claim seems to lie the Principle of Charity (3971), but a gang of systematic liars (e.g. evil students) would be a problem case.
14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction
If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle]
     Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
     From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6)
     A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 4. Explanation Doubts / a. Explanation as pragmatic
You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Explanation is an interest-relative notion …explanation has to be partly a pragmatic concept. To regard the 'pragmatics' of explanation as no part of the concept is to abdicate the job of figuring out what makes an explanation good.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], p. 41-2), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1
     A reaction: I suppose this is just obvious, depending on how far you want to take the 'interest-relative' bit. If a fool is fobbed off with a trivial explanation, there must be some non-relative criterion for assessing that.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran]
     Full Idea: It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did - without a word - what they do, we would take them for robots.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09)
     A reaction: Love this one. Though it might be said that the power of speech does add an extra dimension of freedom to an action, beyond what any animal could attain. I take the absolute idea of 'being free' to be nonsense.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / a. Concepts and language
If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran]
     Full Idea: If only we could reach back before the concept, could write on a level with the senses, record the infinitesimal variations of what we touch, do what a reptile would do if it were to set about writing!
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02)
     A reaction: A lovely thought. It is a huge effort for us to try to imagine a mental life without concepts. And then to express that mental life in words…..!
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four)
     A reaction: How can you have a theory of understanding without a meaning that requires to be understood? Personally I think about the minds of small animals when pondering this, and that seems to put reference and truth at the front of the queue.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
Truth conditions can't explain understanding a sentence, because that in turn needs explanation [Putnam]
     Full Idea: You can't treat understanding a sentence as knowing its truth conditions, because it then becomes unintelligible what that knowledge in turn consists in.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four)
     A reaction: The implication, I take it, is circularity; how can you specify truth conditions if you don't understand sentences? Putnam here agrees with Dummett that verification must be involved. Something has to be taken as axiomatic in all this.
We should reject the view that truth is prior to meaning [Putnam]
     Full Idea: I am suggesting that we reject the view that truth (based on the semantic theory) is prior to meaning.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three)
     A reaction: It is a nice question which of truth or meaning has logical priority. One might start by speculating about how and why animals think. A moth attracted to flame is probably working on truth without much that could be called 'meaning'.
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
How reference is specified is not what reference is [Putnam]
     Full Idea: A theory of how reference is specified isn't a theory of what reference is.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec V)
     A reaction: A simple and important point. We may achieve reference by naming, describing, grunting or pointing, but the question is, what have we achieved when we get there?
19. Language / B. Reference / 4. Descriptive Reference / b. Reference by description
The claim that scientific terms are incommensurable can be blocked if scientific terms are not descriptions [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The line of reasoning of Kuhn and Feyerabend can be blocked by arguing (as I have in various places, and as Saul Kripke has) that scientific terms are not synonymous with descriptions.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec II.2)
     A reaction: A nice clear statement of the motivation for creating the causal theory of reference. See Idea 6162. We could still go back and ask whether we could block scientific relativism by rethinking how descriptions work, instead of abandoning them.
19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language
A private language could work with reference and beliefs, and wouldn't need meaning [Putnam]
     Full Idea: A language made up and used by a being who belonged to no community would have no need for such a concept as the 'meaning' of a term. To state the reference of each term and what the language speaker believes is to tell the whole story.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three)
     A reaction: A subtle response to Wittgenstein's claim (e.g. Ideas 4152,4158), but I am not sure what Putnam means. I would have thought that beliefs had to be embodied in propositions. They may not need 'meaning' quite as urgently as sentences, but still…
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam]
     Full Idea: What it is to be a correct translation is to be the translation that best explains the behaviour of the speaker.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Lec III)
     A reaction: This seems fairly close to Quine, but rather puzzlingly uses the word 'correct'. If our criteria of translation are purely behavioural, there is no way we can be correct after one word ('gavagai'), so at what point does it become 'correct'?
Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam]
     Full Idea: We could say that the language has more than one correct way of being mapped onto the world (it must, since it has more than one way of being correctly mapped onto a language which is itself correctly mapped onto the world).
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Four)
     A reaction: This spells out nicely the significance of Quine's 'indeterminacy of translation'. Others have pointed out that the fact that language maps onto world in many ways need not be anti-realist; the world is endless, and language is limited.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The maxim that 'most of a speaker's beliefs are true' as an a priori principle governing radical translation seems to me to go too far; first, I don't know how to count beliefs; second, most people's beliefs on some topics (philosophy) are probably false.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], Pt Three)
     A reaction: Putnam prefers a pragmatic view, where charity is applicable if behaviour is involved. Philosophy is too purely theoretical. The extent to which Charity should apply in philosophy seminars is a nice question, which all students should test in practice.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 4. Responsibility for Actions
We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran]
     Full Idea: The problem of responsibility would have a meaning only if we had been consulted before our birth and had consented to be precisely who we are.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06)
     A reaction: The question could still be asked retrospectively, like agreeing to be in an army into which you have been conscripted. People gripped by deeply anti-social desires would probably welcome the chance to become different.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 6. The Sublime
We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Moral disintegration when we spend time in a place that is too beautiful: the self dissolves upon contact with paradise.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06)
     A reaction: I'm not sure whether that is true, but it is worth thinking about the value of experiences which are overwhelming.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 3. Angst
In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran]
     Full Idea: In anxiety, a man clings to whatever can reinforce, can stimulate his providential discomfort: to try to cure him of it is to destroy his equilibrium, anxiety being the basis of his existence and his prosperity.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09)
     A reaction: A report from the front line of the age of anxiety, on which I am not qualified to comment. I assume that some anxiety can be a good thing, like nerves before a public performance.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 4. Boredom
Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 05)
     A reaction: I suspect that this is the motivation of people who indulge in dangerous sports. Maybe all that is need is something daunting, rather than frightening.
It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran]
     Full Idea: I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01)
     A reaction: As Nietzsche would have pointed out, this came from a man who regularly wrote books. It is, though, certainly worth asking whether the way we fill our time is better than doing nothing.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 4. Suicide
Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran]
     Full Idea: It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02)
     A reaction: A neat thought, but unlikely to be true for those who commit suicide, which presumably results from a sustained and apparently incurable situation.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven
The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran]
     Full Idea: Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it.
     From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01)
     A reaction: Seems a bit harsh. There was evidently one aspect that was missing (knowledge), and he was surprised to find himself ejected for wanting it. Like a holiday in a Mediterranean hotel, with good food.