73 ideas
| 13734 | Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is (such as properties, meanings and numbers). I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find that an enormously helpful distinction, and support the Aristotelian view. Schaffer's general line is that what exists is fairly uncontroversial and dull, but the interesting truths about the world emerge when we grasp its structure. |
| 13751 | If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is so tightly woven into the fabric of philosophy that it cannot be torn out without the whole tapestry unravelling. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I often wonder why the opponents of metaphysics still continue to do philosophy. I don't see how you address questions of ethics, or philosophy of mathematics (etc) without coming up against highly general and abstract over-questions. |
| 6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Quine has aimed at a naturalistic and empirical world-view, and claims that first-order logic and set theory provide a framework sufficient for the articulation of our knowledge of the world. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.465 | |
| A reaction: Consequently he is fairly eliminativist about meaning and mental states, and does without universals in his metaphysics. An impressively puritanical enterprise, taking Ockham's Razor to the limit, but I find it hard to swallow. |
| 6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
| Full Idea: No enquiry is possible without some conceptual scheme, so we may as well retain and use the best one we know. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark leads to Davidson's splendid paper 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'. Quine's remark raises the question of how we know which conceptual scheme is 'best'. |
| 13743 | We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Occam's Razor should only be understood to concern substances: do not multiply basic entities without necessity. There is no problem with the multiplication of derivative entities - they are an 'ontological free lunch'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The phrase 'ontological free lunch' comes from Armstrong. This is probably what Occam meant. A few extra specks of dust, or even a few more numbers (thank you, Cantor!) don't seem to challenge the principle. |
| 19160 | A comprehensive theory of truth probably includes a theory of predication [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Theories of truth and theories of predication are closely related: it seems probable that any comprehensive theory of truth will include a theory of predication. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: Davidson defends the view that it is this way round. It is tempting to label them both as 'primitive'. Davidson distinguishes a 'theory' about truth from a 'definition'. |
| 19151 | Antirealism about truth prevents its use as an intersubjective standard [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Antirealism, with its limitations of truth to what can be ascertained, deprives truth of its role as an intersubjective standard. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it lifts truth out of individual minds. I take truth to be an ideal - a simple one with little content, which is thus fairly uncontroversial. Truth is the main general purpose of thinking. |
| 19144 | 'Epistemic' truth depends what rational creatures can verify [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The 'epistemic' view of truth asserts an essential tie to epistemology, and introduces a dependence of truth on what can somehow be verified by finite rational creatures. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: This view, which seems to be widely held, strikes me as an elementary confusion. I take truth to be fully successful belief. If you say belief can never be fully successful, then we can't know the truth - but that doesn't destroy the concept of truth. |
| 19148 | There is nothing interesting or instructive for truths to correspond to [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The real objection to the correspondence theory of truth is that there is nothing interesting or instructive to which true sentences correspond. (C.I. Lewis challenged defenders to locate the fact or part of reality to which a truth corresponded). | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson defended a correspondence view in 'True to the Facts'. Davidson evidently also thinks the same objection applies to claims about truthmakers. If you say 'gold is shiny', the gold is very dispersed, but it is still there. |
| 19166 | The Slingshot assumes substitutions give logical equivalence, and thus identical correspondence [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The Slingshot argument (of Frege, Church and Gödel) assumes that if two sentences are logically equivalent, they correspond to the same thing, and what a sentence corresponds to is not changed if a singular term is replaced by a coreferring term. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: This obviously won't work for 'Oedipus thinks he ought to marry Jocasta'. Sentences correspond, I presume, to what they are about, which is often a matter of emphasis or phrasing. Hence the Slingshot sounds like nonsense to me. |
| 19167 | Two sentences can be rephrased by equivalent substitutions to correspond to the same thing [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Slingshot: 'Scott is the author of Waverley' and 'The number of counties in Utah is twenty-nine' can be rephrased by substitution so that they are both about the number twenty-nine, and are thus correspond to the same thing. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: [my paraphrase of Davidson's quote from Church 1956:24] These sentences clearly do not correspond to the same thing, so something has gone wrong with the idea that logically equivalent sentences have identical correspondents. |
| 19150 | Coherence truth says a consistent set of sentences is true - which ties truth to belief [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: A pure coherence theory of truth says that all sentences in a consistent set of sentences are true. ...I class this with epistemic views, because it ties truth directly to what is believed. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Neurath] I would have thought that coherence is rather more than mere consistency. Truths which have nothing whatever in common can be consistent with one another. [but see his p.43 n14] |
| 19145 | We can explain truth in terms of satisfaction - but also explain satisfaction in terms of truth [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Truth is easily defined in terms of satisfaction (as Tarski showed), but, alternatively, satisfaction can be taken to be whatever relation yields a correct account of truth. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson is assessing which is the prior 'primitive' concept, and he votes for truth. A perennial problem in philosophy, and very hard to find reasons for a preference. The axiomatic approach grows from taking truth as primitive. Axioms for satisfaction? |
| 19146 | Satisfaction is a sort of reference, so maybe we can define truth in terms of reference? [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: That the truth of sentences is defined by appeal to the semantic properties of words suggests that, if we could give an account of the semantic properties of words (essentially, of reference or satisfaction), we would understand the concept of truth. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: If you thought that words were prior to sentences, this might be the route to go. Davidson gives priority to sentences, and so prefers to work from the other end, which treats truth as primitive, and then defines reference and meaning. |
| 19174 | Axioms spell out sentence satisfaction. With no free variables, all sequences satisfy the truths [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Axioms specify how each unstructured predicate is satisfied by a particular sequence. Then recursive axioms characterise complex sentences built from simpler ones. Closed sentences have no free variables, so true sentences are satisfied by all sequences. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) | |
| A reaction: I take 'all sequences' to mean all combinations of objects in the domain. Thus nothing in domain contradicts the satisfied sentences. Hence Tarski's truth is said to be 'true in a model', where the whole system vouches for the sentence. |
| 19136 | Many say that Tarski's definitions fail to connect truth to meaning [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It is complained that Tarski's definitions do not establish the connection between truth and meaning that many philosophers hold to be essential. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 1) | |
| A reaction: This, of course, was Davidson's big mission - to build on Tarski's theory a view of truth which dovetailed it with theories of meaning and reference. |
| 19139 | Tarski does not tell us what his various truth predicates have in common [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: There is no indication in Tarski's formal work of what it is that his various truth predicates have in common, and this is part of the content of the concept. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a good question to raise. If I list all the 'red' things, I can still ask what qualifies them to all appear on the same list. |
| 19147 | Truth is the basic concept, because Convention-T is agreed to fix the truths of a language [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The key role of Convention-T in determining that truth, as characterised by the theory, has the same extension as the intuitive concept of truth makes it seem that it is truth rather than reference that is the basic primitive. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: The key strength of Tarski's account is that it specifies the extension of 'true' for a given language (as expressed in a richer meta-language). |
| 19172 | To define a class of true sentences is to stipulate a possible language [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: When we enquire whether a truth definition defines the class of true sentences in a particular language, we are thinking of the truth definition as stipulating a possible language. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) | |
| A reaction: Thus I might say "Nij wonk yang" is true if and only if snow is white, and make my first step towards a new language. An interesting way of looking at Tarski's project. |
| 19153 | Truth is basic and clear, so don't try to replace it with something simpler [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Truth is one of the clearest and most basic concepts we have, so it is fruitless to dream of eliminating it in favor of something simpler or more fundamental. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 3) | |
| A reaction: For redundancy theorists, I suppose, truth would be eliminated in favour of 'assertion'. Replacing it with 'satisfaction' doesn't seem very illuminating. Davidson would say 'reference' is more tricky and elusive than truth. |
| 19170 | Tarski is not a disquotationalist, because you can assign truth to a sentence you can't quote [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It is clearly a mistake to call Tarski a disquotationalist. ...We say of a sentence not at hand (such as 'You gave the right answer to this question last night, but I can't remember what you said') that it is true or false. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) |
| 12798 | Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine] |
| Full Idea: By certain standardizations of phrasing the contexts that call for plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §19) | |
| A reaction: Laycock, who quotes this, calls it 'unduly optimistic', but I presume that it was the standard view of plural reference until Boolos raised the subject. |
| 19140 | 'Satisfaction' is a generalised form of reference [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We can think of 'satisfaction' as a generalised form of reference. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of simple point we novices need from the great minds, to help us see what is going on. One day someone is going to explain Tarski's account of truth in plain English, but probably not in my lifetime. |
| 17905 | Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The condition on an explication of number can be put succinctly: any progression will do nicely. Russell once held that one must also be able to measure multiplicity, but this was a mistake; any progression can be fitted to that further condition. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §54) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the strongest possible statement that the numbers are the ordinals, and the Peano Axioms will define them. The Fregean view that cardinality comes first is redundant. |
| 13741 | If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: We can automatically infer 'there are roses' from 'there are red roses' (with no shift in the meaning of 'roses'). Likewise one can automatically infer 'there are numbers' from 'there are prime numbers'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: He similarly observes that the atheist's 'God is a fictional character' implies 'there are fictional characters'. Schaffer is not committing to a strong platonism with his claim - merely that the existence of numbers is hardly worth disputing. |
| 9556 | Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics, except for very trivial portions such as very elementary arithmetic, is irredeemably committed to quantification over abstract objects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §55) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would say that we are no more committed to such things than actors in 'The Tempest' are committed to the existence of Prospero and Caliban (which is quite a strong commitment, actually). |
| 13748 | Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring. |
| 13747 | Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is mere modal correlation. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) |
| 13744 | The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: My preferred view is that there is only one fundamental entity - the whole concrete cosmos - from which all else exists by abstraction. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks to me like weak anti-realism - that there are no natural 'joints' in nature - but I don't think Schaffer intends that. I take the joints to be fundamentals, which necessitates that the cosmos has parts. His 'abstraction' is clearly a process. |
| 16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The quest of a simplest, clearest overall pattern of canonical notation is not to be distinguished from a quest of ultimate categories, a limning of the most general traits of reality. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §33) | |
| A reaction: I won't disagree, as long as we recognise that reality calls the shots, not the notation, and that even animals must have some sort of system of categories, achieved without 'notation'. |
| 13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3) |
| 19173 | Treating predicates as sets drops the predicate for a new predicate 'is a member of', which is no help [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: 'Theaetetus is a member of the set of seated objects' doesn't mention the predicate 'sits', but has a new predicate 'is a member of', with no given semantic role. We are back with Plato's problem with the predicate 'instantiates'. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) | |
| A reaction: Plato's problem is the 'third man' problem - a regress in the explanation. In other words, if we are trying to explain predication, treating predicates as sets gets us nowhere. Just as I always thought. But you have to want explanations. |
| 15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The further a disposition is from those that can confidently be pinned on molecular structure or something comparably firm, the more our talk of it tends to depend on a vague factor of 'caeteris paribus' | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: I approve of this. It is precisely the point of scientific essentialism, I take it. We are faced with innumerable uncertain dispositions, but once the underlying mechanisms are known, their role in nature becomes fairly precise. |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Quine claims that an unmanifested disposition is explicable in terms of an object having a structure similar to a structure of an object that has manifested the supposed disposition. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This is probably the best account available for the firm empiricist who denies modal features in the actual world. In other words, a disposition is the result of an induction, not a conditional statement. |
| 8504 | Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Quine is not an 'ostrich', because his strategy for dealing with property sentences is clear enough: all talk of attributes is to be dispensed with in favour of talk of eternal open sentences or talk of classes. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §43) by Michael Devitt - 'Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? p.100 | |
| A reaction: [See p.209 'Word and Object'] The proposal seems to be that a property like being-human (a category) would be dealt with by classes, and qualitative properties would be dealt with simply as predicates. I like the split, and the first half, not the second. |
| 8464 | Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Physical objects, conceived four-dimensionally in space-time, are not to be distinguished from events or concrete processes. Each comprises simply the content, however heterogeneous, of a portion of space-time, however disconnected and gerrymandered. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §36) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the suggestion that objects should be thought of as 'processes', but I dislike the idea that they can be gerrymandered. This is a refusal to cut nature at the joints (Idea 7953), which I find very counterintuitive. |
| 7924 | The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In a contest of sheer systematic utility to science, the notion of physical object still leads the field. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §48) | |
| A reaction: A delightful circumlocution from someone who seems terrified to assert that there just are objects. Not that I object to Quine's caution. It would be disturbing if his researches had revealed that we could manage without objects. But compare Idea 6124. |
| 13742 | There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: I am happy to accept universal composition, on the grounds that there are heaps, piles etc with no integral unity, and that arbitrary composites are no less unified than heaps. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1 n11) | |
| A reaction: The metaphysical focus is then placed on what constitutes 'integral unity', which is precisely the question which most interested Aristotle. Clearly if there is nothing more to an entity than its components, scattering them isn't destruction. |
| 13752 | The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: The notion of grounding my capture a crucial mereological distinction (missing from classical mereology) between an integrated whole with genuine unity, and a mere aggregate. x is an integrated whole if it grounds its proper parts. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: That gives a nice theoretical notion, but if you remove each of the proper parts, does x remain? Is it a bare particular? I take it that it will have to be an abstract principle, the one Aristotle was aiming at with his notion of 'form'. Schaffer agrees. |
| 8482 | Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians are necessarily rational, and not necessarily two-legged; cyclists are the opposite. But what of an individual who counts among his eccentricities both mathematics and cycling? | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §41) | |
| A reaction: Quine's view is that the necessity (and essence) depends on how this eccentric is described. If he loses a leg, he must give up cycling; if he loses his rationality, he must give up the mathematics. Quine is wrong. |
| 12136 | Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Cyclists are not essentially two-legged (a one-legged cyclist exists, but can't cycle any more), and mathematicians are not essentially rational (as they can lose rationality and continue to exist, though unable to do mathematics). | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §41.5) by Baruch Brody - Identity and Essence 5.1 | |
| A reaction: Was Quine thinking of the nominal essence of this person - that 'cyclists' necessarily cylce, and 'mathematicians' necessarily do some maths? It is as bad to confuse 'necessary' with 'essential' as to confuse 'use' with 'mention'. |
| 17594 | We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: For general terms write 'if Fx then Fy' and vice versa, and 'if Fxz then Fyz'..... The conjunction of all these is coextensive with 'x=y' if any formula constructible from the vocabulary is; and we can adopt that conjunction as our version of identity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §47) | |
| A reaction: [first half compressed] The main rival views of equality are this and Wiggins (1980:199). Quine concedes that his account implies a modest version of the identity of indiscernibles. Wiggins says identity statements need a sortal. |
| 19142 | Probability can be constrained by axioms, but that leaves open its truth nature [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Kolmogorov's axiomatisation of probability puts clear constraints on the concept of probability, but leaves open whether probability is further characterised as relative frequency, degree of belief, or something else. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson cites this to show the limitations of axiomatic approaches to any topic (e.g. sets, truth, arithmetic). The item in question must be treated as a 'primitive'. This always has the feeling of second-best. |
| 15725 | Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In its unquantified form 'If p then q' the indicative conditional is perhaps best represented as suffering a truth-value gap whenever its antecedent is false. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: That is, the clear truth-functional reading of the conditional (favoured by Lewis, his pupil) is unacceptable. Quine favours the Edgington line, that we are only interested in situations where the antecedent might be true. |
| 15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary conditional loses its point when the truth value of its antecedent is known. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple point that reveals a lot about what conditionals are. |
| 15719 | We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional depends, like indirect quotation and more so, on a dramatic projection: we feign belief in the antececent and see how convincing we then find the consequent. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: This seems accurate. It means that we are only interested in when the antecedent is true, and when it is false is irrelevant. |
| 15721 | Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional is seen at its most respectable in the disposition terms. ...The reason is that they are conceived as built-in, enduring structural traits. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: Surprisingly, this is very sympathetic to a metaphysical view that seems a long way from Quine, since dispositions seem to invite commitment to modal features of reality. But the structural traits are not, of course, modal, in any way! |
| 15720 | What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The traits to suppose preserved in a counterfactual depend on sympathy for the fabulist's purpose. Compare 'If Caesar were in command, he would use the atom bomb', and 'If Caesar were in command, he would use catapults'. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an important example for the Lewis approach, since you are asked to consider the 'nearest' possible world, but that will depend on context. |
| 15724 | Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional has no place in an austere canonical notation for science - but that ban is less restrictive than would at first appear. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: Idea 15723 shows what he has in mind - that what science aims for is accounts of dispositional mechanisms, which then leave talk of other possible worlds (in Lewis style) as unnecessary. I may be with Quine one this one. |
| 13749 | Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: One motivation for dialetheism is the view that there are impossible worlds. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) |
| 13740 | 'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: A 'Moorean certainty' is when something is more credible than any philosopher's argument to the contrary. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The reference is to G.E. Moore's famous claim that the existence of his hand is more certain than standard sceptical arguments. It sounds empiricist, but they might be parallel rational truths, of basic logic or arithmetic. |
| 4630 | Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl] |
| Full Idea: Duhem and Quine have maintained that it may be possible to develop two or more theories that are 1) internally consistent, 2) inconsistent with one another, and 3) perfectly consistent with all the data we can muster. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by J Baggini / PS Fosl - The Philosopher's Toolkit §1.06 | |
| A reaction: Obviously this may be a contingent truth about our theories, but why not presume that this is because we are unable to collect the crucial data (e.g. about prehistoric biology), rather than denigrate the whole concept of a theory, and undermine science? |
| 19169 | Predicates are a source of generality in sentences [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Predicates introduce generality into sentences. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about this. Most words introduce generality. 'From' is a very general word about direction. 'Dogs bark' is as generally about dogs as it is generally about barking. |
| 3131 | Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3 |
| 19149 | If we reject corresponding 'facts', we should also give up the linked idea of 'representations' [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If we give up facts that make entities true, we ought to give up representations at the same time, for the legitimacy of each depends on the legitimacy of the other. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about this, because I'm not sure I know what he means by 'representations'. Surely every sentence is 'about' something? Is that just the references within the sentence, but not the sentence as a whole? |
| 19163 | You only understand an order if you know what it is to obey it [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We understand an imperative if and only if we know under what conditions what it orders or commands is obeyed. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: How could this be wrong? 'Do you understand the order?' 'Yes sir!' 'Well do it then!' 'Do what sir?' |
| 19152 | Utterances have the truth conditions intended by the speaker [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: An utterance has certain truth conditions only if the speaker intends it to be interpreted as having those truth conditions. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a concession to the rather sensible things that Grice said about meaning. What about malapropisms? Surely there the speaker does not understand the truth conditions of her own utterance? Truth conditions are in the head? |
| 19162 | Meaning involves use, but a sentence has many uses, while meaning stays fixed [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Meaning depends on use, but it is not easy to say how, for uses to which we may put the utterance of a sentence are endless while its meaning remains fixed. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. The password is 'Swordfish' (or 'Sweet marjoram', if you prefer). |
| 19131 | We recognise sentences at once as linguistic units; we then figure out their parts [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Our interest in the parts of sentences is derivative; we recognise at once that sentences are effective linguistic units, while we must figure out or decide what constitutes the meaningful words and particles. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It depends on whether linguistic priority goes to complete thoughts that require expression, or to naming and ostensive definition to relate to elements of the environment. I find it hard to have a strong view on this one. Just So stories? |
| 19156 | Modern predicates have 'places', and are sentences with singular terms deleted from the places [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The notion of 'places' in a predicate is the key to the modern concept of a predicate. Any expression obtained from a sentence by deleting one or more singular terms from the sentence counts as a predicate. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 4) |
| 19176 | The concept of truth can explain predication [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: My strategy is to show how our grasp of the concept of truth can explain predication. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 7) | |
| A reaction: His account of the concept of truth centres on Tarski's theory, but he clearly thinks more is needed than the bare bones offered by Tarski. The point, I think, is that predication is what makes a sentence 'truth-apt'. |
| 19133 | If you assign semantics to sentence parts, the sentence fails to compose a whole [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The puzzle is that once plausible assignments of semantic roles have been made to parts of sentences, the parts do not seem to compose a united whole. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It's not clear to me that a sentence does compose a 'whole', given that you can often add or remove bits from sentences, sometimes without changing the meaning. We often, in speech, assemble sentences before we have thought of their full meaning. |
| 19132 | Top-down semantic analysis must begin with truth, as it is obvious, and explains linguistic usage [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Truth is the essential semantic concept with which to begin a top-down analysis of sentences, since truth, or lack of it, is the most obvious semantic property of sentences, and provides the clearest explanation of judging and conveying information. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [a bit compressed] Presumably this goes with giving sentences semantic priority. The alternative approach is compositional, and is likely to give reference of terms priority over truth of the sentence. But accurate reference is a sort of truth. |
| 19158 | 'Humanity belongs to Socrates' is about humanity, so it's a different proposition from 'Socrates is human' [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'Humanity belongs to Socrates' is about the concept of humanity, unlike the "equivalent" 'Socrates is human', so they express different propositions. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I like this a lot, because it shows why we should focus on propositions rather than on sentences, or even utterances. And asking what the sentence is 'about' focuses us on the underlying proposition or thought. |
| 3988 | Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical translation carries all the way in, as the thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation of mental states and processes. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Daniel Dennett on himself p.239 | |
| A reaction: Strong scepticism seems wrong here. Davidson's account of charity in interpretation, and the role of truth, seems closer. |
| 6311 | The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The firmer the direct links of a sentence with non-verbal stimulation, the less drastically its translations can diverge from one another from manual to manual. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §07) | |
| A reaction: This implies (plausibly) that talk about farming will have fairly determinate translations into foreign languages, but talk of philosophy will not. An interesting case is logic, where we might expect tight translation with little non-verbal stimulation. |
| 6312 | We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: There is no evident criterion whereby to strip extraneous effects away and leave just the meaning of 'Gavagai' properly so-called - whatever meaning properly so-called may be. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §09) | |
| A reaction: Quine's famous assertion that translation is ultimately 'indeterminate'. Huge doubts about meaning and language and truth follow from his claim. Personally I think it is rubbish. People become fluent in very foreign languages, and don't have breakdowns. |
| 6313 | Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Stimulus synonymy of the occasion sentences 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee that 'gavagai' and 'rabbit' are coextensive terms, terms true of the same things. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §12) | |
| A reaction: Since this scepticism eventually seems to result in the reader no longer knowing what they mean themselves by the word 'rabbit', I doubt Quine's claim. Problems after hearing one word of a foreign language disappear after years of residence. |
| 6317 | Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Rival systems of analytical hypotheses can fit the totality of speech behaviour to perfection, and can fit the totality of dispositions to speech behaviour as well, and still specify mutually incompatible translations of countless sentences. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §15) | |
| A reaction: This is Quine's final assertion of indeterminacy, having explored charity, bilingual speakers etc. It seems to me that he is a victim of his underlying anti-realism, which won't allow nature to dictate ways of cutting up the world. |
| 6314 | Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Wanton translation can make natives sound as queer as one pleases; better translation imposes our logic upon them. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §13) | |
| A reaction: This begins to point towards the principle of charity, on which Davidson is so keen, and even on doubts whether two different conceptual schemes are possible. Personally I think there is only one logic (deep down), and the natives will have it. |
| 19154 | The principle of charity says an interpreter must assume the logical constants [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The principle of charity says that it is unavoidable that the pattern of sentences to which a speaker assents reflects the semantics of the logical constants. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 3) | |
| A reaction: That is not all the principle says, of course. Davidson seems to assume classical logic here, with a bivalent semantics. I wonder if all speakers use 'false' in the normal way, as well as 'true'? Do all languages even contain 'true'? |
| 6315 | We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The more absurd or exotic the beliefs imputed to a people, the more suspicious we are entitled to be of the translations. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §15) | |
| A reaction: Quine is famous for his relativist and indeterminate account of translation, but he gradually works his way towards the common sense which Davidson later brought out into the open. |
| 19161 | We indicate use of a metaphor by its obvious falseness, or trivial truth [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The sentences that contain metaphors are typically obviously false or trivially true, because these are typically indications that something is intended as a metaphor. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 6) | |
| A reaction: A nice point which sounds correct. Metaphors are famous being false, but the 'obvious' falseness signals the metaphor. If a metaphor is only obscurely false, that makes it difficult to read. |