23 ideas
10838 | To explain a concept, we need its purpose, not just its rules of usage [Dummett] |
Full Idea: We cannot in general suppose that we give a proper account of a concept by describing those circumstance in which we do, and those in which we do not, make use of the relevant word. We explain the point of the concept, what we use the word for. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.231) | |
A reaction: Well said. I am beginning to develop a campaign to make sure that analytical philosophy focuses on understanding concepts (in a full 'logos' sort of way), and doesn't just settle for logical form or definition or rules of usage. |
10837 | It is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements [Dummett] |
Full Idea: It is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.231) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a rather contentious but very interesting claim. An even stronger claim might be that its value (its normative force) is ALL that the concept of truth contributes to speech, other aspects being analysed into something else. |
10840 | We must be able to specify truths in a precise language, like winning moves in a game [Dummett] |
Full Idea: For a particular bounded language, if it is free of ambiguity and inconsistency, it must be possible to characterize the true sentences of the language; somewhat as, for a given game, we can say which moves are winning moves. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.237) | |
A reaction: The background of this sounds rather like Tarski, with truth just being a baton passed from one part of the language to another, though Dummett adds the very un-Tarskian notion that truth has a value. |
19171 | Tarski's truth is like rules for winning games, without saying what 'winning' means [Dummett, by Davidson] |
Full Idea: Tarski's definition of truth is like giving a definition of what it is to win in various games, without giving a hint as to what winning is (e.g. that it is what one tries to do when playing). | |
From: report of Michael Dummett (Truth [1959]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 7 | |
A reaction: This led Dummett to his 'normative' account of truth. Formally, the fact that speakers usually aim at truth seems irrelevant, but in life you certainly wouldn't have grasped truth if you thought falsehood was just as satisfactory. The world is involved. |
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'. |
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). |
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? |
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. |
21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
10839 | You can't infer a dog's abstract concepts from its behaviour [Dummett] |
Full Idea: One could train a dog to bark only when a bell rang and a light shone without presupposing that it possessed the concept of conjunction. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.235) |
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. |
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. |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of ''good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
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? |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |