20 ideas
| 4465 | Note that "is" can assert existence, or predication, or identity, or classification [PG] |
| Full Idea: There are four uses of the word "is" in English: as existence ('he is at home'), as predication ('he is tall'), as identity ('he is the man I saw'), and as classification ('he is British'). | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: This seems a nice instance of the sort of point made by analytical philosophy, which can lead to horrible confusion in other breeds of philosophy when it is overlooked. |
| 4686 | Fallacies are errors in reasoning, 'formal' if a clear rule is breached, and 'informal' if more general [PG] |
| Full Idea: Fallacies are errors in reasoning, labelled as 'formal' if a clear rule has been breached, and 'informal' if some less precise error has been made. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there can be a grey area between the two. |
| 7415 | Question-begging assumes the proposition which is being challenged [PG] |
| Full Idea: To beg the question is to take for granted in your argument that very proposition which is being challenged | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: An undoubted fallacy, and a simple failure to engage in the rational enterprise. I suppose one might give a reason for something, under the mistaken apprehension that it didn't beg the question; analysis of logical form is then needed. |
| 7414 | What is true of a set is also true of its members [PG] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of division is the claim that what is true of a set must therefore be true of its members. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Clearly a fallacy, but if you only accept sets which are rational, then there is always a reason why a particular is a member of a set, and you can infer facts about particulars from the nature of the set |
| 6696 | The Ad Hominem Fallacy criticises the speaker rather than the argument [PG] |
| Full Idea: The Ad Hominem Fallacy is to criticise the person proposing an argument rather than the argument itself, as when you say "You would say that", or "Your behaviour contradicts what you just said". | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is very keen on ad hominem arguments, and cheerfully insults great philosophers, but then he doesn't believe there is such a thing as 'pure argument', and he is a relativist. |
| 4687 | Minimal theories of truth avoid ontological commitment to such things as 'facts' or 'reality' [PG] |
| Full Idea: Minimalist theories of truth are those which involve minimum ontological commitment, avoiding references to 'reality' or 'facts' or 'what works', preferring to refer to formal relationships within language. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am suspicious of minimal theories, which seem to be designed by and for anti-realists. They seem too focused on language, when animals can obviously formulate correct propositions. I'm quite happy with the 'facts', even if that is vague. |
| 6516 | Monty Hall Dilemma: do you abandon your preference after Monty eliminates one of the rivals? [PG] |
| Full Idea: The Monty Hall Dilemma: Three boxes, one with a big prize; pick one to open. Monty Hall then opens one of the other two, which is empty. You may, if you wish, switch from your box to the other unopened box. Should you? | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: The other two boxes, as a pair, are more likely contain the prize than your box. Monty Hall has eliminated one of them for you, so you should choose the other one. Your intuition that the two remaining boxes are equal is incorrect! |
| 21710 | We know a universal in 'yellow differs from blue' or 'yellow resembles blue less than green does' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We are aware of the universal 'yellow'; this universal is the subject in such judgements as 'yellow differs from blue' or 'yellow resembles blue less than green does'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Knowledge by Acquaintance and Description-1 [1911], 154), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Russell's Metaphysical Logic 2.3 | |
| A reaction: This still seems one of the strongest examples in support of universals. You could hardly be talking about yellow tropes in such instances (even if the world does contain yellow tropes). |
| 14082 | No sortal could ever exactly pin down which set of particles count as this 'cup' [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Many decent candidates could the referent of this 'cup', differing over whether outlying particles are parts. No further sortal I could invoke will be selective enough to rule out all but one referent for it. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1 n8) | |
| A reaction: I never had much faith in sortals for establishing individual identity, so this point comes as no surprise. The implication is strongly realist - that the cup has an identity which is permanently beyond our capacity to specify it. |
| 14081 | Identities can be true despite indeterminate reference, if true under all interpretations [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: There can be determinately true identity claims despite indeterminate reference of the terms flanking the identity sign; these will be identity claims true under all admissible interpretations of the flanking terms. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: In informal contexts there might be problems with the notion of what is 'admissible'. Is 'my least favourite physical object' admissible? |
| 24054 | Everything has a probability, something will happen, and probabilities add up [PG] |
| Full Idea: The three Kolgorov axioms of probability: the probability of an event is a non-negative real number; it is certain that one of the 'elementary events' will occur; and the unity of probabilities is the sum of probability of parts ('additivity'). | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: [My attempt to verbalise them; they are normally expressed in terms of set theory]. Got this from a talk handout, and Wikipedia. |
| 3875 | If reality is just what we perceive, we would have no need for a sixth sense [PG] |
| Full Idea: Reality must be more than merely what we perceive, because a sixth sense would enhance our current knowledge, and a seventh, and so on. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 3876 | If my team is losing 3-1, I have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals for a draw [PG] |
| Full Idea: If my football team is losing 3-1, I seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals to achieve a draw | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 8854 | My 'acquaintance' with sense-data is nothing like my knowing New York [Williams,M on Russell] |
| Full Idea: My 'acquaintance' with sense-data is nothing like my knowing New York. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Knowledge by Acquaintance and Description-1 [1911]) by Michael Williams - Without Immediate Justification §4 | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints a nice difficulty for Russell. Williams may misrepresent Russell's account of acquaintance, but that is probably because Russell is unclear, or uncertain. The problem is when Russell claims that his acquaintance gives knowledge. |
| 7734 | Maybe a mollusc's brain events for pain ARE of the same type (broadly) as a human's [PG] |
| Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might say that a molluscs's brain events that register pain ARE of the same type as humans, given that being 'of the same type' is a fairly flexible concept. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: But this reduces 'of the same type' to such vagueness that it may become vacuous. You would be left with token-token identity, where the mental event is just identical to some brain event, with its 'type' being irrelevant. |
| 7735 | Maybe a frog's brain events for fear are functionally like ours, but not phenomenally [PG] |
| Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might (also) say that while a frog's brain events for fear are functionally identical to a human's (it runs away), that doesn't mean they are phenomenally identical. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the key reply to the multiple realisability problem. If a frog flees from a loud noise, it is 'frightened' in a functional sense, but that still leaves the question 'What's it like to be a frightened frog?', which may differ from humans. |
| 3877 | Utilitarianism seems to justify the discreet murder of unhappy people [PG] |
| Full Idea: If I discreetly murdered a gloomy and solitary tramp who was upsetting people in my village, if is hard to see how utilitarianism could demonstrate that I had done something wrong. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 6126 | Life is Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth (MRS NERG) [PG] |
| Full Idea: The biologists' acronym for the necessary conditions of life is MRS NERG: that is, Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: How strictly necessary are each of these is a point for discussion. A notorious problem case is fire, which (at a stretch) may pass all seven tests. |
| 3873 | An omniscient being couldn't know it was omniscient, as that requires information from beyond its scope of knowledge [PG] |
| Full Idea: God seems to be in the paradoxical situation that He may be omniscient, but can never know that He is, because that involves knowing that there is nothing outside his scope of knowledge (e.g. another God) | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 3874 | How could God know there wasn't an unknown force controlling his 'free' will? [PG] |
| Full Idea: How could God be certain that he has free will (if He has), if He couldn't be sure that there wasn't an unknown force controlling his will? | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |