11 ideas
| 9184 | We can't presume that all interesting concepts can be analysed [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: We have no prior reason to suppose that philosophically significant concepts have interesting analyses into necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Review of Bob Hale's 'Abstract Objects' [1988]) | |
| A reaction: We might think that they are either analysable or primitive, and that failure of analysis invites us to take a concept as primitive. But maybe God can analyse it and we can't. |
| 21642 | If quantification is all substitutional, there is no ontology [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is meaningless for a theory whose only quantification is substitutionally construed. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.64), quoted by Thomas Hofweber - Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics 03.5.1 n18 | |
| A reaction: Hofweber views it as none the worse for that, since clearly lots of quantification has no ontological commitment at all. But he says it is rightly called 'a nominalists attempt at a free lunch'. |
| 9183 | Platonism claims that some true assertions have singular terms denoting abstractions, so abstractions exist [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The Fregean argument for platonism is that some true assertions contain singular terms which denote abstract objects if they denote anything; since the assertions are true, the singular terms denote. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Review of Bob Hale's 'Abstract Objects' [1988]) | |
| A reaction: I am perplexed that anyone would rest their view of reality on such an argument. The obvious comparison would be with true remarks about blatantly fictional characters, or blatantly invented concepts such as 'checkmate'. |
| 1633 | Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity. A question of the form "What is an F?" can only be answered with "An F is a G", which makes sense relative to the uncritical acceptance of G. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.53) |
| 18964 | Ontology is relative to both a background theory and a translation manual [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is doubly relative. Specifying the universe of a theory makes sense only relative to some background theory, and only relative to some choice of a manual of translation of one theory into another. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.54) | |
| A reaction: People tend to forget about the double nature of Quine's notion of ontological commitment, and usually only talk about the commitment of the theory being employed. Why is the philosophical community not devoting itself to the study of tranlation manuals? |
| 18965 | We know what things are by distinguishing them, so identity is part of ontology [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot know what something is without knowing how it is marked off from other things. Identity is thus of a piece with ontology. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.55) | |
| A reaction: Actually it is failure of identity which seems to raise questions of individuation. If I say 'this apple is [pause] identical to this apple', I don't see how that helps me to individuate apples. |
| 1634 | Two things are relative - the background theory, and translating the object theory into the background theory [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Relativity has two components: to the choice of a background theory, and to the choice of how to translate the object theory into the background theory. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.67) |
| 8470 | Reference is inscrutable, because we cannot choose between theories of numbers [Quine, by Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: For Quine, we cannot sensibly ask which is the real number five, the Frege-Russell set or the Von Neumann one. There is no arithmetical or empirical way of deciding between the two. Reference is inscrutable. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: To generalise from a problem of reference in the highly abstract world of arithmetic, and say that all reference is inscrutable, strikes me as implausible. |
| 18963 | Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The indeterminacy between 'rabbit', 'rabbit stage' and the rest depended only on a correlative indeterminacy of translation of the English apparatus of individuation - pronouns, plurals, identity, numerals and so on. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.35) | |
| A reaction: This spells out the problem a little better than in 'Word and Object'. I just don't believe these problems are intractable. Quine is like a child endlessly asking 'why?'. |
| 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. |