40 ideas
| 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes [James] |
| Full Idea: Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as 'health' is a name for other processes in life. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: So the slogan is 'truth is success in belief'? Suicide and racist genocide can be 'successful'. I would have thought that truth was the end of a process, rather than the process itself. |
| 18983 | In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object [James] |
| Full Idea: When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases. |
| 18972 | Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences [James] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatists say that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by the close similarity (at least in James) of the pragmatic view of truth and the coherence theory of truth (associated later with Blanshard). Perhaps the coherence theory is one version of the pragmatic account |
| 18973 | New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs [James] |
| Full Idea: A new opinion counts as 'true' just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: Note the tell-tale locution 'counts as' true, rather than 'is' true. The obvious problem is that someone with a big stock of foolish beliefs will 'count as' true some bad interpretation which is gratifyingly assimilated to their current confusions. |
| 18984 | True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify (and false otherwise) [James] |
| Full Idea: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: The immediate question is why you should label something as 'false' simply on the grounds that you can't corroborate it. Proving the falsity is a stronger position than the ignorance James seems happy with. 'Assimilate' implies coherence. |
| 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? |
| 18987 | A 'thing' is simply carved out of reality for human purposes [James] |
| Full Idea: What shall we call a 'thing' anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our human purposes. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 7) | |
| A reaction: James wrote just before the discovery of galaxies, which are much more obviously 'things' than constellations like the Plough are! This idea suggests a connection between pragmatism and the nihilist view of objects of Van Inwagen and co. |
| 18981 | 'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience [James] |
| Full Idea: 'Substance' appears now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are actually grouped and given in coherent forms. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |
| A reaction: This is the strongly empirical strain in James's empiricism. This sounds like a David Lewis comment on the Humean mosaic of experience. We Aristotelians at least believe that the groups run much deeper than the surface of experience. |
| 18974 | Truth is a species of good, being whatever proves itself good in the way of belief [James] |
| Full Idea: Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: The trouble is that false optimism can often often be what is 'good in the way of belief'. That said, I think quite a good way to specify 'truth' is 'success in belief', but I mean intrinsically successful, not pragmatically successful. |
| 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. |
| 18989 | Pragmatism accepts any hypothesis which has useful consequences [James] |
| Full Idea: On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: Most governments seem to find lies more useful than the truth. Maybe most children are better off not knowing the truth about their parents. It might be disastrous to know the truth about what other people are thinking. Is 'useful but false' meaningful? |
| 18971 | Theories are practical tools for progress, not answers to enigmas [James] |
| Full Idea: Theories are instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one to work. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: This follows his criticism of the quest for 'solving names' - big words that give bogus solutions to problems. James's view is not the same as 'instrumentalism', though he would probably sympathise with that view. The defines theories badly. |
| 18985 | True thoughts are just valuable instruments of action [James] |
| Full Idea: The possession of true thoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of action. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: It looks to me like we should distinguish 'active' and 'passive' instrumentalism. The passive version says there is no more to theories and truth than what instruments record. James's active version says truth is an instrument for doing things well. |
| 18982 | Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality [James] |
| Full Idea: The pragmatist view is that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world enigma. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 5) | |
| A reaction: This treats instrumentalism as the pragmatic idea of theories as what works (and nothing more), with, presumably, no interest in grasping something called 'reality'. Presumably instrumentalism might have other motivations - such as fun. |
| 18975 | We return to experience with concepts, where they show us differences [James] |
| Full Idea: Concepts for the pragmatist are things to come back into experience with, things to make us look for differences. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: That's good. I like both halves of this. Experience gives us the concepts, but then we 'come back' into experience equipped with them. Presumably animals can look for differences, but concepts enhance that hugely. Know the names of the flowers. |
| 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. |
| 23418 | Liberal state legitimacy is based on a belief in justice, not in some conception of the good life [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: For liberals the basis of state legitimacy is a shared sense of justice, not a shared conception of the good. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'legitimacy') | |
| A reaction: For a liberal state to work, the citizens have to roughly believe in the core values of liberalism, which are primarily freedom and equality (and hence justice). |
| 23414 | Liberals say state intervention in culture restricts people's autonomy [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: According to liberal theory, a state which intervenes in the cultural market place to encourage any particular way of life restricts people's autonomy. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'social') | |
| A reaction: The communitarian idea is that the state should intervene, in order to foster the best aspects of communal culture. The dangers are obvious, and can be seen in any totalitarian state. A gentle hand on the tiller, perhaps? Increase the options? |
| 23410 | Modern liberals see a community as simply a society which respects freedom and equality [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Most contemporary liberal philosophers have little to say about the ideal of community. …It is often seen as derivative of liberty and equality - a society lives up to the ideal of community if its members are treated as free and equal persons. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: He cites Rawls as an example. This is the central idea which was attacked by modern communitarians. A collection of scattered self-seeking isolated individuals doesn't seem to amount to a healthy communal life. Maybe community needs further rights? |
| 23409 | Community can focus on class or citizenship or ethnicity or culture [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: In recent centuries the ideal of community has taken many forms, from class solidarity or shared citizenship to a common ethnic descent or cultural identity. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Language and religion are not explicitly mentioned, but must be implied. Supporting a major sports team is also worth mentioning. |
| 23419 | Communitarianism struggles with excluded marginalised groups [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: The problem of the exclusion of historically marginalised groups is endemic to the communitarian project. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'legitimacy') | |
| A reaction: Put simply, old-fashioned styles of community are probably impossible in large modern states, some with rather arbitrary borders. |
| 23413 | Feminism has shown that social roles are far from fixed (as communitarians tend to see them) [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians say that some of our social roles must be regarded as fixed when planning our lives, …but the women's movement has shown how deeply entrenched social roles can be questioned and rejected. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Embedded') | |
| A reaction: True, but parents walking out on young children also shows that. The ideal must be some sort of balance. |
| 23415 | Participation aids the quest for the good life, but why should that be a state activity? [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians rarely distinguish between collective activities and political activities. Shared participation aids intelligent decisions about the good life, but why should that be organised through the state, rather than by free individuals? | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'need') | |
| A reaction: Kylicka points out later that local groups can be very unintelligent or prejudiced. Modern media have changed that picture, because participation can be with geographically remote people. |
| 23411 | Communitarians see justice as primarily a community matter, rather than a principle [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Communitarians believe either that community replaces the need for principles of justice, or that the community is either the source of such principles or should play a greater role in deciding their content. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The idea that a racist or chauvinist or puritanical or insular community should decide justice for all its members sounds horrible. It drives you to liberal individualism, just thinking about it. |
| 23412 | Justice resolves conflicts, but may also provoke them [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Justice can help mediate conflicts, but it also tends to creat conflicts, and to decrease the natural expression of sociability. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Community [1993], 'limits') | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing Michael Sandel on liberalism] Family life might not go well if all of its members continually demanded justice for themselves as individuals. Maybe our concept of justice is too individualistic? Do we need a sense of 'group' justice? |
| 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? |
| 18980 | If there is a 'greatest knower', it doesn't follow that they know absolutely everything [James] |
| Full Idea: The greatest knower of them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know what he does know at one single stroke: - he may be liable to forget. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |
| A reaction: And that's before you get to the problem of how the greatest knower could possibly know whether or not they knew absolutely everything, or whether there might be some fact which was irremediably hidden from them. |
| 18978 | It is hard to grasp a cosmic mind which produces such a mixture of goods and evils [James] |
| Full Idea: We can with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of good and evils that we find in this actual world's particulars. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: And, of course, what counts as 'goods' or 'evils' seems to have a highly relative aspect to it. To claim that really it is all good is massive hope based on flimsy evidence. |
| 18991 | If the God hypothesis works well, then it is true [James] |
| Full Idea: On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: The truth of God's existence certainly is a challenging test case for the pragmatic theory of truth, and James really bites the bullet here. Pragmatism may ultimately founder on the impossibility of specifying what 'works satisfactorily' means. |
| 18977 | The wonderful design of a woodpecker looks diabolical to its victims [James] |
| Full Idea: To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: What an elegant sentence! The huge problem for religious people who accept (probably reluctantly) evolution by natural selection is the moral nature of the divine being who could use such a ruthless method of design. |
| 18979 | Things with parts always have some structure, so they always appear to be designed [James] |
| Full Idea: The parts of things must always make some definite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: In so far as the design argument is an analogy with human affairs, we can't deny that high levels of order suggest an organising mind, and mere chaos suggests a coincidence of unco-ordinated forces. |
| 18976 | Private experience is the main evidence for God [James] |
| Full Idea: I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experience. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: There is not much you can say to someone who claims incontrovertible evidence which is utterly private to themselves. Does total absence of private religious experience count as evidence on the subject? |
| 18990 | Nirvana means safety from sense experience, and hindus and buddhists are just afraid of life [James] |
| Full Idea: Nirvana means safety from the everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: Wonderfully American! From what I have seen of eastern thought, including Taoism, I agree with James, in general. There is a rejection of knowledge and of human life which I find shocking. I suspect it is a defence mechanism for downtrodden people. |