13966
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Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames]
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Full Idea:
The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour.
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From:
Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166)
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A reaction:
Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of.
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13974
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If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames]
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Full Idea:
If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both.
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From:
Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
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A reaction:
He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read.
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18284
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Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper]
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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.
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From:
Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws'
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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.
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20363
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Leaves are unequal, but we form the concept 'leaf' by discarding their individual differences [Nietzsche]
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Full Idea:
Every concept arises through the setting equal of the unequal. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never wholly equal to another, so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences.
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From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense [1872]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.1.1 n28
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A reaction:
Nietzsche adds an interesting aspect to psychological abstraction, of abstracting away the differences between things, which we might label as the (further) capacity for Equalisation. If two cars differ only in a blemish, we abstract away the blemish.
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13972
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Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames]
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Full Idea:
Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age.
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From:
Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183)
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A reaction:
I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that?
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