18 ideas
| 18696 | The vagueness of truthmaker claims makes it easier to run anti-realist arguments [Button] |
| Full Idea: The sheer lack of structure demanded by truthmaker theorists means that it is easier to run model-theoretic arguments against them than against correspondence theorists. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: Truthmaking is a vague relation, where correspondence is fairly specific. Model arguments say you can keep the sentences steady, but shuffle around what they refer to. |
| 18701 | The coherence theory says truth is coherence of thoughts, and not about objects [Button] |
| Full Idea: According to the coherence theory of truth, for our thoughts to be true is not for them to be about objects, but only for them to cohere with one another. This is rather terrifying. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson espoused this view in 1983, but then gave it up. It strikes me as either a daft view of truth, or a denial of truth. The coherence theory of justification, on the other hand, is correct. |
| 18694 | Permutation Theorem: any theory with a decent model has lots of models [Button] |
| Full Idea: The Permutation Theorem says that any theory with a non-trivial model has many distinct isomorphic models with the same domain. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This may be the most significant claim of model theory, since Putnam has erected an argument for anti-realism on it. See the ideas of Tim Button. |
| 18692 | Realists believe in independent objects, correspondence, and fallibility of all theories [Button] |
| Full Idea: External realists have three principles: Independence - the world is objects that are independent of mind, language and theory; Correspondence - truth involves some correspondence of thoughts and things; Cartesian - an ideal theory might be false. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 01.1-3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Descartes's Demon for the third] Button is setting these up as targets. I subscribe to all three, in some form or other. Of course, as a theory approaches the success implying it is 'ideal', it becomes highly likely to be accurate. |
| 18693 | Indeterminacy arguments say if a theory can be made true, it has multiple versions [Button] |
| Full Idea: Indeterminacy arguments aim to show that if there is any way to make a theory true, then there are many ways to do so. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: Button says the simplest indeterminacy argument is Putnam's Permutation Argument - that you can shuffle the objects in a formal model, without affecting truth. But do we belief that metaphysics can be settled in this sort of way? |
| 18695 | An ideal theory can't be wholly false, because its consistency implies a true model [Button] |
| Full Idea: If realists think an ideal theory could be false, then the theory is consistent, and hence complete, and hence finitely modellable, and hence it is guaranteed that there is some way to make it true. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This challenges the realists' supposed claim that even the most ideal of theories could possibly be false. Presumably for a theory to be 'ideal' is not all-or-nothing. Are we capable of creating a fully ideal theory? [Löwenheim-Skolem] |
| 18700 | Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button] |
| Full Idea: Cartesian scepticism agonises over whether our beliefs are true or false, whereas Kantian scepticism agonises over how it is even possible for beliefs to be true or false. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Kant's question is, roughly, 'how can our thoughts succeed in being about the world?' Kantian scepticism is the more drastic, and looks vulnerable to a turning of the tables, but asking how Kantian worries can even be expressed. |
| 18698 | Predictions give the 'content' of theories, which can then be 'equivalent' or 'adequate' [Button] |
| Full Idea: The empirical 'content' of a theory is all its observable predictions. Two theories with the same predictions are empirically 'equivalent'. A theory which gets it all right at this level is empirically 'adequate'. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 05.1) |
| 19451 | When absorbed in deep reflection, is your reason in control, or is it you? [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: When, submerged in deep reflection, you forget both yourself and your surroundings, is it you who controls reason, or is it rather reason that controls and absorbs you? | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: A delightful question, even if it looks like a false dichotomy. I'm not sure what to make of 'me', if my reason can be subtracted from it. Aquinas was one the same wavelength here. |
| 18697 | A sentence's truth conditions are all the situations where it would be true [Button] |
| Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions comprise an exhaustive list of the situations in which that sentence would be true. | |
| From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: So to know its meaning you must know those conditions? Compare 'my cat is licking my finger' with 'dramatic events are happening in Ethiopia'. It should take an awful long time to grasp the second sentence. |
| 19450 | Reason, love and will are the highest perfections and essence of man - the purpose of his life [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man; they are his highest powers, his absolute essence in so far as he is man, the purpose of his existence. Man exists in order to think, love and will. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Feuerbach was a notable atheist, but adopts a religious style of language which modern atheists would find rather alien. Personally I love talk of ideals and perfections. Ideals have been discredited in modern times, but need a revival. |
| 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'). |
| 19448 | Consciousness is said to distinguish man from animals - consciousness of his own species [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What constitutes the essential difference between man and animal? The most simple, general, and most widely held answer to this question is consciousness. Consciousness is given only in the case of a being to whom his species ...is an object of thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) | |
| A reaction: Rather speculative. Since other species cohabit and breed only with their fellow species members, one might have thought they were aware of them. |
| 19454 | A God needs justice, kindness and wisdom, but those concepts don't depend on the concept of God [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The concept of God depends on the concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom - a God who is not kind, not just, and not wise is no God. But these concepts do not depend on the concept of God. That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Feuerbach's argument for atheism, but if you ask for the source of our human concepts of justice, kindness and wisdom, no one, I would have thought, could cite God for the role. |
| 19452 | The nature of God is an expression of human nature [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his expressed self. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Even if you are a deeply committed theist, you have to concede some of this point. The perfections attributed to God are usually of human qualities. Leibniz, though, says that God has an infinity of perfection, mostly unknown to us. |
| 19453 | If love, goodness and personality are human, the God who is their source is anthropomorphic [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: If love, goodness, and personality are human determinations, the being which constitutes their source and ...their presupposition is also an anthropomorphism; so is the existence of God. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly a struggle for the imagination to grasp a being which is characterised by idealised versions of human virtues, and yet has an intrinsic nature which is utterly different from humanity. |
| 19449 | Religion is the consciousness of the infinite [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Religion is the consciousness of the infinite. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], I) |
| 19455 | Today's atheism will tomorrow become a religion [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: What is regarded as atheism today will be religion tomorrow. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Introduction of 'Essence of Christianity' [1841], II) | |
| A reaction: Modern critics of atheism frequently accuse it of being a new religion. I doubt whether Feuerbach is right, but it is a nice provocative idea. |