46 ideas
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 10301 | The axiom of choice is controversial, but it could be replaced [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The axiom of choice has a troubled history, but is now standard in mathematics. It could be replaced with a principle of comprehension for functions), or one could omit the variables ranging over functions. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], n 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) |
| 10588 | First-order logic is Complete, and Compact, with the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Early study of first-order logic revealed a number of important features. Gödel showed that there is a complete, sound and effective deductive system. It follows that it is Compact, and there are also the downward and upward Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.1) |
| 10298 | Some say that second-order logic is mathematics, not logic [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Some authors argue that second-order logic (with standard semantics) is not logic at all, but is a rather obscure form of mathematics. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.4) |
| 10299 | If the aim of logic is to codify inferences, second-order logic is useless [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: If the goal of logical study is to present a canon of inference, a calculus which codifies correct inference patterns, then second-order logic is a non-starter. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be because it is not 'complete'. However, moves like plural quantification seem aimed at capturing ordinary language inferences, so the difficulty is only that there isn't a precise 'calculus'. |
| 10300 | Logical consequence can be defined in terms of the logical terminology [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Informally, logical consequence is sometimes defined in terms of the meanings of a certain collection of terms, the so-called 'logical terminology'. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a compositional account, where we build a full account from an account of the atomic bits, perhaps presented as truth-tables. |
| 10290 | Second-order variables also range over properties, sets, relations or functions [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Second-order variables can range over properties, sets, or relations on the items in the domain-of-discourse, or over functions from the domain itself. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.1) |
| 10590 | Up Löwenheim-Skolem: if natural numbers satisfy wffs, then an infinite domain satisfies them [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Upward Löwenheim-Skolem: if a set of first-order formulas is satisfied by a domain of at least the natural numbers, then it is satisfied by a model of at least some infinite cardinal. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.1) |
| 10296 | The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems fail for second-order languages with standard semantics [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Both of the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems fail for second-order languages with a standard semantics | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.3.2) |
| 10297 | The Löwenheim-Skolem theorem seems to be a defect of first-order logic [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is usually taken as a sort of defect (often thought to be inevitable) of the first-order logic. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: [He is quoting Wang 1974 p.154] |
| 10292 | Downward Löwenheim-Skolem: if there's an infinite model, there is a countable model [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Downward Löwenheim-Skolem: a finite or denumerable set of first-order formulas that is satisfied by a model whose domain is infinite is satisfied in a model whose domain is the natural numbers | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.1) |
| 10294 | Second-order logic has the expressive power for mathematics, but an unworkable model theory [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Full second-order logic has all the expressive power needed to do mathematics, but has an unworkable model theory. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [he credits Cowles for this remark] Having an unworkable model theory sounds pretty serious to me, as I'm not inclined to be interested in languages which don't produce models of some sort. Surely models are the whole point? |
| 10591 | Logicians use 'property' and 'set' interchangeably, with little hanging on it [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: In studying second-order logic one can think of relations and functions as extensional or intensional, or one can leave it open. Little turns on this here, and so words like 'property', 'class', and 'set' are used interchangeably. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Higher-Order Logic [2001], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Important. Students of the metaphysics of properties, who arrive with limited experience of logic, are bewildered by this attitude. Note that the metaphysics is left wide open, so never let logicians hijack the metaphysical problem of properties. |
| 14804 | Is chance just unknown laws? But the laws operate the same, whatever chance occurs [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Chance is the name for some law that is unknown to us? If you say 'each die moves under the influence of precise mechanical laws', it seems to me it is not these laws which made the tie turn up sixes, for the laws act the same when other throws come up. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined [1892], p.333) |
| 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? |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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? |
| 14805 | Is there any such thing as death among the lower organisms? [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Among some of the lower organisms, it is a moot point with biologists whether there be anything which ought to be called death. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined [1892], p.334) | |
| A reaction: The point, presumably, is that one phase of an organisms moves into another, and the 'individuals' are not distinct enough for their 'death' to be a significant transition. A nicely mind-expanding thought. |
| 14806 | If the world is just mechanical, its whole specification has no more explanation than mere chance [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mechanical philosopher leaves the whole specification of the world utterly unaccounted for, which is pretty nearly as bad as to baldly attribute it to chance. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined [1892], p.337) | |
| A reaction: If now complete is even remotely available, then that doesn't seem to matter too much, but if there is one message modern physics teaches philosophy, it is that we should not give up on trying to answer the deeper questions. |
| 14803 | The more precise the observations, the less reliable appear to be the laws of nature [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Try to verify any law of nature, and you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show irregular departures from the law. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined [1892], p.331) | |
| A reaction: This nicely encapsulates modern doubts about whether the so-called 'laws' of nature actually capture what is going on in the real world. |