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All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Public Text and Common Reader' and 'Deflating Existential Consequence'

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18 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' can be taken as true without have any truthmaker.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3)
     A reaction: There might be an equivocation over 'true' here. 'What, really really true that he IS a fictional mouse?'
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: No truth predicate is ever indispensable, because Tarski biconditionals, the equivalences between sentences and explicit truth ascriptions to those sentences, allow us to replace explicit truth ascriptions with the sentences themselves.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.1)
     A reaction: Holding a sentence to be true isn't the same as saying that it is true, and it isn't the same as saying the sentence, because one might say it in an ironic tone of voice.
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 2. Deflationary Truth
Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: My take on truth is a fairly deflationary one: The role of the truth predicate is to enable us to assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro)
     A reaction: Clearly this is a role for truth, as in 'I forget what he said, but I know it was true', but it isn't remotely what most people understand by true. We use 'true' about totally explicit sentences all the time.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names
Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: Names function the same way (semantically and grammatically) regardless of whether or not there's an object that they refer to.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3 n55)
     A reaction: I take this to be a fairly clear rebuttal of the 'Fido'-Fido view of names (that the meaning of the name IS the dog), which never seems to quite go away. A name is a peg on which description may be hung, seems a good slogan to me.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence
That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: If the argument isn't that, metaphysically speaking, anything that exists must have causal powers - how on earth would we show that? - rather, the claim is an epistemic one. Any thing we're in a position to know about we must causally interact with.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4)
     A reaction: A very good point. I am attracted to causal power as a criterion for existence, but Azzouni's distinction is vital. Maybe there is just no point in even talking about things which exist but have no causal powers.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 7. Fictionalism
If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: It's robustly part of common sense that fictional objects don't exist in any sense at all, and this means they aren't abstracta either.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3)
     A reaction: Nice. It is so easy to have some philosopher dilute and equivocate over the word 'object' until you find yourself committed to all sorts of daft things as somehow having objectual existence. We can discuss things which don't exist in any way at all.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: It is widespread in contemporary metaphysics to extract commitments to various types of object on the basis of the logical form of certain sentences.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7)
     A reaction: I'm with Azzouni in thinking that this procedure is a very bad idea. I'm increasingly inclined towards the wild view that people are only ontologically committed to things if they explicitly say that they are so committed.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: The argument that objectual quantifiers are ontologically committing has the crucial and unnoticed presupposition that the language in which the semantics for the objectual quantifiers is couched (the 'metalanguage') also has quantifiers with commitment.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3)
     A reaction: That is, presumably we find ourselves ontologically committed to the existence of quantifiers, and are also looking at an infinite regress. See Idea 12439.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: There are no linguistic devices, no idioms (not 'there is', not 'exists') that unequivocally indicate ontological commitment in the vernacular.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro)
     A reaction: This seems right, since people talk in such ways about soap opera, while understanding the ontological situation perfectly well. Presumably Quine is seeking higher standards than the vernacular, if we are doing science.
We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: A slogan: One can't read ontological commitments from semantic conditions unless one has already smuggled into those semantic conditions the ontology one would like to read off.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3)
     A reaction: The arguments supporting this are subtle, but it's good enough for me, as I never thought anyone was ontologically committed just because they used the vagueries of language to try to say what's going on around here.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 4. Impossible objects
Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: Things that don't exist don't have any properties.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4)
     A reaction: Sounds reasonable! I totally agree, but that is because my notion of properties is sparse and naturalistic. If you identify properties with predicates (which some weird people seem to), then non-existents can have properties like 'absence' or 'nullity'.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 3. Taste
Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton]
     Full Idea: We must discover the meanings that emerge when works of literature are experience in relation to each other. ...The importance of tradition is that it denotes - ideally, at least - the class of relevant comparisons.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.27)
     A reaction: This is a nice attempt to explain why we all agree that a thorough education in an art is an essential prerequisite for good taste. Some people (e.g. among the young) seem to have natural good taste. How does that happen?
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 5. Art as Language
In literature, word replacement changes literary meaning [Scruton]
     Full Idea: In literary contexts semantically equivalent words cannot replace each other without loss of literary meaning.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.25)
     A reaction: The notion of 'literary meaning' is not a standard one, and is questionable whether 'meaning' is the right word, given that a shift in word in a poem is as much to do with sound as with connotations.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 1. Artistic Intentions
Without intentions we can't perceive sculpture, but that is not the whole story [Scruton]
     Full Idea: A person for whom it made no difference whether a sculpture was carved by wind and rain or by human hand would be unable to interpret or perceive sculptures - even though the interpretation of sculpture is not the reading of an intention.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.15)
     A reaction: Scruton compares it to the role of intention in language, where there is objective meaning, even though intention is basic to speech.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 3. Artistic Representation
In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not [Scruton]
     Full Idea: In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.18)
     A reaction: A nice aphorism. I always feel uncomfortable reading novels about real people, although the historical Macbeth doesn't bother me much. Novels are too close to reality. Macbeth didn't speak blank verse.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 5. Objectivism in Art
We can be objective about conventions, but love of art is needed to understand its traditions [Scruton]
     Full Idea: An historian can elucidate convention while having no feeling for the art that exploits it; whereas an understanding of tradition is reserved for those with the critical insight which comes from the love of art, both past and present.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.24)
     A reaction: This aesthetic observation is obviously close to Scruton's well-known conservatism in politics. I am doubtful whether the notion of 'tradition' can stand up to close examination, though we all know roughly what he means.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
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').
27. Natural Reality / F. Chemistry / 3. Periodic Table
The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni]
     Full Idea: The periodic table not only governs what elements there can be, with their properties, but also explicitly excludes others sorts of elements, because the elements are individuated by the number of discrete protons in their nuclei.
     From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7)
     A reaction: It has to be central to the thesis of scientific essentialism that the possibilities in nature are far more restricted than is normally thought, and this observation illustrates the view nicely. He makes a similar point about subatomic particles.