Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction'' and 'Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood'

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6 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition

10528	Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Our concern in giving a definition is not to say how things are by to say how we wish to speak
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
	A reaction: This sounds like an acceptable piece of wisdom which arises out of analytical and linguistic philosophy. It puts a damper on the Socratic dream of using definition of reveal the nature of reality.

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / d. Hume's Principle

10529	If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
	A reaction: This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers.

10530	Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312)
	A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic

16458	Semantic vagueness involves alternative and equal precisifications of the language [Lewis]
	Full Idea: If vagueness is semantic indeterminacy, then wherever we have vague statements, we have several alternative precisifications of the vague language involved, all with equal claims of being 'intended'.
	From: David Lewis (Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood [1988], p.318)

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention

1556	By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias]
	Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.
	From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8

18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence

10527	An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not.
	From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307)
	A reaction: I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects.