18 ideas
17990 | Instances of minimal truth miss out propositions inexpressible in current English [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: A standard objection to minimalist truth is the 'incompleteness objection'. Since there are propositions inexpressible in present English the concept of truth isn't captured by all the instances of the Tarski biconditional. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 5.3) | |
A reaction: Sounds like a good objection. |
17988 | Quantification can't all be substitutional; some reference is obviously to objects [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: The view that all quantification is substitutional is not very plausible in general. Some uses of quantifiers clearly seem to have the function to make a claim about a domain of objects out there, no matter how they relate to the terms in our language. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.1) | |
A reaction: Robust realists like myself are hardly going to say that quantification is just an internal language game. |
17989 | Since properties have properties, there can be a typed or a type-free theory of them [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Since properties themselves can have properties there is a well-known division in the theory of properties between those who take a typed and those who take a type-free approach. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.2) | |
A reaction: A typed approach would imply restrictions on what it can be a property of. 'Green' is a property of surfaces, 'dark' is a property of colours. My first reaction is to opt for type-free. |
23805 | Some explanations offer to explain a mystery by a greater mystery [Schulte] |
Full Idea: An 'obscurum per obscurius' explanation is explaining something mysterious by something even more mysterious, | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 6) | |
A reaction: Schulte's example is trying to explain mental content in terms of phenomenal experience. That is, roughly, explaining content by qualia, when the latter is the 'hard problem'. |
23795 | Naturalistic accounts of content cannot rely on primitive mental or normative notions [Schulte] |
Full Idea: A 'naturalistic' explanation of content excludes primitive mental or normative notions, but allows causation, counterfactual dependence, probabilistic dependence or structural similarity. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4) | |
A reaction: Apart from causation, what is permissible to naturalists (like me) all sounds rather superficial (and thus not very explanatory). I'm sure we can do better than this. How about using non-primitive mental notions? |
23806 | Naturalist accounts of representation must match the views of cognitive science [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Recent naturalisation of content now also has to offer a matching account of representational explanations in cognitive science. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 08.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Cummins, Neander and Shea] This is in addition to the 'status' and 'content' questions of Idea 23796. This seems to be an interesting shift to philosophers working backwards from the theories of empirical science. Few are qualified for this job! |
23796 | Naturalists must explain both representation, and what is represented [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Naturalistic accounts of content ask 1) what makes a state qualify as a representational state?, and 2) what makes a representational state have one specific content rather than another? | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4) | |
A reaction: [As often in this collection, the author uses algebraic letters, but I prefer plain English] I would say that the first question looks more amenable to an answer than the second. Do we know the neuronal difference between seeing red and blue? |
23792 | Phenomenal and representational character may have links, or even be united [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Some theorists maintain that all states with representational content or intentionality must have phenomenal character …and we can also ask whether all states with phenomenal character also have representional content. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 2.4) | |
A reaction: He mentions that beliefs could involve inner speech. And pains and moods may be phenomenal but lack content. He also asks which determines which. |
23804 | Maybe we can explain mental content in terms of phenomenal properties [Schulte] |
Full Idea: The phenomenal intentionality approach says that the content properties of mental states can be explained in terms of the phenomenal properties of mental states. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 6) | |
A reaction: [Searle and Loar are cited] Tends to be 'non-naturalistic'. We might decide that content derives from the phenomenal, but still without saying anything interesting about content. Mathematical content? Universally generalised content? |
23793 | On the whole, referential content is seen as broad, and sense content as narrow [Schulte] |
Full Idea: We can say that non-Fregean content [reference] is (virtually) always contrued as broad, while Fregean content [sense] is usually contrued as narrow. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 3.2) | |
A reaction: I can't make sense of mental content actually being outside the mind, so I see all content as narrow - but that doesn't mean that externals are irrelevant to it. If I think that is an oak, and it's an elm, the content is oak. |
23802 | Conceptual role semantics says content is determined by cognitive role [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Conceptual role semantics says the content of a representation is determined by the cognitive role it plays with a system. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4.5) | |
A reaction: Obvious problem: if 'swordfish' is the password, its role is quite different from its content. I've never thought that the role of something tells you anything about what it is. Hearts pump blood, but how do they fulfil that role? |
23797 | Cause won't explain content, because one cause can produce several contents [Schulte] |
Full Idea: A simple causal theory of content has the 'content indeterminacy' problem - that the presence of a cow causes 'a cow is present', but also 'an animal is present' and 'a biological organism is present'. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4.1) | |
A reaction: That only rules out the 'simple' version. We just need to add that the cause (cow experience) is shaped by current knowledge and interests. Someone buying cows and someone terrified of them thereby produce different concepts. |
23799 | Teleosemantics explains content in terms of successful and unsuccessful functioning [Schulte] |
Full Idea: The core idea of teleosemantics is that we need to explain how content can be accurate or inaccurate, true or false, realised or unrealised …which must appeal to the distinction between proper functioning and malfunctioning. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4.4) | |
A reaction: My immediate reaction to this is that you don't learn about content by assessing its success. Surely (as with eyesight) you first need to understand what it does, and only then judge its success. …Though success and failure are implicit in function. |
23800 | Teleosemantic explanations say content is the causal result of naturally selected functions [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Teleosemantic theories usually give a causal account of mental functions …where some trait has a particular function if it was selected for that function by a process of natural selection. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is an idea I like - that something has a specific function if without that function it wouldn't have come into existence (eyes, for example). But presumably the function of a mind is to collect content - which does nothing to explain content! |
23798 | Information theories say content is information, such as smoke making fire probable [Schulte] |
Full Idea: Information theories of content [usually assume that] a column of smoke over there carries the information that fire is over there because it raises the probability of fire being over there. | |
From: Peter Schulte (Mental Content [2023], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Theorists usually add further conditions to this basic one. Fred Dretske is the source of this approach. Not promising, in my opinion. Surely the content is just smoke, and fire is one of dozens of possible inferences from it? |
17991 | Holism says language can't be translated; the expressibility hypothesis says everything can [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Holism says that nothing that can be said in one language can be said in another one. The expressibility hypothesis says that everything that can be said in one language can be said in every other one. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 6.4) | |
A reaction: Obviously expressibility would only refer to reasonably comprehensive languages (with basic logical connectives, for example). Personally I vote for the expressibility hypothesis, which Hofweber seems to favour. |
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. |