43 ideas
| 17641 | Discoveries in mathematics can challenge philosophy, and offer it a new foundation [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Any new discovery as to mathematical method and principles is likely to upset a great deal of otherwise plausible philosophising, as well as to suggest a new philosophy which will be solid in proportion as its foundations in mathematics are securely laid. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.283) | |
| A reaction: This is a manifesto for modern analytic philosophy. I'm not convinced, especially if a fictionalist view of maths is plausible. What Russell wants is rigour, but there are other ways of getting that. Currently I favour artificial intelligence. |
| 17638 | If one proposition is deduced from another, they are more certain together than alone [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Two obvious propositions of which one can be deduced from the other both become more certain than either in isolation; thus in a complicated deductive system, many parts of which are obvious, the total probability may become all but absolute certainty. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.279) | |
| A reaction: Thagard picked this remark out, in support of his work on coherence. |
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an emerging naturalist consensus that is Realist in ontology and epistemology, externalist in semantics, and computationalist in cognitive psychology, which nicely allows us to retain our understanding of ourselves as rational creatures. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 17632 | Non-contradiction was learned from instances, and then found to be indubitable [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The law of contradiction must have been originally discovered by generalising from instances, though, once discovered, it was found to be quite as indubitable as the instances. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.274) |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A psychology that can't make sense of such facts as that mental processes are typically truth-preserving is ipso facto dead in the water. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §3) |
| 17629 | Which premises are ultimate varies with context [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Premises which are ultimate in one investigation may cease to be so in another. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.273) |
| 17630 | The sources of a proof are the reasons why we believe its conclusion [Russell] |
| Full Idea: In mathematics, except in the earliest parts, the propositions from which a given proposition is deduced generally give the reason why we believe the given proposition. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.273) |
| 17640 | Finding the axioms may be the only route to some new results [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The premises [of a science] ...are pretty certain to lead to a number of new results which could not otherwise have been known. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.282) | |
| A reaction: I identify this as the 'fruitfulness' that results when the essence of something is discovered. |
| 17627 | It seems absurd to prove 2+2=4, where the conclusion is more certain than premises [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is an apparent absurdity in proceeding ...through many rather recondite propositions of symbolic logic, to the 'proof' of such truisms as 2+2=4: for it is plain that the conclusion is more certain than the premises, and the supposed proof seems futile. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.272) | |
| A reaction: Famously, 'Principia Mathematica' proved this fact at enormous length. I wonder if this thought led Moore to his common sense view of his own hand - the conclusion being better than the sceptical arguments? |
| 17628 | Arithmetic was probably inferred from relationships between physical objects [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When 2 + 2 =4 was first discovered, it was probably inferred from the case of sheep and other concrete cases. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.272) |
| 17637 | The most obvious beliefs are not infallible, as other obvious beliefs may conflict [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Even where there is the highest degree of obviousness, we cannot assume that we are infallible - a sufficient conflict with other obvious propositions may lead us to abandon our belief, as in the case of a hallucination afterwards recognised as such. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.279) | |
| A reaction: This approach to fallibilism seems to arise from the paradox that undermined Frege's rather obvious looking axioms. After Peirce and Russell, fallibilism has become a secure norm of modern thought. |
| 17639 | Believing a whole science is more than believing each of its propositions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Although intrinsic obviousness is the basis of every science, it is never, in a fairly advanced science, the whole of our reason for believing any one proposition of the science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.279) |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Premeditated cognitive management is possible if knowing the contents of one's thoughts would tell you what would make them true and what would cause you to have them. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I love the idea of 'cognitive management'. Since belief is fairly involuntary, I subject myself to the newspapers, books, TV and conversation which will create the style of beliefs to which I aspire. Why? |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: To be in the audience for an experiment you have to believe what the experimenter believes about what the outcome would mean, but not necessarily what the outcome will be. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Experimentation is an occasional and more or less self-conscious exercise in what informal thinking does all the time without thinking about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A creature that knows what makes its thoughts true and what would cause it to have them, could therefore cause itself to have true thoughts. …This would explain why experimentation is so close to the heart of our cognitive style. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You can put yourself into a situation where you may be caused to believe that P. Putting a question to someone who is in the know is one species of this behaviour, and putting a question to Nature (an experiment) is another. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Theories function as links in the causal chains that run from environmental outcomes to the beliefs that they cause the inquirer to have. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 17631 | Induction is inferring premises from consequences [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.274) | |
| A reaction: So induction is just deduction in reverse? Induction is transcendental deduction? Do I deduce the premises from observing a lot of white swans? Hm. |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I hold that psychological laws are intentional, that semantics is purely informational, and that thinking is computation (and that it is possible to hold all of these assumptions at once). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: When he puts it baldly like that, it doesn't sound terribly persuasive. Thinking is 'computation'? Raw experience is irrelevant? What is it 'like' to spot an interesting connection between two propositions or concepts? It's not like adding 7 and 5. |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I think it is likely that we are the only creatures that can think about the contents of our thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a major idea. If you ask me the traditional question - what is the essential difference between us and other animals? - this is my answer (not language, or reason). We are the metathinkers. |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The Cartesian view is that the interaction problem does arise, but is unsolvable because interaction is miraculous. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: A rather unsympathetic statement of the position. Cartesians might think that God could explain to us how interaction works. Cartesians are not mysterians, I think, but they see no sign of any theory of interaction. |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The question how mental representations could be both semantic, like propositions, and causal, like rocks, trees, and neural firings, is arguably just the interaction problem all over again. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting way of presenting the problem. If you seem to be confronting the interaction problem, you have probably drifted into a bogus dualist way of thinking. Retreat, and reformulate you questions and conceptual apparatus, till the question vanishes. |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1) | |
| A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states. |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird. |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes are really three-place relations, between a creature, a proposition, and a mode of presentation (which are sentences of Mentalese). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'really'! Why do we need a creature? Isn't 'hoping it will rain' a propositional attitude which some creature may or may not have? Fodor wants it to be physical, but it's abstract? |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mentalism isn't gratuitous; you need it to explain rationality. Mental causation buys you behaviours that are unlike reflexes in at least three ways: they're autonomous, they're productive, and they're experimental. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: He makes his three ways sound all-or-nothing, which is (I believe) the single biggest danger when thinking about the mind. "Either you are conscious, or you are not..." |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There isn't any XYZ, and there couldn't be any, and so we don't have to worry about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: Jadeite and Nephrite are real enough, which are virtually indistinguishable variants of jade. You just need Twin Jewellers instead of Twin Earths. We could build them, and employ twins to work there. |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We need the idea of broad content to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth-conditions that they do. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be (as Dummett points out) a potential circularity here, as you can hardly know the truth-conditions of something if you don't already know its content. |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If the words of 'Swamp Man' (spontaneously created, with concepts) are about XYZ on Twin Earth, it is not because he's causally connected to the stuff, but because XYZ would cause his 'water' tokens (in the absence of H2O). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App B) | |
| A reaction: The sight of the Eiffel tower causes my 'France' tokens, so is my word "France" about the Eiffel Tower? What would cause my 'nothing' tokens? |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure where this fits into the great jigsaw of the mind, but it strikes me as an acute and important observation. The truth of a thought is not essential to make you have it. Ask Othello. |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I assume intentional content reduces (in some way) to information. …The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not the way that it is related to other thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Does this make Fodor a 'weak' functionalist? The 'strong' version would say a thought is merely a location in a flow diagram, but Fodor's 'mentalism' includes a further 'content' in each diagram box. |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Semantics, according to the informational view, is mostly about counterfactuals; what counts for the identity of my concepts is not what I do distinguish but what I could distinguish if I cared to (even using instruments and experts). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: We all differ in our discriminations (and awareness of expertise), so our concepts would differ, which is bad news for communication (see Idea 223). The view has some plausibility, though. |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the essence of semantic externalism that there is nothing that you have to believe, there are no inferences that you have to accept, to have the concept 'elm'. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: [REMINDER: broad content is filed in 18.C.7, under 'Thought' rather than under language. That is because I am a philospher of thought, rather than of language. |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the causal connection between the state of the world and the contents of beliefs that the reduction of meaning to information is designed to insure. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why characterising the contents of a belief in terms of its information has to amount to a 'reduction'. A cup of tea isn't reduced to tea. Connections imply duality. |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you thereby know what would make the thought true. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: The truthmaker might by physically impossible, and careful thought might show it to be contradictory - but that wouldn't destroy the meaning. |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that Frege cases [knowing Jocasta but not mother] show that reference doesn't determine sense, and Twin cases [knowing water but not H2O] show that sense doesn't determine reference. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: How about 'references don't contain much information', and 'descriptions may not fix what they are referring to'? Simple really. |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Broad semantic theories generally hold that the basic semantic properties of thoughts are truth and denotation. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: I think truth and denotation are the basic semantic properties, but I am dubious about whole-hearted broad semantic theories, so I seem to have gone horribly wrong somewhere. |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You need an externalist semantics to explain why the contents of beliefs should have anything to do with how the world is. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Since externalist semantics only emerged in the 1970s, that implies that no previous theory had any notion that language had some connection to how the world is. Eh? |
| 18665 | Moral problems are responsibility conflicts, needing contextual and narrative attention to relationships [Gilligan] |
| Full Idea: The moral problem arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than competing rights, and its resolution needs contextual and narrative thinking. This morality as care centers around the understanding of responsibility and relationships. | |
| From: Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice [1982], p.19), quoted by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) | |
| A reaction: [Kymlicka cites her as a key voice in feminist moral philosophy] I like all of this, especially the very original thought (to me, anyway) that moral thinking should be 'narrative' in character. |
| 17633 | The law of gravity has many consequences beyond its grounding observations [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The law of gravitation leads to many consequences which could not be discovered merely from the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Regressive Method for Premises in Mathematics [1907], p.275) |