7 ideas
| 12580 | Experiences have no conceptual content [Evans, by Greco] |
| Full Idea: In Evans's work experiences are conceived of as not having a conceptual content at all. | |
| From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal | |
| A reaction: I presume it is this view which provoked McDowell's contrary view in 'Mind and World'. I say this is a job for neuroscience, and I struggle to see what philosophical questions hang on the outcome. I think I side with Evans. |
| 7643 | We have far fewer colour concepts than we have discriminations of colour [Evans] |
| Full Idea: Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are shades colour that we can sensibly discriminate? | |
| From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the argument (rejected by McDowell) that experience cannot be conceptual because experience is too rich. We should not confuse lack of concepts with lack of words. I may have a concept of a colour between two shades, but no word for it. |
| 23794 | Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte] |
| Full Idea: Evans introduced the idea that there are some representational states, for example perceptual experiences, which have content that is nonconceptual. | |
| From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 3.4 | |
| A reaction: McDowell famously disagree, and whether all experience is inherently conceptualised is a main debate from that period. Hard to see how it could be settled, but I incline to McDowell, because minimal perception hardly counts as 'experience'. |
| 16366 | The Generality Constraint says if you can think a predicate you can apply it to anything [Evans] |
| Full Idea: If a subject can be credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being G of which he has conception. This condition I call the 'Generality Constraint'. | |
| From: Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], p.104), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 5.3 | |
| A reaction: Recanati endorses the Constraint in his account of mental files. Apparently if I can entertain the thought of a circle being round, I can also entertain the thought of it being square, so I am not too sure about this one. |
| 12575 | Concepts have a 'Generality Constraint', that we must know how predicates apply to them [Evans, by Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Evans's 'Generality Constraint' says that if a thinker is capable of attitudes to the content Fa and possesses the singular concept b, then he is capable of having attitudes to the content Fb. | |
| From: report of Gareth Evans (The Varieties of Reference [1980], 4.3) by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 1.1 | |
| A reaction: So having an attitude becomes the test of whether one possesses a concept. I suppose if one says 'You know you've got a concept when you are capable of thinking about it', that is much the same thing. Sounds fine. |
| 20041 | Intentional actions are those which are explained by giving the reason for so acting [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: Intentional actions are those to which a certain sense of the question 'Why?' is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Intention [1957], p.9), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 2 'Two kinds' | |
| A reaction: This works better for grand large-scale actions than for small ones, like taking the knife out of the drawer before the fork. Kahnemann nowadays tells us that the reasons we articulate might not be the ones that are operative. |
| 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'). |