17 ideas
| 8251 | The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The logical space of reasons is just part of the logical space of nature. ...And, in a Kantian slogan, the space of reasons is the realm of freedom. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], Intro 7) | |
| A reaction: [second half on p.5] This is a modern have-your-cake-and-eat-it view of which I am becoming very suspicious. The modern Kantians (Davidson, Nagel, McDowell) are struggling to naturalise free will, but it won't work. Just dump it! |
| 15091 | Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I favour restricting the term 'logical truth' to what logicians would count as such, excluding both analytic truths like 'Bachelors are unmarried' and Kripkean necessities like 'Gold is an element'. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I) | |
| A reaction: I agree. There is a tendency to splash the phrases 'logical truth' and 'logical necessity around in vague ways. I take them to strictly arise out of the requirements of formal systems of logic. |
| 22333 | Only language is understandable Being [Gadamer] |
| Full Idea: Being that can be understood is language. | |
| From: Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method [1960], p.450), quoted by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 5.2 | |
| A reaction: [also 1967 p.19] Glock quotes this to show that continental philosophers are just as linguistic in their approach as the analytic school. I think the main aim of representational painting is to grasp non-linguistic Being. |
| 15095 | A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The view I now favour says that the causal features of a property, both forward-looking and backward-looking, are essential to it. And it says that properties having the same causal features are identical. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: In this formulation we have essentialism about properties, as well as essentialism about the things which have the properties. |
| 15097 | I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The controversial claim of my theory is that the causal features of properties are essential to them - are features that they have in all possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: One problem is that a property can come in degrees, so what degree of the property is necessary to it? It is better to assign this claim to the fundamental properties (which are best called 'powers'). |
| 15094 | I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I now reject the formulation of the causal theory which says that a property is a cluster of conditional powers. That has a reductionist flavour, which is a cheat. We need properties to explain conditional powers, so properties won't reduce. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: [compressed wording] I agree with Mumford and Anjum in preferring his earlier formulation. I think properties are broad messy things, whereas powers can be defined more precisely, and seem to have more stability in nature. |
| 15099 | If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If it is possible that there could be possible states of affairs that are not nomologically possible, don't we therefore need a notion of metaphysical possibility that outruns nomological possibility? | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: Shoemaker rejects this possibility (p.425). I sympathise. So there is 'natural' possibility (my preferred term), which is anything which stuff, if it exists, could do, and 'logical' possibility, which is anything that doesn't lead to contradiction. |
| 15101 | Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII) | |
| A reaction: The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke). |
| 15098 | Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: We have abundant empirical evidence that when we can imagine some phenomenal situation, e.g., imagine things appearing certain ways, such a situation could actually exist. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: There seem to be good reasons for holding the opposite view too. We can imagine gold appearing to be all sorts of colours, but that doesn't make it possible. What does empirical evidence really tell us here? |
| 15100 | Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Imaginability can give us access to conceptual possibility, when we come to believe situations to be conceptually possible by reflecting on their descriptions and seeing no contradiction or incoherence. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI) | |
| A reaction: If take the absence of contradiction to indicate 'logical' possibility, but the absence of incoherence is more interesting, even if it is a bit vague. He is talking of 'situations', which I take to be features of reality. A priori synthetic? |
| 8128 | Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: McDowell has claimed that one cannot make sense of representation that plays a role in epistemology unless one takes the representation to be propositional, and thus capable of yielding reasons. | |
| From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.456 | |
| A reaction: A transcendental argument leads back to a somewhat implausible conclusion. I suspect that McDowell has a slightly inflated (Kantian) notion of the purity of the 'space of reasons'. Do philosophers just imagine their problems? |
| 19092 | There is no pure Given, but it is cultured, rather than entirely relative [McDowell, by Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: McDowell argues that the Myth of the Given shows not that there is no content to a concept that is not a matter of its inferential relations to other concepts but only that awareness of the sort that we enjoy ...is acquired in the course of acculturation. | |
| From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Danielle Macbeth - Pragmatism and Objective Truth p.185 | |
| A reaction: The first view is of Wilfred Sellars, who derives pragmatic relativism from his rejection of the Myth. This idea is helpful is seeing why McDowell has a good proposal. As I look out of my window, my immediate experience seems 'cultured'. |
| 8253 | Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The world's impressions on our senses are already possessed of conceptual content. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of McDowell's, which challenges most traditional empiricist views, and (maybe) offers a solution to the rationalist/empiricist debate. His commitment to the 'space of reasons' strikes me as an optional extra. |
| 15096 | 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps 'grue' has causal features, but only derivatively, in virtue of its relation to green. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III) | |
| A reaction: I take grue to be a behaviour, and not a property at all. The problem only arises because the notion of a 'property' became too lax. Presumably Shoemaker should also mention blue in his account. |
| 8254 | Forming concepts by abstraction from the Given is private definition, which the Private Lang. Arg. attacks [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The idea that concepts can be formed by abstraction from the Given just is the idea of private ostensive definition. So the Private Language Argument just is the rejection of the Given, in so far as it bears on the possibilities for language. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why the process of abstraction from raw impressions shouldn't be a matter of public, explicit, community negotiation. We seem to be able to share and compare fairly raw impressions without much trouble (discussing sunsets). |
| 20928 | Facts don't oppose values; they are integrated into each person's aspirations [Gadamer, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Gadamer shows that we cannot oppose facts to values, but that all facts are integrated into meaningful wholes through a personal commitment to some kind of vision of how things ought to be. | |
| From: report of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method [1960]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction | |
| A reaction: Straw man here. Whoever said that facts were 'opposed' to values? Certainly not David Hume. Any sensible empiricist of that type would try to develop values that integrated nicely with the facts. Gadamer seems to be denying facts. |
| 15093 | We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals. |