7 ideas
| 9355 | One sort of circularity presupposes a premise, the other presupposes a rule being used [Braithwaite, by Devitt] |
| Full Idea: An argument is 'premise-circular' if it aims to establish a conclusion that is assumed as a premise of that very argument. An argument is 'rule-circular' if it aims to establish a conclusion that asserts the goodness of the rule used in that argument. | |
| From: report of R.B. Braithwaite (Scientific Explanation [1953], p.274-8) by Michael Devitt - There is no a Priori §2 | |
| A reaction: Rule circularity is the sort of thing Quine is always objecting to, but such circularities may be unavoidable, and even totally benign. All the good things in life form a mutually supporting team. |
| 9879 | NF has no models, but just blocks the comprehension axiom, to avoid contradictions [Quine, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Quine's New Foundations system of set theory, devised with no model in mind, but on the basis of a hunch that a purely formal restriction on the comprehension axiom would block all contradictions. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (New Foundations for Mathematical Logic [1937]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: The point is that Quine (who had an ontological preference for 'desert landscapes') attempted to do without an ontological commitment to objects (and their subsequent models), with a purely formal system. Quine's NF is not now highly regarded. |
| 21315 | A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler] |
| Full Idea: When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit. |
| 21317 | Despite consciousness fluctuating, we are aware that it belongs to one person [Butler] |
| Full Idea: Though the successive consciousnesses which we have of our own existence are not the same, yet they are consciousnesses of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: Butler's arguments seems to be that he appears to be the same person, so he is the same person. He is explicitly disagreeing with Locke. |
| 21313 | If consciousness of events makes our identity, then if we have forgotten them we didn't exist then [Butler] |
| Full Idea: Though consciousness of what is past does ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons is to say a person has not existed a single moment but what he can remember. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: An over-cautious scepticism has crept in about the reliability of bodily identity. Now we can have photographs and CCTV to prove that we experienced events we have forgotten. Butler is right. |
| 21314 | Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler] |
| Full Idea: One would think it really self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge can presuppose truth, which it presupposes. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: It rather begs the question to dogmatically assert that mere consciousness presupposes a self, especially after Hume's criticisms. That consciousness implies a subject to experience needs arguing for. Is it the best explanation? |
| 21318 | If the self changes, we have no responsibilities, and no interest in past or future [Butler] |
| Full Idea: If personality is a transient thing ...then it follows that it is a fallacy to charge ourselves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in any thing which befell us yesterday, or what will befall us tomorrow. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: We seem to care about the past and future of our children, without actually being our children. Can't my future self be my descendant, a close one, instead of me? |