7 ideas
| 10528 | Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Our concern in giving a definition is not to say how things are by to say how we wish to speak | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like an acceptable piece of wisdom which arises out of analytical and linguistic philosophy. It puts a damper on the Socratic dream of using definition of reveal the nature of reality. |
| 10529 | If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers. |
| 10530 | Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition. |
| 15049 | Metaphysical realists are committed to all unambiguous statements being true or not true [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The anti-realist view undercuts the ground for accepting bivalence. ...Acceptance of bivalence should not be taken as a sufficient condition for realism. ..They accept the weaker principle that unambiguous statements are determinately true or not true. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Realism and Anti-Realism [1992], p.467) | |
| A reaction: [cited by Kit Fine, when discussing anti-realism] I take it be quite an important component of realism that there might be facts which will never be expressed, or are even beyond our capacity to grasp or express them |
| 4042 | Metaphysics requires the idea of people (speakers) located in space and time [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: An intelligible metaphysics will assign a central place to the idea of people (= speakers) with a location in public space and time. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Method of Truth in Metaphysics [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: The 'location' is the interesting bit, requiring people to be bodies, not abstractions. A big, plausible claim, but hard to prove. |
| 10527 | An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects. |
| 4041 | Sentences held true determine the meanings of the words they contain [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Sentences held true (the linguistic representatives of beliefs) determine the meanings of the words they contain. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Method of Truth in Metaphysics [1977], §II) | |
| A reaction: Maybe. Historically, truth and belief presumably precede words and sentences. But words separate off from beliefs very easily. I'm not convinced. Words initiate language, not beliefs? |