23 ideas
| 2510 | Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of philosophy is that it is an a priori enquiry into the most general facts about reality. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xi) | |
| A reaction: I think this still defines philosophy, though it also highlights the weakness of the subject, which is over-confidence about asserting necessary truths. How could the most god-like areas of human thought be about anything else? |
| 2516 | Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, or at least one large part of it, is subsequent to science; it begins where science leaves off. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxi) | |
| A reaction: In some sense this has to be true. Without metaphysics there couldn't be any science. Rationalists should not forget, though, the huge impact which Darwin's science has (or should have) on fairly abstract philosophy (e.g. epistemology). |
| 18696 | The vagueness of truthmaker claims makes it easier to run anti-realist arguments [Button] |
| Full Idea: The sheer lack of structure demanded by truthmaker theorists means that it is easier to run model-theoretic arguments against them than against correspondence theorists. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: Truthmaking is a vague relation, where correspondence is fairly specific. Model arguments say you can keep the sentences steady, but shuffle around what they refer to. |
| 18701 | The coherence theory says truth is coherence of thoughts, and not about objects [Button] |
| Full Idea: According to the coherence theory of truth, for our thoughts to be true is not for them to be about objects, but only for them to cohere with one another. This is rather terrifying. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson espoused this view in 1983, but then gave it up. It strikes me as either a daft view of truth, or a denial of truth. The coherence theory of justification, on the other hand, is correct. |
| 18694 | Permutation Theorem: any theory with a decent model has lots of models [Button] |
| Full Idea: The Permutation Theorem says that any theory with a non-trivial model has many distinct isomorphic models with the same domain. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This may be the most significant claim of model theory, since Putnam has erected an argument for anti-realism on it. See the ideas of Tim Button. |
| 2521 | 'Real' maths objects have no causal role, no determinate reference, and no abstract/concrete distinction [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Three objections to realism in philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects have no space/time location, and so no causal role; that such objects are determinate, but reference to numbers aren't; and that there is no abstract/concrete distinction. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxix) |
| 18692 | Realists believe in independent objects, correspondence, and fallibility of all theories [Button] |
| Full Idea: External realists have three principles: Independence - the world is objects that are independent of mind, language and theory; Correspondence - truth involves some correspondence of thoughts and things; Cartesian - an ideal theory might be false. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 01.1-3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Descartes's Demon for the third] Button is setting these up as targets. I subscribe to all three, in some form or other. Of course, as a theory approaches the success implying it is 'ideal', it becomes highly likely to be accurate. |
| 18693 | Indeterminacy arguments say if a theory can be made true, it has multiple versions [Button] |
| Full Idea: Indeterminacy arguments aim to show that if there is any way to make a theory true, then there are many ways to do so. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: Button says the simplest indeterminacy argument is Putnam's Permutation Argument - that you can shuffle the objects in a formal model, without affecting truth. But do we belief that metaphysics can be settled in this sort of way? |
| 18695 | An ideal theory can't be wholly false, because its consistency implies a true model [Button] |
| Full Idea: If realists think an ideal theory could be false, then the theory is consistent, and hence complete, and hence finitely modellable, and hence it is guaranteed that there is some way to make it true. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This challenges the realists' supposed claim that even the most ideal of theories could possibly be false. Presumably for a theory to be 'ideal' is not all-or-nothing. Are we capable of creating a fully ideal theory? [Löwenheim-Skolem] |
| 18415 | The actual world is just the world you are in [Lewis, by Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: Lewis equates knowing which world is actual with knowing which world one is in. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh - The Inessential Indexical 05.1 | |
| A reaction: [This view is not, of course, Actualism, but an alternative treatment of actuality, within a multitude of possibilities]. |
| 16392 | A content is a property, and believing it is self-ascribing that property [Lewis, by Recanati] |
| Full Idea: For Lewis, a belief mode is analysed by saying that to believe a content (analysed as a property) is for the subject of thought to 'self-ascribe' that property. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 18.3 | |
| A reaction: Lewis is weird. I would have thought you only self-ascribe the 'property' when you find yourself believing it. Lewis seems desperate to eliminate mental language. Belief can be a primitive concept without being primitive in ontology. |
| 2513 | We don't have a clear enough sense of meaning to pronounce some sentences meaningless or just analytic [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic meaning is not rich enough to show either that all metaphysical sentences are meaningless or that all alleged synthetic a priori propositions are just analytic a priori propositions. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xx) |
| 2522 | Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The Leibniz-Kant criticism of empiricism is that experience cannot teach us why mathematical and logical facts couldn't be otherwise than they are. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxxi) |
| 18700 | Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button] |
| Full Idea: Cartesian scepticism agonises over whether our beliefs are true or false, whereas Kantian scepticism agonises over how it is even possible for beliefs to be true or false. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Kant's question is, roughly, 'how can our thoughts succeed in being about the world?' Kantian scepticism is the more drastic, and looks vulnerable to a turning of the tables, but asking how Kantian worries can even be expressed. |
| 18698 | Predictions give the 'content' of theories, which can then be 'equivalent' or 'adequate' [Button] |
| Full Idea: The empirical 'content' of a theory is all its observable predictions. Two theories with the same predictions are empirically 'equivalent'. A theory which gets it all right at this level is empirically 'adequate'. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 05.1) |
| 18416 | Attitudes involve properties (not propositions), and belief is self-ascribing the properties [Lewis, by Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Lewis suggests that we take attitudes to have properties, rather than propositions, as contents. To stand in the belief relation to a property is to self-ascribe that property. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Robert C. Solomon - Erotic Love as a Moral Virtue 05.1 | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of convoluted suggestion that Lewis has to come up with, in pursuit of his project of a wholly consistent metaphysics. Examine Lewis's account of properties before you judge this proposal! Self-ascribing is joining a set! |
| 16390 | Lewis's popular centred worlds approach gives an attitude an index of world, subject and time [Lewis, by Recanati] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers now prefer Lewis's centred worlds framework for indexicals …It is two-dimensional, saying an attitude only has a truth-value when evaluated with respect to a contextual index, containing a subject and time, as well as a world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 18.2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed; this is said to have largely ousted the older Kaplan-Perry view] You only begin to understand the possible worlds game when you see how many problems find proposed 'solutions' there. |
| 2517 | Structuralists see meaning behaviouristically, and Chomsky says nothing about it [Katz] |
| Full Idea: In linguistics there are two schools of thought: Bloomfieldian structuralism (favoured by Quine) conceives of sentences acoustically and meanings behaviouristically; and Chomskian generative grammar (which is silent about semantics). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxiv) | |
| A reaction: They both appear to be wrong, so there is (or was) something rotten in the state of linguistics. Are the only options for meaning either behaviourist or eliminativist? |
| 18418 | A theory of perspectival de se content gives truth conditions relative to an agent [Lewis, by Cappelen/Dever] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's theory of a perspectival 'de se' content ...delivers truth conditions not absolutely, but only relative to a choice of agent/center. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh - The Inessential Indexical 05.7 | |
| A reaction: The proposal rests on a theory of 'centred' possible worlds, specifying the viewpoint of some agent within the whole system. It relies on accepting the idea that indexicals are special, which Cappelen and Dever reject. |
| 18697 | A sentence's truth conditions are all the situations where it would be true [Button] |
| Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions comprise an exhaustive list of the situations in which that sentence would be true. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: So to know its meaning you must know those conditions? Compare 'my cat is licking my finger' with 'dramatic events are happening in Ethiopia'. It should take an awful long time to grasp the second sentence. |
| 2519 | It is generally accepted that sense is defined as the determiner of reference [Katz] |
| Full Idea: There is virtually universal acceptance of Frege's definition of sense as the determiner of reference. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: Not any more, since Kripke and Putnam. It is one thing to say sense determines reference, and quite another to say that this is the definition of sense. |
| 2520 | Sense determines meaning and synonymy, not referential properties like denotation and truth [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Pace Frege, sense determines sense properties and relations, like meaningfulness and synonymy, rather than determining referential properties, like denotation and truth. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: This leaves room for Fregean 'sense', after Kripke has demolished the idea that sense determines reference. |
| 2518 | Sentences are abstract types (like musical scores), not individual tokens [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are types, not utterance tokens or mental/neural tokens, and hence sentences are abstract objects (like musical scores). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: If sentences are abstract types, then two verbally indistinguishable sentences are the same sentence. But if I say 'I am happy', that isn't the same as you saying it. |