30 ideas
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Once we move beyond investigating correlations between observables the question of what does or should guide our choice between alternative explanatory accounts becomes problematic. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IX.2) |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We are only justified in regarding scientific practice as the very paradigm of rationality if we can justify the claim that scientific change is rationally explicable. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.2) |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.3) |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: For positivists it was taken that while theory change meant change in the meaning of theoretical terms, the meaning of observational terms was invariant under theory change. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The critics of positivism attacked the conception of a dichotomy between theory and observation. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot explicate a useful notion of verisimilitude in terms of the number of truths and the number of falsehoods generated by a theory, because they are infinite. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.4) |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If a theory is a better approximation to the truth, then it is likely that it will have greater predictive power. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VIII.8) |
| 19100 | Truth makes disagreements matter, or worth settling [Misak] |
| Full Idea: The role of truth is to make disagreements matter, or to make sense of wanting to resolve disagreements. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Huw Price 2003] This suggests that the most important use of 'truth' is forensic. It is hard to make any sense of a law court without a robust sense of truth. Trial by jury, rather than some great personage, shows this value. |
| 19094 | For pragmatists the loftiest idea of truth is just a feature of what remains forever assertible [Misak] |
| Full Idea: For pragmatists there is an unseverable connection between making an assertion and claiming that it is true. ...Were we to get to a belief that is forever assertible...then we would have a true belief. There is nothing higher or better we could ask of it. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: She is particularly drawing on Peirce. She says his 'ideal end of enquiry' idea is a small aspect of his view of truth, which is mainly given here. I had taken the pragmatic view of truth to be silly, but I may rethink. |
| 19099 | 'True' is used for emphasis, clarity, assertion, comparison, objectivity, meaning, negation, consequence... [Misak] |
| Full Idea: 'P is true' is used to emphasise p, and avoid logic problems. The pragmatists says there are plenty of other uses: the aim of assertion or deliberation, the improvement of our views, distinguishing objectivity, explaining meaning, negation, consequence... | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Pragmatism seems to break 'true' down into its many uses, rather than having a specific theory of truth. This might be where ordinary language philosophy (how is the word 'true' used) meets pragmatism (how is the concept [true] used). |
| 19103 | 'That's true' doesn't just refer back to a sentence, but implies sustained evidence for it [Misak] |
| Full Idea: The pragmatist says 'That's so' or 'that's true' are not just 'pro-sentential', but carry with them the thought that evidence does currently speak in favour of the statement asserted, and the prediction that it will continue to speak in favour. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice point made by a pragmatist against the flimsy view of truth held by various deflationary views. You ought to believe what is true, and stand by what you hold to be true. |
| 19105 | Truth isn't a grand elusive property, if it is just the aim of our assertions and inquiries [Misak] |
| Full Idea: If truth is what satisfies our aims in first-order assertion and inquiry (as the pragmatist says), then there is no search for an elusive property, or a metaphysical property, or a property which we cannot grasp. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: This pragmatic approach is much more persuasive than the usual caricature of pragmatic truth (Idea 19097), but I'm beginning to wonder how you distinguish an 'inquiry' (or 'assertion') from other modes of thought. Do I smell a circularity? |
| 19108 | Truth is proper assertion, but that has varying standards [Misak] |
| Full Idea: The pragmatist will say that truth is proper assertion, but different discourses have different standards for proper assertion. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This remark shows that there is a pragmatic attitude towards truth behind most attempts to analyse the concept of assertion. When and why is assertion legitimate, and what motivates it? |
| 19101 | Disquotation is bivalent [Misak] |
| Full Idea: The disquotational schema entails bivalence. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 2 n10) | |
| A reaction: A simple but interesting observation. Critics of Tarski observe that he depends on a bivalent logic. |
| 19106 | Disquotations says truth is assertion, and assertion proclaims truth - but what is 'assertion'? [Misak] |
| Full Idea: The point of the disquotational schema is that to say that a sentence is true is to assert it, and to assert a sentence is to say that it is true. We must then ask what it is to assert or endorse a proposition. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: [She is referring to the views of Crispin Wright] Most people would say that we assert something because we think it is true, and truth is obviously prior. Clearly if it has been asserted, that was because someone thought it was true. |
| 19096 | Disquotationalism resembles a telephone directory [Misak] |
| Full Idea: Disquotationalism is more like a telephone directory than a theory. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 2 n7) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Wilfred Sellars 1962:33] The idea is that there is a schema - 'p' is true iff p - and that all the acceptable sentences of a language can be expressed in this way, making a vast but finite list. It seems to replace 'theories'. |
| 19098 | Deflating the correspondence theory doesn't entail deflating all the other theories [Misak] |
| Full Idea: We must not move seamlessly from the thought that the correspondence theory must be deflated to the thought that any theory of truth must be deflated. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This rather good essay offers the idea that Peircean pragmatic approaches to truth can meet the deflationary desires of the opponents of correspondence, without jettisoning all the crucial naturalistic connections with reality. Interesting. |
| 19104 | Deflationism isn't a theory of truth, but an account of its role in natural language [Misak] |
| Full Idea: Deflationist theories are not theories of truth, or theories of what truth is. ...They are theories which try to explain the role that 'true' plays in natural languages. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Dorothy Grover 2001,2002] If so, then the modern axiomatic theory of truth sounds appealing, because it tries to give a fuller and more precise account than a mere list is disquotations could possibly give. |
| 19109 | The anti-realism debate concerns whether indefeasibility is a plausible aim of inquiry [Misak] |
| Full Idea: If indefeasibility turns out to be something we can't sensibly aim at in a kind of inquiry, then the judgements that arise from that kind of 'inquiry' are not truth-apt. It is here that the realism/anti-realism debate resides. | |
| From: Cheryl Misak (Pragmatism and Deflationism [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting way of presenting the issue, one that makes the debate sound (to me) considerably more interesting than hitherto. I may start using the word 'indefeasible' rather a lot, in my chats with the anti-realist philosophical multitude. |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A necessary truth is 'de re' if its necessity arises from the way the world is. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.6) |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot determine what someone's beliefs are independently of assessing to some extent the truth or falsity of the beliefs. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.4) |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The challenge of incommensurability can be met once it is realised that in comparing theories the notions of truth and reference are more important than that of meaning. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.6) |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A full grasp of the concept '…is yellow' involves coming to accept as true bits of theory; that is, generalisations involving the term 'yellow'. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.2) |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: When scientists observed the motion of Uranus, they did not give up on Newtonian mechanics. Instead they posited the existence of Neptune. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Whether to reject an anomaly has to be decided on the basis of the availability of a rival theory, and on the basis of the positive evidence for the theory in question. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: According to Feyerabend all theories are born falsified, because no theory has ever been totally free of anomalies. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Why should it be so important to distinguish between theories that are scientific and those that are not? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IV.3) |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If theories are genuinely incommensurable why should I be faced with the problem of choosing between them? Why not believe them all? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.1) |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: To explain an action as an action is to show that it is rational. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.2) |
| 18681 | The base for values has grounds, catalysts and intensifiers [Dancy,J, by Orsi] |
| Full Idea: Dancy distinguishes three parts of the supervenience base of values: 1) those which ground the value ('resultance base'); 2) those which enable the ground to make something good ('enabling conditions'); 3) those which intensify or diminish value. | |
| From: report of Jonathan Dancy (Ethics without Principles [2004], p. 170-181) by Francesco Orsi - Value Theory 5.2 | |
| A reaction: I really like and admire this. Dancy has focused on what really matters about values (and hence about the whole of ethics), and begun the work of getting a bit of clarity and increased understanding. |