25 ideas
| 8195 | Undecidable statements result from quantifying over infinites, subjunctive conditionals, and the past tense [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: I once wrote that there are three linguistic devices that make it possible for us to frame undecidable statements: quantification over infinity totalities, as expressed by word such as 'never'; the subjunctive conditional form; and the past tense. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: Dummett now repudiates the third one. Statements containing vague concepts also appear to be undecidable. Personally I have no problems with deciding (to a fair extent) about 'never x', and 'if x were true', and 'it was x'. |
| 4568 | If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If 'the Queen of England' is not a referring expression when there is no queen, nor can it be one when there is a queen - since the meaning of the expression is the same in either case. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced. Does this mean that since I can point with my finger at nothing, I therefore do not indicate anything when there is an object at which I am pointing. Sounds silly to me. |
| 8194 | Surely there is no exact single grain that brings a heap into existence [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: There is surely no number n such that "n grains of sand do not make a heap, although n+1 grains of sand do" is true. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: It might be argued that there is such a number, but no human being is capable of determing it. Might God know the value of n? On the whole Dummett's view seems the most plausible. |
| 8190 | Intuitionists rely on the proof of mathematical statements, not their truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The intuitionist account of the meaning of mathematical statements does not employ the notion of a statement's being true, but only that of something's being a proof of the statement. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: I remain unconvinced that anyone could give an account of proof that didn't discreetly employ the notion of truth. What are we to make of "we suspect this is true, but no one knows how to prove it?" (e.g. Goldbach's Conjecture). |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
| From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
| 8198 | A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The idea of 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east'. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: The phrase was coined in Oxford. It is a useful label with which realists can insult solipsists, idealists and other riff-raff. Four Dimensionalists seem to see time in this way. Events sit there, and we travel past them. But there are indexical events. |
| 8192 | I no longer think what a statement about the past says is just what can justify it [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In distinguishing between what can establish a statement about the past as true and what it is that that statement says, we are repudiating antirealism about the past. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a late shift of ground from the champion of antirealism. If Dummett's whole position is based on a 'justificationist' theory of meaning, he must surely have a different theory of meaning now for statements about the past? |
| 4574 | If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If our most basic concepts, like time, space, substance or causality, are not shared by some peoples, it puts paid to the cherished ideal of philosophers to discover a set of concepts or categories which any rational human must employ in his thinking. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a place where a priori philosophy (Aristotle,Kant,Hegel) meets empirical research (Whorf). However, interpreting the research is so fraught with problems it drives you back to the a priori… |
| 8199 | The existence of a universe without sentience or intelligence is an unintelligible fantasy [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The existence of a universe from which sentience was permanently absent is an unintelligible fantasy. What exists is what can be known to exist. What is true is what can be known to be true. Reality is what can be experienced and known. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as nonsense. The fact that we cannot think about a universe without introducing a viewpoint does not mean that we cannot 'intellectually imagine' its existence devoid of viewpoints. Nothing could ever experience a star's interior. |
| 4573 | If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If it is claimed that linguistic differences significantly correlate with cultural differences, it must therefore be possible to identify the linguistic differences independently from the cultural ones. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a basic objection to any extreme relativist version of the S-P hypothesis. They are part of the conspiracy to overemphasise language in philosophy, and they are wrong. |
| 4575 | A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It would be absurd to say the Hopi lack the concept of time because they lack tensed verbs, ..but how do we find out what a man's concepts are except in terms of his language? | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we should look at animals, where concepts must be inferred in order to explain behaviour. I don't see why introspection (scientifically wicked) should not also be employed to detect our own non-verbal concepts. How are new words invented? |
| 4561 | Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.3) | |
| A reaction: Yet another telling objection to behaviourism. When I look at broccoli I may have a disposition to be sick, but that isn't part of the concept of broccoli. |
| 8193 | Verification is not an individual but a collective activity [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Verification is not an individual but a collective activity. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: This generates problems. Are deceased members of the community included? (Yes, says Dummett). If someone speaks to angels (Blake!), do they get included? Is a majority necessary? What of weird loners? Etc. |
| 4564 | I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It is not meaningless for me to postulate the potential for humans to sense in a manner which is at present unimaginable and indescribable. There is no reason to believe me, but I might be right. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: The key counterexample to verificationist theories of meaning is wild speculations, which are clearly meaningful, though frequently far beyond any likely human experience. Logical positivists are allergic to imagination. |
| 4565 | The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It seems that the positivists must admit that there is at least one statement which is meaningful, but which is neither verifiable nor analytic - namely, the statement of the principle of verification itself. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: Some people think this objection is decisive, but I think any theory must be permitted a few metatheoretic assertions or axioms which are beyond discussion. Ayer thought the VP might be treated as analytic. Everyone has to start somewhere. |
| 4562 | Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find examples like this decisive against the 'use' theory of meaning. Maybe the defence is that the theory works for sentences, and individual words (like passwords) are peripheral. |
| 4563 | 'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'How now brown cow?' has its use in elocutions classes, yet this aspect of its use tells us nothing about its meaning. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, and also there are weird sentence of which we can assemble a meaning, but cannot think of any conceivable use ('rats swim in purple marmalade'). |
| 4571 | Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. If the basic scenario is picking someone out in a crowd, your listener may think they know which person you are talking about, with a high degree of probability. |
| 4566 | Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Any thesis about reference is also going to be a thesis about what there is in existence to refer to. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4) | |
| A reaction: I see the point, but we must not put the cart before the horse. I may have an intuition that something exists, but not know how to refer to it (because of my small vocabulary). |
| 4572 | If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If predicates are names of entities, then subject/predicate sentences are pairs of names, since subjects are names (or referring expressions). But a pair of names is not a sentence at all, it is a mere list. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.4) | |
| A reaction: If that is meant to demolish universals it is too quick. Concatenating names is not the same as listing them. A relationship is asserted. There is a (mysterious) Platonic 'partaking' between form and particular. Perhaps. |
| 8189 | Truth-condition theorists must argue use can only be described by appeal to conditions of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To demonstrate the necessity of a truth-conditional theory of meaning, a proponent of such a theory must argue that use cannot be described without appeal to the conditions for the truth of statements. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Unlike Dummett, I find that argument rather appealing. How do you decide the possible or appropriate use for a piece of language, if you don't already know what it means. Basing it all on social conventions means it could be meaningless ritual. |
| 8191 | The truth-conditions theory must get agreement on a conception of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is not enough for the truth-condition theorist to argue that we need the concept of truth: he must show that we should have the same conception of truth that he has. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson invites us to accept Tarski's account of truth. It invites the question of what the theory would be like with a very robust correspondence account of truth, or a flabby rather subjective coherence view, or the worst sort of pragmatic view. |
| 4576 | An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: The definition of analytic truth which has, I believe, the most chance of success is one in terms of synonymy; ..an analytic truth is one which can be transformed into a logical truth once synonyms are replaced by synonyms. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §7.1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds promising, though there is Quine's notorious problem of circularity in all these concepts. If synonymy is conventional, then so is analyticity. I personally feel that the circle can be broken. |
| 8197 | Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Maybe both the past and the future are real, determined by our current temporal perspective. Past is then events capable of having a causal influence upon events near us, and future is events we can affect, but from which we receive no information. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the Four-Dimensional view, which is opposed to Presentism. Might immediate unease is that it gives encouragement to fortune-tellers, whom I have always dismissed with 'You can't see the future, because it doesn't exist'. |
| 8196 | The present cannot exist alone as a mere boundary; past and future truths are rendered meaningless [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The idea that only the present is real cannot be sustained. St Augustine pointed out that the present has no duration; it is a mere boundary between past and future, and dependent on them. It also denies truth-value to statements about past or future. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: To defend Presentism, I suspect that one must focus entirely on the activities of consciousness and short-term memory. All truths, of past or future, must refer totally to such mental events. But what could an event be if there is no enduring time? |