Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Problem of Empty Names', 'Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes' and 'Frege on Apriority'

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4 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names

18946	Unreflectively, we all assume there are nonexistents, and we can refer to them [Reimer]
	Full Idea: As speakers of the language, we unreflectively assume that there are nonexistents, and that reference to them is possible.
	From: Marga Reimer (The Problem of Empty Names [2001], p.499), quoted by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 4
	A reaction: Sarah Swoyer quotes this as a good solution to the problem of empty names, and I like it. It introduces a two-tier picture of our understanding of the world, as 'unreflective' and 'reflective', but that seems good. We accept numbers 'unreflectively'.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry

9159	You can't simply convert geometry into algebra, as some spatial content is lost [Burge]
	Full Idea: Although one can translate geometrical propositions into algebraic ones and produce equivalent models, the meaning of geometrical propositions seems to me to be thereby lost. Pure geometry involves spatial content, even if abstracted from physical space.
	From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority [2000], IV)
	A reaction: This supports Frege's view (against Quine) that geometry won't easily fit into the programme of logicism. I agree with Burge. You would be focusing on the syntax of geometry, and leaving out the semantics.

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism

4988	Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM]
	Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true.
	From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9
	A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory.

4987	Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM]
	Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced).
	From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro)
	A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'.