20 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. |
| 17518 | Counting 'coin in this box' may have coin as the unit, with 'in this box' merely as the scope [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: If we count the concept 'coin in this box', we could regard coin as the 'unit', while taking 'in this box' to limit the scope. Counting coins in two boxes would be not a difference in unit (kind of object), but in scope. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting') | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice alternative to the Fregean view of counting, depending totally on the concept, and rests more on a natural concept of object. I prefer Ayers. Compare 'count coins till I tell you to stop'. |
| 17516 | If counting needs a sortal, what of things which fall under two sortals? [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: If we accepted that counting objects always presupposes some sortal, it is surely clear that the class of objects to be counted could be designated by two sortals rather than one. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii) | |
| A reaction: His nice example is an object which is both 'a single piece of wool' and a 'sweater', which had better not be counted twice. Wiggins struggles to argue that there is always one 'substance sortal' which predominates. |
| 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. |
| 17520 | Events do not have natural boundaries, and we have to set them [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: In order to know which event has been ostensively identified by a speaker, the auditor must know the limits intended by the speaker. ...Events do not have natural boundaries. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
| A reaction: He distinguishes events thus from natural objects, where the world, to a large extent, offers us the boundaries. Nice point. |
| 17519 | To express borderline cases of objects, you need the concept of an 'object' [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: The only explanation of the power to produce borderline examples like 'Is this hazelnut one object or two?' is the possession of the concept of an object. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting') |
| 17510 | Speakers need the very general category of a thing, if they are to think about it [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: If a speaker indicates something, then in order for others to catch his reference they must know, at some level of generality, what kind of thing is indicated. They must categorise it as event, object, or quality. Thinking about something needs that much. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Ayers defends the view that such general categories are required, but not the much narrower sortal terms defended by Geach and Wiggins. I'm with Ayers all the way. 'What the hell is that?' |
| 17522 | We use sortals to classify physical objects by the nature and origin of their unity [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: Sortals are the terms by which we intend to classify physical objects according to the nature and origin of their unity. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
| A reaction: This is as opposed to using sortals for the initial individuation. I take the perception of the unity to come first, so resemblance must be mentioned, though it can be an underlying (essentialist) resemblance. |
| 17515 | Seeing caterpillar and moth as the same needs continuity, not identity of sortal concepts [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: It is unnecessary to call moths 'caterpillars' or caterpillars 'moths' to see that they can be the same individual. It may be that our sortal concepts reflect our beliefs about continuity, but our beliefs about continuity need not reflect our sortals. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vi) | |
| A reaction: Something that metamorphosed through 15 different stages could hardly required 15 different sortals before we recognised the fact. Ayers is right. |
| 17511 | Recognising continuity is separate from sortals, and must precede their use [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: The recognition of the fact of continuity is logically independent of the possession of sortal concepts, whereas the formation of sortal concepts is at least psychologically dependent upon the recognition of continuity. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be entirely correct. I might add that unity must also be recognised. |
| 17517 | Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: The abstract question arises of whether the same matter could be subject to more than one principle of unity simultaneously, or unified by more than one 'form'. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that the unity of the sweater is destroyed by unravelling, and the unity of the thread by cutting. |
| 17513 | If there are two objects, then 'that marble, man-shaped object' is ambiguous [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: The statue is marble and man-shaped, but so is the piece of marble. So not only are the two objects in the same place, but two marble and man-shaped objects in the same place, so 'that marble, man-shaped object' must be ambiguous or indefinite. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') | |
| A reaction: It strikes me as basic that it can't be a piece of marble if you subtract its shape, and it can't be a statue if you subtract its matter. To treat a statue as an object, separately from its matter, is absurd. |
| 17523 | Sortals basically apply to individuals [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: Sortals, in their primitive use, apply to the individual. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
| A reaction: If the sortal applies to the individual, any essence must pertain to that individual, and not to the class it has been placed in. |
| 17521 | You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: It would be impossible for anyone to have the concept of a stage who did not already possess the concept of a physical object. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') |
| 17514 | Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: Temporally extended 'parts' are still mysteriously inseparable and not subject to rearrangement: a thing cannot be cut temporally in half. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') | |
| A reaction: A nice warning to anyone accepting a glib analogy between spatial parts and temporal parts. |
| 17509 | Some say a 'covering concept' completes identity; others place the concept in the reference [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: Some hold that the 'covering concept' completes the incomplete concept of identity, determining the kind of sameness involved. Others strongly deny the identity itself is incomplete, and locate the covering concept within the necessary act of reference. | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [a bit compressed; Geach is the first view, and Quine the second; Wiggins is somewhere between the two] |
| 17512 | If diachronic identities need covering concepts, why not synchronic identities too? [Ayers] |
| Full Idea: Why are covering concepts required for diachronic identities, when they must be supposed unnecessary for synchronic identities? | |
| From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') |
| 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. |
| 15666 | To understand language is to know how to use it to reach shared understandings [Habermas] |
| Full Idea: One simply would not know what it is to understand the meaning of a linguistic expression if one did not know how one could make use of it in order to reach understanding with someone about something. | |
| From: Jürgen Habermas (On the Pragmatics of Communications [1998], p.228), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:34 | |
| A reaction: Not offered as a 'theory of meaning', and certainly plausible. Compare a hammer, though: a proper understanding is that it is used to exert a sharp force, but you can take in its structure and nature before you spot its usage. |