Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts', 'works' and 'Mind and World'

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8 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 3. Pure Reason

8251	The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell]
	Full Idea: The logical space of reasons is just part of the logical space of nature. ...And, in a Kantian slogan, the space of reasons is the realm of freedom.
	From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], Intro 7)
	A reaction: [second half on p.5] This is a modern have-your-cake-and-eat-it view of which I am becoming very suspicious. The modern Kantians (Davidson, Nagel, McDowell) are struggling to naturalise free will, but it won't work. Just dump it!

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 3. Value of Logic

9390	Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13)
	A reaction: There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects

9389	Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5)
	A reaction: I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / a. Parts of objects

8249	Class membership is not transitive, unlike being part of a part of the whole [Lesniewski, by George/Van Evra]
	Full Idea: Lesniewski distinguished the part-whole relationship from class membership. Membership is not transitive: if s is an element of t, and t of u, then s is not an element of u, whereas a part of a part is a part of the whole.
	From: report of Stanislaw Lesniewski (works [1916]) by George / Van Evra - The Rise of Modern Logic 7
	A reaction: If I am a member of a sports club, and my club is a member of the league, I am not thereby a member of the league (so clubs are classes, not wholes). This distinction is clearly fairly crucial in ontology.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation

8128	Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge]
	Full Idea: McDowell has claimed that one cannot make sense of representation that plays a role in epistemology unless one takes the representation to be propositional, and thus capable of yielding reasons.
	From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.456
	A reaction: A transcendental argument leads back to a somewhat implausible conclusion. I suspect that McDowell has a slightly inflated (Kantian) notion of the purity of the 'space of reasons'. Do philosophers just imagine their problems?

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation

19092	There is no pure Given, but it is cultured, rather than entirely relative [McDowell, by Macbeth]
	Full Idea: McDowell argues that the Myth of the Given shows not that there is no content to a concept that is not a matter of its inferential relations to other concepts but only that awareness of the sort that we enjoy ...is acquired in the course of acculturation.
	From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Danielle Macbeth - Pragmatism and Objective Truth p.185
	A reaction: The first view is of Wilfred Sellars, who derives pragmatic relativism from his rejection of the Myth. This idea is helpful is seeing why McDowell has a good proposal. As I look out of my window, my immediate experience seems 'cultured'.

12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism

8253	Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell]
	Full Idea: The world's impressions on our senses are already possessed of conceptual content.
	From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.6)
	A reaction: This is a key idea of McDowell's, which challenges most traditional empiricist views, and (maybe) offers a solution to the rationalist/empiricist debate. His commitment to the 'space of reasons' strikes me as an optional extra.

19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language

8254	Forming concepts by abstraction from the Given is private definition, which the Private Lang. Arg. attacks [McDowell]
	Full Idea: The idea that concepts can be formed by abstraction from the Given just is the idea of private ostensive definition. So the Private Language Argument just is the rejection of the Given, in so far as it bears on the possibilities for language.
	From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.7)
	A reaction: I'm not clear why the process of abstraction from raw impressions shouldn't be a matter of public, explicit, community negotiation. We seem to be able to share and compare fairly raw impressions without much trouble (discussing sunsets).