11 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? |
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. |
7522 | A full neural account of qualia will give new epistemic access to them, beyond private experience [Churchlands] |
Full Idea: When the hidden neurophysiological structure of qualia (if there is any) gets revealed by unfolding research, then we will automatically gain a new epistemic access to qualia, beyond each person's native and exclusive capacity for internal discrimination. | |
From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
A reaction: Carefully phrased and hard to deny, but something is impenetrable. What experience does an insect have when it encounters ultra-violet light? Nothing remotely interesting about their qualia is likely to emerge from the study of insect brains. |
7521 | It is question-begging to assume that qualia are totally simple, hence irreducible [Churchlands] |
Full Idea: One of the crucial premises of the antireductionists - concerning the intrinsic, nonrelational, metaphysical simplicity of our sensory qualia - is a question-begging and unsupported assumption. | |
From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
A reaction: This is a key point for reductionists, with emphasis on the sheer numbers of connections involved in a simple quale (I estimate a billion involved in one small patch of red). |
7523 | The qualia Hard Problem is easy, in comparison with the co-ordination of mental states [Churchlands] |
Full Idea: The so-called Hard Problem (of qualia) appears to be one of the easiest, in comparison with the problems of short-term memory, fluid and directable attention, the awake state vs sleep, and the unity of consciousness. | |
From: Churchland / Churchland (Recent Work on Consciousness [1997]) | |
A reaction: Most of their version of the Hard Problems centre on personal identity, and the centralised co-ordination of mental events. I am inclined to agree with them. Worriers about qualia should think more about the complexity of systems of neurons. |
1451 | Design is seen in the way ideas match the world, in the mechanisms of evolution, and in values [Tennant,FR, by PG] |
Full Idea: There is evidence for design in the correspondence of pure ideas to the world, in the origin and mechanism of evolution, and in the existence of moral values and beauty. | |
From: report of F.R. Tennant (Philosophical Theology [1930], II.IV) by PG - Db (ideas) |