16 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? |
| 19378 | Early modern possibility is what occurs sometime; for Leibniz, it is what is not contradictory [Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: For Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, if a state of things is possible, it must occur at some time, whether past, present or future. For Leibniz possibility makes no reference to time; an individual is possible if its concept contains no contradiction. | |
| From: Richard T.W. Arthur (Leibniz [2014], 4 'Contingent') | |
| A reaction: It has always struck me as fallacious to say that anything that is possible must at some time occur. If '6' is possible on the die, what will constrain it to eventually come up when thrown? Mere non-contradiction doesn't imply possibility either. |
| 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. |
| 19380 | Occasionalism contradicts the Eucharist, which needs genuine changes of substance [Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: The Jesuits rejected occasionalism ... because it is incompatible with the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist, which there is genuine change of substance of the bread into the substance of Christ (transubstantiation). | |
| From: Richard T.W. Arthur (Leibniz [2014], 5 'Substance') | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I take it that the Eucharist needs a real relation across the substance-spirit boundary, and not just a co-ordination. |
| 21103 | Moral questions can only be decided by common opinion [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Though an appeal to general opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural philosophy or astronomy, be deemed unfair, yet in all questions with regard to morals there is really no other standard for deciding controversies. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.291) | |
| A reaction: Surely this is too pessimistic. Common opinion decided to burn people to death for being witches. Common opinion may usually win, but there must sometimes be good grounds for resisting it. |
| 21099 | People must have agreed to authority, because they are naturally equal, prior to education [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we consider how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education, ...then nothing but their own consent could at first associate them together, and subject them to authority. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.276) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound very convincing. Some people are much better suited than others to training and education. Men vary enormously in size. |
| 21100 | The idea that society rests on consent or promises undermines obedience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were you to preach in most parts of the world that political connections are founded altogether on voluntary consent or a mutual promise, the magistrate would soon imprison you as seditious for loosening the ties of obedience. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.278) | |
| A reaction: He cites obedience as the prime civic virtue, because the law can't operate without it. He doesn't seem to consider the limiting cases of obedience, which makes him essentially a conservative. |
| 20495 | We no more give 'tacit assent' to the state than a passenger carried on board a ship while asleep [Hume] |
| Full Idea: [If we give 'tacit' assent to the state] ...we may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried aboard while asleep. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: We should probably drop the whole idea that we give assent to the state. We are stuck with a state, and a few of us can escape, if it seems important enough, but most of us have no choice. He hope to assent to the controllers of the state. |
| 21101 | The people would be amazed to learn that government arises from their consent [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we assert that all lawful government arises from the consent of the people, we certainly do them a great deal more honour than they deserve, or even expect or desire from us. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.285) | |
| A reaction: Hume has no interest in the purely abstract idea of a contract, and scorns Locke's idea of tacit consent to government. I assume he would dismiss Rawls as unrealistic theorising. Hume loves peace, and is alarmed by change. |
| 6703 | Poor people lack the knowledge or wealth to move to a different state [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages that he acquires? | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: Of course, in the nineteenth century the Scottish poor did, going to America, which welcomed the poor, and spoke English. Hume's point is the right reply to anyone who says 'If you don't like it, go elsewhere'. Also 'No! Change it!' |
| 21102 | We all know that the history of property is founded on injustices [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as land or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.288) | |
| A reaction: A prime objection to Nozick, who fantasises about an initial position of just ownership, which can then be the subject of just contracts. In 1866 thousands of white people were granted land in the USA, but not a single black freed slave got anything. |