Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Problems of Epistemology', 'Reference and Essence (1st edn)' and 'Abstraction Reconsidered'

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12 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 11. Ostensive Definition
Ostensive definitions needn't involve pointing, but must refer to something specific [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: So-called ostensive definitions need not literally involve ostension, e.g. pointing, but they must involve genuine reference of some sort (in this case reference to a sample of water).
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 4.11.2)
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / h. System S5
S4, and therefore S5, are invalid for metaphysical modality [Salmon,N, by Williamson]
     Full Idea: Salmon argues that S4 and therefore S5 are invalid for metaphysical modality.
     From: report of Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 238-40) by Timothy Williamson - Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 4
     A reaction: [He gives references for Salmon, and for his own reply] Salmon's view seems to be opposed my most modern logicians (such as Ian Rumfitt).
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / c. Against mathematical empiricism
Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach]
     Full Idea: For an understanding of arithmetic the grasp of an operation's being performed 'so many times' is quite indispensable; and abstraction of a feature from groups of nuts cannot give us this grasp.
     From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.170)
     A reaction: I end up defending the empirical approach to arithmetic because remarks like this are so patently false. Geach seems to think we arrive ready-made in the world, just raring to get on with some counting. He lacks the evolutionary perspective.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The metaphysical doctrine of essentialism says that certain properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have, except by not existing.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 3.8.2)
     A reaction: A bad account of essentialism, and a long way from Aristotle. It arises from the logicians' tendency to fix objects entirely in terms of a 'flat' list of predicates (called 'properties'!), which ignore structure, constitution, history etc.
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 6. Falsification
Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper]
     Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one.
     From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws'
     A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 5. Generalisation by mind
If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible [Geach]
     Full Idea: If concepts were nothing but recognitional capacities, then it is unintelligible that I can judge that cats eat mice when neither of them are present.
     From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.164)
     A reaction: Having observed the importance of recognition for the abstractionist (Idea 10731), he then seems to assume that there is nothing more to their concepts. Geach fails to grasp levels of abstraction, and cross-reference, and generalisation.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / b. Concepts as abilities
For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world [Geach]
     Full Idea: For abstractionists, concepts are essentially capacities for recognizing recurrent features of the world.
     From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.163)
     A reaction: Recognition certainly strikes me as central to thought (and revelatory of memory, since we continually recognise what we cannot actually recall). Geach dislikes this view, but I see it as crucial to an evolutionary view of thought.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 8. Abstractionism Critique
The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not' [Geach]
     Full Idea: The abstractionist cannot give a logically coherent account of the features that are supposed to be reached by discriminative attention, corresponding to the words 'some' and 'not'.
     From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.167)
     A reaction: I understand 'some' in terms of mereology, because that connects to experience, and 'not' I take to derive more from psychological experience than from the physical world, building on thwarted expectation, which even animals experience.
Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck' [Geach]
     Full Idea: To understand the verb 'to strike' we must see that 'striking' and 'being struck' are different, but necessarily go together in event and thought; only in the context of a judgment can they be distinguished, when we think of both together.
     From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.168)
     A reaction: Geach seems to have a strange notion that judgements are pure events which can precede all experience, and are the only ways we can come to understand experience. He needs to start from animals (or 'brutes', as he still calls them!).
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
Frege's 'sense' solves four tricky puzzles [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: Reference via sense solves Frege's four puzzles, of the informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitutivity in attitude contexts, of negative existentials, and the truth-value of statements using nondenoting singular terms.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.1)
     A reaction: These must then be compared with Kripke's three puzzles about referring via sense, and the whole debate is then spread before us.
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference
The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 5. Reference to Natural Kinds
Nothing in the direct theory of reference blocks anti-essentialism; water structure might have been different [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: There seems to be nothing in the theory of direct reference to block the anti-essentialist assertion that the substance water might have been the very same entity and yet have had a different chemical structure.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 6.23.1)
     A reaction: Indeed, water could be continuously changing its inner structure, while retaining the surface appearance that gets baptised as 'water'. We make the reasonable empirical assumption, though, that structure-change implies surface-change.