Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'God and Human Attributes', 'The Varieties of Reference' and 'The Problem of Natural Laws'

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7 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception

12580	Experiences have no conceptual content [Evans, by Greco]
	Full Idea: In Evans's work experiences are conceived of as not having a conceptual content at all.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal
	A reaction: I presume it is this view which provoked McDowell's contrary view in 'Mind and World'. I say this is a job for neuroscience, and I struggle to see what philosophical questions hang on the outcome. I think I side with Evans.

7643	We have far fewer colour concepts than we have discriminations of colour [Evans]
	Full Idea: Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are shades colour that we can sensibly discriminate?
	From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 7.5)
	A reaction: This is the argument (rejected by McDowell) that experience cannot be conceptual because experience is too rich. We should not confuse lack of concepts with lack of words. I may have a concept of a colour between two shades, but no word for it.

18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content

23794	Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte]
	Full Idea: Evans introduced the idea that there are some representational states, for example perceptual experiences, which have content that is nonconceptual.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 3.4
	A reaction: McDowell famously disagree, and whether all experience is inherently conceptualised is a main debate from that period. Hard to see how it could be settled, but I incline to McDowell, because minimal perception hardly counts as 'experience'.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 1. Concepts / a. Nature of concepts

16366	The Generality Constraint says if you can think a predicate you can apply it to anything [Evans]
	Full Idea: If a subject can be credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being G of which he has conception. This condition I call the 'Generality Constraint'.
	From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], p.104), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 5.3
	A reaction: Recanati endorses the Constraint in his account of mental files. Apparently if I can entertain the thought of a circle being round, I can also entertain the thought of it being square, so I am not too sure about this one.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / b. Concepts as abilities

12575	Concepts have a 'Generality Constraint', that we must know how predicates apply to them [Evans, by Peacocke]
	Full Idea: Evans's 'Generality Constraint' says that if a thinker is capable of attitudes to the content Fa and possesses the singular concept b, then he is capable of having attitudes to the content Fb.
	From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 4.3) by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 1.1
	A reaction: So having an attitude becomes the test of whether one possesses a concept. I suppose if one says 'You know you've got a concept when you are capable of thinking about it', that is much the same thing. Sounds fine.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 3. Laws and Generalities

4800	Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos]
	Full Idea: Cohen contends that statements that express laws of nature are the products of eliminative induction, where accidentally true generalisations are the products of enumerative induction.
	From: report of L. Jonathan Cohen (The Problem of Natural Laws [1980], p.222) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §7.1
	A reaction: The idea is that enumerative induction only offers the support of positive instances, where eliminative induction involves attempts to falsify a range of hypotheses. This still bases laws on observed regularities, rather than essences or mechanisms.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / c. Moral Argument

20713	God must be fit for worship, but worship abandons morally autonomy, but there is no God [Rachels, by Davies,B]
	Full Idea: Rachels argues 1) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship, 2) No being could be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent, so 3) There cannot be a being who is God.
	From: report of James Rachels (God and Human Attributes [1971], 7 p.334) by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 9 'd morality'
	A reaction: Presumably Lionel Messi can be a fitting object of worship without being God. Since the problem is with being worshipful, rather than with being God, should I infer that Messi doesn't exist?