6 ideas
3663 | How can you contemplate Platonic entities without causal transactions with them? [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Platonism has the attendant problem of how we can succeed in thinking about and referring to entities we can have no causal transactions with. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Phil of Mathematics: why nothing works [1979], Modalism) |
18430 | We accept properties because of type/tokens, reference, and quantification [Edwards] |
Full Idea: Three main reasons for thinking properties exist: the one-over-many argument (that a type can have many tokens), the reference argument (to understand predicates and singular terms), and the quantification argument (that we quantify over them). | |
From: Douglas Edwards (Properties [2014], 1.1) | |
A reaction: [Bits in brackets are compressions of his explanations]. I don't find any of these remotely persuasive. Why would we infer how the world is, simply from how we talk about or reason about the world? His first reason is the only interesting one. |
18432 | Quineans say that predication is primitive and inexplicable [Edwards] |
Full Idea: The Quinean claims that the application of a predicate cannot, in principle, be explained - it is a 'primitive' fact. | |
From: Douglas Edwards (Properties [2014], 4.4) | |
A reaction: I am not clear what 'principle' could endorse this claim. There just seems to be a possible failure of all the usual attempts at explaining predication. |
18437 | Resemblance nominalism requires a second entity to explain 'the rose is crimson' [Edwards] |
Full Idea: For resemblance nominalism the sentence 'the rose is crimson' commits us to at least one other entity that the rose resembles in order for it to be crimson. | |
From: Douglas Edwards (Properties [2014], 5.5.2) | |
A reaction: If the theory really needs this, then it has just sunk without trace. It can't suddenly cease to be crimson when the last resembling entity disappears. |
18434 | That a whole is prior to its parts ('priority monism') is a view gaining in support [Edwards] |
Full Idea: The view of 'priority monism' - that the whole is prior to its parts - is controversial, but has been growing in support | |
From: Douglas Edwards (Properties [2014], 5.4.4) | |
A reaction: The simple and plausible thought is, I take it, that parts only count as parts when a whole comes into existence, so a whole is needed to generate parts. Thus the whole must be prior to the parts. Fine by me. |
7517 | I could take a healthy infant and train it up to be any type of specialist I choose [Watson,JB] |
Full Idea: Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, artist, beggar, thief - regardless of his ancestry. | |
From: J.B. Watson (Behaviorism [1924], Ch.2), quoted by Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate | |
A reaction: This was a famous pronouncement rejecting the concept of human nature as in any way fixed - a total assertion of nurture over nature. Modern research seems to be suggesting that Watson is (alas?) wrong. |