Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Why Constitution is not Identity', 'On the Nature of Moral Values' and 'Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic''

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25 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 2. Aims of Definition
A definition need not capture the sense of an expression - just get the reference right [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Frege expressly denies that a correct definition need capture the sense of the expression it defines: it need only get the reference right.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.3
     A reaction: This might hit up against the renate/cordate problem, of two co-extensive concepts, where the definition gets the extension right, but the intension wrong.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
Science is sympathetic to truth as correspondence, since it depends on observation [Quine]
     Full Idea: Science, thanks to its links with observation, retains some title to a correspondence theory of truth.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.63)
     A reaction: I would describe what he is affirming as a 'robust' theory of truth. An interesting aside, given his usual allegiance to disquotational, and even redundancy, accounts of truth. You can hardly rely on observations if you think they contain no truth.
4. Formal Logic / B. Propositional Logic PL / 2. Tools of Propositional Logic / e. Axioms of PL
Since every definition is an equation, one cannot define equality itself [Frege]
     Full Idea: Since every definition is an equation, one cannot define equality itself.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.327)
     A reaction: This seems a particularly nice instance of the general rule that 'you have to start somewhere'. It is a nice test case for the nature of meaning to ask 'what do you understand when you understand equality?', given that you can't define it.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / e. Counting by correlation
Counting rests on one-one correspondence, of numerals to objects [Frege]
     Full Idea: Counting rests itself on a one-one correlation, namely of numerals 1 to n and the objects.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894]), quoted by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3
     A reaction: Parsons observes that counting will establish a one-one correspondence, but that doesn't make it the aim of counting, and so Frege hasn't answered Husserl properly. Which of the two is conceptually prior? How do you decide.
Husserl rests sameness of number on one-one correlation, forgetting the correlation with numbers themselves [Frege]
     Full Idea: When Husserl says that sameness of number can be shown by one-one correlation, he forgets that this counting itself rests on a univocal one-one correlation, namely that between the numerals 1 to n and the objects of the set.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.326)
     A reaction: This is the platonist talking. Neo-logicism is attempting to build numbers just from the one-one correlation of objects.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / c. Fregean numbers
In a number-statement, something is predicated of a concept [Frege]
     Full Idea: In a number-statement, something is predicated of a concept.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.328)
     A reaction: A succinct statement of Frege's theory of numbers. By my lights that would make numbers at least second-order abstractions.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 1. Mathematical Platonism / a. For mathematical platonism
Our concepts recognise existing relations, they don't change them [Frege]
     Full Idea: The bringing of an object under a concept is merely the recognition of a relation which previously already obtained, [but in the abstractionist view] objects are essentially changed by the process, so that objects brought under a concept become similar.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.324)
     A reaction: Frege's view would have to account for occasional misapplications of concepts, like taking a dolphin to be a fish, or falsely thinking there is someone in the cellar.
Numbers are not real like the sea, but (crucially) they are still objective [Frege]
     Full Idea: The sea is something real and a number is not; but this does not prevent it from being something objective; and that is the important thing.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.337)
     A reaction: This seems a qualification of Frege's platonism. It is why people start talking about abstract items which 'subsist', instead of 'exist'. It shows Frege's motivation in all this, which is to secure logic and maths from the vagaries of psychology.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / c. Against mathematical empiricism
The naïve view of number is that it is like a heap of things, or maybe a property of a heap [Frege]
     Full Idea: The most naïve opinion of number is that it is something like a heap in which things are contained. The next most naïve view is the conception of number as the property of a heap, cleansing the objects of their particulars.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.323)
     A reaction: A hundred toothbrushes and a hundred sponges can be seen to contain the same number (by one-to-one mapping), without actually knowing what that number is. There is something numerical in the heap, even if the number is absent.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / b. Levels of abstraction
If objects are just presentation, we get increasing abstraction by ignoring their properties [Frege]
     Full Idea: If an object is just presentation, we can pay less attention to a property and it disappears. By letting one characteristic after another disappear, we obtain concepts that are increasingly more abstract.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.324)
     A reaction: Frege despises this view. Note there is scope in the despised view for degrees or levels of abstraction, defined in terms of number of properties ignored. Part of Frege's criticism is realist. He retains the object, while Husserl imagines it different.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
Clay is intrinsically and atomically the same as statue (and that lacks 'modal properties') [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: Arguments for statue being the clay are: that the clay is intrinsically like the statue, that the clay has the same atoms as the statue', that objects don't have modal properties such as being necessarily F, and the reference of 'property' changes.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], II)
     A reaction: [my summary of the arguments she identifies - see text for details] Rudder Baker attempts to refute all four of these arguments, in defence of constitution as different from identity.
The clay is not a statue - it borrows that property from the statue it constitutes [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: I argue that a lump of clay borrows the property of being a statue from the statue. The lump is a statue because, and only because, there is something that the lump constitutes that is a statue.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], n9)
     A reaction: It is skating on very thin metaphysical ice to introduce the concept of 'borrowing' a property. I've spent the last ten minutes trying to 'borrow' some properties, but without luck.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
Is it possible for two things that are identical to become two separate things? [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: A strong intuition shared by many philosophers is that some things that are in fact identical might not have been identical.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV)
     A reaction: This flies in the face of the Kripkean view that if Hesperus=Phosphorus then the identity is necessary. I don't think I have an intuition that some given thing might have been two things - indeed the thought seems totally weird. Amoeba? Statue/clay?
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 6. Constitution of an Object
Constitution is not identity, as consideration of essential predicates shows [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: I want to resuscitate an essentialist argument against the view that constitution is identity, of the form 'x is essentially F, y is not essentially F, so x is not y'.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], Intro)
     A reaction: The point is that x might be essentially F and y only accidentally F. Thus a statue is essentially so, but a lump if clay is not essentially a statue. Another case where 'necessary' would do instead of 'essentially'.
The constitution view gives a unified account of the relation of persons/bodies, statues/bronze etc [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: Constitution-without-identity is superior to constitution-as-identity in that it provides a unified view of the relation between persons and bodies, statues and pieces of bronze, and so on.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], IV)
     A reaction: I have a problem with the intrinsic dualism of this whole picture. Clay needs shape, statues need matter - there aren't two 'things' here which have a 'relation'.
Statues essentially have relational properties lacked by lumps [Rudder Baker]
     Full Idea: The statue has relational properties which the lump of clay does not have essentially.
     From: Lynne Rudder Baker (Why Constitution is not Identity [1997], V)
     A reaction: She has in mind relations to the community of artistic life. I don't think this is convincing. Is something only a statue if it is validated by an artistic community? That sounds like relative identity, which she doesn't like.
14. Science / C. Induction / 2. Aims of Induction
More careful inductions gradually lead to the hypothetico-deductive method [Quine]
     Full Idea: Our inductions become increasingly explicit and deliberate, and in the fulness of time we even rise above induction, to the hypothetico-deductive method.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.57)
     A reaction: This seems to defer to Hempel's account of scientific theorising. I wander what exactly 'rising above' means?
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
Many people have the same thought, which is the component, not the private presentation [Frege]
     Full Idea: The same thought can be grasped by many people. The components of a thought, and even more so the things themselves, must be distinguished from the presentations which in the soul accompany the grasping of a thought.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.325)
     A reaction: This is the basic realisation, also found in Russell, of how so much confusion has crept into philosophy, in Berkeley, for example. Frege starts down the road which leads to the externalist view of content.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 3. Abstracta by Ignoring
Disregarding properties of two cats still leaves different objects, but what is now the difference? [Frege]
     Full Idea: If from a black cat and a white cat we disregard colour, then posture, then location, ..we finally derive something which is completely without restrictions on content; but what is derived from the objects does differ, although it is not easy to say how.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.324)
     A reaction: This is a key objection to abstractionism for Frege - we are counting two cats, not two substrata of essential catness, or whatever. But what makes a cat countable? (Key question!) It isn't its colour, or posture or location.
How do you find the right level of inattention; you eliminate too many or too few characteristics [Frege]
     Full Idea: Inattention is a very strong lye which must not be too concentrated, or it dissolves everything (such as the connection between the objects), but must not be too weak, to produce sufficient change. Personally I cannot find the proper dilution.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.330)
     A reaction: We may sympathise with the lack of precision here (frustrating for a logician), but it is not difficult to say of a baseball defence 'just concentrate on the relations, and ignore the individuals who implement it'. You retain basic baseball skills.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 8. Abstractionism Critique
Number-abstraction somehow makes things identical without changing them! [Frege]
     Full Idea: Number-abstraction simply has the wonderful and very fruitful property of making things absolutely the same as one another without altering them. Something like this is possible only in the psychological wash-tub.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.332)
     A reaction: Frege can be awfully sarcastic. I don't really see his difficulty. For mathematics we only need to know what is countable about an object - we don't need to know how many hairs there are on the cat, only that it has identity.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
Psychological logicians are concerned with sense of words, but mathematicians study the reference [Frege]
     Full Idea: The psychological logicians are concerned with the sense of the words and with the presentations, which they do not distinguish from the sense; but the mathematicians are concerned with the matter itself, with the reference of the words.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.326)
     A reaction: This is helpful for showing the point of his sense/reference distinction; it is part of his campaign against psychologism, by showing that there is a non-psychological component to language - the reference, where it meets the public world.
Identity baffles psychologists, since A and B must be presented differently to identify them [Frege]
     Full Idea: The relation of sameness remains puzzling to a psychological logician. They cannot say 'A is the same as B', because that requires distinguishing A from B, so that these would have to be different presentations.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.327)
     A reaction: This is why Frege needed the concept of reference, so that identity could be outside the mind (as in Hesperus = Phosophorus). Think about an electron; now think about a different electron.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / a. Nature of value
Altruistic values concern other persons, and ceremonial values concern practices [Quine]
     Full Idea: Altruistic values attach to satisfactions of other persons, without regard to ulterior satisfactions accruing to oneself. Ceremonial values attach to practices of one's society, without regard to satisfactions accruing to oneself.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.58)
     A reaction: An interesting distinction, but probably as blurred and circular as (according to Quine) the analytic/synthetic distinction.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / g. Love
Love seems to diminish with distance from oneself [Quine]
     Full Idea: One cannot reasonably be called upon to love even one's neighbour quite as oneself. Is love to diminish inversely as the square of the distance? Is it to extend to other species than one's own?
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.65)
     A reaction: Quine isn't actually saying that love is inherently egoistic, but that is the implication. The power of my love is at its most powerful when it is closest to home.