31 ideas
2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
Full Idea: It is the job of the philosopher to distinguish what is fact and what is convention in our theorising about the world. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §7 p.112) | |
A reaction: This may well be the entire truth about philosophy. It begins with the Nomos-Physis debate in ancient Athens, and it turns out to be the key issue in almost every area of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics and morality. |
2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Although no semantic notions are used in Tarski's truth definitions themselves, they are used in deciding when such a definition is correct, namely the notion of translation. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §4 p.66) |
2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
Full Idea: If you say "I am going to drive this car", and I say "That's true", that is very different from my saying "I am going to drive this car". | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §4 p.68) |
2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Metaphysical realism about truth is a bundle of ideas: that it is a matter of Correspondence, that it exhibits Independence (of humans), Bivalence, and Uniqueness (there is only one ultimate truth). | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §7 p.107) | |
A reaction: It requires robust truth, but not correspondence (which is too strict, and too imprecise). Not sure about bivalence, which seems an unwarranted imposition. The other two seem fine, to me. |
2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The parts of a lamp stay together when it is moved (which is one of Aristotle's criteria for objecthood). | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §7 p.110) | |
A reaction: Metaphysics 1052a26 (just after the cross-reference) says a thing may be unified 'if its movement is single'. |
2799 | Bayes' theorem explains why very surprising predictions have a higher value as evidence [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Bayesianism can explain the fact that in science surprising predictions have greater evidential value, as the equation produces a higher degree of confirmation. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.42) |
2798 | Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) x prob(E given H) / prob(E) [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Bayesianism says ideally rational people should have degrees of belief (not all-or-nothing beliefs), corresponding with probability theory. Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) X prob(E given H) / prob(E). | |
From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.41) |
21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
Full Idea: My "functionalism" insisted that a robot, a human being, a silicon creature and a disembodied spirit could all work much the same way when described at the relevant level of abstraction, and it is wrong to think the essence of mind is hardware. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], Int p.xii) | |
A reaction: This is the key point about the theory - that it is an abstract theory of mind, saying nothing about substances. It drew, however, some misguided criticisms suggesting silly implementations. |
2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The idea that there is one computational state that every being who believes that there are lots of cats in the neighbourhood is in must be false. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §5 p.84) | |
A reaction: It is tempting to say that the mental states of such people must have SOMETHING in common, until you realise that all you can specify is that all their states are about cats. |
2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Functionalism has as much trouble with physical accounts of reference as of meaning. Reference is the main tool used in formal theories of truth. But 'truth' isn't folk psychology, it is central to logic, which everyone wants. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], Int p.xiv) | |
A reaction: All logic is defined in terms of truth and falsehood resulting from reasoning, but it could be that 'true' and 'false' have no more content that 1 and 0 in binary electronics. They are distinct, but empty. |
2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Computational models of the brain/mind will not suffice for cognitive psychology. We cannot individuate concepts and beliefs without reference to the environment. Meanings aren't "in the head". | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], p.73) | |
A reaction: Mr Functionalism quits! |
21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Why don't the eliminationists speak of "folk logic" as well as "folk psychology"? | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §4 p.60) | |
A reaction: I think Putnam considers that if you can prove 'truth' to be a necessary feature of mental life, that connects mind and world, but marking a sentence as 'T' doesn't make any connections. |
2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The desire that grips Fodor, as it once gripped me, is the desire to make belief-desire psychology "scientific" by simply identifying it outright with computational psychology. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], p.7) | |
A reaction: An "outright" identification looks very implausible. It seems that we should accept that belief-desire psychology is a very good guide to normal brain events, but a bad guide to unusual brain events. See Ideas 2987 and 7519. |
2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The 'mental representations' of Earth speakers and Twin Earth speakers were not in any way different; the reference was different because the substances were different. Reference is fixed by the environment itself. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.32) | |
A reaction: There seems to be an elementary distinction here between what you think you are referring to, and what you are in fact referring to. "That man is the Prince of Wales" (pointing at the butler). |
2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The notion of meaning, and hence of translation (needed to define truth), presupposes the notion of reference. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §4 p.67) | |
A reaction: It is plausible to see reference as the fundamental notion of language. With no anchors in reality, language would be 'private', in LW's sense. |
2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
Full Idea: "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §7 p.119) | |
A reaction: I agree. It probably fails to define meaning because it is false. A corkscrew is not the action of opening a wine bottle. |
2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The doctrine of Quine called "meaning holism" offered arguments refuting logical positivist attempts to show that every term we can understand can be defined using a limited group of "observation terms". | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.08) | |
A reaction: To seems a rather large jump from saying that sentences come in groups to full-blown 'holism' (involving every sentence). |
2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
Full Idea: If I say "Hawks fly", I do not intend my hearer to deduce that a hawk with a broken wing will fly. What we expect depends on the whole network of belief. Language describes experience as a network, not sentence by sentence. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09) | |
A reaction: The shortcut through this is 'exactly what did you mean when you said "Hawks fly"?'. That is, get me closer to your proposition. |
2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Holism immediately suggests that most terms cannot be defined, at least not in a way that is fixed once and for all. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09) | |
A reaction: Perhaps there exists a single perfect definition for each holistic system, only graspable by a transcendent intellect. Or why can't there be a matching holistic system of definitions? |
2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The effect of my account, as of Kripke's, is to separate the question of how the reference of terms such as 'gold' is fixed from the question of their conceptual content. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.38) | |
A reaction: Too simple. 'Gold' isn't a proper name, like 'Hilary', which needs no more content than a serial number. Baptising a gold sample needs much more information than baptising a person. |
2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
Full Idea: It seems that the dominant "component" of natural kind words is the extension. The referential factor does almost all the work, and natural kind terms resemble names. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §3 p.49) | |
A reaction: My concept of 'tiger' does not mainly consist of the tigers. Does the concept contract as the tiger population dwindles? Prototypes, exemplars etc. See 'Concepts' |
2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
Full Idea: What is wrong with the Aristotelian picture (of meaning and reference based on concepts) is that it suggest that everything that is necessary for the use of language is stored in each individual mind, but no individual language works this way. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.25) | |
A reaction: Languages must partly work that way. You can't talk without a conceptual storehouse. In a small society I would expect every adult to know the full vocabulary. |
2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Reference is a social phenomenon. Individual speakers do not have to know how to distinguish robins, or elms, or aluminium. They can always rely on experts to do this for them. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.22) | |
A reaction: It can't just be a social phenomenon. The experts don't just enquire about standard usage, or defer to Hilary Putnam. |
21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of 'good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') | |
A reaction: I take normativity not be the mere labelling of certain things as 'good', but as a way of responding to that fact, with some sort of motivation. |
21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |
Full Idea: "Water" functions as a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description, synonymous with an account of its atoms. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §3 p.50) |
21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |