121 ideas
| 16604 | Philosophy consists of choosing between Plato, Aristotle and Democritus [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The history of philosophy consists in a series of choices between three primordial rivals: Plato, Aristotle and Democritus. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau's point is that the importance of Democritus is not usually appreciated. As far as I can see, Democritus may have been the greatest of all philosophers, but most of his works are lost. His fragments are the best fragments. |
| 16606 | Original philosophers invariably seek inspiration from past thinkers [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers almost never strike out on wholly new ground, without the historical inspiration of some figure or other. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
| 16586 | The commentaries of Averroes were the leading guide to Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The commentaries of Averroes on virtually the whole Aristotelian corpus became by far the most important scholastic guide to the interpretation of Aristotle. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.1) |
| 16568 | Modernity begins in the late 12th century, with Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: I tend to think of modernity as coming in the late twelfth century, with Averroes's magisterial commentaries on Aristotle. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: A rather quirky use of 'modernity', but this seems to be a huge landmark. Note that it comes from the Islamic Arab world, not from Europe. |
| 16653 | Once accidents were seen as real, 'Categories' became the major text for ontology [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Originally you count substances for ontology. Once there is the doctrine of real accidents (in the 14th cent) the list of ten categories begins to look like an inventory of the kinds of things there are, and 'Categories' looks like the fundamental text. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: Prior to this development, 'Categories' was treated as a mere beginner's text, once the major corpus of Aristotle had been rediscovered in the 13th century. The result of this development is sortal essentialism, which I don't like. |
| 16704 | In 1347, the Church effectively stopped philosophy for the next 300 years [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The year 1347 is a great milestone in the history of philosophy, because then the route to modern philosophy was blocked by Church authorities, and effectively put on hold for almost 300 years. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 19.3) | |
| A reaction: It is interesting that it was 100 years after the Reformation before philosophy got going again, and then only thanks to one man. Islam stopped philosophy earlier. |
| 16605 | After c.1450 all of Plato was available. Before that, only the first half of 'Timaeus' was known [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: From the mid-fifteenth century forward, for the first time, the whole Platonic corpus was available in Ficino's Latin translation. Before then, only the first half of the 'Timaeus' had widely circulated in Latin. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
| 16607 | Renaissance Platonism is peripheral [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The fabled phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism is peripheral. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that only a few Italians pursued the Platonic line. Pasnau suggests Cartesian dualism as a possible influence from Plato. |
| 16715 | Plato only made an impact locally in 15th century Italy [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: In certain limited circles in Italy, Plato made an impact in the fifteenth century, but his influence never came close to challenging Aristotle's. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 20.2) |
| 16610 | Philosophy could easily have died in 17th century, if it weren't for Descartes [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: As scholasticism collapsed in the 17th century, it might easily have happened is that philosophy simply died. That this did not happen is due in large part to René Descartes. …It is remarkable that this brilliant man insisted on still doing philosophy. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.5) | |
| A reaction: The alternative view is, of course, that you just can't stop people from thinking philosophically (except by totalitarian education). Are there philosophers in North Korea, or among the Taliban? |
| 16781 | The 17th century is a metaphysical train wreck [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The seventeenth century is a metaphysical train wreck. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.6) | |
| A reaction: This is, roughly, because the corpuscularian philosophy lacked the resources to answer all the problems dealt with by substantial forms. |
| 15357 | Philosophy is the most general intellectual discipline [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the most general intellectual discipline. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: Very simple, but exactly how I see the subject. It is continuous with the sciences, and tries to give an account of nature, but operating at an extreme level of generality. It must respect the findings of science, but offer bold interpretations. |
| 6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Not only is traditional philosophy incapable of discovering the foundations it seeks, but the philosophical enterprise may itself dislodge the contingent, de facto supports that our daily life depends upon. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: In the end Fogelin is not so pessimistic, but he is worried by the concern of philosophers with paradox and contradiction. I don't remotely consider this a reason to reject philosophy, but it might be a reason to keep it sealed off from daily life. |
| 6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three main threats to our rational lives are fear of inconsistency, illusions (of absolutism and relativism) and doubt. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice analysis of the forces that can destroy the philosopher's aspiration to the rational life. Personally I still suffer from a few illusions about the possibility of absolutes, but I may grow out of it. The other three don't bother me. |
| 6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: It might be wholly unreasonable to suppose that human beings will ever be able to attain a view of the world that is both suitably rich and completely consistent. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin's lectures develop this view very persuasively. I think all philosophers must believe that the gods could attain a 'rich and consistent' view. Our problem is that we are a badly organised team, whose members keep dying. |
| 6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The presence of an inconsistency in the rules that govern a game need not destroy the game. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: He only defends this thesis if the inconsistency is away from the main centre of the action. You can't have an inconsistent definition of scoring a goal or a touchdown. |
| 6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Traditionally many philosophers (Aristotle among them) have considered the law of noncontradiction to be the deepest, most fundamental principle of rationality. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For Aristotle, see Idea 1601 (and 'Metaphysics' 1005b28). The only denier of the basic character of the law that I know of is Nietzsche (Idea 4531). Fogelin, despite many qualifications, endorses the law, and so do I. |
| 6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: People who reject the law of noncontradiction obliterate any significant difference between asserting something and denying it; …this will not move anyone who genuinely opts either for silence or for madness. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a sufficiently firm and clear assertion of the basic nature of this law. The only rival view seems to be that of Nietzsche (Idea 4531), but then you wonder how Nietzsche is in a position to assert the relativity of the law. |
| 16677 | Anti-Razor: if you can't account for a truth, keep positing things until you can [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The Anti-Razor says 'whenever an affirmative proposition is truly stated, if one thing does not suffice to account for its truth, then one must posit things, and if two do not suffice then three, and so on to infinity'. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.3) | |
| A reaction: This is quoted from an anonymous logic text of 1325. Apparently Ockham himself articulated the idea more than once. |
| 15352 | A definition should allow the defined term to be eliminated [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: A definition allows a defined term to be eliminated in every context in which it appears. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 04.2) | |
| A reaction: To do that, a definition had better be incredibly comprehensive, so that no nice nuance of the original term is thrown out. |
| 6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: There is almost universal agreement that legal reasoning is fundamentally analogical, not deductive, in character. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the question of whether analogy can be considered as 'reasoning' in itself. How do you compare the examples? Could you compare two examples if you lacked language, or rules, or a scale of values? |
| 15324 | Semantic theories of truth seek models; axiomatic (syntactic) theories seek logical principles [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: There are semantical theories of truth, concerned with models for languages containing the truth predicate, and axiomatic (or syntactic) theories, interested in basic logical principles governing the concept of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the map of contemporary debates, which seem now to have given up talking about 'correspondence', 'coherence' etc. |
| 15323 | Truth is a property, because the truth predicate has an extension [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: I take truth to be a property because the truth predicate has an extension - the collection of all true sentences - and this collection does not (unlike the 'extension' of 'exists') consist of everything, or even of all sentences. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: He concedes that it may be an 'uninteresting' property. My problem is always that I am unconvinced that truth is tied to sentences. I can make perfect sense of animal thoughts being right or wrong. Extension of mental propositions? |
| 15374 | Truth has no 'nature', but we should try to describe its behaviour in inferences [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: We should not aim at describing the nature of truth because there is no such thing. Rather, we should aim at describing the inferential behaviour of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 10.2.3) |
| 15348 | Propositions have sentence-like structures, so it matters little which bears the truth [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: It makes little difference, at least in extensional contexts, whether the truth bearers are propositions or sentences (or assertions). Even if the bearers are propositions rather than sentences, propositions are structured rather like sentences. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.4) | |
| A reaction: The 'extensional' context means you are only talking about the things that are referred to, and not about the way this is expressed. I prefer propositions, but this is an interesting point. |
| 15333 | Modern correspondence is said to be with the facts, not with true propositions [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Modern correspondence theorists no longer take things to correspond to true propositions; they consider facts to be the truthmakers of propositions. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: If we then define facts as the way certain things are, independently from our thinking about it, at least we seem to be avoiding circularity. Not much point in correspondence accounts if you are not a robust realist (like me). [14,000th idea, 23/4/12!] |
| 15337 | The correspondence 'theory' is too vague - about both 'correspondence' and 'facts' [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The principle difficulty of the correspondence theory of truth is its vagueness. It is too vague to be called a theory until more information is given about what is meant by the terms 'correspondence' and 'fact'. Facts can involve a heavy ontology. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing here to make me give up my commitment to the correspondence view of truth, though it sounds as if I will have to give up the word 'theory' in that context. Truth is so obviously about thought fitting reality that there is nothing to discuss. |
| 15334 | The coherence theory allows multiple coherent wholes, which could contradict one another [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The coherence theory seems too liberal. It seems there can be more than one systematic whole which, while being internally coherent, contradict each other, and thus cannot all be true. Coherence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a modern post-Tarski axiomatic truth theorist making very short work indeed of the coherence theory of truth. I take Horsten to be correct. |
| 15336 | The pragmatic theory of truth is relative; useful for group A can be useless for group B [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The pragmatic theory is unsatisfactory because usefulness is a relative notion. One theory can be useful to group A while being thoroughly impractical for group B. This would make the theory both truth and false. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This objection, along with the obvious fact that certain falsehoods can be very useful, would seem to rule pragmatism out as a theory of truth. It is, in fact, an abandonment of truth. |
| 15354 | Tarski's hierarchy lacks uniform truth, and depends on contingent factors [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: According to the Tarskian hierarchical conception, truth is not a uniform notion. ...Also Kripke has emphasised that the level of a token of the truth predicate can depend on contingent factors, such as what else has been said by a speaker. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 04.5) |
| 15340 | Tarski Bi-conditional: if you'll assert φ you'll assert φ-is-true - and also vice versa [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The axiom schema 'Sentence "phi;" is true iff φ' is the (unrestricted) Tarski-Biconditional, and is motivated by the thought that if you are willing to assume or outright assert that φ, you will assert that φ is true - and also vice versa. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: Very helpful! Most people are just bewildered by the Tarski bi-conditional ('"Snow is white"...), but this formulation nicely shows its minimal character while showing that it really does say something. It says what truths and truth-claims commit you to. |
| 15345 | Semantic theories have a regress problem in describing truth in the languages for the models [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Semantic theories give a class of models with a truth predicate, ...but Tarski taught us that this needs a more encompassing framework than its language...so how is the semantics of the framework expressed? The model route has a regress. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] So this regress problem, of endless theories of truth going up the hierarchy, is Horsten's main reason for opting for axiomatic theories, which he then tries to strengthen, so that they are not quite so deflated. |
| 15373 | Axiomatic approaches avoid limiting definitions to avoid the truth predicate, and limited sizes of models [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: An adequate definition of truth can only be given for the fragment of our language that does not contain the truth predicate. A model can never encompass the whole of the domain of discourse of our language. The axiomatic approach avoids these problems. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 10.1) |
| 15346 | Axiomatic approaches to truth avoid the regress problem of semantic theories [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The axiomatic approach to truth does not suffer from the regress problem. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 15345 for the regress problem. The difficulty then seems to be that axiomatic approaches lack expressive power, so the hunt is on for a set of axioms which will do a decent job. Fun work, if you can cope with it. |
| 15371 | An axiomatic theory needs to be of maximal strength, while being natural and sound [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The challenge is to find the arithmetically strongest axiomatical truth theory that is both natural and truth-theoretically sound. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 07.7) |
| 15332 | 'Reflexive' truth theories allow iterations (it is T that it is T that p) [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: A theory of truth is 'reflexive' if it allows us to prove truth-iterations ("It is true that it is true that so-and-so"). | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.4) |
| 15361 | A good theory of truth must be compositional (as well as deriving biconditionals) [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Deriving many Tarski-biconditionals is not a sufficient condition for being a good theory of truth. A good theory of truth must in addition do justice to the compositional nature of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.1) |
| 15350 | The Naďve Theory takes the bi-conditionals as axioms, but it is inconsistent, and allows the Liar [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The Naďve Theory of Truth collects all the Tarski bi-conditionals of a language and takes them as axioms. But no consistent theory extending Peano arithmetic can prove all of them. It is inconsistent, and even formalises the liar paradox. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 03.5.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This looks to me like the account of truth that Davidson was working with, since he just seemed to be compiling bi-conditionals for tricky cases. (Wrong! He championed the Compositional Theory, Horsten p.71) |
| 15351 | Axiomatic theories take truth as primitive, and propose some laws of truth as axioms [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: In the axiomatic approach we take the truth predicate to express an irreducible, primitive notion. The meaning of the truth predicate is partially explicated by proposing certain laws of truth as basic principles, as axioms. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 04.2) | |
| A reaction: Judging by Horsten's book, this is a rather fruitful line of enquiry, but it still seems like a bit of a defeat to take truth as 'primitive'. Presumably you could add some vague notion of correspondence as the background picture. |
| 15367 | By adding truth to Peano Arithmetic we increase its power, so truth has mathematical content! [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: It is surprising that just by adding to Peano Arithmetic principles concerning the notion of truth, we increase the mathematical strength of PA. So, contrary to expectations, the 'philosophical' notion of truth has real mathematical content. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: Horsten invites us to be really boggled by this. All of this is in the Compositional Theory TC. It enables a proof of the consistency of arithmetic (but still won't escape Gödel's Second). |
| 15330 | Friedman-Sheard theory keeps classical logic and aims for maximum strength [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The Friedman-Sheard theory of truth holds onto classical logic and tries to construct a theory that is as strong as possible. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.4) |
| 15331 | Kripke-Feferman has truth gaps, instead of classical logic, and aims for maximum strength [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: If we abandon classical logic in favour of truth-value gaps and try to strengthen the theory, this leads to the Kripke-Feferman theory of truth, and variants of it. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.4) |
| 15325 | Inferential deflationism says truth has no essence because no unrestricted logic governs the concept [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: According to 'inferential deflationism', truth is a concept without a nature or an essence. This is betrayed by the fact that there are no unrestricted logical laws that govern the concept of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.1) |
| 15344 | Deflationism skips definitions and models, and offers just accounts of basic laws of truth [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Contemporary deflationism about truth does not attempt to define truth, and does not rely on models containing the truth predicate. Instead they are interpretations of axiomatic theories of truth, containing only basic laws of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.3) |
| 15356 | Deflationism concerns the nature and role of truth, but not its laws [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Deflationism is not a theory of the laws of truth. It is a view on the nature and role of the concept of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05 Intro) |
| 15368 | This deflationary account says truth has a role in generality, and in inference [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: On the conception of deflationism developed in this book, the prime positive role of the truth predicate is to serve as a device for expressing generalities, and an inferential tool. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 07.5) |
| 15358 | Deflationism says truth isn't a topic on its own - it just concerns what is true [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Deflationism says the theory of truth does not have a substantial domain of its own. The domain of the theory of truth consists of the bearers of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate thought is that truth also concerns falsehoods, which would be inexplicable without it. If physics just concerns the physical, does that mean that physics lacks its own 'domain'? Generalising about the truths is a topic. |
| 15359 | Deflation: instead of asserting a sentence, we can treat it as an object with the truth-property [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The Deflationary view just says that instead of asserting a sentence, we can turn the sentence into an object and assert that this object has the property of truth. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05.2.2) | |
| A reaction: That seems to leave a big question hanging, which concerns the nature of the property that is being attributed to this object. Quine 1970:10-13 says it is just a 'device'. Surely you can rest content with that as an account of truth? |
| 15329 | Nonclassical may accept T/F but deny applicability, or it may deny just T or F as well [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Some nonclassical logic stays close to classical, assuming two mutually exclusive truth values T and F, but some sentences fail to have one. Others have further truth values such as 'half truth', or dialethists allow some T and F at the same time. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: I take that to say that the first lot accept bivalence but reject excluded middle (allowing 'truth value gaps'), while the second lot reject both. Bivalence gives the values available, and excluded middle says what has them. |
| 15326 | Doubt is thrown on classical logic by the way it so easily produces the liar paradox [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Aside from logic, so little is needed to generate the liar paradox that one wonders whether the laws of classical logic are unrestrictedly valid after all. (Many theories of truth have therefore been formulated in nonclassical logic.) | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke uses Strong Kleene logic for his theory. The implication is that debates discussed by Horsten actually have the status of classical logic at stake, as well as the nature of truth. |
| 15341 | Deduction Theorem: ψ only derivable from φ iff φ→ψ are axioms [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The Deduction Theorem says ψ is derivable in classical predicate logic from ψ iff the sentence φ→ψ is a theorem of classical logic. Hence inferring φ to ψ is truth-preserving iff the axiom scheme φ→ψ is provable. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: Horsten offers this to show that the Tarski bi-conditionals can themselves be justified, and not just the rule of inference involved. Apparently you can only derive something if you first announce that you have the ability to derive it. Odd. |
| 15328 | A theory is 'non-conservative' if it facilitates new mathematical proofs [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: A theory is 'non-conservative' if it allows us to prove mathematical facts that go beyond what the background mathematical theory can prove on its own. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: This is an instance of the relationship with mathematics being used as the test case for explorations of logic. It is a standard research method, because it is so precise, but should not be mistaken for the last word about a theory. |
| 15349 | It is easier to imagine truth-value gaps (for the Liar, say) than for truth-value gluts (both T and F) [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: It is easier to imagine what it is like for a sentence to lack a truth value than what it is like for a sentence to be both truth and false. So I am grudgingly willing to entertain the possibility that certain sentences (like the Liar) lack a truth value. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.5) | |
| A reaction: Fans of truth value gluts are dialethists like Graham Priest. I'm with Horsten on this one. But in what way can a sentence be meaningful if it lacks a truth-value? He mentions unfulfilled presuppositions and indicative conditionals as gappy. |
| 15366 | Satisfaction is a primitive notion, and very liable to semantical paradoxes [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Satisfaction is a more primitive notion than truth, and it is even more susceptible to semantical paradoxes than the truth predicate. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.3) | |
| A reaction: The Liar is the best known paradox here. Tarski bases his account of truth on this primitive notion, so Horsten is pointing out the difficulties. |
| 15353 | The first incompleteness theorem means that consistency does not entail soundness [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: It is a lesson of the first incompleteness theorem that consistency does not entail soundness. If we add the negation of the gödel sentence for PA as an extra axiom to PA, the result is consistent. This negation is false, so the theory is unsound. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 04.3) |
| 15355 | Strengthened Liar: 'this sentence is not true in any context' - in no context can this be evaluated [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The Strengthened Liar sentence says 'this sentence is not true in any context'. It is not hard to figure out that there is no context in which the sentence can be coherently evaluated. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 04.6) |
| 15364 | English expressions are denumerably infinite, but reals are nondenumerable, so many are unnameable [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The number of English expressions is denumerably infinite. But Cantor's theorem can be used to show that there are nondenumerably many real numbers. So not every real number has a (simple or complex name in English). | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.3) | |
| A reaction: This really bothers me. Are we supposed to be committed to the existence of entities which are beyond our powers of naming? How precise must naming be? If I say 'pick a random real number', might that potentially name all of them? |
| 15360 | ZFC showed that the concept of set is mathematical, not logical, because of its existence claims [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: One of the strengths of ZFC is that it shows that the concept of set is a mathematical concept. Many originally took it to be a logical concept. But ZFC makes mind-boggling existence claims, which should not follow if it was a logical concept. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 05.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This suggests that set theory is not just a way of expressing mathematics (see Benacerraf 1965), but that some aspect of mathematics has been revealed by it - maybe even its essential nature. |
| 15369 | Set theory is substantial over first-order arithmetic, because it enables new proofs [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: The nonconservativeness of set theory over first-order arithmetic has done much to establish set theory as a substantial theory indeed. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 07.5) | |
| A reaction: Horsten goes on to point out the price paid, which is the whole new ontology which has to be added to the arithmetic. Who cares? It's all fictions anyway! |
| 15370 | Predicativism says mathematical definitions must not include the thing being defined [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Predicativism has it that a mathematical object (such as a set of numbers) cannot be defined by quantifying over a collection that includes that same mathematical object. To do so would be a violation of the vicious circle principle. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 07.7) | |
| A reaction: In other words, when you define an object you are obliged to predicate something new, and not just recycle the stuff you already have. |
| 16598 | Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: For a scholastic author, hardly anything was so likely to precipitate a lengthy disputatio as talk of priority, in its various kinds. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.3) |
| 16727 | In mixtures, the four elements ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed body with a form [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The standard view was that in a mixture there is only the mixed body and its substantial form (gold). There are no further substantial forms of the elements, because the elements do not actually exist within the body. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 22.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be the key idea that was overthrown in the seventeenth century, so that corpuscular matter kept aspects of its ingredients, which science could then investigate. With the substantial form, investigation seemed impossible. |
| 15338 | We may believe in atomic facts, but surely not complex disjunctive ones? [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: While positive and perhaps even negative atomic facts may be unproblematic, it seems excessive to commit oneself to the existence of logically complex facts such as disjunctive facts. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it is hard to deny that very complex statements involving massive disjunctions can be true or false. But why does commitment to real facts have to involve a huge ontology? The ontology is just the ingredients of the fact, isn't it? |
| 15363 | In the supervaluationist account, disjunctions are not determined by their disjuncts [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: If 'Britain is large' and 'Italy is large' lack truth values, then so must 'Britain or Italy is large' - so on the supervaluationist account the truth value of a disjunction is not determined by the truth values of its disjuncts. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 15362 to get the full picture here. |
| 15362 | If 'Italy is large' lacks truth, so must 'Italy is not large'; but classical logic says it's large or it isn't [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: If 'Italy is a large country' lacks a truth value, then so too, presumably, does 'Italy is not a large country'. But 'Italy is or is not a large country' is true, on the supervaluationist account, because it is a truth of classical propositional logic. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 15363. He cites Fine 1975. |
| 16732 | 17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The seventeenth century is often said to have bequeathed us three ways of thinking about sensible qualities: either in reductive microphysical terms, or as internal phenomenal states, or else as powers or dispositions. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau goes on to claim that no one in the 17th century believed the third one. I take it to be a very new, and totally wonderful and correct, view. |
| 16733 | 17th century authors only recognised categorical properties, never dispositions [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, my claim is that authors during the period recognise only categorical properties, and never dispositional properties. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) |
| 16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Among scholastics the primary agreement is that what primarily exist are substances. The primary disagreement concerns the nature of their changeable properties. Are they real accidents, or mere modes of substance? | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 13.1) |
| 16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2) | |
| A reaction: This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'. |
| 16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Someone who wants to enrich a strict corpuscularian account with other metaphysical entities has alternatives other than Aristotelian hylomorphism. One can, for instance, introduce dispositions. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 28.2) | |
| A reaction: This slightly throws me, because I have been flirting with a dispositional account of hylomorphism. The implication is that the form is abstract and structural, where the disposition is real and physical. But dispositions can do the job of forms. |
| 16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics reject anything like bare dispositions, on Aristotelian principles. Powers are forms, and forms actualise their subject, and are causally efficacious. Therefore no powers can be bare dispositions. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be that a mere disposition is not actual, as a form is required to be. I would have thought that a power does not have to be operational to be actual. A live electric wire is a real phenomenon. It isn't waiting to be live. |
| 16649 | Scholastics say there is a genuine thing if it is 'separable' [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Among the scholastics (after Duns Scotus) it would be come to be taken for granted that the crucial test for being a genuine thing - a 'res' - is separability. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea of separability is implicit in Aristotle. In borderline cases, it seems that they are tempted to claim that things like accidental properties are separable, simply because they want them to be genuine things. A criterion for separability? |
| 16785 | If you reject essences, questions of individuation become extremely difficult [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Given the accepted linkage between a thing's essence and its identity, the rejection of essences makes a complete mess out of questions of individuation. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.6) | |
| A reaction: I note that he talks of a thing having 'identity', contra the view of identity as a two-place relation. I agree with this, but there is a chicken-egg problem. Do I perceive an identity and surmise an essence, or surmise an essence and deduce identity? |
| 16680 | Scholastics thought Quantity could be the principle of individuation [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Quantity was a leading scholastic contender for the principle of individuation. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.4) |
| 16628 | Corpuscularianism promised a decent account of substance [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: One of the great attractions of corpuscularianism is that it promises to put our acquaintance with substances on a solid foundation. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 07.3) | |
| A reaction: This is why the seventeenth century did not abandon 'substance', even though they banished 'substantial form'. |
| 16617 | Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism say only substances exist [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism tend to think that only substances exist. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau treats this as an extreme 17th C reaction which was hopelessly inadequate as metaphysics. We have been struggling with the nature of 'properties' ever since, while losing our grip on the concept of a unified 'substance'. |
| 16741 | Scholastics wanted to treat Aristotelianism as physics, rather than as metaphysics [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: There is a broad scholastic tendency to understand Aristotelianism not in abstract, metaphysical terms, but as a concrete, physical theory of the world. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give a good explanation of why Aristotelianism plummeted to oblivion in the 17th C. Pasnau obviously wants to revive it, by drawing a sharp line between metaphysics and science. I doubt the line. |
| 16777 | If crowds are things at all, they seem to be Substances, since they bear properties [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Crowds seem to be the bearers of properties, and if they are things at all, then there is no place for them other than in the category of Substance. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to say, based on Aristotle, that a substance is whatever 1) bears properties, and 2) endures in spite of change, but a crowd is a nice problem case, because it looks too disunited to be a 'substance'. |
| 16615 | Scholastics use 'substantia' for thick concrete entities, and for thin metaphysical ones [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Scholastic texts are rife with different senses of 'substantia', using the term to refer, among other things, both to thick concrete entities and to thin metaphysical ones. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau introduces 'thin' and 'thick' substance for this reason. I may adopt this. Without distinctions between thin and thick concepts of things we can get very muddled. I like the word to label something which is an 'entity'. |
| 16775 | For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: According to strict corpuscularianism the only real constituents of a substance are its integral parts. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
| A reaction: An understandable reaction to the emptiness of Aristotelian substantial forms in science. It seems to leave out the structural principles that distinguish one arrangement of parts from another. See Koslicki on this. |
| 16769 | If clay survives destruction of the statue, the statue wasn't a substance, but a mere accident [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The unitarian view of substance says it cannot be divided. If the clay can survive the destruction of the statue, then that shows that the statue was not a substance at all, and that its shape (or whatever made it a statue) was merely a passing accident. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give the orthodox Aristotelian/Thomist reading, assuming that a substance only has one form, which unifies it. Since clay must have shape, and statues must have matter, I have never understood how there were two objects here. |
| 16602 | Corpuscularianism rejected not only form, but also the dependence of matter on form [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: What marks the rise of the corpuscularian movement is not just the rejection of form, but the rejection of matter as dependent on form. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: The point was that matter required form to have any kind of actual existence, but now matter can stand on its own. |
| 16612 | Hylomorphism may not be a rival to science, but an abstract account of unity and endurance [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Hylomorphism admits of an alternative formulation, as an explanatory schema at a different level of analysis, not competing with corpuscular-mechanistic theory, but accounting for abstract features of the world - notably unity and endurance of substances. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau is clearly sympathetic. As a view of why normal objects have unity and persist over time it is almost the only decent theory around. Hawley, for example, struggles to explain how 'stages' of a thing are linked. Classical mereology is silly. |
| 16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics lost their grip on hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory, conceiving of it as a concrete, physical hypothesis about causal forces. Once form and matter were made subject to empirical research, their days were inevitably numbered. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau seems to make a sharp distinction between science, and a separate realm he labels 'metaphysical'. You can't keep causation out of Aristotelian hylomorphism. The defence is that it is at a higher level of generality than science. |
| 16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The conception of form as somehow substantial took on new life among scholastic Aristotelians, and was developed in ways that Aristotle himself never suggested. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
| A reaction: This is music to we modern neo-Aristotelians, because scholasticism was rightly dumped in the 17th C, but we can go back and start again from what The Philosopher actually said. |
| 16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The whole scholastic conception of substantial form came to have more and more in common with an Aristotelian efficient cause. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle, of course, identified the form with the 'formal cause [aitia]', which is the shape of the statue, rather than the efficient cause, which is the sculptor. |
| 16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Aquinas subscribes to the unitarian doctrine that a single substance has just a single substantial form, but authors like Scotus subscribe to a plurality of substantial forms. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
| A reaction: The Scotists seem to think that qualities themselve can have forms. I take it that Aristotle would have agreed with Aquinas. |
| 16671 | Scholastic Quantity either gives a body parts, or spreads them out in a unified way [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: On one version of Quantity realism it is what makes a body have parts; on another version, it is what makes the body's parts be spread out in a continuous and unified way. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.1) |
| 16579 | There may be different types of substrate, or temporary substrates [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The substratum thesis says …perhaps there is a different subject for different kinds of changes, and perhaps what endures through one kind of change will be corrupted by another. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
| 16596 | A substratum can't be 'bare', because it has a job to do [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: A completely bare substratum seems not just incoherent but also unable to carry out the function for which it is intended - to be a substratum. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.3) |
| 16584 | If a substrate gives causal support for change, quite a lot of the ingredients must endure [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: When the substratum thesis is grounded on the idea that the ingredients must endure through the change, if they are to play a causal role, then it is natural to suppose that quite a lot of the ingredients must endure. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle sharply distinguishes alteration from substantial change, but as the substrate gets thinner, the boundary between those two would blur. |
| 16580 | A substrate may be 'prime matter', which endures through every change [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The 'conservation thesis' about substrates says that there is a single, most basic substrate that endures through every material change, something we call 'prime matter'. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
| 16749 | Aristotelians deny that all necessary properties are essential [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: For an Aristotelian not all necessary properties are essential; the essential properties are those that define a thing as what it is. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it as basic that whatever is essential is in some way important, whereas necessities can be trivial. |
| 16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The standard scholastic examples of 'entia successiva' are time and motion. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 18.1) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's examples of a day and the Games seem clearer, as time and motion do not count so clearly as 'things'. |
| 16583 | Weak ex nihilo says it all comes from something; strong version says the old must partly endure [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The weak ex nihilo principle says that everything comes from something, and the strong ex nihilo principle says that in everything new, something of the old must endure | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
| 6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Convention, to exist at all, must have a basis in something that is not conventional; conventions, to work, need something nonconventional to build upon and shape. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin attributes his point to Hume. I agree entirely. No convention could ever possibly catch on in a society unless there were some point to it. If you can't see a point to a convention (like wearing ties) then start looking, because it's there. |
| 15372 | Some claim that indicative conditionals are believed by people, even though they are not actually held true [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: In the debate about doxastic attitudes towards indicative conditional sentences, one finds philosophers who claim that conditionals can be believed even though they have no truth value (and thus are not true). | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 09.3) |
| 6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: My own view might be called 'circumspect rationalism' - the view that our intellectual faculties provide our only means for comprehending the world in which we find oruselves. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He needs to say more than that to offer a theory, but I like the label, and it fits the modern revival of rationalism, with which I sympathise, and which rests, I think, on Russell's point that self-evidence comes in degrees, not as all-or-nothing truth. |
| 6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: In general a knowledge claim is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem here is what is 'relevant'. Fogelin's example is 'Are you sure the suspect doesn't have a twin brother?' If virtual reality is relevant, most knowledge is defeated. Certainly, imaginative people feel that they know less than others. |
| 6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Coherentists argue that if the circle of justifications is big enough, rich enough, coherent enough, and so on, then there is nothing wrong circularity. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: There must always be something wrong with circularity, and no god would put up with it, but we might have to. Of course, two pieces of evidence might be unconnected, such as an equation and an observation. |
| 6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: One rule for the justification of knowledge might be: Do not raise the level of scrutiny in the absence of a particular reason that triggers it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: That won't decide the appropriate level of scrutiny from which to start. One of my maxims is 'don't set the bar too high', but it seems tough that one should have to justify moving it. The early scientists tried raising it, and were amazed by the results. |
| 6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction. |
| 6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Sceptical scenarios deal in wildly remote defeating possibilities, so that the level of scrutiny becomes unrestrictedly high, and they also usually deal with defeators that are in principle ineliminable. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The question of how high we 'set the bar' seems to me central to epistemology. There is clearly an element of social negotiation involved, centring on what is appropriate. If, though, scepticism is 'ineliminable', we must face up to that. |
| 6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We reach radical perspectivism by replacing Kant's single, necessary categorial scheme with a plurality of competing categorial schemes. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It certainly looks as if Kant sent us down a slippery slope into the dafter aspects of twentieth century relativism. The best antidote I know of is Davidson's (e.g. Idea 6398). But then it seems unimaginative to say that only one scheme is possible. |
| 16783 | Essences must explain, so we can infer them causally from the accidents [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Without the explanatory role of essence, the underlying epistemic picture would be jeopardised, because there would no longer be any causal route by which we might get from accidents to essence. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.5) | |
| A reaction: There is a slight whiff of circularity here. It could be that we are psychologically desperate for essences, and so we invent bogus causal routes from the accidents to get at them. Can we know there are essences awaiting us, on independent grounds? |
| 6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We as human beings are also irrational animals, unique among animals in our capacity to place faith in bizarre fictions of our own construction. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is glaringly true, and a very nice corrective to the talk of Greeks and others about man as the 'rational animal'. From a distance we might be described by Martians as the 'mad animal'. Is the irrational current too strong to swim against? |
| 15347 | A theory of syntax can be based on Peano arithmetic, thanks to the translation by Gödel coding [Horsten] |
| Full Idea: A notion of formal provability can be articulated in Peano arithmetic. ..This is surprisingly 'linguistic' rather than mathematical, but the key is in the Gödel coding. ..Hence we use Peano arithmetic as a theory of syntax. | |
| From: Leon Horsten (The Tarskian Turn [2011], 02.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the explanation of why issues in formal semantics end up being studied in systems based on formal arithmetic. And I had thought it was just because they were geeks who dream in numbers, and can't speak language properly... |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
| 6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Like the word 'good', the word 'beautiful', when deprived of contextual support, is nearly contentless. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If I say with, for example, Oscar Wilde that beauty is the highest ideal in life, this doesn't strike me as contentless, but I still sympathise with Fogelin's notion that beauty is rooted in particulars. |
| 6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: "It is all a matter of taste" may be an all-purpose stopper of discussions of aesthetic values, but it also completely severs the connection with the actual properties of the object under consideration. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark grows out of his discussion of Hume. I like this remark, which ties in with Particularism in morality, and with the central role of experiments in science. The world forces beliefs on us. |
| 6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Cynics are usually unswerving in their commitment to a moral ideal, but disappointed or disgusted by humanity's failure to meet it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I felt quite suicidal the other day when I saw someone park diagonally across two parking spaces. They can't seem to grasp the elementary Kantian slogan 'What if everybody did that?' It's all hopeless. I wonder if I am becoming a bit of a Cynic? |
| 6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The purposes of punishment include deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and retribution, but they don't always sit well together. Deterrence is best served by making prisons miserable places, but this may run counter to rehabilitation. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to most educated people that retribution should be pushed far down the list if we are to be civilised (see Idea 1659), and yet personal revenge for a small act of aggression seems basic, normal and acceptable. We dream of rehabilitation. |
| 6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: A strict retributivist is likely to say that once a crime is paid for, that's that; a deterrence theorist is likely to say that the protection of potential victims overrides the released convict's right to a free and fresh start. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting since the retributivist here has the more liberal attitude. Reformists will also have a dilemma when years in prison have failed to reform the convict. Virtue theorists like balance, and sensitively consider our relations with the criminals. |
| 16609 | Atomists say causation is mechanical collisions, and all true qualities are microscopic [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The atomist view is that causation is limited to collisions among corpuscles (which is 'mechanism'), and the only bodily qualities are those found at the microcorpuscular level; sensible qualities are in fact sensations. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.4) | |
| A reaction: [Part of a full summary of atomism by Pasnau] |
| 16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, matter becomes body, and body becomes the object of natural science. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) |
| 16592 | Atomism is the commonest version of corpuscularianism, but isn't required by it [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Atomism is the most common version of corpuscular prime matter, but it is not the only option. Indeed, atomism neither entails nor is entailed by the combination of corpuscularianism and the substratum thesis. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the corpuscles may be endlessly divisible (which Lewis called 'gunk'). |
| 16750 | If there are just arrangements of corpuscles, where are the boundaries between substances? [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: If all there are corpuscles of various shapes and sizes, variously arranged, it is not easy to see how we might draw the boundary lines, at any given moment, between one substance and another. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
| A reaction: We still have precisely that problem, and it leads to the nihilism about ordinary objects found in Unger, Van Inwagen and Merricks. I have so far found modern defences of ordinary objects unpersuasive. |
| 16722 | Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: There is a scholastic theory of causation. Of Aristotle's Four Causes, the main one is the 'formal' cause, and that consists of changes in the primary, elemental qualities, which are hot, cold, wet and dry. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 21.2) | |
| A reaction: [my summary] It is probably right to call this 'scholastic' rather than 'Aristotelian', as I take Aristotelian essence to run deeper than this, and involve principles as well as qualities. |
| 16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Substantial forms might well be viewed as an early step in the development of scientific essentialism. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the scholastic view of substantial forms, which is much more physical and causal, rather than Aristotle's more abstract view. The rejection of substantial forms led to the 'Humean' view of laws of nature. |
| 16581 | Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Authors from 1274 to 1671 unanimously endorse the Christian doctrine that matter was created by God, before which time there was no material world at all. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
| 16642 | Transubstantion says accidents of bread and wine don't inhere in the substance [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Transubstantiation maintains that the accidents of the bread and wine endure after consecration without inhering in the substance. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: It's a big puzzle to outsiders why softness and nice taste should have theological significance. If it is the body and blood of Christ, presumably a miracle has occurred, so normal theories don't apply. It is the key difficulty for scholastic metaphysics. |