78 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) |
| 8187 | Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions, which he called 'thoughts' and regarded as being expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1 | |
| A reaction: Sometimes it is necessary to know the time, the place, and the speaker before one can evaluate the truth of a proposition. Not just indexical words, but the indexical aspect of, say, "the team played badly". |
| 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) |
| 8729 | Intuitionists deny excluded middle, because it is committed to transcendent truth or objects [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Intuitionists in mathematics deny excluded middle, because it is symptomatic of faith in the transcendent existence of mathematical objects and/or the truth of mathematical statements. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: There are other problems with excluded middle, such as vagueness, but on the whole I, as a card-carrying 'realist', am committed to the law of excluded middle. |
| 18772 | We can treat designation by a few words as a proper name [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The designation of a single object can also consist of several words or other signs. For brevity, let every such designation be called a proper name. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: Frege regards names and descriptions as in the same class. Russell, and then Kripke, had things to say about that. |
| 14075 | Proper name in modal contexts refer obliquely, to their usual sense [Frege, by Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: According to Frege, a proper name in a modal context refers obliquely; its reference there is its usual sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity V | |
| A reaction: [he cites the fourth page of Frege's 'Sense and Reference'] One can foresee problems with the word 'usual' here. Frege might be offering something better than Kripke does here. |
| 10424 | A Fregean proper name has a sense determining an object, instead of a concept [Frege, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: We could think of a referring expression in Fregean terms as what he calls a proper name (Eigenname): its Sinn (sense) is supposed to determine an object as opposed to a concept as its Bedeutung (referent). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.1 | |
| A reaction: The problem would be that the same expression could precisely indicate an object on one occasion, nearly do so on another, and totally fail on a third. |
| 18773 | People may have different senses for 'Aristotle', like 'pupil of Plato' or 'teacher of Alexander' [Frege] |
| Full Idea: In the case of an actual proper name such as 'Aristotle' opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], note), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: This note is 'notorious', and was a central target for Kripke's critique. Frege says people's senses may vary on this, and thinks the sense of 'Aristotle' can be accurately expressed. |
| 4978 | The meaning of a proper name is the designated object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a proper name is the object itself which we designate by using it. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.30) | |
| A reaction: I can't actually make sense of this. How can a physical object be identical with a meaning? What sort of thing is a 'meaning'? Meanings are just 'in the head', I suspect. |
| 10510 | Frege ascribes reference to incomplete expressions, as well as to singular terms [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege ascribes reference not only to singular terms, but equally to expressions of other kinds (the various kinds of incomplete expressions). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.3 Intro | |
| A reaction: The incomplete expressions presumably make reference to concepts. Frege may not seem, therefore, to have a notion of reference as what plugs language into reality - except that he is presumably a platonist about concepts. |
| 18937 | If sentences have a 'sense', empty name sentences can be understood that way [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of 'sense' showed how sentences with empty names can have meaning and be understood. One just has to grasp the sense of the sentence (the thought expressed), and this is available even in the absence of a referent for the name. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is that this provides a promising solution to the empty names problem, which certainly never bothered me before I started reading philosophy. Sawyer says co-reference and truth problems remain. |
| 18940 | It is a weakness of natural languages to contain non-denoting names [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Languages have the fault of containing expressions which fail to designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Wrong, Frege! This is a strength of natural languages! Names are tools. It isn't a failure of your hammer if you can't find any nails. |
| 18939 | In a logically perfect language every well-formed proper name designates an object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A logically perfect language should satisfy the conditions that every expression grammatically well constructed as a proper name out of signs already introduced shall in fact designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.41) | |
| A reaction: This seems to cramp your powers of reasoning, if you must know the object to use the name ('Jack the Ripper'), and reasoning halts once you deny the object's existence ('Pegasus'), or you don't know if names co-refer ('Hesperus/Phosphorus'). |
| 9462 | Frege is intensionalist about reference, as it is determined by sense; identity of objects comes first [Frege, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Intensionalism of reference is owing to Frege (in his otherwise extensionalist philosophy of language). Sense determines reference, so intension determines extension. An object must first satisfy identity requirements, and is thus in a set. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Dale Jacquette - Intro to 'Philosophy of Logic' §4 | |
| A reaction: The notion that identity of objects comes first sounds right - you can't just take objects as basic - they have to be individuated in order to be discussed. |
| 18936 | Frege moved from extensional to intensional semantics when he added the idea of 'sense' [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege moved from an extensional semantic theory (that countenances only linguistic expressions and their referents) to an intensional theory that invokes in addition a notion of sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: This was because of Frege's famous 'puzzles', such as the morning/evening star. Quine loudly proclaimed himself an 'extensionalist', implying that he had extensional solutions for Frege's Puzzles. |
| 8763 | The number 3 is presumably identical as a natural, an integer, a rational, a real, and complex [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: It is surely wise to identify the positions in the natural numbers structure with their counterparts in the integer, rational, real and complex number structures. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that this might be denied, since 3, 3/1, 3.00.., and -3*i^2 are all arrived at by different methods of construction. Natural 3 has a predecessor, but real 3 doesn't. I agree, intuitively, with Shapiro. Russell (1919) disagreed. |
| 18249 | Cauchy gave a formal definition of a converging sequence. [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A sequence a1,a2,... of rational numbers is 'Cauchy' if for each rational number ε>0 there is a natural number N such that for all natural numbers m, n, if m>N and n>N then -ε < am - an < ε. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.2 n4) | |
| A reaction: The sequence is 'Cauchy' if N exists. |
| 8764 | Categories are the best foundation for mathematics [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: There is a dedicated contingent who hold that the category of 'categories' is the proper foundation for mathematics. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.3 n7) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lawvere (1966) and McLarty (1993), the latter presenting the view as a form of structuralism. I would say that the concept of a category will need further explication, and probably reduce to either sets or relations or properties. |
| 8762 | Two definitions of 3 in terms of sets disagree over whether 1 is a member of 3 [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Zermelo said that for each number n, its successor is the singleton of n, so 3 is {{{null}}}, and 1 is not a member of 3. Von Neumann said each number n is the set of numbers less than n, so 3 is {null,{null},{null,{null}}}, and 1 is a member of 3. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 645 - Zermelo could save Plato from the criticisms of Aristotle! These two accounts are cited by opponents of the set-theoretical account of numbers, because it seems impossible to arbitrate between them. |
| 8760 | Numbers do not exist independently; the essence of a number is its relations to other numbers [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The structuralist vigorously rejects any sort of ontological independence among the natural numbers; the essence of a natural number is its relations to other natural numbers. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to place the emphasis on ordinals (what order?) rather than on cardinality (how many?). I am strongly inclined to think that this is the correct view, though you can't really have relations if there is nothing to relate. |
| 8761 | A 'system' is related objects; a 'pattern' or 'structure' abstracts the pure relations from them [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A 'system' is a collection of objects with certain relations among them; a 'pattern' or 'structure' is the abstract form of a system, highlighting the interrelationships and ignoring any features they do not affect how they relate to other objects. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: Note that 'ignoring' features is a psychological account of abstraction, which (thanks to Frege and Geach) is supposed to be taboo - but which I suspect is actually indispensable in any proper account of thought and concepts. |
| 8744 | Logicism seems to be a non-starter if (as is widely held) logic has no ontology of its own [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that principles of arithmetic are derivable from the laws of logic runs against a now common view that logic itself has no ontology. There are no particular logical objects. From this perspective logicism is a non-starter. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This criticism strikes me as utterly devastating. There are two routes to go: prove that logic does have an ontology of objects (what would they be?), or - better - deny that arithmetic contains any 'objects'. Or give up logicism. |
| 8749 | Term Formalism says mathematics is just about symbols - but real numbers have no names [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Term Formalism is the view that mathematics is just about characters or symbols - the systems of numerals and other linguistic forms. ...This will cover integers and rational numbers, but what are real numbers supposed to be, if they lack names? | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Real numbers (such as pi and root-2) have infinite decimal expansions, so we can start naming those. We could also start giving names like 'Harry' to other reals, though it might take a while. OK, I give up. |
| 8750 | Game Formalism is just a matter of rules, like chess - but then why is it useful in science? [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Game Formalism likens mathematics to chess, where the 'content' of mathematics is exhausted by the rules of operating with its language. ...This, however, leaves the problem of why the mathematical games are so useful to the sciences. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This thought pushes us towards structuralism. It could still be a game, but one we learned from observing nature, which plays its own games. Chess is, after all, modelled on warfare. |
| 8752 | Deductivism says mathematics is logical consequences of uninterpreted axioms [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The Deductivist version of formalism (sometimes called 'if-thenism') says that the practice of mathematics consists of determining logical consequences of otherwise uninterpreted axioms. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [Hilbert is the source] More plausible than Term or Game Formalism (qv). It still leaves the question of why it seems applicable to nature, and why those particular axioms might be chosen. In some sense, though, it is obviously right. |
| 8753 | Critics resent the way intuitionism cripples mathematics, but it allows new important distinctions [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Critics commonly complain that the intuitionist restrictions cripple the mathematician. On the other hand, intuitionist mathematics allows for many potentially important distinctions not available in classical mathematics, and is often more subtle. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: The main way in which it cripples is its restriction on talk of infinity ('Cantor's heaven'), which was resented by Hilbert. Since high-level infinities are interesting, it would be odd if we were not allowed to discuss them. |
| 8731 | Conceptualist are just realists or idealist or nominalists, depending on their view of concepts [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: I classify conceptualists according to what they say about properties or concepts. If someone classified properties as existing independent of language I would classify her as a realist in ontology of mathematics. Or they may be idealists or nominalists. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Shapiro wants to eliminate 'conceptualist' as a useful label in philosophy of mathematics. He's probably right. All thought involves concepts, but that doesn't produce a conceptualist theory of, say, football. |
| 8730 | 'Impredicative' definitions refer to the thing being described [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A definition of a mathematical entity is 'impredicative' if it refers to a collection that contains the defined entity. The definition of 'least upper bound' is impredicative as it refers to upper bounds and characterizes a member of this set. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The big question is whether mathematics can live with impredicative definitions, or whether they threaten to be viciously circular, and undermine the whole enterprise. |
| 10533 | We can't get a semantics from nouns and predicates referring to the same thing [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege is denying that on a traditional basis we can construct a workable semantics for a language; we can't regard terms like 'wisdom' as standing for the very same thing as the predicate 'x is wise' stands for. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: This follows from Idea 10532, indicating how to deal with the problem of universals. So predicates refer to concepts, and singular terms to objects. But I see no authoritative way of deciding which is which, given that paraphrases are possible. |
| 4893 | Frege was asking how identities could be informative [Frege, by Perry] |
| Full Idea: A problem which Frege called to our attention is: how can identities be informative? | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §5.2 | |
| A reaction: E.g. (in Russell's example) how is "Scott is the author of 'Waverley'" more informative than "Scott is Scott"? A simple answer might just be that informative identities also tell you of a thing's properties. "The red ball is the heavy ball". |
| 8725 | Rationalism tries to apply mathematical methodology to all of knowledge [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Rationalism is a long-standing school that can be characterized as an attempt to extend the perceived methodology of mathematics to all of knowledge. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Sometimes called 'Descartes's Dream', or the 'Enlightenment Project', the dream of proving everything. Within maths, Hilbert's Programme aimed for the same certainty. Idea 22 is the motto for the opposition to this approach. |
| 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. |
| 18752 | 'The concept "horse"' denotes a concept, yet seems also to denote an object [Frege, by McGee] |
| Full Idea: The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can be the subject of a sentence, and ought to denote an object. But it clearly denotes the concept "horse". Yet Fregean concepts are said to be 'incomplete' objects, which led to confusion. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Vann McGee - Logical Consequence 4 | |
| A reaction: This is the notorious 'concept "horse"' problem, which was bad news for Frege's idea of a concept. |
| 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. |
| 22318 | Frege failed to show when two sets of truth-conditions are equivalent [Frege, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Frege's account suffered from a lack of precision about when two sets of truth-conditions should count as equivalent. (Wittgenstein aimed to rectify this defect). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 50 Intro |
| 4980 | The meaning (reference) of a sentence is its truth value - the circumstance of it being true or false [Frege] |
| Full Idea: We are driven into accepting the truth-value of a sentence as constituting what it means (refers to). By the truth-value I understand the circumstance that it is true or false. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Sounds bizarre, but Black's translation doesn't help. The notion of what the whole sentence refers to (rather than its sense) is a very theoretical notion. 'All true sentences refer to the truth' sounds harmless enough. |
| 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. |
| 9180 | Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege thought of a language as a game played with fixed rules, there being all the difference in the world between a move in the game and an alteration of the rules; but, if holism is correct, every move in the game changes the rules. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege's Distinction of Sense and Reference p.248 | |
| A reaction: Rules do shift over time, so there must be some mechanism for that - the rules can't sit in sacrosanct isolation. People play games with the language itself, as well as using it to play other games. |
| 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. |
| 4981 | The reference of a word should be understood as part of the reference of the sentence [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I have transferred the relation between the parts and the whole of the sentence to its reference, by calling the reference of the word part of the reference of the sentence, if the word itself is part of the sentence. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Since Frege says the reference of a true sentence is simply to truth, words have reference insofar as they make contributions to attempts at stating truths. |
| 15597 | Frege's Puzzle: from different semantics we infer different reference for two names with the same reference [Frege, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Frege's Puzzle: If two sentences convey different information, they have different semantic roles, so the names 'Cicero' and 'Tully' are semantically different, in which case they are referentially different - but they are not referentially different. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Kit Fine - Semantic Relationism 2.A | |
| A reaction: [this is my summary of Fine's summary] Given the paradox, the question is which of these premisses should be challenged. Fregeans reject their being referentially different. Referentialists reject the different semantic roles. |
| 17002 | Frege's 'sense' is ambiguous, between the meaning of a designator, and how it fixes reference [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. He takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. …They correspond to two ordinary uses of 'definition'. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker quotes this, but seems unconvinced that Frege is guilty. If the 'meaning' largely consists of a way of determining a reference, Frege would be in the clear. |
| 18778 | Every descriptive name has a sense, but may not have a reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It may perhaps be granted that every grammatically well-formed expression representing a proper name always has a sense. But this is not to say that to this sense there also corresponds a reference. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 3.1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this concerns fictional names such as 'Pegasus'. It seems to be good simple evidence for the distinction between sense and reference. |
| 7805 | Frege started as anti-realist, but the sense/reference distinction led him to realism [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: In the Grundlagen of 1884 Frege was an anti-realist, but in Grundgesetze of 1893 he is a realist, who has profited by his interim discovery of the sense/reference distinction. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by José A. Benardete - Logic and Ontology | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of the new realist philosophy which seems to be growing out of Kripke and co's causal theory of reference. The very notion of reference is realist (hence Russell's realism). |
| 4976 | The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.27) | |
| A reaction: Max Black translates 'bedeutung' as 'meaning', but nowadays everyone calls it 'reference'. This is Frege's crucial distinction, which greatly clarified analytical philosophy. Nevertheless, is it a sharp distinction? E.g. referring to a fictional name? |
| 4977 | In maths, there are phrases with a clear sense, but no actual reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'the least rapidly convergent series' has a sense but demonstrably there is no reference, since a less rapidly convergent series (for any given series) can always be found. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.28) | |
| A reaction: A nice example. 'The second Kennedy assassin' has a clear meaning, but does it have a reference? The meaning 'points at' a possible reference. We yet discover an identity. |
| 4979 | We are driven from sense to reference by our desire for truth [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The striving for truth drives us always to advance from the sense to the thing meant (the reference). | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.33) | |
| A reaction: As in, we want to know the reference of 'the person who shot Kennedy'. I always perk up if truth is mentioned in a discussion of language, because it reminds us of the point of the whole thing. In 'Is he the best man?' I have the reference, not the truth. |
| 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. |
| 15155 | Expressions always give ways of thinking of referents, rather than the referents themselves [Frege, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, expressions always contribute ways of thinking of their referents, rather than the referents themselves, to the thoughts expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Scott Soames - Philosophy of Language 1.16 | |
| A reaction: I have some sympathy for Frege. It always strikes me as daft to think that if I say 'my dustbin is empty', the dustbin becomes 'part' of my sentence. Sentences don't contain large plastic objects. |
| 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. |
| 11126 | 'Sense' gives meaning to non-referring names, and to two expressions for one referent [Frege, by Margolis/Laurence] |
| Full Idea: Frege notes that an expression without a referent ('Pegasus') needn't lack a meaning, since it still has a sense, and the same referent (Eric Blair) can be associated with different expressions (George Orwell) because they convey different senses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice neat summary of the value of Frege's introduction of the sense/reference distinction, which seems to me to be virtually undeniable (a rare event in modern philosophy). |
| 8164 | Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning, that is, a theory of how a human language functions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Frege had an advantage because he was the first to distinguish sense from reference, and hence to identify the subject-matter of the theory. Essentially Frege's theory is that of truth-conditions. |
| 9817 | Earlier Frege focuses on content itself; later he became interested in understanding content [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Earlier Frege was interested solely in the content of our statements, not in our grasp of that content. His notion of 'sense' from 1891 onwards, has to do with understanding; the sense of an expression is something we grasp. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The important point must be that the later theory depends on the earlier, so we can hardly give theories of understanding, if we don't have a view about what it is that is understood. |
| 8171 | Frege divided the meaning of a sentence into sense, force and tone [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege distinguished three components of the meaning of a sentence: sense, force and tone; he used no single term for 'linguistic meaning' in general. ...The sense is only what bears on the truth or falsity of what the sentence expresses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 3 | |
| A reaction: Modern theories of meaning seem to assume that there is one item called 'meaning' which needs to be explained, but presumably this is 'strict and literal meaning', leaving the rest to pragmatics. |
| 4954 | Frege uses 'sense' to mean both a designator's meaning, and the way its reference is determined [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. For he takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: This criticism doesn't surprise me, as heroic pioneers like Frege seem to have been extremely unclear about what they were claiming. Kripke has helped, but we still need some great mind to step in and sort out the mess. |
| 7304 | Frege explained meaning as sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege analysed the intuitive notion of meaning in terms of the notions of sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], Pref) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language Pref | |
| A reaction: This suggests that there are two approaches to the explanation of meaning: either a simple identity with some other mental fact, or an analysis (as here) into a range of components. I remain open-minded on that. |
| 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? |