Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Letters' and 'The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction'

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15 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 1. Nature of the A Priori
The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey]
     Full Idea: Where Kant and others had traditionally assumed that the a priori concerned beliefs 'justifiable independently of experience', Quine and others of the time came to regard it as beliefs 'unrevisable in the light of experience'.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7)
     A reaction: That throws a rather striking light on Quine's project. Of course, if the a priori is also necessary, then it has to be unrevisable. But is a bachelor necessarily an unmarried man? It is not necessary that 'bachelor' has a fixed meaning.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey]
     Full Idea: Externalists are typically committed to counting expressions as 'synonymous' if they happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena, even if a thinker couldn't realise that they are by reflection alone.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.2)
     A reaction: [He cites Fodor] Externalists always try to link to concrete things in the world, but most of our talk is full of generalities, abstractions and fiction which don't link directly to anything.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 1. Analytic Propositions
'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey]
     Full Idea: If Bob is married to Sue, then Sue is married to Bob. If x bigger than y, and y bigger than z, x is bigger than z. The symmetry of 'marriage' or transitivity of 'bigger than' are not obviously 'contained in' the corresponding thoughts.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2)
     A reaction: [Also 'if something is red, then it is coloured'] This is a Fregean criticism of Kant. It is not so much that Kant was wrong, as that the concept of analyticity is seen to have a much wider application than Kant realised. Especially in mathematics.
Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey]
     Full Idea: Rejecting 'a married bachelor' as contradictory would seem to have no justification other than the claim that 'All bachelors are unmarried is analytic, and so cannot serve to justify or explain that claim.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2)
     A reaction: Rey is discussing Frege's objection to Kant (who tried to prove the necessity of analytic judgements, on the basis of the denial being a contradiction).
Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey]
     Full Idea: What's peculiar about the analytic is that denying it seem unintelligible. Far from unrevisability explaining analyticity, it seems to be analyticitiy that explains unrevisability; we only balk at denying unmarried bachelors because that's what it means!
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7)
     A reaction: This is a criticism of Quine, who attacked analyticity when it is understood as unrevisability. Obviously we could revise the concept of 'bachelor', if our marriage customs changed a lot. Rey seems right here.
The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey]
     Full Idea: It may be that the meaning properties of a term are the ones that play a basic explanatory role with regard to the use of the term generally, the ones in virtue ultimately of which a term is used with that meaning.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.3)
     A reaction: [He cites Devitt 1996, 2002, and Horwich 1998, 2005) I spring to philosophical life whenever I see the word 'explanatory', because that is the point of the whole game. They are pointing to the essence of the concept (which is explanatory, say I).
An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey]
     Full Idea: The existence of a separate language faculty may be an odd but psychologically real fact about us, and it may thereby supply a real basis for commitments about not only what is or is not grammatical, but about what is a matter of natural language meaning.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4)
     A reaction: This is the Chomskyan view of analytic sentences. An example from Chomsky (1977:142) is the semantic relationships of persuade, intend and believe. It's hard to see how the secret faculty on its own could do the job. Consensus is needed.
Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey]
     Full Idea: The movement of 'experimental philosophy' has pointed to evidence of considerable malleability of subject's 'intuitions' with regard to the standard kinds of thought experiments on which defenses of analytic claims typically rely.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4)
     A reaction: See Cappelen's interesting attack on the idea that philosophy relies on intuitions, and hence his attack on experimental philosophy. Our consensus on ordinary English usage hardly qualifies as somewhat vague 'intuitions'.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey]
     Full Idea: How in the end are we going to distinguish claims or the analytic as 'rational insight', 'primitive compulsion', inferential practice or folk belief from merely some deeply held empirical conviction, indeed, from mere dogma.
     From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.1)
     A reaction: This is Rey's summary of the persisting Quinean challenge to analytic truths, in the face of a set of replies, summarised by the various phrases here. So do we reject a dogma of empiricism, by asserting dogmatic empiricism?
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / b. Fact and value
Virtues and vices are like secondary qualities in perception, found in observers, not objects [Hume]
     Full Idea: Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind.
     From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1740)
     A reaction: Very revealing about the origin of the is/ought idea, but this is an assertion rather than an argument. Most Greeks treat value as a primary quality of things (e.g. life, harmony, beauty, health).
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / c. Motivation for virtue
All virtues benefit either the public, or the individual who possesses them [Hume]
     Full Idea: I desire you to consider if there be any quality that is virtuous, without having a tendency either to the public good or to the good of the person who possesses it.
     From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739)
     A reaction: Obviously this is generally true. How, though, does it benefit the individual to secretly preserve their integrity? I go round to visit a friend to repay a debt; I am told they have died; I quietly leave some money on the table and leave. Why?
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
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.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 3. Final causes
The idea of a final cause is very uncertain and unphilosophical [Hume]
     Full Idea: Your sense of 'natural' is founded on final causes, which is a consideration that appears to me pretty uncertain and unphilosophical.
     From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739)
     A reaction: This is the rejection of Aristotelian teleology by modern science. I agree that the notion of utterly ultimate final cause is worse than 'uncertain' - it is an impossible concept. Nevertheless, I prefer Aristotle to Hume. Nature can teach us lessons.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / d. Causal necessity
That events could be uncaused is absurd; I only say intuition and demonstration don't show this [Hume]
     Full Idea: I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause: I only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor from demonstration, but from another source.
     From: David Hume (Letters [1739], 1754), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 5 'God'
     A reaction: Since the other source is habit, he is being a bit disingenuous. While rational intuition and demonstration give a fairly secure basis for the universality of causation, mere human habits of expectation give very feeble grounds.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
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.