51 ideas
| 2319 | Metaphysics is the clarification of the ontological relationships between different areas of thought [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.066) |
| 13252 | Some truths have true negations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Dialetheism is the view that some truths have true negations. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: The important thing to remember is that they are truths. Thus 'Are you feeling happy?' might be answered 'Yes and no'. |
| 13247 | A truthmaker is an object which entails a sentence [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker thesis is that an object is a truthmaker for a sentence if and only if its existence entails the sentence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.3) | |
| A reaction: The use of the word 'object' here is even odder than usual, and invites many questions. And the 'only if' seems peculiar, since all sorts of things can make a sentence true. 'There is someone in the house' for example. |
| 13249 | (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The inference of 'distribution' (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically. It is straightforward to construct a 'stage' at which the LHS is true but the RHS is not. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to parallel the iterative notion in set theory, that you must construct your hierarchy. All part of the general 'constructivist' approach to things. Is some kind of mad platonism the only alternative? |
| 13243 | Excluded middle must be true for some situation, not for all situations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant logic endorses excluded middle, ..but says instances of the law may fail. Bv¬B is true in every situation that settles the matter of B. It is necessary that there is some such situation. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: See next idea for the unusual view of necessity on which this rests. It seems easier to assert something about all situations than just about 'some' situation. |
| 13242 | It's 'relevantly' valid if all those situations make it true [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The argument from P to A is 'relevantly' valid if and only if, for every situation in which each premise in P is true, so is A. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that proper inference should have an element of relevance to it. A falsehood may allow all sorts of things, without actually implying them. 'Situations' sound promising here. |
| 13246 | Relevant logic does not abandon classical logic [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We have not abandoned classical logic in our acceptance of relevant logic. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: It appears that classical logic is straightforwardly accepted, but there is a difference of opinion over when it is applicable. |
| 13245 | Relevant consequence says invalidity is the conclusion not being 'in' the premises [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant consequence says the conclusion of a relevantly invalid argument is not 'carried in' the premises - it does not follow from the premises. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this appealing. It need not invalidate classical logic. It is just a tougher criterion which is introduced when you want to do 'proper' reasoning, instead of just playing games with formal systems. |
| 13254 | A doesn't imply A - that would be circular [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We could reject the inference from A to itself (on grounds of circularity). | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [Martin-Meyer System] 'It's raining today'. 'Are you implying that it is raining today?' 'No, I'm SAYING it's raining today'. Logicians don't seem to understand the word 'implication'. Logic should capture how we reason. Nice proposal. |
| 13255 | Relevant logic may reject transitivity [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Some relevant logics reject transitivity, but we defend the classical view. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [they cite Neil Tennant for this view] To reject transitivity (A?B ? B?C ? A?C) certainly seems a long way from classical logic. But in everyday inference Tennant's idea seems good. The first premise may be irrelevant to the final conclusion. |
| 13250 | Free logic terms aren't existential; classical is non-empty, with referring names [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: A logic is 'free' to the degree it refrains from existential import of its singular and general terms. Classical logic must have non-empty domain, and each name must denote in the domain. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that logic should have no ontology at all, so I like the sound of 'free' logic. We can't say 'Pegasus does not exist', and then reason about Pegasus just like any other horse. |
| 9944 | We understand some statements about all sets [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: We seem to understand some statements about all sets (e.g. 'for every set x and every set y, there is a set z which is the union of x and y'). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967], p.308) | |
| A reaction: His example is the Axiom of Choice. Presumably this is why the collection of all sets must be referred to as a 'class', since we can talk about it, but cannot define it. |
| 13235 | Logic studies consequence; logical truths are consequences of everything, or nothing [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays we think of the consequence relation itself as the primary subject of logic, and view logical truths as degenerate instances of this relation. Logical truths follow from any set of assumptions, or from no assumptions at all. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems exactly right; the alternative is the study of necessities, but that may not involve logic. |
| 13238 | Syllogisms are only logic when they use variables, and not concrete terms [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: According to the Peripatetics (Aristotelians), only syllogistic laws stated in variables belong to logic, and not their applications to concrete terms. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [from Lukasiewicz] Seems wrong. I take it there are logical relations between concrete things, and the variables are merely used to describe these relations. Variables lack the internal powers to drive logical necessities. Variables lack essence! |
| 13234 | The view of logic as knowing a body of truths looks out-of-date [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Through much of the 20th century the conception of logic was inherited from Frege and Russell, as knowledge of a body of logical truths, as arithmetic or geometry was a knowledge of truths. This is odd, and a historical anomaly. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I have always taken this idea to be false. I presume logic has minimal subject matter and truths, and preferably none at all. |
| 13232 | Logic studies arguments, not formal languages; this involves interpretations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Logic does not study formal languages for their own sake, which is formal grammar. Logic evaluates arguments, and primarily considers formal languages as interpreted. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hodges seems to think logic just studies formal languages. The current idea strikes me as a much more sensible view. |
| 13241 | The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics if anything is. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting contrast to the claim of logicism, that mathematics reduces to logic. This idea explains why students of logic are surprised to find themselves involved in mathematics. |
| 13253 | There are several different consequence relations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We are pluralists about logical consequence because we take there to be a number of different consequence relations, each reflecting different precisifications of the pre-theoretic notion of deductive logical consequence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: I don't see how you avoid the slippery slope that leads to daft logical rules like Prior's 'tonk' (from which you can infer anything you like). I say that nature imposes logical conquence on us - but don't ask me to prove it. |
| 13240 | A sentence follows from others if they always model it [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The sentence X follows logically from the sentences of the class K if and only if every model of the class K is also a model of the sentence X. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This why the symbol |= is often referred to as 'models'. |
| 13236 | Logical truth is much more important if mathematics rests on it, as logicism claims [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: If mathematical truth reduces to logical truth then it is important what counts as logically true, …but if logicism is not a going concern, then the body of purely logical truths will be less interesting. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Logicism would only be one motivation for pursuing logical truths. Maybe my new 'Necessitism' will derive the Peano Axioms from broad necessary truths, rather than from logic. |
| 13237 | Preface Paradox affirms and denies the conjunction of propositions in the book [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The Paradox of the Preface is an apology, that you are committed to each proposition in the book, but admit that collectively they probably contain a mistake. There is a contradiction, of affirming and denying the conjunction of propositions. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems similar to the Lottery Paradox - its inverse perhaps. Affirm all and then deny one, or deny all and then affirm one? |
| 9937 | I do not believe mathematics either has or needs 'foundations' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: I do not believe mathematics either has or needs 'foundations'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967]) | |
| A reaction: Agreed that mathematics can function well without foundations (given that the enterprise got started with no thought for such things), the ontology of the subject still strikes me as a major question, though maybe not for mathematicians. |
| 9939 | It is conceivable that the axioms of arithmetic or propositional logic might be changed [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: I believe that under certain circumstances revisions in the axioms of arithmetic, or even of the propositional calculus (e.g. the adoption of a modular logic as a way out of the difficulties in quantum mechanics), is fully conceivable. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967], p.303) | |
| A reaction: One can change the axioms of a system without necessarily changing the system (by swapping an axiom and a theorem). Especially if platonism is true, since the eternal objects reside calmly above our attempts to axiomatise them! |
| 9940 | Maybe mathematics is empirical in that we could try to change it [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics might be 'empirical' in the sense that one is allowed to try to put alternatives into the field. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967], p.303) | |
| A reaction: He admits that change is highly unlikely. It take hardcore Millian arithmetic to be only changeable if pebbles start behaving very differently with regard to their quantities, which appears to be almost inconceivable. |
| 9941 | Science requires more than consistency of mathematics [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Science demands much more of a mathematical theory than that it should merely be consistent, as the example of the various alternative systems of geometry dramatizes. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967]) | |
| A reaction: Well said. I don't agree with Putnam's Indispensability claims, but if an apparent system of numbers or lines has no application to the world then I don't consider it to be mathematics. It is a new game, like chess. |
| 2317 | Reductionism is good on light, genes, temperature and transparency [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Examples where reductionism seems to give a good account of things are light, genes, temperature and transparency. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.025) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This a fairly simple examples, thoroughly confirmed by science a long time ago. Life is a nicer example, because it is more complex and less obvious, but pretty much beyond dispute these days. |
| 2310 | Supervenience is linked to dependence [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is customary to associate supervenience with the idea of dependence or determination. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.011) | |
| A reaction: It is only 'customary' because, in principle, the supervenience might just be a coincidence. I might follow someone everywhere because I love them (dependence) or because they force me to (determination). There's always a reason. |
| 2315 | Mereological supervenience says wholes are fixed by parts [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mereological supervenience is the doctrine that wholes are fixed by the properties and relations that characterise their parts. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.018) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would be the opposite of 'holism'. Personally I would take mereological supervenience to be not merely correct, but to be metaphysically necessary. Don't ask me to prove it, of course. |
| 2329 | Causal power is a good way of distinguishing the real from the unreal [Kim] |
| Full Idea: A plausible criterion for distinguishing what is real from what is not real is the possession of causal power. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.119) |
| 9943 | You can't deny a hypothesis a truth-value simply because we may never know it! [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Surely the mere fact that we may never know whether the continuum hypothesis is true or false is by itself just no reason to think that it doesn't have a truth value! | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Mathematics without Foundations [1967]) | |
| A reaction: This is Putnam in 1967. Things changed later. Personally I am with the younger man all they way, but I reserve the right to totally change my mind. |
| 2320 | Properties can have causal powers lacked by their constituents [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Macroproperties can, and in general do, have their own causal powers, powers that go beyond the causal powers of their microconstituents. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §3 p.085) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the macro-powers 'go beyond' the sum of the micro-powers. Admittedly one molecule can't be slippery, but slipperiness can be totally reduced to molecule behaviour. |
| 13244 | Relevant necessity is always true for some situation (not all situations) [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: In relevant logic, the necessary truths are not those which are true in every situation; rather, they are those for which it is necessary that there is a situation making them true. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to rest on the truthmaker view of such things, which I find quite attractive (despite Merricks's assault). Always ask what is making some truth necessary. This leads you to essences. |
| 530 | There are two contradictory arguments about everything [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There are two contradictory arguments about everything. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B06a), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 13314 | Protagoras says arguments on both sides are always equal [Kim, by Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Protagoras declares that it is possible to argue either side of any question with equal force, even the question whether or not one can equally argue either side of any question! | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998]) by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 088 | |
| A reaction: This is perhaps the most famous sceptical argument in the ancient world (though, note, Protagoras is most famous for his relativism rather than his scepticism). It is, of course, wrong. The arguments are sometimes equal, but often they are not. |
| 2065 | Not every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: We do not agree that every person is the measure of all things, but only wise people. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 183c | |
| A reaction: I fully agree with this, but only because I have an optimistic view that rational people converge on the truth. |
| 1550 | Why didn't Protagoras begin by saying "a tadpole is the measure of all things"? [Plato on Kim] |
| Full Idea: Why didn't he start 'Truth' off by saying "A pig is the measure of all things", or "a baboon",…or " tadpole"? That would have been a magnificently haughty beginning. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], B01) by Plato - Theaetetus 161d1 |
| 2318 | Agency, knowledge, reason, memory, psychology all need mental causes [Kim, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The following all require a belief in mental causation: agency (mind causes events), knowledge (perception causes beliefs), reasoning (one belief causes another), memory (events cause ideas), psychology (science of mental causes). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §2 p.031) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A very good list, which I cannot fault, and to which I cannot add. The question is: is there any mental activity left over which does NOT require causation? Candidates are free will, and the contingent character of qualia. I say the answer is, no. |
| 2325 | It seems impossible that an exact physical copy of this world could lack intentionality [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me inconceivable that a possible world exists that is an exact physical duplicate of this world but lacking wholly in intentionality. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: Personally I can't conceive of such a world lacking qualia either. The physical entails the mental, say I. |
| 2324 | Intentionality as function seems possible [Kim] |
| Full Idea: There has been much scepticism about a functionalist account of intentionality, particularly from Putnam (recently) and Searle, but, like many others, I don't see any principled objections to such an account. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I don't believe that intentionality is a candidate for being one of those many 'magic' qualities which are supposed to make the reduction of mind to brain impossible. |
| 2314 | Maybe intentionality is reducible, but qualia aren't [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to hold that phenomenal properties (qualia) are irreducible, while holding intentional properties, including propositional attitudes, to be reducible (functionally, or biologically). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.017) | |
| A reaction: This is the position which Kim has settled for, but I find it baffling. If the universe is full of irreducibles that is one thing, but if everything in the universe is reducible except for one tiny item, that is implausible. |
| 2313 | Emergentism says there is no explanation for a supervenient property [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The emergentism (of Searle), like ethical intuitionism, views mind-body supervenience as something that admits no explanation - it is a brute fact. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.013) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'emergence' is no sort of theory, and is really old-fashioned dualism in a dubious naturalistic disguise. If mind 'emerges', there is presumably a causal mechanism for that. |
| 2328 | The only mental property that might be emergent is that of qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: If emergentism is correct about anything, it is more likely to be correct about qualia than about anything else. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.103) | |
| A reaction: I'm puzzled by a view that says that nearly all of the mind is reducible, but one tiny aspect of it is 'emergent'. What sort of ontology is envisaged by that? |
| 2309 | Non-Reductive Physicalism relies on supervenience [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers saw in mind-body supervenience a satisfying metaphysical statement of physicalism without reductionism. This widely influential position is now known as "nonreductive physicalism". | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.008) | |
| A reaction: If two things supervene on one another, then we should be asking why. Occasionalism and Parallelism are presumably not the answer. Coldness supervenes on ice. |
| 2311 | Maybe strong supervenience implies reduction [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Maybe strong supervenience is inconsistent with the irreducibility of the supervenient properties to their subvenient bases. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.012) | |
| A reaction: If two things are really very very supervenient on one another (superdupervenient?), then you have to ask WHY? If there isn't identity, then there is surely a highly lawlike connection? |
| 2308 | Identity theory was overthrown by multiple realisations and causal anomalies [Kim] |
| Full Idea: The two principle arguments which overthrew the mind-brain identity theory were the multiple realization argument of Hilary Putnam, and the anomalist argument of Davidson, which contained the seeds of functionalism and anomalous monism. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §1 p.002) | |
| A reaction: The first argument strikes me as significant and interesting, but Davidson seems weak. It makes the unsubstantiated claim that mind is outside the laws of physics, and irreducible. |
| 2322 | Multiple realisation applies to other species, and even one individual over time [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realization goes deeper and wider than biological species, and even in the same individual the neural realizer, or correlate, of a given mental state or function may change over time through maturation and brain injuries. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.095) | |
| A reaction: The tricky question here is what you mean by 'change'. How different must a pattern of neurons be before you say it is of a different type? How do you individuate a type? |
| 2327 | Knowledge and inversion make functionalism about qualia doubtful [Kim] |
| Full Idea: My doubts about functionalist accounts of qualia are based on the much discussed arguments from qualia inversions, and from epistemic considerations. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.102) | |
| A reaction: With a colour inversion experience changes but function doesn't. But maybe function does change if you ask the right questions. 'Is this a warm colour?' It certainly strikes me that qualia contain useful (epistemic) information. |
| 2323 | Emotions have both intentionality and qualia [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It has been customary to distinguish between two broad categories of mental phenomena, the intentional and the phenomenal, without excluding those that have both (e.g. emotions). | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World [1998], §4 p.101) | |
| A reaction: This has become the conventional modern account of the mind. It seems a little too simple to say that the mind is characterised by two clearcut phenomena like this. I suspect that his picture will be modified in time. |
| 13239 | Judgement is always predicating a property of a subject [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: All judgement, for Kant, is essentially the predication of some property to some subject. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the denial of a predicate could be a judgement, or the affirmation of ambiguous predicates? |
| 13248 | We can rest truth-conditions on situations, rather than on possible worlds [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Situation semantics is a variation of the truth-conditional approach, taking the salient unit of analysis not to be the possible world, or some complete consistent index, but rather the more modest 'situation'. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.4) | |
| A reaction: When I read Davidson (and implicitly Frege) this is what I always assumed was meant. The idea that worlds are meant has crept in to give truth conditions for modal statements. Hence situation semantics must cover modality. |
| 13233 | Propositions commit to content, and not to any way of spelling it out [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Our talk of propositions expresses commitment to the general notion of content, without a commitment to any particular way of spelling this out. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of propositions I like this. It leaves open the question of whether the content belongs to the mind or the language. Animals entertain propositions, say I. |