7 ideas
| 10835 | True sentences says the appropriate descriptive thing on the appropriate demonstrative occasion [Austin,JL] |
| Full Idea: A sentence is said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the demonstrative conventions (the one to which it 'refers') is of a type with which the sentence used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions. | |
| From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is correspondence by convention rather than correspondence by mapping. Personally I prefer some sort of mapping account, despite all the difficulty and vagueness of specifying what maps onto what. |
| 10836 | Correspondence theorists shouldn't think that a country has just one accurate map [Austin,JL] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists too often talk as one would who held that every map is either accurate or inaccurate; that every country can have but one accurate map. | |
| From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], n 24) | |
| A reaction: A well-made point, for those who intuitively hang on to correspondence as not only good common sense, but also some sort of salvation for a realist view of the world which might give us certainty in epistemology. |
| 8406 | Not all explanations are causal, but if a thing can be explained at all, it can be explained causally [Sanford] |
| Full Idea: Although not all explanations are causal, anything which can be explained in any way can be explained causally. | |
| From: David H. Sanford (Causation [1995], p.79) | |
| A reaction: A nice bold claim with which I am in sympathy, but he would have a struggle proving it. Does this imply that causal explanations are basic, or in some way superior? Note that functional explanations would thus have underlying causal explanations. |
| 17371 | Some kinds are very explanatory, but others less so, and some not at all [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory significance, hence naturalness, comes in degrees: positing some kinds may be very explanatory, positing others, only a little bit explanatory, positing others still, not explanatory at all. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: He mentions 'cousin' as a natural kind that is not very explanatory of anything. It interests us as humans, but not at all in other animals, it seems. ...Nice thought, though, that two squirrels might be cousins... |
| 8407 | A totality of conditions necessary for an occurrence is usually held to be jointly sufficient for it [Sanford] |
| Full Idea: A totality of conditions necessary for an occurrence is jointly sufficient for it. This is a widely held but controversial view, and it is not a logical truth. | |
| From: David H. Sanford (Causation [1995], p.82) | |
| A reaction: This wouldn't work for an impossible occurrence. What are the necessary conditions to produce a large planet made of uranium? One of them would have to be a naturally impossible necessity. |
| 17372 | The higher categories are not natural kinds, so the Linnaean hierarchy should be given up [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: The signs are that the higher categories are not natural kinds and so the Linnaean hierarchy must be abandoned. ...This is not abandoning a hierarchy altogether, it is not abandoning a tree of life. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Devitt's underlying point is that the higher and more general kinds do not have an essence (a specific nature), which is the qualification to be a natural kind. They explain nothing. Essence is the hallmark of natural kinds. Hmmm. |
| 17373 | Species pluralism says there are several good accounts of what a species is [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Species pluralism is the view that there are several equally good accounts of what it is to be a species. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 7) | |
| A reaction: Devitt votes for it, and cites Dupré, among many other. Given the existence of rival accounts, all making good points, it is hard to resist this view. |