22 ideas
| 19306 | It is a principle of reasoning not to clutter your mind with trivialities [Harman] |
| Full Idea: I am assuming the following principle: Clutter Avoidance - in reasoning, one should not clutter one's mind with trivialities. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I like Harman's interest in the psychology of reasoning. In the world of Frege, it is taboo to talk about psychology. |
| 19304 | The rules of reasoning are not the rules of logic [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Rules of deduction are rules of deductive argument; they are not rules of inference or reasoning. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: And I have often noticed that good philosophing reasoners and good logicians are frequently not the same people. |
| 19307 | If there is a great cost to avoiding inconsistency, we learn to reason our way around it [Harman] |
| Full Idea: We sometimes discover our views are inconsistent and do not know how to revise them in order to avoid inconsistency without great cost. The best response may be to keep the inconsistency and try to avoid inferences that exploit it. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: Any decent philosopher should face this dilemma regularly. I assume non-philosophers don't compare the different compartments of their beliefs very much. Students of non-monotonic logics are trying to formalise such thinking. |
| 19309 | Logic has little relevance to reasoning, except when logical conclusions are immediate [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Although logic does not seem specially relevant to reasoning, immediate implication and immediate inconsistency do seem important for reasoning. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: Ordinary thinkers can't possibly track complex logical implications, so we have obviously developed strategies for coping. I assume formal logic is contructed from the basic ingredients of the immediate and obvious implications, such as modus ponens. |
| 19303 | Implication just accumulates conclusions, but inference may also revise our views [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Implication is cumulative, in a way that inference may not be. In argument one accumulates conclusions; things are always added, never subtracted. Reasoned revision, however, can subtract from one's view as well as add. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This has caught Harman's attention, I think (?), because he is looking for non-monotonic reasoning (i.e. revisable reasoning) within a classical framework. If revision is responding to evidence, the logic can remain conventional. |
| 18889 | Ostensive definitions needn't involve pointing, but must refer to something specific [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: So-called ostensive definitions need not literally involve ostension, e.g. pointing, but they must involve genuine reference of some sort (in this case reference to a sample of water). | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 4.11.2) |
| 14627 | S4, and therefore S5, are invalid for metaphysical modality [Salmon,N, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Salmon argues that S4 and therefore S5 are invalid for metaphysical modality. | |
| From: report of Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 238-40) by Timothy Williamson - Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 4 | |
| A reaction: [He gives references for Salmon, and for his own reply] Salmon's view seems to be opposed my most modern logicians (such as Ian Rumfitt). |
| 18888 | Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysical doctrine of essentialism says that certain properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have, except by not existing. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 3.8.2) | |
| A reaction: A bad account of essentialism, and a long way from Aristotle. It arises from the logicians' tendency to fix objects entirely in terms of a 'flat' list of predicates (called 'properties'!), which ignore structure, constitution, history etc. |
| 19305 | The Gambler's Fallacy (ten blacks, so red is due) overemphasises the early part of a sequence [Harman] |
| Full Idea: The Gambler's Fallacy says if black has come up ten times in a row, red must be highly probable next time. It overlooks how the impact of an initial run of one color can become more and more insignificant as the sequence gets longer. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: At what point do you decide that the roulette wheel is fixed, rather than that you have fallen for the Gambler's Fallacy? Interestingly, standard induction points to the opposite conclusion. But then you have prior knowledge of the wheel. |
| 19310 | High probability premises need not imply high probability conclusions [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Propositions that are individually highly probable can have an immediate implication that is not. The fact that one can assign a high probability to P and also to 'if P then Q' is not sufficient reason to assign high probability to Q. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Kyburg's Lottery Paradox. It is probable that there is a winning ticket, and that this ticket is not it. Thus it is NOT probable that I will win. |
| 19308 | We strongly desire to believe what is true, even though logic does not require it [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Moore's Paradox: one is strongly disposed not to believe both P and that one does not believe that P, while realising that these propositions are perfectly consistent with one another. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: [Where in Moore?] A very nice example of a powerful principle of reasoning which can never be captured in logic. |
| 19311 | In revision of belief, we need to keep track of justifications for foundations, but not for coherence [Harman] |
| Full Idea: The key issue in belief revision is whether one needs to keep track of one's original justifications for beliefs. What I am calling the 'foundations' theory says yes; what I am calling the 'coherence' theory says no. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 4) | |
| A reaction: I favour coherence in all things epistemological, and this idea seems to match real life, where I am very confident of many beliefs of which I have forgotten the justification. Harman says coherentists need the justification only when they doubt a belief. |
| 19312 | Coherence is intelligible connections, especially one element explaining another [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Coherence in a view consists in connections of intelligibility among the elements of the view. Among other things these included explanatory connections, which hold when part of one's view makes it intelligible why some other part should be true. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Change in View: Principles of Reasoning [1986], 7) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. I call myself an 'explanatory empiricist', and embrace a coherence theory of justification. This is the framework within which philosophy should be practised. Harman is our founder, and Paul Thagard our guru. |
| 18886 | Frege's 'sense' solves four tricky puzzles [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: Reference via sense solves Frege's four puzzles, of the informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitutivity in attitude contexts, of negative existentials, and the truth-value of statements using nondenoting singular terms. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: These must then be compared with Kripke's three puzzles about referring via sense, and the whole debate is then spread before us. |
| 18887 | The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works. |
| 20725 | The idea of duty in one's calling haunts us, like a lost religion [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: Great sentence! Vast scholarship boiled down to a simple and disturbing truth. I recognise this in me. Having been 'Head of Philosophy' once is partly what motivates me to compile these ideas. |
| 20722 | Acquisition and low consumption lead to saving, investment, and increased wealth [Weber] |
| Full Idea: If people are acquisitive but consumption is limited, the inevitable result is the accumulation of capital through the compulsion to save. The restraints on consumption naturally served to increase wealth by enabling the productive investment of capital. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. He also quotes John Wesley saying this] In a nutshell, this is how the protestant ethic (esp. if puritan) drives capitalism. It also needs everyone to have a 'calling', and a rebellion against monasticism in favour of worldly work. |
| 20724 | When asceticism emerged from the monasteries, it helped to drive the modern economy [Weber] |
| Full Idea: When asceticism was carried out of the monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
| A reaction: Since Max Weber's time I should think this is less and less true. If you hunt for ascetics in the modern world, they are probably dropped out, and pursuing green politics. Industrialists are obsessed with property and wine. |
| 20717 | Capitalism is not unlimited greed, and may even be opposed to greed [Weber] |
| Full Idea: Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less in its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
| A reaction: The point is that profits have to be re-invested, rather than spent on pleasure. If we are stuck with capitalism we need a theory of Ethical Capitalism. |
| 20718 | Modern western capitalism has free labour, business separate from household, and book-keeping [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The modern Occident has developed a very different form of capitalism: the rational capitalist organisation of free labour …which needed two other factors: the separation of the business from the household, and the closely connected rational book-keeping. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
| A reaction: For small businesses the separation has to be maintained by a ruthless effort of imagination. Book-keeping is because the measure of loss and profit is the engine of the whole game. Labour had to be dragged free of family and community. |
| 18891 | Nothing in the direct theory of reference blocks anti-essentialism; water structure might have been different [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be nothing in the theory of direct reference to block the anti-essentialist assertion that the substance water might have been the very same entity and yet have had a different chemical structure. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 6.23.1) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, water could be continuously changing its inner structure, while retaining the surface appearance that gets baptised as 'water'. We make the reasonable empirical assumption, though, that structure-change implies surface-change. |
| 20719 | Punish the heretic, but be indulgent to the sinner [Weber] |
| Full Idea: The rule of the Catholic church is 'punishing the heretic, but indulgent of the sinner'. | |
| From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 1) | |
| A reaction: Weber cites this as if it is a folklore saying. It seems to fit the teachings of Jesus, who is intensely keen on unwavering faith, but very kind to those who stray morally. Hence Graham Greene novels, all about sinners. |