17 ideas
| 23548 | Indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I now believe that the existence of indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: I think that prior to this Fine had defended classical logic. Presumably the difficulty is over Bivalence. Nietzsche spotted this problem, despite not being a logician. Logic has to simplify the world. Hence philosophy is quite different from logic. |
| 23539 | Classical semantics has referents for names, extensions for predicates, and T or F for sentences [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A precise language is often assigned a classical semantics, in which the semantic value of a name is its referent, the semantic value of a predicate is its extension (the objects of which it is true), and the value of a sentence is True or False. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Helpful to have this clear statement of how predicates are treated. This extensionalism in logic causes trouble when it creeps into philosophy, and people say that 'red' just means all the red things. No it doesn't. |
| 23544 | Local indeterminacy concerns a single object, and global indeterminacy covers a range [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Vagueness concerns 'local' indeterminacy, such as whether one man in the lineup is bald, and 'global' indeterminacy, applying to a range of cases, as when it is indeterminate how 'bald' applies to the lineup. But how do these relate? | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: This puts the focus either on objects or on predicates which are vague. |
| 23540 | Conjoining two indefinites by related sentences seems to produce a contradiction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If 'P is red' and 'P is orange' are indefinite, then 'P is red and P is orange' seems false, because red and orange are exclusive. But if two conjoined indefinite sentences are false, that makes 'P is red and P is red' false, when it should be indefinite. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the problem of 'penumbral connection', where two indefinite values are still logically related, by excluding one another. Presumably 'P is red and P is of indefinite shape' can be true? Doubtful about this argument. |
| 23546 | Standardly vagueness involves borderline cases, and a higher standpoint from which they can be seen [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Standard notions of vagueness all accept borderline cases, and presuppose a higher standpoint from which a judgement of being borderline F, rather than simply being F or being not F, can be made. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: He says that the concept of borderline cases is an impediment to understanding vagueness. Proposing a third group when you are struggling to separate two other groups doesn't seem helpful, come to think of it. Limbo cases. |
| 23542 | Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We can see Epistemicism [vagueness as ignorance] as a common and misguided tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. We are unsure how to characterise vagueness, and identify it with the resulting ignorance, instead of explaining it. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Love it. This echoes my repeated plea in these reactions to stop identifying features of reality with the functions which embody them or the patterns they create. We need to explain them, and must dig deeper. |
| 23541 | Supervaluation can give no answer to 'who is the last bald man' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Under supervaluation there should always be someone who is the last bald man in the sequence, but there is always an acceptable way to make some other man the last bald man. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: Fine seems to take this as a conclusive refutation of the supervaluation approach. Fine says (p.41) that supervaluation says there is a precisification for every instance. |
| 23545 | We do not have an intelligible concept of a borderline case [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We simply have no intelligible notion of local indeterminacy or of a borderline case. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 2) | |
| A reaction: He mentions cases which are near a borderline, and cases which are hard to decide, but denies that these are intrinsically borderline. If there are borderline cases between red and orange, what are the outer boundaries of the border? |
| 15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Fodor asks the stirring and basic question 'How does anything get outside itself?' | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 03.6 | |
| A reaction: Is this one of those misconceived questions, like major issues concerning 'what's it like to be?' In what sense am I outside myself? Is a mind any more mysterious than a shadow? |
| 2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: For Fodor the intentionality of the propositional-attitude vocabulary of our folk psychology is the outward expression of the inward intentionality of the language of the brain. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.39 | |
| A reaction: I would be very cautious about this. Folk psychology works, so it must have a genuine basis in how brains work, but it breaks down in unusual situations, and might even be a total (successful) fiction. |
| 23547 | It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Pace Parfit and others, it boggles the mind that survival could be independent of any relation of identity between the currently existing object and the objects that subsequently exist. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 3) | |
| A reaction: Yes. If the self or mind just consists of a diachronic trail of memories such that the two ends of the trail have no connection at all, that isn't the kind of survival that any of us want. I want to live my life, not a life. |
| 2985 | Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor holds that beliefs are brain states or processes, but picked out at a 'higher' or 'special science' level. | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.82 | |
| A reaction: I don't think you can argue with this. Levels of physical description exist (e.g. pure physics tells you nothing about the weather), and I think 'process' is the best word for the mind (Idea 4931). |
| 3135 | Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic). | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness? |
| 2983 | Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content). | |
| From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54 | |
| A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference. |
| 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. |
| 23543 | We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is a common tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. Hence we are not sure how to characterise a law, and so we identify it with the regularities to which it gives rise. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1) | |
| A reaction: A lovely clear identification of my pet hate, which is superficial accounts of things, which claim to be the last word, but actually explain nothing. |
| 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. |