46 ideas
| 1627 | Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.43) |
| 1623 | Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.26) |
| 18335 | There are five problems which the truth-maker theory might solve [Rami] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that truth-makers explain universals, or ontological commitment, or commitment to realism, or to the correspondence theory of truth, or to falsify behaviourism or phenomenalism. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This expands the view that truth-making is based on its explanatory power, rather than on its intuitive correctness. I take the theory to presuppose realism. I don't believe in universals. It marginalises correspondence. Commitment is good! |
| 18334 | The truth-maker idea is usually justified by its explanatory power, or intuitive appeal [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The two strategies for justifying the truth-maker principle are that it has an explanatory role (for certain philosophical problems and theses), or that it captures the best philosophical intuition of the situation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: I would go for 'intuitive', but not in the sense of a pure intuition, but with 'intuitive' as a shorthand for overall coherence. To me the appeal of truth-maker is its place in a naturalistic view of reality. I love explanation, but not here. |
| 18339 | The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-to-many [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-many. In the latter case, different truths may have the same truth-maker, and one truth may have different truth-makers. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: 'There is at least one cat' obviously has many possible truth-makers. Many statements will be made true by the mere existence of a particular cat (such as 'there is an animal in the room' and 'there is a cat in the room'). Many-many wins? |
| 18333 | Central idea: truths need truthmakers; and possibly all truths have them, and makers entail truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The main full-blooded truth-maker principle is that x is true iff there is a y that is its truth-maker. This implies the principles that if x is true x has a truth-maker, and the principle that if x has a truth-maker then x is true. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Rami calls the second principle 'maximalism' and the third principle 'purism'. To reject maximalism is to hold a more restricted version of truth-makers. That is, the claim is that lots of truths have truth-makers. |
| 18342 | Most theorists say that truth-makers necessitate their truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists regard the necessitation of a truth by a truth-maker as a necessary condition of truth-making. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that reality is crammed full of potential truth-makers, but not crammed full of truths. If there is no thinking in the universe, then there are no truths. If that is false, then what sort of weird beast is a 'truth'? |
| 18340 | It seems best to assume different kinds of truth-maker, such as objects, facts, tropes, or events [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaker anti-monism holds the view that there are truth-makers of different kinds. For example, objects, facts, tropes or events can all be regarded as truthmakers. Objects seem right for existential truths but not others, so anti-monism seems best. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we need to identify the different types of truth (analytic, synthetic, general, particular...), and only then ask what truth-makers there are for the different types. To presuppose one type of truthmaker would be crazy. |
| 18341 | Truth-makers seem to be states of affairs (plus optional individuals), or individuals and properties [Rami] |
| Full Idea: As truth-makers, some theorists only accept states of affairs, some only accept individuals and states of affairs, and some only accept individuals and particular properties. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me rash to opt for one of these. Truths come in wide-ranging and subtly different types, and the truth-makers probably have a similar range. Any one of these theories will almost certainly quickly succumb to a counterexample. |
| 18346 | 'Truth supervenes on being' only gives necessary (not sufficient) conditions for contingent truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that 'truth supervenes on being' (with or without possible worlds) offers only a necessary condition for the truth of contingent propositions, whereas the standard truth-maker theory offers necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: The point, I suppose, is that the change in being might be irrelevant to the proposition in question, so any old change in being will not ensure a change in the truth of the proposition. Again we ask - but what is this truth about? |
| 18345 | 'Truth supervenes on being' avoids entities as truth-makers for negative truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The important advantage of 'truth supervenes on being' is that it can be applied to positive and negative contingent truths, without postulating any entities that are responsible for the truth of negative truths. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: [For this reason, Lewis favours a possible worlds version of the theory] I fear that it solves that problem by making the truth-maker theory so broad-brush that it not longer says very much, apart from committing it to naturalism. |
| 18343 | Maybe a truth-maker also works for the entailments of the given truth [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The 'entailment principle' for truth-makers says that if x is a truth-maker for y, and y entails z, then x is a truth-maker for z. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think the correct locution is that 'x is a potential truth-maker for z' (should anyone every formulate z, which in most cases they never will, since the entailments of y are probably infinite). Merricks would ask 'but are y and z about the same thing?'. |
| 18338 | Truth-making is usually internalist, but the correspondence theory is externalist [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists are internalists about the truth-maker relation. ...But the correspondence theory makes truth an external relation to some portion of reality. So a truth-maker internalist should not claim to be a narrow correspondence theorist. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [wording rearranged] Like many of Rami's distinctions in this article, this feels simplistic. Sharp distinctions can only be made using sharp vocabulary, and there isn't much of that around in philosophy! |
| 18337 | Correspondence theories assume that truth is a representation relation [Rami] |
| Full Idea: One guiding intuition concerning a correspondence theory of truth says that the relation that accounts for the truth of a truth-bearer is some kind of representation relation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: I unfashionably cling on to some sort of correspondence theory. The paradigm case is of a non-linguistic animal which forms correct or incorrect views about its environment. Truth is a relation, not a property. I see the truth in a bad representation. |
| 18347 | Deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property [Rami] |
| Full Idea: According to the moderate deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 10) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Horwich 1998] That is, I presume, that truth is embodied in an infinity of propositions of the form '"p" is true iff p'. |
| 18350 | Truth-maker theorists should probably reject the converse Barcan formula [Rami] |
| Full Idea: There are good reasons for the truth-maker theorist to reject the converse Barcan formula. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], note 16) | |
| A reaction: In the text (p.15) Rami cites the inference from 'necessarily everything exists' to 'everything exists necessarily'. [See Williamson 1999] |
| 9204 | Quine's arguments fail because he naively conflates names with descriptions [Fine,K on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's logical argument against modality presupposes a naïve view of singular terms under which no significant distinction is to be drawn between the use of names and descriptions. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 6 | |
| A reaction: See Idea 9201 for Quine's argument. The question is whether '9' and 'the number of planets' are names or descriptions. The 'number of planets' is not remotely descriptive of 9, so it must be referential. So '9' is a name? Hm. |
| 17738 | Quine blurs the difference between knowledge of arithmetic and of physics [Jenkins on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine cannot deal with the intuition that there is a difference in kind between our knowledge of arithmetic and our knowledge of physics. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5 | |
| A reaction: The endorses this criticism, which she says is widespread. I'm not convinced that there is a clear notion of 'difference in kind' here. Jenkins gets arithmetic from concepts and physics from the world. Is that a sharp distinction? |
| 19492 | Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology [Yablo on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's advice is to countenance numbers iff the literal part of our theory quantifies over them; and to count the part of our theory that quantifies over numbers literal iff there turn out really to be numbers. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? XIII | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit devastating. Presumably it is indeed the choice of a best theory which results in the ontological commitment, so it is not much help to then read off the ontology from the theory. |
| 18336 | Internal relations depend either on the existence of the relata, or on their properties [Rami] |
| Full Idea: An internal relation is 'existential' if x and y relate in that way whenever they both exist. An internal relation is 'qualitative' if x and y relate in that way whenever they have certain intrinsic properties. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [compressed - Rami likes to write these things in fashionable quasi-algebra, but I have a strong prejudice in this database for expressing ideas in English; call me old-fashioned] The distinction strikes me as simplistic. I would involve dispositions. |
| 1628 | If physical objects are a myth, they are useful for making sense of experience [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.44) |
| 10929 | Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian notion of essence was the forerunner of the modern notion of intension or meaning. ...Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1) | |
| A reaction: Quine first wants to jettison de re necessity (essence of the object), by shifting it to de dicto necessity (necessity in meaning), but he subsequently rejects that as well, presumably because he doesn't even believe in meanings. |
| 12188 | Contrary to some claims, Quine does not deny logical necessity [Quine, by McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: Nothing in Quine's argument seems to be said directly against the view that the propositions of logic are necessary truths, ..though Crispin Wright has represented him as saying this at the end of 'Two Dogmas'. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §3 | |
| A reaction: Quine famously denies that logical truths are merely a matter of convention, so the question is, if he believes in logical necessity, what does he think is the basis of it? Answers, as always, on a postcard. |
| 15090 | Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction sought to contract, if not to empty, the class of truths that are called necessary. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity I | |
| A reaction: The thought was that absolutely everything, including, for example, basic logic, became potentially revisable. See the last section of Quine's paper. |
| 9383 | Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine showed the vacuity of the metaphysical concept of analyticity and the futility of the underwritten project - the linguistic theory of necessity. But that doesn't effect the epistemic notion of analyticity needed for a priori knowledge. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered Concl | |
| A reaction: This summarise Boghossian's view, that a priori knowledge is still analytic, once we get clear about analyticity. See Idea 9368 for his two types of analyticity. Horwich attacks the view. |
| 12424 | Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher] |
| Full Idea: The last section of Quine's article challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 04.5 | |
| A reaction: That is, Quine does not deny that there are truths which rest entirely on meaning. It is a 'dogma of empiricism' that the a priori can be equated with the analytic (and the necessary). |
| 9338 | Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine's arguments provide no reason to doubt the existence of a priori knowledge outside the domain of science. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
| A reaction: This rather ignores Quine's background view of thoroughgoing physicalism, so that the domain of science is the domain of nature, which is the domain of everything. See his naturalising of epistemology, for example. Maths is part of his science. |
| 9337 | Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Quine says scientific beliefs follow empirical adequacy, simplicity and conservatism; science and rationality support this view; hence any hypothesis can be abandoned to increase simplicity; so no scientific belief is a priori. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
| A reaction: [Compressed] I just don't accept this claim. If science wants to drop simple arithmetic or the laws of thought, so much the worse for science - they've obviously taken a wrong turning somewhere. We must try to infer God's logic. |
| 9340 | Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine] |
| Full Idea: I think logic, arithmetic and geometry are subject to Quine's empirical revisability argument: quantum logic may turn out to be the best overall theory; so these things are justified a posteriori. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §11 | |
| A reaction: Not much of an argument, because 'quantum logic' may also turn out to be a will-o'-the-whisp. Until it is established (which I doubt, because quantum theory is so poorly understood), I think we should be highly suspicious of the Quinean view. |
| 1620 | Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine] |
| Full Idea: One dogma of empiricism is that there is some fundamental cleavage between truths that are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of facts, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.20) |
| 1629 | Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The outer edge of our empirical system must be kept squared with experience; the rest, with all its elaborate myths and fictions, has as its objective the simplicity of laws. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.45) |
| 19488 | The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Quine's second dogma of empiricism is the reductionism that finds every statement to be linkable by fixed correspondence rules to a determinate range of confirming observations. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? V | |
| A reaction: Quine's response to this is to embrace holism about theories, instead of precise connections with Humean impressions. I'm thinking that Lewis disagrees with Quine, when his Humean supervenience rests on a 'mosaic' of small qualities. |
| 1625 | Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience as a corporate body [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My suggestion, following Carnap, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.41) |
| 1626 | It is troublesome nonsense to split statements into a linguistic and a factual component [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My present suggestion is that it is nonsense, and the root of much nonsense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.42) | |
| A reaction: I take the language and its subject matter to be obviously separate, but it is right that we can't separate these two components within a sample of language. |
| 7317 | 'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to see that intersubstitutability salva veritate is not a sufficient condition for synonymy. 'Renate' (with kidney) and 'cordate' (with heart) can be substituted in a purely extensional language, but are plainly not synonymous. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key example (along with Hesperus, and many others) in mapping out synonymy, meaning, analyticity, sense, reference, extension, intension, and all that stuff. |
| 1621 | Once meaning and reference are separated, meaning ceases to seem important [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once theory of meaning and of reference are separated it is a short step to recognising as the primary business of theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and analyticity of statements; meanings themselves may be abandoned. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.22) | |
| A reaction: I can't buy the abandonment of meaning, because when I introspect my own speech there is clearly what I want to say formulating in my mind before the words are settled. |
| 9371 | Analytic statements are either logical truths (all reinterpretations) or they depend on synonymy [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Analytic statements fall into two classes: 'no unmarried man is married' typifies the first class, of logical truths; it remains true under all reinterpretations. 'No bachelor is married' is analytic if synonyms replace synonyms, and there's the problem. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1) | |
| A reaction: Boghossian emphasises this passage. In other papers Quine argues that logical truths also cannot be purely analytic, although he does not deny that there are logical truths. |
| 1622 | Did someone ever actually define 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man'? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: How do we find that 'bachelor' is defined as unmarried man? Who defined it thus, and when? Not the lexicographer, who is a scientist recording antecedent facts. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.24) | |
| A reaction: All mid-20th C philosophy of language is too individualistic in its strategy. Eventually later Wittgenstein sank in, and socially agreed meanings for 'water' and 'elm'. |
| 9366 | Quine's attack on analyticity undermined linguistic views of necessity, and analytic views of the a priori [Quine, by Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack on analyticity devastated the philosophical programs that depend upon a notion of analyticity - specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §I | |
| A reaction: Note that much more would be needed to complete Quine's aim of more or less eliminating both necessity and the a priori from his scientific philosophy. Quine was trying to complete a programme initiated by C.I. Lewis (q.v.). |
| 14473 | Quine attacks the Fregean idea that we can define analyticity through synonyous substitution [Quine, by Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Quine's attack argues against the Fregean attempt to define 'analyticity' in terms of synonymy - where analytical truths are logical truths ('unmarried men are unmarried'), or become logical truths by synonymous replacement ('bachelors are unmarried'). | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 02.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a very helpful explanation of what is going on in Quine. Why won't philosophers explain clearly what they are attacking, before they attack it? |
| 7321 | The last two parts of 'Two Dogmas' are much the best [Miller,A on Quine] |
| Full Idea: The arguments of the final two sections of 'Two Dogmas' have received more acceptance than the arguments of the first four sections, which are now generally acknowledged to be unsuccessful. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4 Read | |
| A reaction: The early sections are the 'circular' argument against analyticity; the later parts are further discussions of the concept. We don't have to take Miller's word for this, but it is a useful pointer when reading the paper. |
| 8803 | Erasing the analytic/synthetic distinction got rid of meanings, and saved philosophy of language [Davidson on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Erasing the line between the analytic and the synthetic saved philosophy of language as a serious subject by showing how it could be pursued without what there cannot be: determinate meanings. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Donald Davidson - Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge p.158 | |
| A reaction: Note that this comes from the most famous modern champion of one of the main theories of meaning (as truth-conditions). Did anyone ever believe in reified objects called 'meanings'? |
| 17737 | The analytic needs excessively small units of meaning and empirical confirmation [Quine, by Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Quine rejects the analytic on the grounds that it assumes a smaller unit of meaning than a total theory, and he does not think it makes sense to talk about such smaller units of meaning because there are no smaller units of empirical confirmation. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5 | |
| A reaction: A very helpful account of the famous Quine argument, showing how it arises out of his particular holistic view of empiricism. |
| 1624 | If we try to define analyticity by synonymy, that leads back to analyticity [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In defining analyticity an appeal to meanings seems natural, but that reduces to synonymy or definition. Definition is a will-o'-the-wisp, and synonymy is best understood by a priori appeal to analyticity, so we are back at the problem of analyticity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Quine is full of these over-neat sceptical arguments, saying everything is circular, or can never get started. Compare Aristotle's benign circle of virtuous people and virtuous actions. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |