9 ideas
| 7332 | There is a huge range of sentences of which we do not know the logical form [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We do not know the logical form of sentences about counterfactuals, probabilities, causal relations, belief, perception, intention, purposeful action, imperatives, optatives, or interrogatives, or the role of adverbs, adjectives or mass terms. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967], p.35) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the famous 'Davidson programme', where teams of philosophers work out the logical forms for this lot, thus unravelling the logic of the world. If they are beavering away, some sort of overview should have emerged by now... |
| 7772 | Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Davidson's main argument in favour of his truth conditions theory of meaning is that compositionality is needed to account for our understanding of long, novel sentences, and a sentence's truth condition is its most obviously compositional feature. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me exactly right. As we hear a new long sentence unfold, we piece together the meaning. At the end we may spot that the meaning is silly, or an unverifiable speculation, or not what the speaker intended - but it is too late! It means. |
| 7327 | Davidson thinks Frege lacks an account of how words create sentence-meaning [Davidson, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Davidson thinks that Frege's model for a theory of semantic value (and thereby for a systematic theory of sense) is unsatisfactory, because it provides no useful or explanatory account of how sentence-meaning can be a function of word-meaning. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 8.1 | |
| A reaction: Put like that, it is not clear to me how you could even start to explain how word-meaning contributes to sentence meaning. Try speaking any sentence slowly, and observe how the sentence meaning builds up. Truth is, of course, relevant. |
| 7769 | You can state truth-conditions for "I am sick now" by relativising it to a speaker at a time [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Davidson's response to the problem of how you would state truth conditions for "I am sick now" ...is to relativize its truth to a particular speaker and a time. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: Lycan is not happy with this, but it seems a reasonable way to treat the truth of any statement containing indexicals. Never mind the 'truth conditions theory of meaning' - just ask whether "I am sick now" is true. |
| 6179 | Should we assume translation to define truth, or the other way around? [Blackburn on Davidson] |
| Full Idea: The concern of some philosophers has been expressed by saying that whereas Tarski took translation for granted, and sought to understand truth, Davidson takes truth for granted, and seeks to understand translation. | |
| From: comment on Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by Simon Blackburn - Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy p.82 | |
| A reaction: We can just say that the two concepts are interdependent, but my personal intuitions side with Davidson. If you are going to take something as fundamental and axiomatic, truth looks a better bet than translation. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 20595 | You can't distribute goods from behind a veil, because their social meaning is unclear [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Walzer says behind the veil of ignorance there would be no way to know how a particular good should be distributed, because we would not know the social meaning of the good in question. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian' | |
| A reaction: Is Rawls actually proposing to decide details of distribution from behind the veil? There is just the maximin principle. What that means in practice would surely come once the society was under way. |
| 20592 | Complex equality restricts equalities from spilling over, like money influencing politics and law [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Complex equality tries to keep advantages in one area (such as money) from translating into advantages in politics or before the law. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 3 'Complex' | |
| A reaction: Put like that, Walzer's complex equality becomes very interesting, and pinpoints a major problem of our age, where discrepancies of wealth have become staggeringly large at the top end. |
| 20549 | Equality is complex, with different spheres of equality where different principles apply [Walzer, by Swift] |
| Full Idea: Michael Walzer argues for 'complex equality', saying different goods belong to different distributive 'spheres', each with its own distributive principles. | |
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 3 'Egalitarian' | |
| A reaction: Sounds interesting. Equality seems to make different demands when it concerns basic food for survival, or fine wines. You can spend your money freely, but hording in a crisis is frowned on. |