8 ideas
2945 | Most philosophers start with reality and then examine knowledge; Descartes put the study of knowledge first [Lehrer] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers (e.g Plato) begin with an account of reality, and then appended an account of how we can know it, ..but Descartes turned the tables, insisting that we must first decide what we can know. | |
From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.2) |
2946 | You cannot demand an analysis of a concept without knowing the purpose of the analysis [Lehrer] |
Full Idea: An analysis is always relative to some objective. It makes no sense to simply demand an analysis of goodness, knowledge, beauty or truth, without some indication of the purpose of the analysis. | |
From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.7) | |
A reaction: Your dismantling of a car will go better if you know what a car is for, but you can still take it apart in ignorance. |
12580 | Experiences have no conceptual content [Evans, by Greco] |
Full Idea: In Evans's work experiences are conceived of as not having a conceptual content at all. | |
From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal | |
A reaction: I presume it is this view which provoked McDowell's contrary view in 'Mind and World'. I say this is a job for neuroscience, and I struggle to see what philosophical questions hang on the outcome. I think I side with Evans. |
7643 | We have far fewer colour concepts than we have discriminations of colour [Evans] |
Full Idea: Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are shades colour that we can sensibly discriminate? | |
From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 7.5) | |
A reaction: This is the argument (rejected by McDowell) that experience cannot be conceptual because experience is too rich. We should not confuse lack of concepts with lack of words. I may have a concept of a colour between two shades, but no word for it. |
23794 | Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte] |
Full Idea: Evans introduced the idea that there are some representational states, for example perceptual experiences, which have content that is nonconceptual. | |
From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 3.4 | |
A reaction: McDowell famously disagree, and whether all experience is inherently conceptualised is a main debate from that period. Hard to see how it could be settled, but I incline to McDowell, because minimal perception hardly counts as 'experience'. |
16366 | The Generality Constraint says if you can think a predicate you can apply it to anything [Evans] |
Full Idea: If a subject can be credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being G of which he has conception. This condition I call the 'Generality Constraint'. | |
From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], p.104), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 5.3 | |
A reaction: Recanati endorses the Constraint in his account of mental files. Apparently if I can entertain the thought of a circle being round, I can also entertain the thought of it being square, so I am not too sure about this one. |
12575 | Concepts have a 'Generality Constraint', that we must know how predicates apply to them [Evans, by Peacocke] |
Full Idea: Evans's 'Generality Constraint' says that if a thinker is capable of attitudes to the content Fa and possesses the singular concept b, then he is capable of having attitudes to the content Fb. | |
From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 4.3) by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 1.1 | |
A reaction: So having an attitude becomes the test of whether one possesses a concept. I suppose if one says 'You know you've got a concept when you are capable of thinking about it', that is much the same thing. Sounds fine. |
4366 | We can't accept Aristotle's naturalism about persons, because it is normative and unscientific [Williams,B, by Hursthouse] |
Full Idea: Williams has expressed pessimism about the project of Aristotelian naturalism on the grounds that his conception of nature, and thereby of human nature, was normative, and that, in a scientific age, this is not a conception that we can take on board. | |
From: report of Bernard Williams (works [1971]) by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.11 | |
A reaction: I think there is a compromise here. The existentialist denial of intrinsic human nature seems daft, but Aristotelians must grasp the enormous flexibility that is possible to human behaviour because of the open nature of rationality. |