29 ideas
| 9331 | How do we determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: How are we to determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §2) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. If I say 'philosophy is the love of wisdom' and 'philosophy bores me', why should one be part of its definition and the other not? What if I stipulated that the second one is part of my definition, and the first one isn't? |
| 14273 | Conditional Proof is only valid if we accept the truth-functional reading of 'if' [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Conditional Proof seems sound: 'From X and Y, it follows that Z. So from X it follows that if Y,Z'. Yet for no reading of 'if' which is stronger that the truth-functional reading is CP valid, at least if we accept ¬(A&¬B);A; therefore B. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: See the section of ideas on Conditionals (filed under 'Modality') for a fuller picture of this issue. Edgington offers it as one of the main arguments in favour of the truth-functional reading of 'if' (though she rejects that reading). |
| 14281 | A thing works like formal probability if all the options sum to 100% [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: One's degrees of belief in the members of an idealised partition should sum to 100%. That is all there is to the claim that degrees of belief should have the structure of probabilities. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 3.1) |
| 14284 | Conclusion improbability can't exceed summed premise improbability in valid arguments [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: If (and only if) an argument is valid, then in no probability distribution does the improbability of its conclusion exceed the sum of the improbabilities of its premises. We can call this the Probability Preservation Principle. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [Ernest Adams is credited with this] This means that classical logic is in some way probability-preserving as well as truth-preserving. |
| 14270 | Simple indicatives about past, present or future do seem to form a single semantic kind [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Straightforward statements about the past, present or future, to which a conditional clause is attached - the traditional class of indicative conditionals - do (in my view) constitute a single semantic kind. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: This contrasts with Idea 14269, where the future indicatives are group instead with the counterfactuals. |
| 14269 | Maybe forward-looking indicatives are best classed with the subjunctives [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: According to some theorists, the forward-looking 'indicatives' (those with a 'will' in the main clause) belong with the 'subjunctives' (those with a 'would' in the main clause), and not with the other 'indicatives'. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Gibbard, Dudman and 1988 Bennett; Jackson defends the indicative/subjunctive division, and recent Bennett defends it too] It is plausible to say that 'If you will do x' is counterfactual, since it hasn't actually happened. |
| 14275 | Truth-function problems don't show up in mathematics [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: The main defects of the truth-functional account of conditionals don't show up in mathematics. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: These problems are the paradoxes associated with the material conditional ⊃. Too often mathematical logic has been the tail that wagged the dog in modern philosophy. |
| 14274 | Inferring conditionals from disjunctions or negated conjunctions gives support to truth-functionalism [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: If either A or B is true, then you are intuitively justified in believe that If ¬A, B. If you know that ¬(A&B), then you may justifiably infer that if A, ¬B. The truth-functionalist gets both of these cases (disjunction and negated conjunction) correct. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed version] This summarises two of Edgington's three main arguments in favour of the truth-functional account of conditions (along with the existence of Conditional Proof). It is elementary classical logic which supports truth-functionalism. |
| 14276 | The truth-functional view makes conditionals with unlikely antecedents likely to be true [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: The truth-functional view of conditionals has the unhappy consequence that all conditionals with unlikely antecedents are likely to be true. To think it likely that ¬A is to think it likely that a sufficient condition for the truth of A⊃B obtains. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Edgington's main reason for rejecting the truth-functional account of conditionals. She says it removes our power to discriminate between believable and unbelievable conditionals, which is basic to practical reasoning. |
| 14290 | Doctor:'If patient still alive, change dressing'; Nurse:'Either dead patient, or change dressing'; kills patient! [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: The doctor says "If the patient is still alive in the morning, change the dressing". As a truth-functional command this says "Make it that either the patient is dead in the morning, or change the dressing", so the nurse kills the patient. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: Isn't philosophy wonderful? |
| 14271 | Non-truth-functionalist say 'If A,B' is false if A is T and B is F, but deny that is always true for TT,FT and FF [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Non-truth-functional accounts agree that 'If A,B' is false when A is true and B is false; and that it is sometimes true for the other three combinations of truth-values; but they deny that the conditional is always true in each of these three cases. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Truth-functional connectives like 'and' and 'or' don't add any truth-conditions to the values of the propositions, but 'If...then' seems to assert a relationship that goes beyond its component propositions, so non-truth-functionalists are right. |
| 14272 | I say "If you touch that wire you'll get a shock"; you don't touch it. How can that make the conditional true? [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Non-truth-functionalists agree that when A is false, 'If A,B' may be either true or false. I say "If you touch that wire, you will get an electric shock". You don't touch it. Was my remark true or false? They say it depends on the wire etc. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This example seems to me to be a pretty conclusive refutation of the truth-functional view. How can the conditional be implied simply by my failure to touch the wire (which is what benighted truth-functionalists seem to believe)? |
| 14282 | On the supposition view, believe if A,B to the extent that A&B is nearly as likely as A [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Accepting Ramsey's suggestion that 'if' and 'on the supposition that' come to the same thing, we get an equation which says ...you believe if A,B to the extent that you think that A&B is nearly as likely as A. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 3.1) |
| 14278 | Truth-functionalists support some conditionals which we assert, but should not actually believe [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: There are compounds of conditionals which we confidently assert and accept which, by the lights of the truth-functionalist, we do not have reason to believe true, such as 'If it broke if it was dropped, it was fragile', when it is NOT dropped. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [The example is from Gibbard 1981] The fact that it wasn't dropped only negates the nested antecedent, not the whole antecedent. I suppose it also wasn't broken, and both negations seem to be required. |
| 14287 | Does 'If A,B' say something different in each context, because of the possibiites there? [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: A pragmatic constraint might say that as different possibilities are live in different conversational settings, a different proposition may be expressed by 'If A,B' in different conversational settings. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Edgington says that it is only the truth of the proposition, not its content, which changes with context. I'm not so sure. 'If Hitler finds out, we are in trouble' says different things in 1914 and 1944. |
| 9333 | A priori belief is not necessarily a priori justification, or a priori knowledge [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: It is one thing to believe something a priori and another for this belief to be epistemically justified. The latter is required for a priori knowledge. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would agree with this, because I don't think anything should count as knowledge if it doesn't have supporting reasons, but fans of a priori knowledge presumably think that certain basic facts are just known. They are a priori justified. |
| 9342 | Understanding needs a priori commitment [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is itself based on a priori commitment. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
| A reaction: This sounds plausible, but needs more justification than Horwich offers. This is the sort of New Rationalist idea I associate with Bonjour. The crucial feature of the New lot is, I take it, their fallibilism. All understanding is provisional. |
| 9332 | Meaning is generated by a priori commitment to truth, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Our a priori commitment to certain sentences is not really explained by our knowledge of a word's meaning. It is the other way around. We accept a priori that the sentences are true, and thereby provide it with meaning. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a lovely trump card, but how on earth do you decide that a sentence is true if you don't know what it means? Personally I would take it that we are committed to the truth of a proposition, before we have a sentence for it. |
| 9341 | Meanings and concepts cannot give a priori knowledge, because they may be unacceptable [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: A priori knowledge of logic and mathematics cannot derive from meanings or concepts, because someone may possess such concepts, and yet disagree with us about them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
| A reaction: A good argument. The thing to focus on is not whether such ideas are a priori, but whether they are knowledge. I think we should employ the word 'intuition' for a priori candidates for knowledge, and demand further justification for actual knowledge. |
| 9334 | If we stipulate the meaning of 'number' to make Hume's Principle true, we first need Hume's Principle [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate the meaning of 'the number of x's' so that it makes Hume's Principle true, we must accept Hume's Principle. But a precondition for this stipulation is that Hume's Principle be accepted a priori. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §9) | |
| A reaction: Yet another modern Quinean argument that all attempts at defining things are circular. I am beginning to think that the only a priori knowledge we have is of when a group of ideas is coherent. Calling it 'intuition' might be more accurate. |
| 9339 | A priori knowledge (e.g. classical logic) may derive from the innate structure of our minds [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: One potential source of a priori knowledge is the innate structure of our minds. We might, for example, have an a priori commitment to classical logic. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §11) | |
| A reaction: Horwich points out that to be knowledge it must also say that we ought to believe it. I'm wondering whether if we divided the whole territory of the a priori up into intuitions and then coherent justifications, the whole problem would go away. |
| 21506 | A coherence theory of justification can combine with a correspondence theory of truth [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: There is no manifest absurdity in combining a coherence theory of justification with a correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: His point is to sharply (and correctly) distinguish coherent justification from a coherence theory of truth. Personally I would recommend talking of a 'robust' theory of truth, without tricky commitment to 'correspondence' between very dissimilar things. |
| 21509 | There will always be a vast number of equally coherent but rival systems [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: On any plausible conception of coherence, there will always be many, probably infinitely many, different and incompatible systems of belief which are equally coherent. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: If 'infinitely many' theories are allowed, that blocks the coherentist hope that widening and precisifying the system will narrow down the options and offer some verisimilitude. If we stick to current English expression, that should keep them finite. |
| 21503 | Empirical coherence must attribute reliability to spontaneous experience [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: An empirical coherence theory needs, for the beliefs of a cognitive system to be even candidates for empirical justification, that the system must contain laws attributing a high degree of reliability to a variety of spontaneous cognitive beliefs. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: Wanting such a 'law' seems optimistic, and not in the spirit of true coherentism, which can individually evaluate each experiential belief. I'm not sure Bonjour's Observation Requirement is needed, since it is incoherent to neglect observations. |
| 21511 | A well written novel cannot possibly match a real belief system for coherence [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: It is not even minimally plausible that a well written novel ...would have the degree of coherence required to be a serious alternative to anyone's actual system of beliefs. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct. 'Bleak House' is wonderfully consistent, but its elements are entirely verbal, and nothing occupies the space between the facts that are described. And Lady Dedlock is not in Debrett. I think this kills a standard objection. |
| 21510 | The objection that a negated system is equally coherent assume that coherence is consistency [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes it is said that if one has an appropriately coherent system, an alternative system can be produced simply be negating all of the components of the first system. This would only be so if coherence amounted simply to consistency. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: I associate Russell with this original objection to coherentism. I formerly took this to be a serious problem, and am now relieved to see that it clearly isn't. |
| 21505 | A coherent system can be justified with initial beliefs lacking all credibility [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: It is simply not necessary in order for [the coherence] view to yield justification to suppose that cognitively spontaneous beliefs have some degree of initial or independent credibility. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: This is thoroughly and rather persuasively criticised by Erik Olson. But he always focuses on the coherence of a 'system' with multiple beliefs. I take the credibility of each individual belief to need coherent assessment against a full background. |
| 21504 | The best explanation of coherent observations is they are caused by and correspond to reality [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The best explanation for a stable system of beliefs which rely on observation is that the beliefs are caused by what they depict, and the system roughly corresponds to the independent reality it describes. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Anyone who links best explanation to coherence (and to induction) warms the cockles of my heart. Erik Olson offers a critique, but doesn't convince me. The alternative is to find a better explanation (than reality), or give up. |
| 21508 | Anomalies challenge the claim that the basic explanations are actually basic [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The distinctive significance of anomalies lies in the fact that they undermine the claim of the allegedly basic explanatory principles to be genuinely basic. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems plausible, suggesting that (rather than an anomaly flatly 'falsifying' a theory) an anomaly may just demand a restructuring or reconceptualising of the theory. |